Velvet Lightning (14 page)

Why? As a sick sort of revenge? It made sense in a twisted way, but Tyrone couldn’t remember having angered or hurt anyone on the island so much that his horse would become a target. Still, the violent cruelty in killing his horse told him that, indeed, he had made an enemy—a bad one.

Tyrone didn’t like it. It was bad enough when you knew your enemy, when you could assign him a face and a name. Then, at least, it was possible to be on guard. But with a ghostly enemy wearing God knew what face, it was nothing short of impossible to be more than careful.

Both before and during the war Tyrone had developed a keen sense of danger; it had served him well in his blockade-running years, and had never since deserted him. That sense was tingling now, leaving him with an itch between his shoulder blades that warned of an unfriendly hand with a naked blade at his back. And it was all the worse because he hadn't the faintest idea who was holding the knife.

Tyrone drove slowly out of town, frowning. Passing the Jenkins house, he saw little Tommy sitting disconsolately on the front steps and staring at the ground. Tyrone hesitated, then drew his horse to a halt at the end of the walkway. “Tommy, come here for a moment, please.”

The boy looked up, fright passing swiftly over his small face. He rose and came down the walk with lagging steps, stopping a couple of feet from the buggy. He looked at Tyrone with huge eyes, and spoke quickly and breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble, Captain, I swear I didn't!”

Tyrone smiled, trying to put the boy at ease. “Of course not, Tommy. It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“I was just looking at the ship,” Tommy mumbled, hanging his head and scuffing one foot. “I know Ma told me not to go near the water, but I wanted to get near the ship. She’s such a pretty ship and I . . . and I wanted to see her!”

Tyrone listened, still smiling. When the boy’s breathless explanation was over, he asked softly, “Tommy, do you think someone might have pushed you off the dock?”

Tommy’s mouth made a perfectly round O, and his eyes grew larger. ‘‘Why would anybody go and do that, Captain?” he asked in total astonishment.

‘‘As a joke perhaps? Not knowing you couldn’t swim? Did you hear someone come up behind you?”

Tommy scuffed his foot harder and frowned. “I didn't hear anybody. But maybe somebody pushed me, Captain. I wouldn’t never go and fall off the dock by my own self. I’m real careful.” He said the last with a strong trace of defiance, and Tyrone knew that had probably been the boy’s repeated defense to an angry, worried mother.

Still, it was clear that if someone had pushed Tommy, he couldn’t remember it. Not unnatural, but certainly frustrating to Tyrone. “All right, Tommy. Thank you.” He fished into a pocket and found a coin, tossing it to the boy. “Buy yourself some sweets.”

“Oh, thank you, Captain!” Tommy said, catching the coin neatly.

Tyrone remembered his own fascination with ships at that age, and made an offer on impulse. “Tell you what. You get your pa to take you down to the harbor tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll see to it that you’re taken out to visit the ship.” He was rewarded instantly by the expression of blissful happiness that spread across the boy’s small face.

Tommy stuttered his thanks, and Tyrone lifted his reins and drove on, reflecting wryly that it didn't take much to make a boy of that age happy. It became more difficult, as one grew older, to find contentment. To cope with problems. At Tommy’s age, Tyrone thought, an enemy could be faced and thrashed and anger forgotten, likely with a return to friendship in the next hour. Boys were like that.

But men, Tyrone knew, couldn’t settle their hostilities quite so easily. Men carried knives and guns . . . and hated for a very long time indeed.

Tyrone had a sense of time and events rushing beyond his control, and it disturbed him. An enemy here on the island, faceless and more dangerous because of it; an enemy—or at least a determined man— very likely on his way here for a long-avoided confrontation. Then there were his growing feelings for Catherine, and her hidden worry and fear.

Secrets. Too many secrets all suddenly too close to the surface and exposure. An enemy’s secret hate; Tyrone’s secret deeds, his secret commitment; Catherine’s secret fears.

He felt an elusive sense of understanding, as though the answers to everything lay buried in his own mind, but he couldn’t seem to grasp them.

Frowning, he drove on, absently remembering to stop by the harbor and arrange Tommy’s visit to
The Raven
.

Boys were easily made happy. He wondered if men ever could be.

7

O
n Friday Catherine made up her mind to end her relationship with Tyrone. It was the only rational thing to do. She couldn’t go on living with her nerves stretched to the breaking point, terrified someone would find out about them. So there was really no choice. It had to be over, finished. Then she would get on with her life.

It sounded so simple. Reasonable. She was a reasonable, intelligent woman, after all. She wasn’t a schoolgirl languishing in heartbreak for what she couldn't have. She was a mature woman of twenty- eight who had lived long enough to know that hearts didn’t break, that they only ached as if they could and would, and that there were certain things she would never be able to call her own.

Captain Marc Tyrone was one of them.

And Catherine’s reasonable, rational, intelligent decision to end things between them cost her more pain than she would have believed possible. She had caught herself looking at her reflection in a mirror on Thursday afternoon, wondering why the pain didn't show. It should show plainly, she thought; nothing that hurt so badly could avoid leaving marks—claw marks—in the flesh.

But she looked the same as always—calm, remote, cold. It was with a different kind of pain that she wondered then if this “public” mask, discarded in relief in Tyrone’s presence, would gradually become her real self. With no Tyrone to evoke passion and laughter, how could she avoid it? Would she wake one morning and feel no conscious forming of the mask because the mask had become a normal part of her? Would the violence of her secret feelings simply churn wildly for a while before slowing, and finally dying, smothered to death inside her?

Oh, dear God . . .

