Iron Chamber of Memory (11 page)

“Shouldn’t you put something on to answer the door?”

Her green eyes flashed, perhaps in anger, perhaps in amusement. “Bad enough when my mother tells me what to wear! I am mistress in my own house here, or it soon will be! And I was not coming to answer the door because you did not ring the bell. I heard a noise and I came to look. I did not know the door had opened. Imagine my surprise to see you standing inside my locked house where no one is supposed to come unless invited! Now I am sorry I tempted you to become a break-in artist. I did not think it would become your profession.”

“I was invited!”

“To come at five o’clock! What ungodly hour is it now? There are no clocks here. Invited guests ring the bell, they don’t break in!”

“I did not ring the bell because there were no lights on, and I thought no one was home because I assumed you had gone down to the inn!”

“Anyone who was a thoughtless boob, I suppose,” she said coolly. “Manfred was called away, and he took the keys with him. So if I left before you came, I would have had to leave the front door hanging open, which would have been unwise. But how is it that you are not locked out?”

“I have the key.”

Now she stopped and turned, looking down at him, and her eyes did flash with anger, with no playfulness in them. “That is
preposterous
. Why would he give the keys to you and not to me?”

“I–I don’t know… He wanted my help to solve the mystery of this house.”

“I would like to solve the mystery of why he does not trust me!” she blazed. “At times, he is a total stranger to me. He disappears, sometimes for days on end, and later says he does not remember where he went!” Her eyes sought his. She said, “You have a funny look on your face. What has Manfred said about me? Is he having second thoughts?”

A quiet inner voice told Hal to tell the truth, but instead he threw out his chest and forced a hearty grin to his features and said, “No, he is madly, head-over-heels in love with you! He just wants to get his dissertation out of the way, and clear up these legal matters, get his fine new house here up and running—it is hectic. He is under stress! You should not read into things, you know, Miss du Lac?”

She tossed her head to throw stray strands back from her face, and sighed, and said, “Well, that is nice to hear, even though I know you don’t mean a word of it. Shall we go and eat the dinner Manny had the cook whip up for us?”

Laurel took a step, then two, and looked back again. Hal had not moved. She said archly, “Or are you going to run off, leaving me alone in a haunted house to sleep on a bare cot again? Well, there is actually a four-poster bed in the master bedroom now, and a battery-powered space heater. I appreciate that you don’t want to cause a scandal by seeing me without a chaperone, but I will remind you that I am a woman of iron self-control, and your attempts to tempt my virtue have fallen considerably short of your sinister intentions.”

“My attempts at what? Miss du Lac, I am not the one who came to the door half-naked!”

“No, merely the one who broke in on me when I was half-naked!” she said with a malicious smile. “But come! All will be forgiven once you sit and eat, and drink the wine I found. Wonderful vintage. And stop worrying about my attire! You should see what the girls on the beach wear in France.”

“If you could put something on…”

“This is actually my wedding dress. I just left the veil in the hatbox.” She purred, and she swayed with languid, swinging steps down the corridor, her heels clattering brightly, taking the candle with her.

Seeing no escape, and cursing himself for a fool under his breath, he followed.

They stepped again into the Rose Crystal Chamber, where Laureline, as she had said, indeed spread out a fine supper table. There was no shock this time as their true memories returned, they merely straightened, looked one another in the eye, saw the recognition there, the truth they shared, the burning passion.

Then they were in each other’s arms.

They held hands while they ate, and slipped morsels into each other’s mouths, each forcing the other to drink more than was wise. After the meal, he started nibbling on her. She pulled him down onto the rug.

The madness of longing drove him further this time than he had dared before, so that by the time he pulled himself back from where they lay intertwined on a tigerskin rug before the blazing fire in which their shattered wine glasses lay, she was naked from the waist up, wearing little more than her silk stockings. Oddly, her black shoes were still on her feet, as if, in the midst of their passion, she had forgotten to kick then off.

