A Kiss in the Night (42 page)

"Wait for me downstairs," he said.

"Let's go see what foodstuffs Vivian packed for the trip," she said. Lady Beaumaris rose quickly, too. All the excitement of the journey had vanished now as Jean Luc understood how hard it was to go. He knew he had to leave, that part of him even wanted to, but not for leaving her.

He took one last look at his mother. She stared back, tears filling her eyes and blurring her vision. She wiped them quickly, desperate to keep this last look in her memory for the long, empty days ahead.

And then he was gone.

Paxton shut the door.

She heard his boots approach the bed. He stood over her, staring down at the wet lashes brushing her cheek. She had pulled the covers over her lap, and held them tightly, desperate for something to cling to, and as he saw this, he felt as if the weight of his life were slipping away, disappearing into some hazy fog, and all he had left was this one impossible moment to say good-bye.

"I do not know how it is possible," she said, echoing his thoughts. "I know in a moment I will feel your arms come around me. I know that as you hold me, as I feel your arms for the last time, I know that somehow you will have to pick a moment to part from me. I keep wondering at this, how you can possibly pick that moment."

His fear of this truth filled the silence. He felt the tremble start in his hands as he hesitated, wanting so desperately to touch her one last time and yet terrified that it was true, that he would not have the strength to choose that moment.

Suddenly she was in his arms, clinging to him. He closed his eyes, feeling the slim and soft and warm form against him. The scent of her sadness filling him: the taste of tears and summer lilacs and warmth.

He wondered at how much pain it was possible to endure.

"Paxton, Paxton, tell me I will survive, that somehow I will find the strength to survive you leaving me."

He wanted to give her this; more than anything in the world, he wanted to give her this strength. But he did not think he had it himself. Sometimes he felt he did have the necessary fortitude, but then, when he projected himself into this future, he saw only the empty shell of a man left. The understanding brought the awareness of just how much of himself she had claimed. Not just his heart but his very soul...

He closed his eyes tighter and held her so close, he was afraid he might hurt her, and still it was not enough. "Linness, I love you, I love you. "

He drew back just to touch his mouth to hers, gently, tasting the lingering trace of her tears. He knew instantly it was a mistake. Desire was felt as a warm rush of feeling, of love; it blossomed and then changed with the surge of desperation. And he was drinking from her mouth like a dying man led to the sweet well of life.

He broke the kiss, his breathing changed as he stared down at the lovely features of her upturned face. "Linness," he whispered. "Help me, Linness, help me now. . ."

She felt the tension stealing into his body "Nay, I can't, I can't."

She remembered little after that. His hands reached over her arms to take them away. The miracle of his first step away from her, then the next. Her vision blurring as the door opened. The sound of it shutting.

The light was gone. Darkness surrounded her, penetrating physically, a darkness made of silence, emptiness, longing. The darkness that was to be for the rest of her life.

Chapter Twelve

“
Wait, milady! Wait!"

Linness stopped and turned to see Morgan flagging her from the steps of the chateau. He raced down, taking the steps two at a time until he reached her. His arm still rested in a sling. He had lost weight since his injury and he drank much less, even though he, like all of them, felt the weight of what had happened. Like a dark cloud over all of Gaillard, there was no happiness here, and no drink could possibly cure it.

His brown eyes brushed over her. The cloak seemed to swallow her whole, leaving only her pale face and her deep, sad eyes uncovered. Hollowed rings underlined the gray eyes, making them look larger, too large for the delicate features. A basket rested on one bent arm. She was leaving again. Just as she did every afternoon. He was losing her, he knew, and he felt helpless to save her.

"Where are you going, milady?"

His voice was curiously soft and filled with his anxiety for her. "To the old quarry," she said.

"Again?"

"Aye."

"Why?"

She settled her gaze on the horizon appearing through the gate. "'Tis a place where 1 find solace, is all."

Morgan paused, trying to think of something to say. Now even Clair, whom she loved, was gone. They had sent her to Beaumont to be with Jean Luc The boy had become despondent, missing his mother too much, and though neither of them wanted to lose Clair now, it was all they could think to do to ease the ache in Jean Luc's heart. "I'll send Michaels with you—"

"No, please, milord," she begged. "I need to be alone. I need desperately to be alone..." Then, without looking at him, as if to herself, she said, "She died last night."

He drew back with shock, thinking of Clair. "Who?"

"The lady in black. Paxton s wife.”

A chilly breeze lifted the heavy circle of her winter cloak as he searched her face to guess the significance she found in this death. He saw at once it did not matter. He felt a twinge of relief, before he realized it really didn't matter. It altered nothing for her, meant nothing to her.

No one ever saw Linness cry. Ever. Yet the tears hung like mist in her eyes, shimmering like a haunting light, and conveyed the extent of her struggle as no words could. Father Thomas had begun hearing her confession, and last night the man hinted that he was afraid she was losing her will to live.

"Not suicide?!"

"Nay," the father said. "‘Tis more subtle, as if life is just slipping from her."

And the words had struck him with fear, for every night he suffered a nightmare about this very thing. Though she went about life in the same manner she had always gone about it, she was so different, so terribly changed. 'Twas indeed as the good father said, the light of her life was fading.

He hadn't wanted to believe it, that she was as much in love with Paxton as Paxton was with her. At first he had been imagining only Paxton had loved her, like everyone else; his brother had gone and fallen in love with his wife. It never occurred to him how very much she had fallen in love with Paxton as well.

The idea was a punishing one.

