In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  “He cares about you, a great deal, what hurts you also hurts him.”

  “I had one of my headaches. I had taken something for it. It was unfortunate that he found me when he did. I said more than I should have, and that is what hurt him.”

  “Is it, Jamie?”

  He looked at her, eyes dark and face pale in the dim light, with a streak of fine color on either cheekbone.

  “You hold the knife, Pamela, it would perhaps be only kind if you wielded it less often.”

  She went toward him, aware that she was still trembling. She opened her hands as she came near to him. “There is no knife, there is nothing here but a woman and a friend.”

  “Friend, you say, and yet you claim to wield no blade.”

  “Jamie, I—” she choked on the words, afraid that if she began crying she wouldn’t be able to stop. She reached out to touch him, but he put out one of his hands and caught hers before she could.

  “I’m only a man, Pamela. I love you and I’ve long desired you, you know that well enough, but since that night in Maine…” He shook his head, the light from the candles tremoring on his hair, and echoing over and over in the windows of the room. “Don’t come near, not right now.”

  “Do you think it’s any different for me? I miss you even when you’re in the same room.”

  “Oh God, woman, you and that brutal honesty.”

  She pulled his hand aside and stepped inside his defenses, insufficient as they were this night.

  “Jamie, I love you, I have from the first day I saw you all those years ago. It has been a love of many facets, and it still is. I made vows to Casey though, and I believed I would keep those vows for the rest of my life. Somehow that night in Maine with you only felt inevitable, and not like I had broken a promise. But if you regret it, if it has caused you pain, then I—”

  He stopped her by the simple expedient of taking her face in his hands and kissing her. When at last he stopped, he gave his answer. “There is no room within me for regret, not with you.”

  And then, his breath warm against her mouth, “Come home with me.”

  Long ago, another woman, a stranger to her now, had been in this house. It was here that she had learned the story, long hidden, of Jamie’s twin sister, Adele. Here that she had come to understand and know him better and here that she had found the allies she needed to save his companies. She had also been newly pregnant at the time, so newly she hadn’t even yet realized it. She had lived in this house for a week, worried sick about the man who now walked up beside her, and took her hand in his.

  She waited while Jamie got out the keys, looking up at the house as it sat in the white light of the moon, sentineled by ghost-lit lime trees, their branches snow and shadow. The garden walls were steeped in the pale light as well, blotted with thick swatches of ivy. From the dormered window of one of the upstairs bedrooms, a single light shone. Jamie unlocked the door and then stepped aside for her to walk through. She thought for a moment she heard someone whisper behind her, just a sound, which might have been her name, but was surely only the wind murmuring through the ivy.

  Inside, the scents of sandalwood and roses hung upon the air. Moonlight traced the gilt edges of an old chair and limned the lines of poetry engraved over the mantelpiece, which she remembered from her last visit.

  And the sunlight clasps the earth,

  And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

  What is all this sweet work worth

  If thou kiss not me?

  Shelley, of course. His words were inevitable here.

  The hush of emptiness was around them. She looked up at Jamie, and he said, “She’s away for a week, visiting her sister in Brittany. It is only us.” He was referring to Madame Felicie who had once been his sister’s nurse and now looked after this house for him.

  Her hand still in his, she followed him through the kitchen and up the stairs of the old and beautiful house which had once held other lovers, long ago. At the bend of the stairs he kissed her, the moonlight falling through the long casement windows above them, fretting through the strands of his hair. It was a kiss which held a question at its core, and she responded with an answer made of many years and long desire stirred to wakefulness beside a dreaming sea.

  The bedroom looked out over the garden and the moon dipped in, wicking through the curtains, shimmering them to silver. Jamie took the wrap from her shoulders and laid it over a chair. He turned back and held out his hand. She took it and stepped into his arms.

  He leaned his forehead against hers, and she could feel the pulse of his blood, swift and warm, her own speeding up in response. She knew this man and understood his constraints all too well.

  “I—” he began, because it seemed, once a Jesuit acolyte, always a Jesuit acolyte. She put her hand up to his lips and said, “Tell the Father General in your head to close his eyes and look away, because he really shouldn’t see what’s about to happen.”

  He laughed and she reached up to kiss him. And still she felt the reserve in him, the hands that held her lightly, the breath that stuttered and paused. It was for her to unleash what held him in check.

  “Jamie.” Her voice shook, but it wasn’t from nerves. “I need you.”

  On that his hands closed, the hesitancy gone from him. The dress drifted down her body, her skin glowing as softly as pearls in the dim light. She shivered as he smoothed his hands along the glow. Her hair had tumbled from its pins and he pulled it aside to kiss her neck there in the hollow of her shoulder. She was trembling and so was he, the fire between them arcing back and forth, enveloping them, telling her that this time would not be like the last, this time would hurt more and damage them both. And yet, she did not want to stop, she only wanted this night to last as long as it might. In a moment she was completely bare to his hands, and she felt as if fire coursed through every cell in her body.

