Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (4 page)

“I wonder what he’d have thought of me. Had he lived, Jewel, he’d likely have chased me off with a shotgun.”

She had wondered herself at times what her father would have thought of Casey, an ex-IRA rebel who worked with his hands and had spent five years in prison. Likely he wouldn’t have been terribly impressed until he knew the man behind the history.

“You’re a finer man than any I’ve ever known,” she said, stroking the side of his face with one hand, his stubble rasping pleasantly against her oiled palm.

“It’s only that it intimidates a man a bit to know that ye came from such wealth an’ privilege, that ye were meant for country clubs an’ big homes on the ocean. I wonder that all this,” he indicated the room with a wave of his hand, though she knew he meant the world beyond this room as well, “doesn’t seem a wee bit shabby to ye? I took ye from that world, like pluckin’ a jewel from its proper settin’, an’ perhaps I’d not the right to do so.”

“That world was a lonely place for me, Casey. Maybe I would have found my place in it when I was an adult, but maybe I wouldn’t have. No, I belong here with you, with the dog, the cat and the sheep, in a house that creaks in welcome each time I step over the threshold, in a wee hollow filled with flowers. A house built by a man who hammered every board into place with love. You’re my home, man. I would never be happy elsewhere.”

He took the hand that still rested lightly on his jaw and kissed it.

“I may not be able to give ye the sailboats and summer homes, but I can promise ye this one thing, Jewel. As long as I am alive in this world, you will always be loved.”

“Thank you for that,” she said quietly, depositing a kiss on the back of his neck. She moved awkwardly off his back and lay down beside him. She put her face into the hollow at the base of his skull, the crush of his curls soft beneath her cheek. His hair had grown long over the winter, though he kept threatening to shave it off the minute he found the time for it. She rather hoped he wouldn’t though, for he had beautiful hair: thick, dark and loosely curled. Tonight it smelled of pine pitch and rock dust, elements with which he had worked that day. She loved the luxuriant silkiness of it and privately thought he looked like a wonderfully sexy pirate. It was not a thought she voiced aloud, knowing he would shave it off that second, lack of time be damned.

“Will we ever speak of it, d’ye suppose?” he asked so softly that it hardly registered.

“About what?” she asked on the rise of a yawn. The heat of his body near her own and the vapors of roses and lavender, chamomile and honey all combined to make her sleepy, not that she needed much of a nudge in that direction these days. Casey’s next words, however, brought her fully alert.

“About you an’ Love Hagerty,” he said, voice still quiet, but now with an under-note of pain with which she was all too familiar.

She was silent for a long moment, heart thudding hard in her chest. She was certain that Casey must be able to feel it, as closely as their two skins lay together.

“I—I don’t know. What would we say?”

“I don’t know, Pamela, only that I think as much as it hurts the both of us, still we’ll have to speak of it one day.”

She didn’t respond, though she knew his words were not framed in the form of a question, but rather a statement of fact that neither of them wanted to face.

Though they did not speak of it, she knew that didn’t preclude either of them thinking about it, and she was sensitive enough to her husband in all his various moods that she knew when it was occupying him. A darkness would come down over him, visible even in the shade his eyes took on, and he would leave the house for a few hours. She never asked where he went during those absences, for fear that he might actually tell her.

The silence in the room was so complete that she could hear the tap of empty rose cane against the window, fretting in the night wind.

“Aye, not tonight then,” he said, voice weary with all the words neither of them seemed able to utter.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered in his ear.

“Aye, darlin’,” he said and took her hand in his own, face still turned from her. “So am I.”

She lay for some time after Casey fell asleep
, listening to the hiss and pop of the peat fire in the grate and the soft sighing of the wind outside their bedroom. Finally, she gave up on sleep and slid from the bed as quietly as her body allowed. She put Casey’s discarded shirt on and went to sit by the window. The windowsills were a good eighteen inches thick and provided a solid seat for watching the moon cross the sky on restless nights. Tonight, however, was moonless, the yard below thick with shadows. She gazed out sightlessly, already chilled to the bone and knowing it had nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

For months now, this thing had stood between them, and she knew well that the longer it stood there, the more damage it was going to inflict on their marriage. Yet what could she say to him? What could she tell him to take away the things she had done? To wipe from his mind the images and feelings that she knew he could not help but imagine, in painful detail. She did not see how words could help, but was uncertain how they were going to get through this whole without her having to say them. Perhaps it would be better than what he was imagining, but what if it wasn’t? What then? Everything between them was so terribly tenuous right now, their whole relationship as delicate as a spider’s web touched by the elements and torn by the wind. If they spoke of it and he couldn’t handle it—and she knew it was likely he wasn’t going to like it one bit—then what? She could not lose him again, nor have him stay because he felt he had to for their child.

The night he had come for her at Jamie’s those few months ago, she had hoped that they had mended things well enough so that this would not be necessary; the conversation that Casey felt must be had. It had been a foolish hope born of the sheer relief that Casey had come home to her, as much as he was able at that time. Being that she had waited months not knowing if she would ever see him again, it had been more than enough—then. But now it was all too apparent that something was missing. There was a constraint between them, if not in the small rituals of domestic life then in the bed where they had once given of themselves completely.

