House of Glass (13 page)

“Mrs.,” I corrected her, and took a glass of champagne. “Mrs.”

“So sorry,” she said.

I saw Mr. Azoulay from across the room and he approached me and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek. His monocled eye peered at me intently. “You have risen higher than the sun,” he said approvingly. “It makes me happy to see it.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

“It is the only bright spot now when I visit here. Now that Annie is gone.” He shook his head. “She was a dear girl.” Genuine grief crossed his face.

Then I knew. It was Mr. Azoulay and Annie that I had witnessed on my first night, embracing on the terrace. They were lovers. Not Lucas and Annie. In the darkened shadows I had confused them.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, though it was a lie. Things had started to spin out of control.

A little while later Lucas pulled me aside. “You wear her clothes out of the house? What are you doing?” he whispered angrily.

“I’m doing what I have to do, what I want to do. You don’t understand.”

“Well, you can do it alone, because I can’t stand to see it.” He shoved away from me, and disappeared into the night.

Later, much later, when I finally crawled into our bed, he wasn’t there. I knew exactly where to find him.

I would go to him. I put on a robe and slipped from the house and ran across the lawn. Devlin Manor was a dark monolith behind me, a sleeping giant from which I had just escaped, and I needed the glass cottage.

I don’t know what overcame me. Maybe it was the night air, the moon, or just my desire, but I quite deliberately hurried my pace and continued on to the stone staircase.

There was a light on in the house; I saw its lonely beam stretching out into the night. It was like a beacon calling out to me and I ran down the steps, feeling the salt-crusted rock under my bare feet and the heat of each torch as I passed by. The moon was there, waiting for me, encouraging me to be brave, and the waves cajoled me with their gentle sounds.

I became anxious as I approached the door, wondering if I should knock or not.
No,
I decided,
Celeste would not knock.
I reached out and slowly turned the handle.

I stepped into the cottage. A breeze welcomed me. The sliding glass doors were opened to the night, and Lucas was on the deck. He was looking out over the ocean and his back was to me. I walked toward him, the wind blowing my silk robe behind me. I stepped onto the deck.

Lucas turned around. I saw my effect on him, the intake of breath, the widening of his shoulders as he did, even the surprise and anger that mixed together in his gaze. But quickly it turned to lust, and a wicked part of me loved it.

I took a step. The wind tugged at my robe. I pulled apart the sash and held the robe up in the air. The wind grabbed it, stole it right from my hand, and pulled it into the night, where it fluttered until the darkness claimed it. I took another step, and the stiff wind pushed against my nightgown and silhouetted my body. I saw a rage of desire in him as he eyed my body.

He came to me. In two strides he reached me, and I crushed against him, kissed him. He moaned and kissed me deeper, and his arousal made me wild, pushed me to a place I was unaware existed.

He pushed me to my knees and I was glad for it, for the wildness of our coupling. He yanked up my nightgown and shoved my legs apart. When he touched me between my legs and felt how wet I was, he grabbed my hips and pushed himself against me, so hard and unrelenting, so damn tempting that I met him halfway, and he cried out in surprise.

He reached around to my front, ripped my gown, exposing my breasts. The intensity of it overwhelmed me and I cried out again and again as he pushed into me. The wind grew fierce and it stole my cries of ecstasy right from my lips. When I looked down, through the glass floor, I saw the waves crashing against the jagged rocks and right at that moment I exploded, soaring and falling at the same time.

* * *

That night I dreamed of my father. In the dream, I was on a boat in the middle of the ocean. It was night and there were no stars or moon. The dark of the water blended with the sky, and my boat drifted in the nothingness.

I heard my father calling out to me, and I knew that he was out there, in the darkness. Over and over he called my name. I called back, until I did not know which of us was lost and which was searching. Finally I called his name, and there was no answer, only the wind blowing over the water. The sound of the lost.

I woke.

The first thing I saw was the surf rolling onto the rocks below me. The water smashed into the rocks and the foam rose almost as high as the glass floor. Lucas was still asleep, breathing peacefully, completely unaware of the dangers beneath us both.