“Did you say something, Catherine?”

She looked at her father across the table as they ate lunch on Friday. “No. No, Father, I didn’t say anything.”

“I thought you did.”

“No.”

Catherine glanced back down at her plate, wondering if the anguish inside her had escaped in some thread of sound. Dangerous. Her loss of control was dangerous. And it was so important, especially now, to maintain control. No one could be allowed to guess what she felt, not the town, not her father— and not Tyrone, especially not Tyrone.

He wouldn’t want it to end. She knew that, without vanity. She had, somehow, made an impression on Marc Tyrone’s life—or perhaps she had simply become a habit with him. In any case, he saw her as being a part of his life, so much so that he had flatly told her he would propose marriage a second time. When he heard her say his name.

Marc
. It was in her head, always, a whisper away from her lips. She had managed, somehow, not to give in when he had tried, in passion, to force it from her. He knew then, had guessed, that she withheld that because it was her single defense against a total and complete intimacy. By using his surname, whether briskly or in passion, she held him firmly at a distance. With her mask and her morals stripped away by him, it was all she had left.

“I’m riding over to Gerald’s after lunch, Catherine,” her father said absently. “There’s a book he’s promised to lend me.”

“All right, Father.”

“What have you planned for this afternoon?”

She wondered briefly what his reaction would be if she told him the truth.
I'm going to cut my heart out, Father
. But she didn’t, of course. She said, “A walk perhaps.”

“It would do you good, no doubt. You’re looking quite peaked, Catherine.”

If her father saw that, what would Tyrone’s sharper gaze see? She couldn’t allow herself to appear at all uncertain or distressed by what she was about to do; if Tyrone found the chinks in her armor, she would never be able to hide the truth from him. She would have to appear calm and certain, and she couldn't be pale or shaky.

I won't shake. I won't. And I'll rouge my cheeks so that he won't notice a pallor. That’s it. I’ll paint my face like a whore when I go to him this last time.

The decision made, Catherine resolutely began wrapping layers of cold calm about herself. As she had never been forced to before, she called on all her willpower to hold her features expressionless, her eyes steady and cool, her body stiff. It was so vital now. She reminded herself over and over that it was desperately important not to betray her feelings—and not to allow her body to respond to his.

That would be hardest. The mask she could cling to, even with him, but her body . . .

Catherine felt heat, felt a slow throbbing begin deep inside her, and bent her head over her plate so that her father wouldn’t see. It's worse! she thought wildly. Worse, this longing of her body for his, worse because she knew she would never have him again. And her body refused to be willed into submission by her despairing mind, refused to feel cold and uncaring. Refused to stop wanting him.

From the first he had been able to instantly arouse her with no more than his presence, a veiled look, a slow smile; how in God’s name could she convince him that response no longer existed?

She had to. Somehow, she had to.

“Is there anything you need from town, Catherine?” her father asked casually a short time later.

‘‘No, Father. Will you be long?”

“Two or three hours, I suppose. You should take that walk, you know. Get some color in your cheeks.”

“Yes, I will.”

“All right, then.” He left, whistling cheerfully. A few minutes later she heard his old hack trotting from the stables and past the house. She waited a few more minutes, then went slowly up to her bedroom.

The pot of rouge, caked and dry, was in the drawer of her bureau; she had used it only rarely in England for masquerades and the like, but never here on the island. There had never been a reason to use it. Now there was. With a steady hand Catherine very lightly and carefully colored her pale cheeks. She studied her reflection, half nodded to herself. She looked, she decided, normal enough.

The dress she was wearing was dark blue and without frills; it could have been a gown of mourning.
Was
a gown of mourning.

Catherine went downstairs and then slipped from the house. She made her way through the garden and out to the road. She was careful to wait, to look and listen. When she was sure there was no one about to see her, she crossed the road and allowed the forest swallow her. Dim, cool. She walked steadily, reminding herself with every step that this was her only choice.

Only choice . . . only choice ... It echoed in her mind, a litany. Only choice. Only. Choice.

Who would she have to talk to after this?

Only choice. Only choice.

Never again to feel his passion . . .

Only choice. Only choice.

Never again to feel her own . . .

Only choice.

Never to say his name out loud . . .

She walked steadily to the cottage, went inside. She took down the blue curtains, folded them neatly, and put them on the floor in the main room. The fresh sheets they had not yet used were removed from the bed, folded, and placed on top of the curtains. The colorful quilt was added to the pile. Her hairbrush was placed on top.

She stood looking at the pathetic little stack. Not much, she thought wearily, to mark the end of passion, the end of joy. The end of happiness. She went into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bare mattress. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at the wall.

Gazing at a patch of mildew, she realized how odd it was that she had never felt sordid in this decaying, abandoned little cottage. Never. Though knowing the town would have branded her a whore for what went on here, she had never known the least bit of shame in this place. Suddenly it occurred to her why that was so: because she had loved him from the first. Anyplace with him would have been a place of joy and passion, a place where laughter would have come easily. Anyplace.

She heard hoofbeats, vaguely wondered why he was riding today instead of driving the buggy. She looked down at her hands and laced her fingers together. She heard the door open, a pause, heard it close. He had seen the curtains, the quilt, the sheets, her hairbrush. He would know what it meant.

Footsteps came slowly across the main room, stopped in the doorway. She braced herself inwardly and turned her head to look at him.

Tyrone leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. His face was set, grim. His eyes reminded Catherine of a stormy gray sky just before the Atlantic loosed one of its violent tempests. He didn't move, didn’t say a word. He simply stared at her and waited.