Chloe was keenly aware of the bare chest only inches from her cheek. It was warm and smelled like Rory. Sometime in the last few days she had grown accustomed to his scent and thought that she would recognize it anywhere.
The view was another matter entirely. She doubted that she would ever become completely accustomed to his bared body. The sight, however fleeting, interfered with her ability to think.
“Come this way.” The hand at her waist urged her to a ninety-degree turn.
“We’ll go in through the kitchen. But no more pie for you tonight.”
Chloe could only trust that he knew the way into the working quarters of the house. They were walking toward four squares of soft light, but she couldn’t make out anything more than the white of the oyster shell path crunching beneath their feet and the small humps of fragrant greenery.
They arrived in the softly lit kitchen, only to find it abandoned except for the cat and the detritus of meal preparation still strewn on the counter. One bread basket was actually lying on the floor surrounded by an explosion of crumbs.
“Roger!” Chloe scolded. “What have you been doing?”
Rory frowned at the mess and headed for the hall door. Since he didn’t let go of Chloe’s waist, she hurried too.
“Morag!” He opened the narrow door and yelled louder: “Oleander!”
Chloe was puzzled until she realized Rory wasn’t calling for a shrub, but for the cook.
“Damn.” Rory headed for the dining room. “It must be MacGregor!”
“What’s wrong?” The pleasantness of their romantic stroll had vanished into the ether, and all that was left was Rory’s alarm and the lingering odors from dinner.
“Rory!” a weak female voice called from the music room. “Come quick. Your daddy’s had a fit.”
Morag’s stooped figure appeared in the door. She might have been worried about MacGregor, but was not so distraught that she didn’t notice Chloe wearing Rory’s shirt and the arm he had wrapped about her waist. Her lips grew straight like the cut of a guillotine, and her expression became disapproving and possibly even somewhat anxious. But why would she be afraid for Chloe?
“We didn’t know where you were,” Morag chided, finally looking away.
“A fit?” Rory finally dropped his arm from Chloe’s waist and pushed the staring Morag gently aside. “Have you called the doctor?”
“Oleander did. She said to call an ambulance. Your daddy has to go to the hospital this time.”
Rory grunted and went to kneel by his father. Someone had covered the reclining MacGregor with an afghan, as though preparing him for a snooze, but the gray face and wheezing lungs were hardly those of someone enjoying a nap.
“I’ll be better in a moment, boy,” MacGregor rasped. “There’s no need for the doctor. Morag’s just raisin’ a fuss, officious old trout.”
“You’re lying on the floor, wheezing like a leaky accordion, and your skin is the color of cement. You need a doctor.” Rory’s words were harsh, but his touch gentle as he tucked the throw more tightly about MacGregor’s shoulders.
“Where’s Chloe?” MacGregor gasped.
“Save your breath. You don’t need to be talking right now.”
“I need to see her.”
Chloe, who had just been making a tactful retreat from Morag’s stern eyes, stopped in her tracks and answered softly,
“I’m right here, MacGregor. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”
“Good. Come here, girl.” The painful breaths went on for several seconds. MacGregor managed to open his eyes and turn his head. He looked once between his son and Chloe and then smiled. “Come closer, girl. Did you like your magnolias?”
Rory stiffened.
“I settled for mint,” Chloe said, coming all the way into the room and also kneeling at MacGregor’s side. She had a moment of déjà vu. It was like the morning when she and Rory had found him passed out on the floor, right down to the old buffalo plaid shirt he was wearing and the smell of crushed mint floating on the air.
As matter-of-factly as possible, she shrugged off Rory’s borrowed shirt and draped it over his bare shoulders. She could feel the tension that gripped him in the knotted muscles beneath her hands. “You need to do something about those mosquitoes. Your son has rhino hide, so they leave him alone, but they were after me from the moment I stepped outside.”
“My mosquitoes have good taste,” MacGregor said, closing his eyes as though talking with them open was too much effort and he couldn’t manage both things at once.
There came the distant sound of an ambulance siren. Chloe was willing to bet that there would be more numerous gnome casualties, since the drivers were unlikely to know what to expect.
“I’ll go out front and show them in,” she said, rising to her feet.
“You stay here, girl. I’ll set the dogs on them,” MacGregor muttered. His voice was getting weaker. His eyes closed.
“Go,” Rory said softly. “And turn on the lights along the drive. The switch is by the door.”
Chloe felt her eyes flooding with useless tears, and she hurried from the room.
If the mosquitoes bothered her while she waited on the front portico, Chloe never noticed them. She was too busy trying to wipe away the steady stream of saltwater that trickled from her eyes.
“He’s too stubborn to die,” she said to Roger, who had stepped outside to keep her company.
She repeated the thought over and over again until the ambulance finally arrived, but in her heart she didn’t believe it. Her continuing dreams of death had to mean something. MacGregor—ready or not—was going home to his Nancy, and she couldn’t think of anything to do that would help him, or Rory, except to continue to keep her promise of silence about the cemetery.
As soon to kindle fire with snow as to seek
to quench the fire of love with words.
