"Yes," he whispered.
"He wanted you to hurt something, and you wouldn't."
"Quentin wouldn't."
"But you did?"
"I took the punishment." Fenris's lips drew away from his teeth. "And I fought back."
She almost found it in her heart to pity the grandfather who had created such a monster. Had Fenris taken revenge?
"Quentin knew about you then, when he called you for help," she said. "Did he forget? What made him forget, Fenris?"
"He forgot everything." Fenris backed up and slammed his arms against the wall. "I remember. I suffered it all for him."
And you hate him for it. Fenris was hatred—Quentin's hatred and pain and terror. The memories he couldn't face.
"I'm sorry, Fenris," she said. "I'm sorry you had to suffer so much."
His gaze became terrifyingly lucid. "Sorry?" He threw back his head and laughed. "You think you can help him, don't you?"
"Help him—and you."
"I don't need help." He pushed free of the wall and advanced on her. "When the time is right, Quentin will disappear. Only I'll be here." His feet made no sound on the floor. "Get used to it, Johanna. You're mine."
The backs of her thighs bumped against the chaise. Fenris's evil intent, his unfettered lust, poured over her like a dirty fog. Her flesh crawled with it.
Quentin's body would lie against hers; Quentin's hands would touch her, his weight move upon her. But Quentin would not be there.
Fenris had said she wanted Quentin. She did. Only Quentin. And he alone could save her now.
"Quentin," she said, searching his face. "I know you're there. It's time to wake up."
"It won't do you any good," Fenris said. "He's cowering in his little corner, and he won't return until it's too late."
"Quentin was the one who created you, and he can banish you as well." She lifted her chin and gave Fenris stare for stare. "It's not your time, or your place. Go."
Fenris flinched, as if her command had actually affected him. He shook himself and took another step toward her. One more and he'd be on top of her.
"Quentin," Johanna repeated. She reached out and pressed her palm to Fenris's cheek. "You have nothing to fear. Come back to me."
The unshaven skin under her hand twitched and jumped. Fenris opened his mouth on a scream.
"You lied," he roared. "I'll make you—"
He didn't complete his threat. It faded to a whisper, and the ferocious glint in his eyes went out like a snuffed candle. The transformation she'd witnessed so recently began to reverse itself as he surrendered his body to its original and rightful owner.
Quentin's eyes fixed on her in bewilderment, as warm as they had ever been. "What did you say?"
She knew instantly that he remembered nothing of Fenris's appearance, or what had been said since his other self had seized his body. He had spoken of "shadows" that haunted him, but those shadows had no name or personality he could grasp with his conscious mind. For him, it must seem as if he'd simply lost track of the conversation.
Fenris hadn't lied. Quentin was unaware that he lived a double life. He didn't know that he had attacked May's father.
Johanna's first impulse was to tell him everything. He deserved to know, and curing such a profound illness could not begin until he confronted the dark half of himself. She understood with a deep, unwavering insight that any cure must come from the deliberate reunion of Quentin's divided selves.
But how was such a thing to be accomplished? She had no experience to draw on, nothing but a few scattered cases to use as precedents. Fenris had been "born" in a time of great suffering, created by Quentin's own mind to bear the unbearable. She guessed that he had also emerged during the battle in India, the "massacre" that Quentin didn't consciously remember. And any number of times since.
Even so, she could not believe that Fenris was a killer. He must remain alive because he still served a purpose—a purpose that Quentin could not acknowledge.
If she told Quentin of Fenris now, she might be taking a terrible risk. He knew something had happened with May's father, but Fenris hid the true facts from his conscious mind. In his own way, Fenris was protecting Quentin from a more deadly madness—one that could destroy both of them.
Only by exposing Quentin's hidden rage, and the suffering in his past, could she eliminate the menace of Fenris's insidious presence. Only with Fenris's cooperation could she cure Quentin without shattering his sanity forever.
