The Enchantment (38 page)

She'd done it because she had to, because it was the only way to survive in the cold, dark slums of New York. In that environment she'd become diamond-hard and ice-cold, and those traits had kept her fed.

Kept her alive. She'd kept herself sheltered from all human contact, because she'd learned the hard THE ENCHANTMENT

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way that love—unlike money—didn't last.

Never once had she allowed herself to believe that she could have more than simple monetary security.

That she could have it all: a home, a husband who loved her, children, and financial security.

Larence had changed her self-centered path; he'd offered her a bright, searingly hot beam of hope that blasted through the darkness of her solitude. And now, as she sat beside him, leaning lovingly against his side like a loyal wife, she couldn't help believing in that light, in that hope. She felt an almost boundless sense of happiness and security because he was right. She could have it all. She already did.

Closing her eyes again with a contented sigh, she rested her cheek against his shoulder and fingered the circlet of turquoise that hung heavily between her breasts. The stone felt cool and mirror-smooth.

Whoever had crafted it had—

She froze. Her head jerked up. Whoever had crafted it. "Larence!" She lurched to her feet. Without her support, he tumbled sideways. And kept drawing. "Yes?" he said without looking up. "Something's wrong." "Uh-huh."

Emma crossed her arms across her chest to ward off a chill. Nervously she studied the chamber. What moments before had seemed warm and cozy and benign, seemed all of a sudden cold and vaguely malevolent. Her foot started tapping nervously. "Where are the people?"

The pen stopped. He cocked his head toward her and grinned. "They've been dead for hundreds of years."

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"I know that. But where are their bones? Or their graves?"

For a single heartbeat, Larence looked at her with no expression on his face whatsoever. Then he jumped to his feet. The notebook fell to the floor with a muffled thud. "Shit!"

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Larence pulled Emma against him and lifted her off her feet in an exuberant bear hug. He twirled her around until she was breathless and laughing.

As their laughter dwindled, his hold loosened. She slid down the long, hard length of his body. Her bare feet plopped on the cold stone floor. And still they stared at each other.

He kissed her, a long, slow kiss that spoke of love and caring and promises. "Pa-lo-wah-ti was wrong, love," he murmured against her lips. "You are part of this quest. Now let's find the burial grounds."

Three hours later, they came to the end of the road. There they found a five-foot circle made up of polished, palm-sized pieces of jade. In the center of the circle, propped against the sandstone wall, was a gnarled walking stick decorated with what had once been ostrich feathers and beads.

Larence stared at the stick with bulging, glassy eyes. Fumbling in his breast pocket, he pulled out the diary, and flipped through the pages with shaking fingers. After a few seconds, he did a quick, professorial jump and thumped his forefinger against one of the open pages. " Aha! Proof positive."

Emma waited patiently for enlightenment as to the particular meaning of aha accompanied by a hop and a thump. When none came, she said, "Aha, what?"

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"This is Esteban's walking stick. Here, look."

He flashed the drawing at her so quickly, she barely had time to ascertain that it was, in fact, a walking stick before he yanked it back and buried his nose in it. He stared at the drawing, studying it from first one way, then another. "Still, it's strange. ..."

She peered at the picture and decided immediately that he was right: they were both sticks. "Looks pretty ordinary to me."

"What?" he answered distractedly. "Oh, yes, the stick itself is normal. It's just ..."

"Just what?" she prompted.

He tugged on his chin, frowned. "Esteban never went anywhere without his stick. It was a sort of a ...

talis- ^ man, I guess you'd call it. Why would he leave it be- ™ hind?"

He jotted something down, then frowned again. "Of course, an equally intriguing question is, where did they get the jade?" He shot her a knowing glance. "It's not indigenous, you know."

Emma restrained the urge to roll her eyes. Perhaps _ she wasn't such a great professor's wife after all.

It re- p quired a good deal more patience than she possessed. "Larence," she said pointedly, "the more intriguing question is, where are the graves? Or the bones? Except for the guard, there isn't a body in the place. Not one."

