A Candle in the Dark (38 page)

“So he’s just… sleeping?” she whispered.

Jiméne nodded. “Like the dead,
cariña
. And there is something else, something I think you must know.” He looked away from her inquiring gaze as if it made him uncomfortable. “He will probably look sick when you see him.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “The fever?”

“No, no,” Jiméne touched her hand reassuringly. “Not that. It is just—last night, he was very drunk.”

Drunk. Ana closed her eyes and leaned back on the thin pillow. She knew him too well now to think he’d just been drinking aimlessly. For Cain, it was a way to ease pain—she understood that now, since he’d told her about John Matson—and Ana’s whole body ached at the thought that he’d been alone and hurting. She swallowed, wishing with all her heart that she had been there to help him. He needed her, and she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t been there.

“You must understand,” Jiméne continued on quickly. “He was afraid you would die, Ana, and he—he did not think he could—”

“I understand,” she said softly, opening her eyes. “You don’t need to explain.”

“You must not hate him for it.”

“I don’t hate him.” She looked at Jiméne in surprise. “How could you think that?”

“Think what?”

They both turned at the sound of the voice. D’Alessandro stood in the doorway, a tired grin on his face, and Ana felt suddenly light-headed. A warm, tingly feeling raced through her, and she smiled foolishly, absurdly glad to see him. “Cain.”

“Morning,” he said, sauntering into the room. “Or is it afternoon?”

“Afternoon,” Jiméne informed him, rising from the stool. “You slept a long time.”

“Yeah. Well, I was tired.” He shoved a hand through his hair and looked at Ana. “You were quite a trial,
querida
.”

“I have told her already,” Jiméne said in a low voice, stepping back.

“Oh?” Cain took the stool, sinking heavily onto it. “Told her what?”

“Jiméne was just telling me that you were drinking again,” Ana said quietly.

Cain stiffened. He reached for a vial of powder and threw an irritated glance at Jiméne, but when he looked back at Ana, his eyes were shuttered.

Ana cursed herself. It had been the wrong thing to say, but she couldn’t help herself. He needed her, and here she was, helpless and in bed, letting him and everyone else wait on her. She felt again the rough, sweet worry that had haunted her since Gorgona, the overwhelming urge to soothe him. So she touched his hand, drawing away quickly when he jumped. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” she said.

He smiled at that. “You did.”

“But I was delirious—”

“You helped,” he said simply. He poured a bit of water into a cup and tapped a few grains of powder into it. “Now,
querida
, though I like you worrying about me, it’s not important now. What is important is how you feel.”

Better now
, she wanted to say.
Since you’re here, I feel better
. But the feeling was still too private, too strange. “I’m fine.”

“She is hardly fine.” Jiméne spoke quickly, with dramatic somberness. “You are still very sick, Ana. You must take care. You have just escaped death—”

Cain swiveled on the stool. “Don’t you have something to do, Castañeras? Some cow to bother or something?”

“No.” Jiméne’s smile was broad. “I am here to assist you,
amigo
.”

“I don’t need your assistance.”

“But after last night, you still look weak—”

Cain jerked his head at the door. “I think I hear Serafina calling.”

“She is not—”

“Out, Jiméne. Let me tend my patient in peace.” When Jiméne’s mouth set stubbornly, Cain pointed. “I’ll call if I need you.”

“Very well. I will go, D’Alessandro, but only because I do not care to spend time with you in this mood.” Jiméne pushed past Cain and leaned over the bed, taking Ana’s hand to press it against his lips. “You will call if you need me?”

“Yes, Jiméne.” She nodded.

“Then good-bye.” He shot a chastising look at Cain. “Do not tire her out,
amigo
—”

“Good-bye, Castañeras.” Cain waited until Jiméne left the room, and then he turned back to Ana, pressing a cup into her hand. “Here. Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“A precaution,” he said. He smiled at her, and it accentuated the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the gauntness of his face. “You’re still not well. I don’t want to risk another fever.”

She looked down into the cup. “Is Jiméne’s mother drinking this?”

“Yes, she’s drinking it. I stopped in to check on her before I came here.”

“Perhaps you should be watching after her,” she said slowly. “I feel fine, and she was much sicker than I was.”