Somehow I knew that things were not settled between us. The sick feeling inside me was proof of that. I slipped from our makeshift bed, and could see out the windows that there was no sunlight, only strange, dark green clouds that snaked across the sky. It would storm today.

Lucas moved beneath the covers, and when I looked at him he was staring at me.

“Lucas,” I said, “How do you know that you love me, and not just the image or the memory of Celeste?”

He was quiet for a moment, and I watched the surf break on the rocks beneath him. “I could ask you the same question.”

It was with horror that I realized he was right. There was nothing I could say, so I walked away, and went into Celeste’s bedroom. My head was pounding, and I was forced to sit upon the bed for a moment. The bed was so soft and luxurious. I had always preferred a hard bed, but ever since coming to Devlin Manor I had lost sight of what I preferred.

I thought back to the evening before, to the party, where I acted like a brute. Painfully, I realized that I began to change the second that I put my desire of the glass house above all else. When I tried to emulate and ultimately erase the memory of Celeste. To take what was hers. Her house, her legacy. The second I idolized what I myself thought Lucas wanted.

That immaturity, that greedy desire had blossomed inside me unchecked.

The first thing I needed to do was apologize to Lucas. When I went back into the living room Lucas was sitting at the table. His blue eyes watched me as I passed by him. I could feel them on my back. He was angry, and suddenly I was, too, that he could harden in such a manner. The room felt smaller and suffocating all of a sudden. For all his beauty, the man could be so very cold.

I took the chair opposite him and we sat eyeing each other for a moment. How ironic that the three of us, Myself, Lucas and the statue of Celeste between us all sat at the table. Somehow, Celeste always seemed to be between us.

“Lucas, I’m sorry.”

Lucas sighed, and rested his head upon his hands. “Reyna, what is going on?”

“No, Lucas, listen. I just need time. It’s so much to get used to. I have been so wrong. So very wrong.”

“Reyna, I don’t know what the hell I’ve got myself into with you. I don’t know what to think right now.”

I wanted him to stop. To stop speaking, and to not say the next words that I knew he would say. I held up my hand, but he barreled ahead and said them, anyway. Even worse, he stood and walked to me, and took my face into his hands, and I had full measure of his anger.

The next words that came out of his mouth stopped my heart. “I can’t figure you out. You have these wild swings, and an obsession that drives you. It is pushing you away from me.”

Tears, hot, needful tears sprang from my eyes and ran down my cheeks. “No. That’s not so.” But even I knew he spoke the truth.

“Yes. It is.” He stood and walked away from me, looking out the windows over the ocean. “The real disaster is that I far, far prefer Reyna, who always needs saving, who trips when she’s nervous, who takes in stray dogs. I prefer her over the woman I see now. I prefer the woman who wears a shell necklace and not the one who wears diamonds..” Lucas leaned over me and slammed his hand on the table. “When you looked at me, when you believed in me, I could see it in your eyes. All these years I was a wrecked man, and everyone looked at me like I was a murderer. But not you.” He turned away. “But now,” he spat the words, “you are a woman more concerned with the house than with me. You’ve gone cold. Like her.”

I was angry. “It’s a house, Lucas. Just a house.” Even as I said the words I knew that the house had somehow become more to me than mere walls. It represented the certainty of who I wanted to be. “What do you want me to do? I loved you. Loved you. Do you understand? And all the while I am loving you, you are devoted, no you are insanely devoted to the memory of another woman.” I stood and pushed the chair away from the table. It clattered to the floor. “Look at this house! Exactly as it was.”

“The day you fell into the jungle, and I found you, and you looked at me with such hope. I knew right then and there that I loved you. Who are we if we are not remembered?” he asked.

“Always remember,” I said. “But who are we if we do not go forward? Then we are just shadows of ourselves. Shadows. That’s what I liked about the glass house. It took away the shadows!” I wiped a tear from my eye. “It made my choices very clear. I knew what to do.”

He grabbed the golden statue of Celeste from the table and hoisted it above his head. “Choices?” he roared, “I will make the choice for you!” He waved the statue threateningly. “I will make the choice like I should have done for her.”