"What was your last question, Johanna?" Quentin said with a ragged smile. "I'm afraid I don't remember."
"It doesn't matter." She let her hand fall. "Our session is over, for now."
"Did you find out what you wanted?"
"Enough, for the time being."
He dropped his head into his hands, as if the dim light in the room hurt his eyes. "Did I… do anything? In town?"
"No, Quentin. You did not."
"You aren't lying to me."
She felt slightly ill. "No."
"And May—she's safe? You won't let anything happen to her."
"I promise you, Quentin. She will be safe."
"Then I think… I'll go and rest." He walked unsteadily to the door and turned. "I thought I might finally be over it—the drinking, and what comes after. I was wrong." He stared at the floor between his feet. "You were right, Johanna. There's nothing you can do to help me."
Her visceral protest stuck in her throat. He walked out of the room as if he didn't expect one.
She went to her desk, sat down, and attempted to take notes. Her hand only managed to make uneven ink blots on the paper.
Notes were unnecessary. She was all too sensible of her current predicament: two equally urgent cases, May's and Quentin's, strangely—and dangerously—interconnected. Fenris had attacked Ingram. He might reappear at any time if provoked—if May should be threatened again. And there was no telling how far he might go.
Why did Fenris, and Quentin, react so strongly to May's situation? Quentin had said that Ingram was "forcing his attentions" upon a young maid at the hotel. Fenris knew all that Quentin experienced. He had acted upon Quentin's desires. In his mind, May and the maid were one and the same.
Quentin would have understood the difference, but Fenris didn't care. He was a force immune to reason and negotiation, to all the civilizing elements that made Quentin who he was.
As long as Fenris continued to exist, Quentin must be watched, and kept close to the Haven. There were times she could not be with him—at night, and when she saw the other patients. That meant she had to believe that Fenris would remain dormant as long as Quentin was not provoked.
Restraining him by physical means was out of the question. And so, now, was sending him to another doctor. The responsibility was entirely hers. And if she could no longer call him her patient…
He remained her friend. She would lay down her life for him. She would save him, if it was the last thing she accomplished as a doctor.
Or a woman.
Resolutely she set aside her pen, gathered her notes, and hid them in a new place behind several heavy medical volumes on her bookshelf. She resumed her routine until dinnertime, visiting her father and the other patients and joining them at the table in the usual manner. Quentin remained in his room.
She tossed and turned that night. When she slept at last, vivid dreams swept her away on a tide of ever-changing images, both nightmarish and sublime. She found herself in Quentin's arms, turning her face up to his tender kisses, feeling his hands on her body. Between one moment and the next, in the manner of dreams, she was naked in his bed.
He stretched his length over her, murmuring endearments as he stroked her belly, her most intimate places. Her own voice emerged as a low moan of anticipation and need. She was about to be initiated into the mystery she knew only as theory: the supreme pleasure of sexual ecstasy, the joining of a man and woman in the act of love…
He kissed her. She cried out in pain, tasting blood on her
lips.
Fenris held her; Fenris pushed her thighs apart and laughed in his victory. She fought him, raking his face and his chest with her nails, but he was immune to hurt. He pressed down, overpowering her, smothering her, possessing her.
"Quentin!"
The cry yanked her from the dream and halfway out of the bed. For a terrifying instant she couldn't move. Her nightgown was twisted around her body and wedged between her legs; the sheets lay spilled on the floor.
Hunched up against the pillows, she concentrated on catching her breath. Her skin was clammy to the touch, her heart leaping from beat to beat like a panicked doe.
Still halfway caught in the snares of her own mind, she crawled from the bed and felt her way to the door.
Quentin. She must see him, make sure of… what? That he wasn't the cruel and ruthless creature who laughed as he subjugated all her strength and confidence, and stripped her of herself? Or was it to prove she wasn't afraid?
She bumped into the walls of the hallway and flailed for the knob of Quentin's door.