Panting, head pounding, he stepped back to help himself to more wine and paused to drink in the frankly erotic vision of her. She lay carelessly draped over the fur rug, displaying to best advantage the sensuous contour of her soft body—her lovely shoulder, her wasp-like waist, her curving hip, the smooth black lines of her stockinged legs, and her shoes glinting like onyx. He had seen such seductive poses ten thousand times in advertisements, films, paperback covers, calendars, but this was real. She arched her back and smiled her ensorcelling smile not for a camera, not for an anonymous audience, but for him and him alone.

A strange sensation ran through him then, a heated, animal energy that inflamed his body even as it seared his conscience. She was a blessing and a blasphemy; she was rare wine cast indifferently into the briny sea, the nectar of the gods poured into a sewer. And yet, he burned to slake his thirst and drain her to the very dregs.

Henry whispered, “This cannot go on. I will go mad.”

“Mad with what?”

“We really should not be doing this…” without meaning to do so, he took a half-step towards her.

“Mm. A girl likes to know that she is wanted.” Laureline made a soft noise in the back of her throat, half-sigh, half-moan. Rolling over, she writhed against the tigerskin, her shoulders and knees touching the luxurious fur, her hips high, her head low. Firelight caressed her, a red-gold dappling that danced over her porcelain skin. “You do want me, don't you, Henry?”

“You know I do.” His throat was thick, his voice was oddly deep. “You know damn well I do. Why are you doing this to me? This is so wrong.”

“It will feel right soon, very soon. Everything is all right. Kiss me, that will make it all better!”

“Do you even realize what you are doing? Are you doing all this on purpose? Do all girls practice in a mirror looking seductive?”

Laureline rolled onto her back and put her hands above her head, smiling at him. “You think too much, Henry. Live! Love! Feel! It is like dancing; let yourself go! If you are doing it deliberately, step after careful step, you are doing it wrong. Do all men practice in a mirror looking bold and masterful, so menacing and huge and hairy?”

He glowered down at her, his broad and hairy chest glistening in the firelight where she had torn all his buttons away, his face stern, his eyes like fire, his countenance like a pagan war god, or a lion towering over its helpless prey.

“Am I now?” he said in a low growl, as the fire cast his huge shadow across the ceiling behind him. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course. When the antlers of the king stag of the forest affright the other does, his royal consort can queen it over them.”

“Outside you—is
she
marrying Manfred for his money, then? His title?”

Laureline shook her head. “I don't know. I can’t psychoanalyze her. Maybe it is for the security, or the illusion of security. Or maybe not. It’s even possible I want to marry him just to get closer to you, but I fear what my mother would say if I wed an penniless American nobody. Out there, in that outer world, I am a coward. Only here am I true.”

He stared at her, bewildered. “But I
am
a nobody! I cannot even break us out of this chamber into the outside!”

“In here, you are my knight in shining armor, my champion, my demigod. You are strong and give me strength. Do you think I could fight this shapeless nightmare of amnesia without you?”

Henry plunged his hand into the ice bucket, pulled out a handful of dripping ice cubes, and wiped them angrily against his face and neck, hissing in shock. The pounding heartbeat left his face and released his groin. He stuffed the handful of ice under one armpit, then the other, which certainly drove away his erotic thoughts.

Laureline sat up on the rug, her arms behind her to either side, palms on the fur, black-clad legs stretched before her, crossed at the ankles. She watched his antics with both eyebrows raised. “Well, that must smart!”

Henry said, “You and I, we have to control ourselves. Things are spinning out of control.”

She smiled archly and leaned back on her elbows. “It’s not working. You still look huge, hairy and menacing to me. Damp, to be sure, but still desirable.”

“I cannot imagine why you love me.”

She smiled. “It is like dancing, if you look at your feet, you break the spell. Why do I love you? Look at me. What do you see?”

“The most attractive woman in the world.”

“Beauty fades. Five years, or ten, or when I have your first son, and this will be gone. I am wasting my life studying theater and going to parties, hunting for eligible bachelors, hanging out with silly girls my own age even sillier than I am. I am never going to change the world. Do you understand why I love you now?”

He shook his head, as if trying to drive away the echo of her words from his brain.
When I have your first son.
She had said it so casually, as if, in her heart, they were already wed.