“She’s also had four days on you. She’s much better today.” He nudged the cup with his finger. “Drink it, Ana.”

Obediently she held the cup to her lips and took a tentative sip. It was bitter, and she grimaced and put it down again. “This is vile.”

“It saved your life. Or at least I think it did,” he said wryly. He wrapped his hand around hers, forcing the cup to her mouth. “If you don’t drink it, I’ll open your mouth and pour it down myself.”

She gulped the liquid and pushed his hand away. “That’s enough. I’m fine.”

“You just spent four days in a fever.”

“I’ve been sicker than this.” She pushed at the blankets, making to rise. “Don’t worry about me.
Doña
Melia needs you more, I’m sure.”

He pulled the blankets back up and gently pressed her back. “Ana—”

“You’re the one who’s not well,” she pointed out. “You look terrible. You should be in bed.”

“Christ, you’re a rotten patient.” He laughed. “Listen to you.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “I can take care of myself. I always have.”

He squeezed her hand and brought it to his mouth, grazing his lips across her knuckles—a light touch that made her strangely dizzy. Then he looked down at her fingers and sighed. “Maybe you don’t need me to take care of you, Ana,” he said. “But I need to. I want to. Trust me with this. Please, I—I need you to trust me.”

The words and the obvious effort it took him to say them stole her strength. Relief washed over her in such strong waves she felt faint. He needed her. For the moment that eclipsed everything else, for the moment she actually believed that she was helping him by allowing him to take care of her, that he needed her far more than she needed him.

Yes, for a moment, she believed it. And because she believed it, she smiled back at him and nodded. “Of course,” she said graciously. “Of course I trust you.”

She saw the relief sweeping through his dark eyes, and that and his broad smile made her weak with pleasure.

“Good. I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

“I doubt you will.” She tried to match his light tone. “After all, if Jiméne is to be believed, you saved my life.”

“They’re out there building a shrine to me now.”

“Oh? Saint Cain—isn’t that rather blasphemous?”

He dropped her hand and looked away, capping vials and moving things on the tabletop. “You’ve been talking to my father, I see.”

“He thought you were a saint?”

He glanced at her, pausing a moment before he answered. “Hardly.”

“He couldn’t have thought you were a devil child or he wouldn’t have put you in the choir.”

“Not even to save my soul?”

Ana laughed. “Is it so black he thought a choir would help?”

“I think by then he was just taking precautions.” Cain smiled back at her. His eyes widened, he lowered his voice melodramatically. “He wouldn’t even say my name, you know. Afraid it would let the devil in.”

Ana stared at him. “So he called you Rafael instead.”

“How bright you are,
querida
.” He touched her shoulder, urging her forward, and then he stepped around the bed until he was behind her, pushing aside her hair. “Yes. He called me Rafael.”

Ana frowned, feeling the hard tapping of his fingers on her back, the softness of his hair brushing her shoulder as he leaned close enough to hear. “He must have been a very religious man.”

He made a noise of agreement.

“And your mother? Was she religious too?”

He backed away. “Why so curious?” He was still behind her. He touched her hair—gently, tentatively, and then his fingers glided down the length of it to her waist.

The touch was electrifying, so much so Ana stiffened, startled. A warm tingling web spun through her, and her skin felt suddenly sensitive and burning. “I—I just wondered.”

He coiled a strand of hair around his finger, tugging gently, and Ana wished suddenly that she could see his face. But he didn’t move, just kept his fingers spinning, playing.

“No,” he said finally. “My mother wasn’t religious. She named me Cain because it punished my father. No other reason than that.”

His voice sounded distant and impersonal. But she heard the pain behind it, and recognized it because it was so familiar—so much like her own. She knew that solid, impersonal wall, the pretense that nothing touched it, that nothing hurt.

So she didn’t pretend it wasn’t there, couldn’t ignore it. Ana looked over her shoulder, but she still couldn’t see his face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you?” He leaned closer again, she felt the warmth of his body against her back. “You don’t need to be. It was a long time ago.”

“Are they still alive?”

“No. No, my father died four years ago. My mother long before that. Thank God.”

The hatred vibrating in his voice surprised her. It was the first time she’d ever heard it. She had seen him drowning in self-pity whenever he was drunk, had seen him miserable with self-recrimination and guilt.