She hugged herself tightly and glanced around. Gold and silver and turquoise glinted at her from every corner. But for once, it wasn't the treasures that captured her imagination, it was the city itself. The magic of the place seemed stronger, an almost tangible presence, as obvious and unconquerable as the sandstone walls.

"No one would build a place like this and then walk

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away," she said, as much to herself as to Larence. "So, what happened?"

Far away, a hawk screeched. The vibrating, scratchy sound floated on the wisp of a morning breeze and then disappeared.

Larence woke slowly, unconsciously drawing Emma's languid, still-sleeping body closer to him.

"Morning, wife."

She blinked awake. "Morning, husband."

They lay together for a long, quiet moment, staring up at the robin's-egg patch of sky. Beneath them, the soft, chamois-colored sand warmed to their bodies.

Emma ran her hand through the curling brown hair that darkened Larence's chest. It was such a warm, cozy feeling to waken in his arms. A small, contented sigh escaped her, fluttered through his chest hair.

It had freed her, this business of falling in love. Made her feel whole, and happy, and confident.

She thought of all the dreams she'd suppressed throughout the years, all the desires and hopes and prayers she'd buried beneath an icy layer of ambition. There were a hundred of them. A thousand.

And yet there was only one. Hesitantly, wistfully, she touched her stomach. Her hand roved up and down the flat, naked surface. Inside her, deep, something fluttered. She knew it was only nerves, or the cold, or just a plain old twitch, but for one heart-stopping moment, she thought it was a life.

Larence covered her hand with his. "I want a baby, too," he whispered.

Emma gasped. Immediately she was swept up in thoughts of maybe, of someday. For years she'd been afraid to let herself even want a child. And yet, no

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matter how hard she'd tried to control her thoughts, when she'd lie alone in her big, four-poster bed, the yearning had surfaced. Strong. Aching.

Familiar images ran through her mind: her holding a baby, singing a lullaby, kissing a tiny, downy-haired head. Only, this time the pictures made her smile. Made her believe.

She began to smile, then stopped. Fast on the heels of hope came doubt. Crushing, aching doubt.

Eugene's words stabbed through her brain: You just aren 't exactly the woman I'd choose to raise my children.

"Don't even think it," Larence said sharply. "You'll make a wonderful, loving mother."

Tears stung her eyes at his quiet confidence. Fear melted into manageable proportions. Yes, she was afraid; she'd probably be afraid until the day she gave birth and for every year of her child's life thereafter.

But she had Larence beside her, and that would make all the difference.

She offered him a shaky smile. Maybe, she thought, please God maybe, if Larence believed in her, she could find the strength to believe in herself. You can have it all. She repeated the words again, making herself believe. "And you'll make a great father."

"I hope so."

Like a fire that starts as a single flame, the dream took hold and built into a raging inferno of hope. Emma nodded fervently. "Our baby will have only the best. The very best."

She tried to make the vow sound casual, and failed miserably. Her voice held all the desperation of her past, all the fear of the child still alive within her. God help her, but even now, with Larence's arms around her, she

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couldn't forget what it meant to be poor. Her child would never know that horror, never know what it meant to be hungry or cold or desperate. She'd rather remain childless and lonely all the days of her life than to raise a child in poverty.

She remembered the baby she'd seen at Rosare Court, and shuddered. Emma would rather die than ever, ever hear her child cough like that. . . .

"She'll have hot food, clean clothes, good water to drink, and a bedroom filled with white eyelet and Hamburg lace."

"All the things you didn't have?"

She thought instinctively of lying, of covering up her past as she'd always done. Then she remembered: It was Larence. A small, hesitant "Yes" slipped past her lips.

"She'll have all that and more," he said. "She'll have confidence, and love, and light."

The fantasy grabbed hold of Emma's heart. Secret, hidden hopes bubbled to the surface of her soul, demanding for once to be released into the light of day. "When we get back I'm going to donate money to Columbia College for a building or something. I'll make sure they name it Digby Hall. Then our little girl—or boy," she amended with a carefree laugh, "will know her daddy's dreams mattered. That they meant something. She'll know from the very beginning it's okay to believe in love and dreams."