  A cask of moonlight had been poured, silver and thick, across the bed. It was light enough that she could see into his eyes, and far beyond that as well, it seemed. Yes, this would hurt more, but she no longer cared. It was clear he did not either. He lay her down across the bed, covering her with his body, even as she arched toward him in need. And then it was as she remembered and yet not at all the same. It was both cascade and deluge all at once, as she opened to him, welcoming the plunder, the bruising blood tide that rushed to every last cell, the greed that grasped and demanded and knew nothing other than its own want.

  Yes, this was not like Maine, for that love had been healing, had been both tender and wild in its consummation, had given and taken equally. But this was not that love; this held within it something darker, an emotion akin to pain and a passion so bruising that she knew neither of them would recover from it, and yet nor could they walk away from this dark, intoxicating fire, much as it might have been wise to.

  After, Jamie left the bed to light a fire in the bedroom hearth. She sat up in the welter of sheets and blankets to watch him as he moved about the room. Even now his beauty could stop her breath in her throat and make her ache. He looked like a different man than he had a few hours ago, like he had been newly made and forged fresh from some fine metal. He was still her Jamie though, still the man who had helped her through every painful day since she had lost Casey.

  She felt a wave of guilt that she should think of Casey here and now, and with it came confusion whether the guilt was for what they had just done, or guilt that she should think of another man while in Jamie’s bed. Casey would always be a part of everything for her, though. She supposed this particular situation was no different because Casey was the only man she had ever had this sort of intimacy with.

  She realized Jamie was watching her and she looked away from his gaze, feeling suddenly too exposed and too naked, both in the literal and the figurative senses of the word. Jamie came back to the bed and got in beside her. He took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She looked up at him.

  “I wouldn’t want you to feel like you had broken faith
with Casey,” he said. Never a coward, he looked her in the eyes as he said it.

  “I don’t,” she said, softly. It was true, she didn’t feel she had cheated on Casey. He had been a man of some understanding and he had not expected her to live like a nun should something happen to him; he had told her as much long ago.

  “If you did feel that way, I would understand,” he said. “I know in your heart, he is your husband.”

  “Jamie, I—”

  He shook his head, forestalling her words. “I would be a fool to think otherwise, Pamela.”

  “It has been,” she said quietly, “more than two years. I’m not a fool, if he was able to come home he would have. That he has not, tells me he never could.”

  “It is only natural that you would think of him. He is the love of your life. It would not be in your nature to forget just how that feels.”

  “He is the love of my life,” she said, “but you are my soul, Jamie.”

  As he sometimes did with her, he replied in poetry, because he knew she understood the further meaning of the lines he spoke.

  “This isle and house are mine, and I have vow’d

  Thee to be lady of the solitude.

  And I have fitted up some chambers there

  Looking towards the golden Eastern air

  And level with the living winds, which flow

  Like waves above the living waves below.”

  Shelley’s soul within a soul, one spirit, divided between two bodies.

  The burnished glow of the fire moved over Jamie, casting shadow and light in equal measure. Her fingers were twined through his, as if they had always rested there. For this moment, she felt entirely at peace. The fire played with the aureate beauty of his hair, strands of platinum and amber glittering amongst the disheveled gold. She traced her hand over the tattoos that spanned his chest and ran down his arm. He had never told her the significance of each one, so she did not know the story behind the tiny field of skulls, the violets that grew delicate upon each prick of barbed wire—though she thought perhaps she understood those a little—and the wolf’s head that gazed out at her from the inside of a shattered star. His right hand rested on the curve of her hip, softly possessive. He spoke when her hand paused, feeling the question though she did not voice it out loud.

  “The wolves are to remind me of what an unpredictable animal is man. The lily is you,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I told Gregor about you while he was tattooing me. He understood you were an integral part of my story, so he put you there on my chest, permanently.”

  “He sounds like he was a complicated friend.”

  Jamie laughed wryly. “You could say that.”

  She touched him carefully, just there where the lily was etched over his heart, and heard his breath catch in his throat.

  “And what did you tell him about me?”

  “The truth.”

  “And that is?”

  He put one finger to her chin, a gentle insistence there forcing her to look up and meet his eyes.

  “I told him that you are my dearest friend, and that I loved you, as a man loves a woman, but that you belonged to another man and I had made peace with that.”

  “Had you?” she asked, sad that she had ever caused this man a moment’s heartache.

  Jamie smiled at her. “I thought I had at the time, or as much as I was ever going to be able to put my feelings for you aside.”

  “I’m sorry, Jamie,” she said.

  He brushed the pad of one thumb over her lips to halt her words.

  “I’m not, sweetheart.”

  She put the tip of a finger to one of the tiny violets. “You can talk about her, it’s all right you know,” she said. “I would rather you told me about her than to have you feel you couldn’t.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I would rather not talk about her just now, Pamela.”

  “Jamie?”

  “Mmhmm?”

  “You moving here to Paris, is…is it because of me? Do you need to be away from me?” The idea of him living so far away and of not seeing him anymore made her feel physically ill.