—William Shakespeare
Chapter Eleven
The hospital was exactly like every other hospital Chloe had ever been in. They might change the type of tile on the floor, or paint the walls different colors, but all hospitals carried the same medicinal odors; and in the intensive care unit they had the same subdued lighting where frightening respirators hissed and clicked, and where nurses still wore serious white uniforms. Other hospital staff might sport colorful scrubs as they went about their work, but in the places where people were in danger of dying they seemed to always wear non-frivolous whites.
In ancient times, white had been the color of mourning and winding shrouds. The Gaels even had a color that translated into English as the white color of death. Chloe hated it. She made a mental vow that if she ever got married, she wouldn’t wear white.
The assumption was that MacGregor had suffered a heart attack, so the emergency room people had started therapeutic treatment immediately. The family physician arrived almost upon their heels, but after a quick look in on his patient, Dr. Emerson left MacGregor to the medical team in the ER.
Chloe had managed to shut off her tears by the time they arrived at the hospital, and Rory remained absolutely stone-faced, so other than the doctor talking to them about what was being done in the examining room, and one nurse offering them some coffee, no one approached with soothing words of encouragement, suggestions of watching TV in the lounge, or boxes of unneeded tissues. It was nearly one in the morning before word came that MacGregor had been transferred up to the intensive care unit. Rory immediately rose and headed for the elevator, so Chloe had trooped up to the third floor with him and started a fresh vigil there.
Rory was eventually permitted to see his father for five minutes, but after that they were urged to go home. MacGregor was stable and they wouldn’t be allowed to see him again until morning anyway. And this could be a long stay, the white-suited nurse reminded them. The family would need its strength.
Chloe, though exhausted, didn’t suggest any course of action, leaving it to Rory to decide what he wanted to do.
Rory had
taken a long look at the plastic chairs that lined the waiting room and then her face, which had lost all trace of the light makeup she had applied before dinner and probably showed the lingering effects of tears. She wasn’t one of those lucky women who look cute when they cry.
“Damn it all.” His gaze in an otherwise calm face nearly scorched her with its blend of frustration, anger . . . and something else that made her breath catch. Something raw, which she had never seen on another person’s face, but she recognized for all that.
Hearts thundering, they opted to return to Riverview.
Neither spoke on the ride back to the house. The silence wasn’t peaceful, but it wasn’t hostile either; it waited in anticipation. Chloe’s heart never quite settled back into a normal rhythm, and she finally noticed how warm the night actually was. Even in her sleeveless dress with the late evening air washing over her through an open window, she felt hot and prickly. To distract herself, Chloe tried counting the gnomes as they appeared in the headlights. Many were missing, smashed into dust by the ambulance bumper.
Rory didn’t bother to put the van away in the carriage house. They abandoned it in the drive with the keys still in the ignition.
It did not surprise Chloe when she climbed down from the van and Rory took her hand in his own hot fist and pulled her into the house. What did surprise her was that he led her immediately upstairs and into a part of the residence where she had never been. He didn’t pause to turn on lights as they went. They stopped only when they reached a closed door, which Rory opened with a quick press on the latch.
The moon’s glow leaking though the curtains showed Chloe that they were in a bedroom, and a vaguely herbal scent told her that the room was Rory’s.
“Now would be the moment to say something if you don’t want this to happen.” Rory’s voice was deeper than usual, and also a little rough. The sweet chocolate tone was missing, but she didn’t mind. She was not in the mood for sweet.
Chloe still had many unanswered questions about the things that had happened in the last week, and also many things in her own head that she wanted to clarify, but at the moment, finding explanations seemed less important than giving in to her body’s wants. Some divine madness had overtaken her.
“Would silence be considered assent?” she asked. Her own voice had altered. “I am not quite used to being this bold.”
“I’d prefer a more direct answer.”
“I feel stupid admitting that I’m shy,” she said, clearing her throat. But Rory still waited.
He wasn’t going to let her off of the hook. Apparently he really needed to hear her words of assent.
Chloe gave in. She slid her arms about his waist and rose up on her toes so that she could brush her lips against his.
“Then have it your way—yes,” she whispered. “I want this to happen.”
And she did. She was at least ninety-five percent sure.
Rory’s arms closed about her immediately and she found herself being lowered onto a down bed. The tie of her dress was undone with a single tug, and since it had been too hot for a bra or stockings, she was unwrapped except for a pair of panties. They soon followed the dress.
As he had demonstrated earlier, Rory could remove his shirt with commendable speed, and his slacks were even easier to dispose of.
Chloe wondered, as Rory loomed over her, a dark silhouette against the pale ceiling, if there would be any of the usual awkwardness this first time, if they would have to speak of their needs or wants—give guidance to one another.
Apparently Rory did not think so, for he didn’t say anything else to her, and after a moment she had to agree with his policy of silence. After all, their bodies were speaking in some mutually understood tongue, and what else was there to say that wouldn’t confuse things?
Her eyes opened wide at the first brush of his mouth against her breast, but all there was to fill them was the silver moonlight, so she allowed her eyelids to droop and used her other senses to tell her of her state.