Her clumsy movements would surely have awakened the heaviest sleeper. But as she reached Quentin's bedside she found him insensible, locked in a fathomless sleep.
In sleep, he was at peace. Fenris had no part of that face, those lips softly curved in some pleasant dream. She knelt beside the bed and gazed at him until the last remnants of her nightmare shredded and drifted away into the summer night.
This was Quentin. This was the man who had made such a vital place in the life of the Haven. The man who had held her in the dream, claimed her long before Fenris broke free to taunt and bully.
But no man claimed her. She belonged only to herself. She couldn't be taken.
She could give.
She leaned over the bed and kissed his brow, meaning it to end there. His skin was warm and slightly damp, tasting of male. One taste was somehow not enough. She kissed the outer corner of his eyelid, and then the high arch of his cheekbone. He sighed through slightly parted lips. She caught the last trace of his breath with her own mouth.
The dream wasn't over. She felt his arms come up around her, gently, neither constraining nor demanding.
"Johanna?" he murmured.
She tensed to flee, suddenly aware of where she was and what she did. The darkness was no hiding place. Quentin was awake. He held her. Not like Fenris, with the desire to seize and devour, but as if he had the most uncertain clasp on a miracle and might crush it with a twitch of his finger.
The decision was hers to make. She wasn't even sure how she'd come to this moment.
But she did know: She'd come to it step by slow, plodding step, just as she treated her patients in small, alternating increments of gratifying progress and frustrating reversal.
The dream was only an excuse. Hadn't it all been leading to this, from the hour she'd saved him by the lane? Hadn't she admitted her attraction at the beginning, no matter how much she fought it?
Quentin faced a terrible challenge. She'd vowed to see him through it, regardless of the cost. Fenris wished to drive her away from this man, who knew but half of himself.
She wouldn't be driven. But she must choose, now for all time: to remain apart from him, clutching at the last scraps of objectivity, or to forsake her principles and surrender to her heart.
Logic dictated the obvious answer. Logic, which had no more power to force her hand than did fear. But once she abandoned it, she couldn't turn back.
"Am I dreaming?" Quentin asked. "Are you here, Johanna?"
Muscle by muscle she allowed her body to melt against him. "I'm here."
He stroked the palm of his hand up her cheek and across her hairline, smoothing the stray wisps that had come loose from her braids. "Why?"
Answer him. Answer with the truth…
"I dreamed," she said. "Dreamed of you."
"What did you dream?"
"That… I was with you. Here, in your room."
"With me." His hand, stilled in its motion, moved again to cup the back of her head. But he drew her no closer. "As you are now?"
"Yes."
"I've also dreamed, Johanna," he said, stroking the pad of his thumb along the bridge of her nose. "But dreams do not always match reality."
As if she, of all women, were not fully cognizant of such facts. "Sometimes dreams reflect reality very well indeed."
"Or give us warnings." He let her go. Her skin felt suddenly cold in the absence of his touch. "Johanna, I think you'd better leave."
"You want me to go?" she said. "After all the—" She stopped herself, moved back to sit on the edge of the bed and began again. "You have, in the past, led me to believe that you are attracted to me. Was I mistaken?"
He sat up, and the sheets slid down to pool in his lap. She bit down hard on her lower lip.
"Why the change, Johanna?" he countered. "Why come to me now? You've been avoiding me." He smiled in self-mockery. "With good cause. I've behaved… less than admirably. Yesterday was just more proof that I'm not to be trusted."
"Yesterday you said that I couldn't help you—"
"You said it yourself, Johanna. I told you that you were right."
"I was wrong." She glared at him, trying to make him understand.
"I thought that I was no longer to be your patient."
"No. Not my patient."
"Then what, Johanna?"
That was the question, and now she had no choice but to answer. Answer him.
"Let me… let me show you," she whispered.
He turned his head. "Again, why now? Is it pity?"