Laureline was saying, “All the little starlets and stage hands I know talk about power and empowerment, and how women must be strong. Strong, strong, strong is all their talk, all day. But I am frail, really. Like glass. My life could be shattered in an instant. Do you understand how opposites attract? I am sure all the beasts aboard Noah’s Ark must have stared at the restless sea in awe. But after the waters receded, the fish learned to adore the land for its hardness and stillness, wondering why the mountains never break like curlers. You will not break either.”

Since he felt as if he were already broken in two, he scowled and said nothing.

She smiled up at him, and saw his thought on his face. “Maybe you don’t feel strong. That is because I have not been doing my job. It is the woman’s job to put strength in her man. We are designed to need each other, man and mate. The cavegirl cannot kill a mastodon, but she can cheer up and cheer on the big hulking brute who can…and pan-sear a mastodon steak for him afterwards, in a light wine sauce with olive oil, butter and peppercorns.”

“That
does
sound delicious,” Henry said, “But it doesn’t seem like a fair deal for the cavegirl.”

“Do you think you men would kill mastodons without us, instead of lying about the cave all day, drinking cave-beer from a coconut shell?”

“On second thought, maybe the caveboy is the one with the wrong end of this deal.”

“I’ll say! You have to kill whole forests of birds and beasts for us, so we can have doeskin-leather bikinis and have necklaces of bearclaws thonging our cavegirl throats, and can adorn our cavegirl hair with prehistoric feathers. Speaking of adornment: Did you get it? Did you bring it?”

He had not taken off his shirt, pants, or boots, but his jacket had been flung across the chamber. He retrieved it and drew a long, flat box of black velvet from an inner pocket. He came and knelt.

She sat up straight and clapped her hands in delight.

He snapped open the box.

Inside, like a snake made of solid light, was a silver necklace with a tear-shaped diamond pendant. Tiny chips of ruby, garnet, and diamond dust circled the boss from which the pendant hung, and the boss was adorned with a pattern of waves and fishes. The links near the boss were tiny dolphins of silver, curling this way and that, each holding the tail of the one before it in its mouth. It was a cunning work, and Henry was sure the artisan must have used a microscope to see and work the fine detail, the drops of spray, the scales of the fish, the smiles of the bottle-noses.

Laureline made little noises of feminine joy and knelt at his feet. Holding up her outrageous masses of hair with both hands, she presented her graceful, swanlike neck. Her eyes were lowered demurely. The firelight gleamed against her naked breasts and the soft contours of her white belly.

Kneeling thus, Henry thought Laureline looked, in that light, in that pose, very much like the cavegirl she had described.

He snapped the silver chain around her neck. She put her hand to her bosom, looking down, to admire the glinting jewels.

She looked so lovely, there in the dancing light of the fire, that he could not take his eyes from her. She was so precious to him, so dear, far more so than a thousand such necklaces.

He imagined their future life, once this terrible curse had been broken, picturing them together, traveling, laughing. He pictured their future house, the children that they would have, sweet, dark-haired girls and stalwart, towheaded boys.

He recalled a time, soon after they had met, when he had come upon her bending over, talking to the granddaughter of the innkeeper in town. She had looked so attentive, so intent, so patient, as she listened to the child. He had been entirely captivated.

He always pictured her speaking to their future children with exactly that same radiant expression.

Laureline spoke: “I was lost last time, and about to give up, and you were my strength. Now it is my turn to put your heart back in you! This proves your new system, your memory mansion, can help you recall more things more clearly. We have more control over our blind Out-of-Doors selves now! It was easy for me to lure us both back into the Rose Crystal Chamber this time! And this necklace—don’t you see, it is a symbol! We are fighting our own subconscious minds, the minds that take over and make us forget our love when we step out that hateful rosy door! But symbols have great power in the subconscious mind!”

“I am still not sure what this will do.”

“I will write a note telling myself to wear it Wednesday, and you write a reminder about meeting me for golf. You will see this glorious pendant on me, and you will remember. Here, now! Kiss me on the back of the neck where the clasp is! Kiss me where the teardrop rests! Look at the chain! Stare at it closely!”