She sank her hands into Rory’s hair and tried to moor herself while the room spun away. Her skin thrilled and tingled and even screamed as Rory moved over her. Cheeks, lips, hands—they all felt different and wonderful. Normally, she preferred her mind to be in charge of her body, but that night she gave herself over to the sensations he provoked, and waded out recklessly into the deeper waters where Rory urged her to go.
It was glorious. It was also oddly terrifying.
Though she spent equal time touching, tasting and exploring Rory’s body, for the first time during an act of sex she felt out of control. Once she let go of her cautious, logical rock, waves of a new sort of passion were crashing over her, making her feel helpless even as they thrilled her. This new sense of vulnerability was notional, because Rory in no way restrained her, but it seemed that the deep, swirling waters to which he lured her suddenly dragged her down into a foreign place and held her captive there. It was a place she could never escape without Rory’s help—somehow he had become both her jailer and her rescuer.
“Chloe!” The weight of his wants pressed down on her in a relentless stream and she felt herself disintegrating, breaking into parts that could not think, only feel. Just a small part of her brain continued to speak and listen to reason, trying to understand what was different now from every other time she had made love.
The needs of her body were plainly enough understood, but what her confused heart called out for she did not know. It was more than simple affection or a desire for recognition. But its wants—for all of being desperate in their strength—were unrecognized. They were shouted down by the feeling parts of her body, which Rory skillfully controlled.
She shook her head slowly. This had never happened before. Her mind was always the master of her body—but not this time. The last thinking pieces of her brain were alarmed and attempted to form a confederacy of her splintered thoughts which might regain control of the situation.
“Rory?” Chloe writhed against the linens, overwhelmed by her body’s response to him, but still not able to completely abandon herself to the moment.
“Hush,” he whispered against her belly. “Trust me.”
Trust him. But she didn’t. Not entirely. Night might smother all other shadows, but not doubt.
The last few days had muddled the conduits of thought and stripped away old logical and moral checkpoints. New emotions raced down these opened channels and straight into her brain and heart where they jabbered at her in foreign tongues. Her body translated some of the new message, but not all. Much of it was still a mystery to her. But what was there for her to see was a tangle of grief and worry about MacGregor, excitement and passion when she thought of Rory, and—just a little bit—of something like fear. It was there in the sweat of her palms and the goose bumps that covered her upper arms. But what she feared, she did not know. Surely it wasn’t that Rory would hurt her.
“Stop thinking. I want everything from you except common sense. This is no time for reason and logic,” Rory said, and bit lightly at her inner thigh. Then he breathed deeply as though gathering her scent the way he had gathered the smells of mint out in the garden.
How would he catalogue her? she wondered a bit hysterically, as his slow exhalation tickled over her bare skin and she felt his teeth scraping over her.
But the answer to this question remained elusive and her body’s demands grew louder than the other things clamoring in her brain. Finally, she did as he asked and stopped listening to logic. It was the only way to escape this desire. He sensed the change at once and laughed softly as she relaxed beneath him.
The pressure from Rory’s hands told her that he wished her to move, and with only minor hesitation she rolled onto her stomach, allowing him to part her legs with his own. She lifted her hips out of the feathered tick and pressed against him. His breath tickled the hair of her nape, sending tiny shivers down her spine and spreading the goose-flesh down her arms.
A low moan told Chloe of Rory’s
pleasure as he pushed into her. After a few languid thrusts, he slipped a hand beneath her belly and slid it down to cover her sex. His work-roughened fingers closed over her, supplying the pressure she needed to end her body’s longing and allow her to escape completely into the realm of sensation where reason could not follow.
She hoped she would emerge as Persephone had from hell, carrying seeds of reason and understanding in her hand, though, for a moment, she doubted that she would ever escape.
After the act, she lay in a lazy S, sunken into the deep tick with Rory sprawled behind her, an arm draped about her waist but otherwise not touching as they allowed their bodies to cool.
Chloe was too tired to wander back into her reassembling brain and start asking questions. Instead she closed her eyes and let her body sleep. Her last thought was to wonder what Rory was thinking, if he understood what had just happened any better than she did.
In many ways, it was as though her life had started only after she arrived at Riverview. She had entered some cocoon and hatched out transformed into another being. She still looked like Chloe Smith, but something inside had altered. Whether this was a good thing or not remained to be seen.
Rory was awake. His body was calm, replete, and he found it pleasant to stay still for a moment and study the spill of hair that folded down Chloe’s fragile nape and spread out upon his pillow. It looked like tarnished silver thread in the moonlight, fragile as gossamer. Perhaps, in a while, he would wind his fingers into those strands and gather them up in his fist. For the moment, he was content to observe and appreciate.
The line of her spine was gentle, her limbs soft and slender, vulnerable in their nakedness—so much more delicate than his own flesh and bones. Even her fingers, which worked so cleverly when she was awake, looked as fragile as folding flower petals where they curled in toward her pale palms.
Writ on Water Page 19