  He was silent for a moment. “In part, yes, things have been terribly strained between us, sweetheart. It’s become difficult for the both of us and I don’t want things to get any more confusing for the children.”

  “And you think leaving won’t confuse them? They love you, Jamie.”

  “I love them too, Pamela, but as time goes on, they are going to want a real family life.”

  “You think you can never have that with us?” she asked.

  “I would love nothing more than that, you know that. I also know that right now you don’t have it to give.”

  She put her head down, shutting her eyes tightly, trying to dam the flood.

  “Hey,” he pulled her to him and held her tightly.

  “I can’t bear the thought of you being gone. I can’t imagine my life without you in it. And yet,” she tried to take a breath, her chest tight with anguish, “if you need to go, if you think living here would make you happier, then I understand.”

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “Jamie, your happiness matters to me more than my own. So yes, if you would be happier here, then I would understand it and I would wish you well.”

  “Oh, Pamela,” he shook his head. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” She reached up and kissed him, and he replied with the silent assurance of his body and she, made helpless by this thing that rose up between them when they touched, responded in kind. When they at last lay quiet again the fire had burned down to coals. Beyond the windows the light had turned ashy, morning would soon be on its way.

  “Will you tell me a story, Jamie? One more from The Faceless Tarot.” She wanted to simply drift to sleep in his arms with his voice soft in her ears.

  “I think I might have one or two left in my storytelling bag,” he said, smiling down at her. “Aren’t you tired of these tales yet?”

  “No, never,” she said.

  From the threads of the night he created something which was solely for the two of them. Something fleeting and gossamer and yet anchored in their history together. From the lost girl he’d found on a shore so long ago, to the lost man she had saved that summer, to the two adults who had journeyed together and apart to arrive here on this night.

  “You need to sleep,” he said at last, words soft as smoke in the deep of the night. “I think that’s enough of the story for now.”

  “I don’t want it to end,” she said quietly, “it’s a tale that should just run on forever.”

  He stroked the line of her back, his eyes meeting hers. “Then I will keep telling it to you, as long as you need.”

  “I love you.”

  He touched the side of her face, fingers as soft as a trace of falling snow. “I love you too.”

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  And Still, And Always

  PAMELA AWOKE TO FIND Jamie gone, though in his place on the pillow next to her was a note, which informed her that he would return soon. Sitting neatly by the closet was the suitcase she had left in her hotel room the day before. She got up and had a bath and, not yet able to decide what to wear for the day, she wrapped Jamie’s robe around her still-warm, damp skin and went downstairs to see what there was to eat. The answer turned out to be one egg, a wedge of cheese that had seen less moldy days and a glass bottle of milk. Clearly Jamie had not been eating in while he was here.

  In lieu of food she wandered around the bottom floor of the house. She had fallen in love with it the first time she’d visited, for it was a house of great charm as well as beauty. Every piece of furniture—from the Joubert writing table to the reading chair that looked like it had come from a very down-at-the-heels flea market; to the pottery and china and old silverware and crystal; to the damask curtains which covered the casement windows and the beds hung with curtains of pale brocades in lavender and celadon and the shee
ts fumed with violet or rose water; to the potbellied Chinese jars in the kitchen and the bright Provençal pottery in its brilliant hues of orange and yellow and cobalt—had been chosen with care and love.

  In the study she opened a window and leaned out into the pale morning light. A few snowflakes were drifting down, laying a light blanket over the ivy and stone walls and frosting the dark boughs of the lime trees. On the desk there was a sheaf of papers and on the top of the pile there was one blotched with ink and filled with Jamie’s distinctive, yet fine, scrawl. Left-handed, Jamie always had smears of ink on his papers when he wrote swiftly. The paper held a poem which had clearly been dashed off, and was like so many of his musings and thoughts—a strand of webbed beauty, spun and discarded.

  In the autumn, he says

  He will go back to Rome

  To London and Amsterdam

  The winter cities

  He will not outlast

  The gardenias in Venice.

  He came to write Venice,

  But found he was too grandly preceded.

  So instead followed ghosts

  In the thick amber twilights of July.

  She heard the door open then and ran out to meet him, feeling vaguely guilty about reading his poem. There was snow in his hair, melting into bright droplets which glimmered before evaporating in the warm air of the kitchen. He had an armful of paper-white narcissi, as delicate and translucent as the snowflakes in his hair.

  “Beautiful and rare, like you,” he said and leaned down to kiss her as he handed her the flowers. The delicate scent wafted up and the snowflakes turned to dew on the fragile petals. She stuck her face in them, her throat suddenly tight and tears gathering in her eyes. Jamie kissed her forehead and then set his other parcels on the table.

  “And food, too,” she said, sniffing the air.

  There was a bag with sugar-dusted croissants and some pears and cheese, the latter of which she put in the fridge. She poured him a cup of coffee and then put the croissants out on two plates, along with butter and jam, sliced pears and cream for the coffee, while he put the flowers in a beautiful old jade vase with almond flowers painted on it.