Because he, too, loved her. For in his mind she was like no other woman. And it was not just her miraculous sight and visions, but her extreme kindness, the intelligence and perspicacity of her understandings, the music of her laughter with his son, and its effect on his heart, the wealth of her simple and good love for people, all people He only understood how much he had come to love Linness since he lost her. It was rather a subtle and gradual building of respect and admiration, a softening of his own rough edges.

He looked away, as if it were too hard to see her now, and he thought, love—what a cursed proposition! If he didn't love her, it wouldn't matter at all. He would be able to bear the profundity of her unhappiness; her happiness would not be the treasure that it was.

Every night he dreamt of her now. Drink could not alter this dream, its vividness of emotion. In this dream he saw her, Linness, and she was fading. Just fading, becoming less and less until she was gone, and as he watched this fading, he felt a mounting desperation to save her.

Paxton always appeared at his side to yell: "Keep her safe, Morgan! Keep her safe!" His desperation mounted, helplessly; he watched in fear, a growing fear of her death, and this fear dropped him to his knees, crying, wanting to save her but not knowing how.

When he woke there were real tears in his eyes.

He was going mad. His anxiety to help her mounted as her melancholy grew. If only he knew what to do...

Her hand emerged from the folds of her cloak She reached to his face, to soothe the anxious lines of his brow. There was tenderness and sympathy in her touch. Then, wordlessly, she turned away.

Morgan's gaze followed her cloaked figure until she faded in the distance.

The desolate landscape loomed eerily against its solitary bleakness, this place she always came to in the afternoon. The quarry made of nothing but piles of dirt, rock, and empty holes filled with water. It was about two miles downriver from Gaillard, the place where long ago the rocks had been dug for the chateau and the township.

The bishop stared down from the highest ridge line. Why did she come here to pray at such a cold and barren landscape?

The forest started just beyond the ridge where he and Father Thomas stood watching her. The bishop held out his hand, and in silence, Father Thomas gave him the spyglass. The bishop brought it to his eyes and aimed it at the spot where she knelt in prayerful supplication.

She wore a dark blue woolen cape that surrounded her in a half circle, its hood drawn over her hair. Her eyes were shut. Through the magnifying power of the glass he could see her slightly parted lips, the small breaths drawn in and out. He imagined he could see her humility at last.

A haunting serenity surrounded the woman.

He dismissed the perception; he was not to be deceived. Satan took no rest. Nothing would separate him from his purpose: to bring this depraved and wicked woman before God. At last he had sent the damning evidence—twenty pages of proof—to the Vatican, to demonstrate the necessity of an ecclesiastic trial.

He had begun reading the copy of this again last night. At first he had thought it had been altered. Somehow, by treachery, she had altered the testimony so he suddenly could not see from these carefully penned words how it was that she turned the faithful from God. Yet how could she alter the paper in which the testimony was writ? ‘Twas impossible.

He read them over again, then twice more. Yet, all the anecdotes seemed suddenly innocent, unworthy of his interest even, let alone the interest of his Vatican superiors. He felt an embarrassed prick of panic at the idea.

He needed something more, something with far greater weight and profanity. He was hoping her mysterious sojourns to the quarry would provide it. Father Thomas promised he would be greatly surprised by the things that transpired here.

Father Thomas would know this, for he had begun hearing the lady's confession. "So," he said to the priest at his side, "this is where she comes every day?"

"Aye, milord."

"She is always alone?"

"Always."

"And from here you say she goes to the chapel?”

"She lights a candle at Mary's altar for vespers.”

He nodded, and still looked down at her. He knew he should not ask it, but he had to know. The question pressed so heavily on his mind, the answer would be the explanation of her power, how she had…had changed Father Thomas. "You hear her confession now?"

Father Thomas straightened visibly, hesitating Why should he be surprised that the bishop would approach the issue? "Aye, milord..."

"I would hear what was confessed."

Father Thomas stared intently at the lone figure kneeling in the distance. He wondered if the bishop would be changed, too, by hearing the lady's confession. No, probably not, he realized. His mind was fixed on the idea she was a danger to the faithful; he filtered everything through cold and hateful eyes.

He himself had not wanted to be changed, but he had, for her confession was a window to her heart. A rich and sacred place, it was, a place where he had found, much to his surprise, he could pass no judgment. He alone was witness to her struggle and suffering, and through this witnessing he found the light of his own heart changed, altered, different. The change, he had come to understand, was his own redemption.

Now he found himself desperate to save her.

He lied, of course, the lesser sin. "Nothing extraordinary, milord."

The bishop let the glass drop as he asked, "Why does she come here?" Angrily he asked, "Do you even know?"

"Aye. I have come three times now."

He turned to see Father Thomas's face much changed by something he saw. "Why?"

"You will see," he said.

The men stood atop the ridgeline, staring down.

The sun set and shadows lengthened. A sudden gust of wind blew down from the ridge, echoing through the stones of the quarry, and sent shimmering ripples over the stilled water of the desolate ponds. The bishop watched as Linness suddenly opened her eyes to stare at the cliff before her. A tremor of alarm shot up his spine as he followed her gaze.

A contorted pile of rocks stood between the woman's kneeling form and the cliff. The sun set behind it. A shadow climbed up the cliff as the winter sun blazed colors of gold and orange around it. A miracle of image formed: a tall shrouded figure holding a child.

Mary and the Christ child.

The mystery of the holy image held him spell bound.

Then it was gone. The violet sky darkened. Linness genuflected and rose; head down, she turned to make her way back to Gaillard. The bishop remained in stunned silence, staring off at the place where it happened. His vision blurred and for a long moment he wondered wildly what was wrong. His hands reached up, rubbing his eyes. He let out a bewildered gasp as he felt the heat of his tears on his cold hands.