Time slowed in that strange way it does at moments like those. I realized that everything, every single thing came down to this one moment. A choice between an obsession and love, and that I had to make the choice, not him.

I raced toward him and yanked the statue from his grip, and with a ferocity I didn’t know I possessed, I hurled the golden statue through the air.

It sailed end over end, and hit the glass floor with a crack louder than a bolt of lightning. The floor smashed apart, and shards of glass sailed through the air. The sofa and loveseat dropped and fell away. The wind came barreling inside the house.

The wind roared in triumph. Papers flew into the air, and my hair and dress whipped around my face and body. There was almost a gleeful, evil quality to the wind, as if it had waited a long, long time to break into the house.

I took a deep breath and felt…better, less frenzied.

As the wind whipped around Lucas, he was unfazed and calm, and perhaps that’s what scared me the most. I could handle angry Lucas, intense Lucas, but not cold and distant Lucas. “You’ve changed, Reyna,” he said, and his words sounded far away, buried underneath all the noise.

He was right, but it felt as if a small part of me had just returned. I walked to him and we stood inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes while the world around us had turned dangerous and wild. I reached around my neck and untied the leather strap that held the seashell in place. Lucas watched dispassionately as I took the necklace and pressed it into his palm.

“I met you a long time ago,” I said. He tried to pull his hand away but I clutched it and wouldn’t let go. I was screaming to be heard. “When I was a child. You showed me kindness.” I looked away with tears biting at my eyes. “Somehow I lost myself here…with the glass house. I changed, but in my heart I’m still the same. An island girl. And I hope you still have kindness.”

His eyes were cold, bluer than I had ever seen them. He pried off my fingers and shoved my hand away. “I don’t remember.” The necklace slid across the floor and hung up on the leg of the dining room table.

It felt as if I was struggling to grasp all of the threads that made up my life. I longed for my father, for his knowing words and calming presence. I remembered the fateful day that we sat next to each other and he guided me as I untangled the nets. He always knew what to do, how to guide me. But I was all alone.

Chapter Twelve

The door flew open, and banged against the wall. The wind had grabbed it. We turned to see Mrs. Amber standing in the doorway. Her hair was mussed and she had an almost wild look to her. She stood for a moment, taking in our evening clothes, still worn in the morning, the stance of our bodies, and then her eyes swept to the glass floor, now just an open wound in the house.

I felt cold fear when I saw her face. I had seen that look before, when the men came and knocked on our door to tell me that my father was lost at sea. It was a panicked look.

She said only four words, and those words changed everything. “A storm is coming.”

Lucas and I pulled away and faced her.

“What did you say?” he asked. He was practically shouting in order to be heard.

“The sheriff is here. There’s a hurricane coming. A huge storm that already destroyed many islands and it’s headed directly toward us.”

At that moment, the clock on the wall began to toll, and I shall always remember that sound, the bells gonging, the wind blowing, the look in our eyes as the danger of the situation settled over us. On and on the bell tolled, twelve times in all and my life has been split ever since, into two distinct lives. Before the storm and after the storm. Lucas jumped into action and sped by me in a blur, pausing only for a moment at the door.

The sheriff waited in the great room. Servants mingled together, milling about in small groups with Mrs. Amber at the lead. The sheriff was a tall man with a wide girth and a serious expression on his face. When everyone saw Lucas and I walk into the room it burst into motion and the sheriff called out in his booming voice for everyone to quiet down.

“Tell us what you can.” Lucas was a different man, determined and grim and completely in control.

“The wireless telegraphs have all gone down. But before they did, the last contact we had…”

“Go on,” said Lucas.

“I’m trying to be delicate. The last contact with the outer islands was very grim. A wall of water, higher than a two-story building, swept over the islands. And those aren’t as mountainous as this one. Many lives have already been lost.”

“The barrier islands around St. Claire are flat, flatter than any other islands,” I said.

The sheriff shot me a grim look. A horrid, sinking feeling overcame me.