But she had never heard anger, and the sound of it now made her strangely glad. It made him seem stronger somehow, made her wonder if perhaps it hadn’t been the drink that ruined him, but his own hatred. She knew how insidious it was, how crippling it could be. God knew she’d fought it her entire life. Cain had given it control, had let all that anger and hatred destroy him. Until this moment, she’d never seen him fight back.

She liked seeing him fight now.

Ana was quiet for a moment, letting the new feeling overwhelm her. His fingers moved on her hair, caressing, smoothing. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew the tense way he was standing, the thoughtful look on his face, the slight purse of his full mouth. She knew the way his heavy lashes rested on his cheeks as he watched her hair fall through his fingers. Her awareness of him went clear into her bones.

And suddenly she understood how he had known exactly what her smile looked like.

She swallowed nervously. “What are you doing?”

“Your hair is all tangled.” His voice was wavering and thin, and Ana heard something in it, something that made her vaguely uneasy.

She pulled her hair forward, over her shoulders, away from his disturbing fingers. “I should brush it,” she said breathlessly.

He drew it back, all of it, drew it away from her hands, spreading it over her back. “Where’s your comb?”

“No—no, really, I—”

“Where’s your comb?”

“There’s a pocket inside my dress. I—I think it’s there. I was using Dolores’s brush this morning, but I—I guess I should braid it.”

He leaned over her, his arm pressing against her shoulder as he grabbed the brush from the table. She felt his first, tentative strokes through her hair, the way he held it carefully so it didn’t pull, and the care he took melted her. He touched it as he had in Chagres, but not like that. Softer, more even strokes, tantalizingly hypnotizing. Strokes that made her realize how tired she still was, how weak. She felt as if her bones had dissolved, and the more he brushed, the more she realized she had no will left. She couldn’t stop him. Didn’t want to…

“You have beautiful hair, Ana,” he said, his voice deep and quiet. “When I first saw you, I thought I’d never seen such hair on a woman.”

“My mother’s hair was this color,” Ana murmured, eyes closed, bound by his magical stroking.

“Was it? What was she like?”

“Ummmm. Beautiful. Charming. She was English, and she had this lovely accent.” Ana laughed softly at the memory. “She had a rule for every occasion. Things like: ‘A lady always wears her hair properly, even when she’s at home.’ Manners were very important to her, but she also liked to have fun.” Ana sobered. “Too much fun, maybe.”

“You mean your father.”

She felt wrapped in a deep, warm cocoon. “Yes.”

“What was he like?”

“I never knew him,” she said simply. “They met at a ball. She was a debutante, and he was a married nobleman. He was charming, handsome—or so my mother said. She fell in love with him.”

“And then what?”

“Then what?” Ana sighed. His touch was like a drug, lulling her. “They lived happily ever after.”

He stopped abruptly, his hands dropped away. Ana felt suddenly cold, strangely bereft. She opened her eyes to see him come around to stand beside her. He held the brush in his hand, and his face seemed pinched, there was a strange look in his eyes.

“What?” she asked. “What is it?”

He sat heavily on the stool, toying with the brush. “When I was six, my mother took her first lover,” he said. “She flaunted them in front of my father, but he never stopped loving her. Stupidly, perhaps, but all the same, he never stopped. When she was dying, she lay there hurling curses at his head until she had no voice left. She always hated him. He always loved her. He was—very religious, and after she was gone, he became even more—severe. Punishing sin—punishing me—was the only important thing to him. I think, sometimes, that he blamed me for her death, or at least her hatred. He told me once that she’d started hating him the day I was conceived, but the truth was she hated us both. Me because I was a part of him, and my father because—because—I don’t know.” He paused as if remembering. “Sometimes I think of their spirits together now—” He laughed shortly. “His heaven, her hell. It was what they both deserved, I guess.”

She stared at him unsteadily. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” he said softly, fastening his gaze on hers. “Because when I thought you were dying, I realized I didn’t know anything about you. And I couldn’t bear it, Ana. I couldn’t bear it.” He took a deep breath. “If it means I have to tell you all about my life, I will. If that’s what it means. But I don’t want stories from you. I don’t want fairy tales. I want the truth.”