There had been the dreadful night when he had found out. It was still there, whole in her memory like a wound that hurt to touch but was impossible to avoid. She shivered and drew her arms tight around her chest. His scent was heavy on the shirt and she breathed deeply of it, allowing it to give her comfort. That night, she had tried to explain her infidelity, how the FBI had given her very little choice, and Love Hagerty had given her even less, that she had simply seen no other way out of their predicament and had thought her body a small price to pay for her husband’s life. He had told her he would, all things considered, rather be dead. He had meant it and she had meant it too, and would do it again if it meant keeping him alive. But he was male and therefore could not understand her reasoning, not that she could blame him.

She had made a terrible mistake that night, but even in hindsight she did not see how she might have fixed it. When Casey had asked if she felt anything for Love Hagerty while she lay in his bed, she had been unable to answer. She had meant only that her body had, despite the revulsion of her heart, sometimes responded to the man’s touch. She was afraid to ask Casey if he understood, afraid to open the wound that was her affair with Love Hagerty, for fear of what might be said. Conversations had a life of their own and that was particularly true of one that could not help but be volatile and emotional.

The night he had brought her home there had been too many emotions in the air to say anything, and after that, it had seemed best to let it all lie. But that night had given them back to one another, and so she would not touch the shape of it for fear of changing the pattern of their lives. He had taken her first to a small tumbledown cottage deep in the countryside and given her the choice of continuing their marriage, their life together and she had felt the gift of that fully. And then he had brought her home here, where they might begin to heal and he, she hoped, could forgive her enough to allow her back into his heart completely.

The house was warm, a fire glowing in the hearth. The light reflected in small shifting patches in the teacups that adorned the sideboard, and the floorboards gleamed softly. She sighed in relief. It was good to be home, like sinking into a warm bath on a chilly winter evening. She turned to Casey.

“How—”

He smiled. “I did hope ye’d come home with me tonight, Jewel. I didn’t want to bring ye back to a cold house. That hardly seemed a proper welcome.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling oddly nervous. Here they were home, just as she had wanted and hoped and prayed for these last few months, and now she didn’t know what to do or say.

Casey took her coat from her and she sat down in a chair by the fire, her legs suddenly wobbly as a new colt’s. He came and knelt on the rug before the fire, adding a couple of bricks of peat to it. The heat steadied her nerves a little. She needed to tell him about the baby.

Casey rubbed his hands together and took a deep breath. Before she could utter a word, he turned to her with an odd look on his face and said, “Well, let’s get on with it then.”

“Get on with what?” she asked, confused.

“Sex,” he said bluntly. “We need to get it out of the way.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a little dizzy suddenly as the full import of what lay between them hit her. There was no way for Casey to take her to bed without it conjuring up the pain that needed only the slightest breath to stir it to full wakefulness. How could she lie down with him, give him everything without any barriers between them, when she knew the images that would haunt him every time he touched her?

“I’m sorry, Jewel. That came out a bit more blunt than I’d intended. It’s just that,” he breathed out heavily, “I want to make love to ye, but I’m afraid to as well. I’m afraid of what I’ll feel. I’m afraid of hurting ye. But I know waiting will only make it worse.”

She swallowed and began to unbutton her blouse. Casey opened his mouth to say something and then snapped it shut as his eyes took in the changes in her body since last he’d touched her. She shrugged the blouse off, the firelight flickering on the ivory of her breasts, each one tinged blue with the dilated veins of pregnancy.

“Oh,” Casey said, and it was a small shocked sound, as though someone had let his air out.

“Give me your hands, man,” she said softly and after a moment, he turned toward her and extended two hands that shook ever so slightly. She took them and placed them on the round of her belly.

“Did ye… did ye know ye were pregnant the night I left ye?” he asked.

“Yes, though just.”

“Oh, Pamela. Why didn’t ye tell me?” His large hands spanned the small mound, eyes dark and riveted to the obvious pregnancy.

“I didn’t think it was fair. I wanted you to stay for love, not for duty.”

Casey bowed his head and took a deep breath. “Woman, there’s never been a minute since I first saw ye that I haven’t loved ye. I was angry. I was hurtin’ somethin’ fierce, but never doubt that I loved ye the whole time.”

“And I you,” she said softly, tears running freely down her face. “You scared the hell out of me, man.”

“How… how…” words seemed to fail him, for he swallowed, the long line of his throat trembling.

“Three months—so far, so good,” she said, knowing the fears that haunted him as well as she knew her own.

He nodded, as though afraid to even give voice to hope. They had been hopeful so many times before, and been sorely pained at each loss. This time she felt it was different, that this pregnancy would result in a living child, a child that would help them heal.

He took her down gently, there on the rug in front of the fire.

She shivered when he touched her, though the fire was hot against her skin.

He brushed the hair away from her face and kissed her forehead tenderly before putting his lips to her own. She needn’t have worried, for her response was immediate. Having been denied the touch of him for so long she found herself almost desperate, wanting him inside her, hard and needing, meeting her own need like fire striking tinder, setting off an uncontrollable blaze.

After, he stayed with her, skin to skin, his blood beating hard against her own. They were silent for a long time, both afraid to speak, yet content to be near one another for the first time in so many weeks. The night outside was silent with frost and cold, but inside it was snug and peaceful.

“Do you know how I love you?” she said suddenly, worried that after all that had passed between them, he still would not know this one crucial thing.

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at her, face tender.

“Aye, there are times, Pamela, when I get a glimpse of it an’ count myself blessed among men for the ferocity of such a thing. Were it only half of what I feel for ye, I would still count myself the most lucky of souls. But I know it to be the equal of my own. We are, both of us, fortunate.”