She reared back. "Pity? Can you say such a thing, when—" She pressed her lips together. "I do not waste my time on pity."
"No." He met her gaze, and his eyes softened. "You're a curious woman, Johanna."
"It is a hazard of my occupation," she said. The nightgown was still damp with perspiration, and she realized that she was shivering. "Either you want me, Quentin, or you do not. I would appreciate an expeditious decision."
He laughed aloud. "Oh, Johanna, Johanna. Even now you can't stop playing the doctor."
"I don't play at anything," she said. "If that is your answer—"
His hand came to rest on her knee, burning through the muslin of her nightgown. "My answer, Johanna… is that I've always wanted you. From the very beginning."
A gush of heat rushed to the core of her body. "Then we need not talk any longer." She placed her hand carefully on his chest. It was bare, sleek with soft hair, and strongly muscled. The heat pooled between her thighs. "I am not afraid."
He seized her wrist. "Do you know what you're asking?"
"Is it so great a sacrifice on your part?"
"Not on mine." He eased his grip and ran his fingers up and down her arm. The sensation was delicious, but she tried not to let herself become distracted.
"You are concerned for my honor," she said. For all his joking and flirtation, he was no despoiler of women.
He was not. Fenris was another matter.
"I've known many women," he said. "I know what society demands."
"Of your aristocratic females, perhaps," she said. "But I am not a member of your society, nor am I attempting to make my way into an advantageous marriage."
He worked his fingers between hers. "You don't wish to be married?"
"We have had this conversation before, have we not? I have found that my work and marriage are not compatible."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Do not pity me, Quentin. Do you think less of me, for making this offer?"
"No." He squeezed her hand. "You could never be less than honorable."
Her eyes began to prickle with incipient tears. "Then there is no obstacle—"
"What of your professional reputation?" His voice hardened. "I did not tell you before, but when I went into town with Oscar, comments were made regarding your possible relationship with male patients."
"I know. As they've undoubtedly been made in the past. I am not the first w
oman doctor to face such prejudices. But if they already suspect or prefer to believe that I am a loose woman of dubious morals, what we do now will make no difference."
"You must have plans for the future—"
"Yes. And I will continue with those plans. I am perfectly capable of discretion. What I do as a physician is entirely apart from what I choose as a person. A woman."
The bed shook with his silent laughter. "And to think I once asked you what you wanted as a woman, and doubted you'd ever allow yourself to find out."
"You have also made assumptions, Quentin," she said.
"I thank you—for your gallantry, and your desire to protect me. But I do not need your protection, nor that of any man. I can make my own decisions and weigh the consequences."
He was quiet for a long time. "You know that our relationship can never be the same if we go forward."
"I know." And she did. It was long past time for regrets. Neither one of them had much to lose by proceeding to the next logical step.
And she knew, in the center of her being where scientific discipline held no sway, that a more intimate connection between them would only strengthen her ability to help him. She'd always relied on intuition in her approach to treating the insane. She saw with complete clarity, for the first time in her life, that emotion was the very basis of that intuition. Her feelings for Quentin were an inextricable part of her.
Feelings she wasn't yet prepared to name.
But there was a final reason why the hour had come to let fall the barriers she'd constructed to keep them apart.
"You think you can have him and get rid of me," Fenris had said. "Once I take you, he'll be that much weaker."
If that were possible, the reverse must also be true. She had the chance to circumvent Fenris's plans here and now. He might return at any moment, but if Quentin was first, Fenris was disarmed. The act of love would be for mutual pleasure, not domination. And Fenris would lose some of his power.
Over her, and over his other self.
"I am as fully committed to seeking your cure as I ever was," she said slowly. "But we will do it together."
"Together." He held out his arms. She moved into them, feeling as though she'd been rescued from the midst of an icy desert. "This method of rational discussion is a strange, dry way to go about lovemaking. It's a technique I never thought to try."
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