Emma waited for Larence to answer, but he said nothing. The silence turned thick, almost palpable.

Surprised, she turned to look at him. He was staring at her with an odd, unreadable expression in his eyes. "Larence? What is it?"

"Michael Jameson said you'd lost everything in the

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crash." His voice was quiet, almost strangled. "I thought that's why you came with me."

She laughed. "I left New York with fifty dollars to my name. And I had to sell my last possessions to get that."

"Then where are you going to get the money to finance Digby Hall?"

"From Cibola, of course."

Larence yanked his arm out from behind her head and snapped to his feet.

Her head thumped backward. "Hey," she said, rubbing the back of her head. "What's the matter?"

"What's the matter?" He grabbed his jeans and stabbed his feet into the pant legs. "What's the matter?"

She regarded him with sudden wariness. Levering to a sit, she plucked up her camisa and held it to her naked breasts. The Wall Street facade slid cautiously into place. "Yes, Larence, that's the question on the table. What's the matter with you?"

He wrenched the last metal button through the buttonhole and slammed his hands on his hips. "How can you ask me that? You said those water jugs belonged in a museum."

She frowned in confusion. He was obviously angry, but why at her? What had she done? "Yes, and I meant it. All the artifacts belong in museums—for the Indian children."

"Unbelievable," he muttered, shaking his head. "You really don't understand."

"No, I-"

"Just tell me this: Where are you going to get the money to donate to the college?"

"From the street. I'll just take a couple of hundred

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feet of it." She noticed he'd gone pale, and she frowned. "Is there a problem with that?"

"A problem with that?" He stared at her in obvious disbelief. "Is there a goddamn problem with that?"

She flinched at the loudness of his voice. "Larence, you're scaring me."

He surged toward her and jerked her to her feet. "Good," he yelled in her face. "Because you're scaring me, too."

"Let's just—"

"I won't let you have the gold. Not one brick."

Emma felt as if she'd been slapped. The color in her cheeks evaporated. "But our deal—"

"Screw the deal! Jesus, Emma, we're married."

She stared up at him dumbly, unable to move or think or even respond. Everything began to crumble. All the hopes, the dreams he'd made her believe in, the new prayers, edged beyond her grasp. Panic widened her eyes.

She tried to back away. His fingers tightened on her upper arm and held her in place. "No, Emma. You can't run from this one."

Their gazes locked, fused. She felt the harsh, angry pelts of his breathing against her face, saw the raw pain in his eyes.

He was asking her to give up the money, the security. He was asking her to be poor.

She wet her trembling lower lip and looked up at him. Tears blurred her vision. "Don't ask this of me, Larence. Anything but this. I ... grew up poor—not 'gosh I need a dime for the train poor,' but really poor. I lost my virginity to an apple vendor for the price of a few half-eaten cores. Don't ..." Her voice THE ENCHANTMENT

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broke, but she refused to look away. "Don't ask me to go back."

"I'm not asking you to go anywhere," he said quietly. "I'm asking you to stay. With me. Please ..."

She heard him ask her to stay, heard the raw, aching need in his voice that matched her own. The words were clear. Stay. But so was the truth. Good-bye.

You can't have it all, you fool, and you always knew it. A small sob escaped her. It was all a lie. She couldn't have it all. She had to choose. Love or money.

The choice she'd been running from all her life had caught up with her. It had waited all these years, patiently, waited for her to begin to believe in love. To weaken. Then it had struck, and struck hard.

"My God, Em, it's stealing." His voice vibrated with emotion. "And not from me, but from the world.

From the Indian children who need this memory a hell of a lot more than you need another fur coat or some diamond tiara."

She snapped her chin up. How dare he judge her? When had he slept in the gutter or eaten other people's leftover table scraps? Had he held his mother's hand as she died of poverty, or cleaned up the mess of a father's suicide? What right did he have to tell her what was right? She yanked out of his grasp and glared up at him. "Sure!" she spat. "Go ahead and lecture me, Larence. But you're getting what you want out of this city. Everything will go in your precious museum. It's only me—me—who's left out in the cold."