Velvet Lightning (23 page)

And wished it could be forever.

Tyrone woke in the silent hours before dawn, woke with the sudden alertness that had been bred into him by years of danger. He knew instantly what had awakened him. Catherine was in the grip of some terrible nightmare, perhaps reliving her father’s fiery death, and the soft sounds that escaped her shaking body were like whispers from hell.

He drew her even closer, stroking her body gently, murmuring wordlessly to soothe her.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, clinging to him.

He wasn’t sure she was awake, but answered anyway. “I won’t. I won’t, my sweet.”

She finally stopped trembling, and her body slowly relaxed. And it was a long time later when her voice reached him, a voice that was soft and bittersweet. “I love you, Marc.”

It was what he had waited for, longed to hear from her, what he hadn’t dared to force from her as he had forced her to say his name. He felt a throb of pain. “I love you too, Catherine.” His tone was bleak because he heard the truth in hers. She loved him ... but it hurt her to love him.

He was still awake when dawn silently arrived.

“Thank you, Sarah.”

Catherine forced herself up through the layers of sleep, his voice pulling at her as always. She half sat up, blinking, looking at him as he came away from the door. He was holding a tray. He was also half dressed in trousers, and he had shaved.

She felt immediately conscious of mussed hair and bleary eyes, of wearing only his silk shirt. Her vanity was vaguely outraged.

“Stop frowning at me,” he told her as he reached the bed. “If you’re wondering, you look beautiful in the morning.”

“I wasn’t wondering,” she lied firmly, resisting an urge to smooth her hair. Since it was obviously expected of her, she banked the pillows behind her and accepted the tray onto her lap, but couldn’t resist one rueful shot. “And you know too damned much about the workings of a woman’s mind.”

He grinned at her, lounging back on an elbow near her knees. Taking one of the coffee cups from the tray, he lifted it in a half salute. “My misspent youth, I’m afraid.”

Catherine picked up her own cup, trying to keep from returning his smile and finding it difficult. “A girl in every port?” she asked dryly.

“There was a time,” he said. Then, briskly, he added, “Sarah allows no one in this house to go hungry. And since it’s nearly noon, she sent up lunch as well as breakfast.”

“I’m really not—”

“Catherine,” he interrupted warningly.

She glared at him for a moment, then gave in with a smile. Surprisingly enough, she found herself hungry once she began eating, and it occurred to her only then that she hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours. Tyrone kept up a light conversation while they ate, entertaining her with his rather pungent descriptions of some of the places he’d been in twenty years of sailing the seas.

She listened with enjoyment, watching his face and absorbing its many expressions. But even though he steered the talk firmly away from any mention of what had happened the day before, she couldn't help but remember. Grief for her father was a dull ache, and something she had prepared herself for during these last difficult years. But she could still feel the shock of watching Marc’s ship burn, and that was a deeper ache because she knew he had lost a part of himself.

When the meal was finished and he removed the tray to set it on the floor by the bed, she had to say it. “Marc, I’m so sorry about The Raven.”

He was still lounging back beside her legs, and shook his head slightly. “I have other ships.”

“Not another
Raven
.”

Tyrone was too conscious of his own sense of grief to tell her it didn’t matter. “Catherine, ships are like people. They live, and they die. It was her time to die.”

“Thanks to my father. And me.”

“Your father was sick. And you aren’t to blame.” He reached over to cover the hands twisting together in her lap. “I mean that. It’s over. Forget it.”

“Will you?” she asked unsteadily.

His smile twisted a little. “If I can have you instead, yes.”

She looked down at his strong hand, felt a pang shoot through her. “I can’t replace The Raven. She was so much a part of your life.”

“My past. You’re my future.”

I can't be
. She looked around his bedroom, thinking almost sadly how different it was from his cabin on the ship. There was luxury here in gleaming woods and fine fabrics, but this was the taste of a man who had earned his wealth over years of hard work and danger, a man whose memories of being cold and hungry were few and fleeting now. There was no ornate bed, no satin draperies, no vividly bright and luxurious colors.

“Catherine?”

She moved away from him suddenly, throwing back the covers and sliding from the bed. She felt stiff, and didn’t know if it was a physical or an emotional thing. Both, probably. Her entire body felt sore, and her heart felt numb.

“I left dinner ready at home last night,” she said vaguely. “And all the lamps in the house burning. There are things to do. I have to—”

“You aren’t going back there.” He had stood as well, and now faced her near the foot of the bed. His hands lifted to hold her shoulders so she couldn’t move away from him. “Sarah and Reuben can close up the house and bring back what you need.”

She looked up at him, seeing steady eyes and determination. “I have to go back there sometime.”

“There’s no hurry.” His voice lightened. “Now that I’ve got you in my house, I’ll not let you go.”

“Marc—”

“I’ll speak to the vicar,” he said in the same deliberately easy tone, “and find out how soon he can marry us.”

Catherine held her voice steady. “I’ll live with you if you like,” she said. “But I won’t marry you, Marc.”

His lean face tautened, but there was no surprise in his eyes. “Why not, Catherine?” His voice roughened, and his grasp on her shoulders tightened. “This time you can’t run away without answering.”

She knew that. It was what she had been dreading. In her mind she heard the detached, clinical voice of the doctor she had gone to about her father, heard him offer a warning that had altered her life.
Madness often runs in families, Miss Waltrip. If it was passed on to your father through one of his parents, it may also be passed to you, in time. Something to consider.

Oh, God, how she had considered it . . .

“Catherine?”

In a deadened voice she said, “My father wasn’t much older than I am now when he . . . when he began to get sick. There’s a chance—Marc, it could happen to me. I could go mad one day.”

Tyrone pulled her into his arms suddenly, holding her tightly against him. Her answer had occurred to him in the cold dawn hours while she slept; it was the only thing that made sense. He had thought of her living with a lunatic, protecting him as best she could. And knowing, always knowing and dreading that it could happen to her.

“I’ll risk it,” he said huskily into her soft hair. “I love you, Catherine. I want you to be my wife.”

“No. I won’t be a burden.” But her arms went around his waist as if she couldn’t help herself.

“You could never be a burden to me.” He made her look at him, framing her face in his hands. “The only burden would be not having you in my life.”

“I—”

“Catherine.” His voice was steady, and he held her darkened eyes with his own. “You told me something in the night. Was it true?”

She felt the hot pressure of tears, and thought distantly how odd it was that after years of not being able to cry, now she couldn’t seem to stop. And she couldn’t lie to him. “Yes. I—I fell in love with you that day by the stream. When you smiled at me.”

He bent his head and kissed her gently. “Then nothing else matters.”

“No, Marc, I can’t.” It was so hard to protest what she wanted with all her heart, and her voice broke.

“Yes, you can. And will.” He might have said something else, but a soft knock at the door interrupted them. He hugged her tightly, then went over to see who it was.

“Dr. Scott’s downstairs,” Sarah told him. “He says it’s very important that he talk to you and Miss Waltrip.”

“All right. Tell him we’ll be down in a few minutes.” Sarah nodded and went away.

Tyrone came back to Catherine. Calmly he said, “We’ll have to get dressed and go talk to him, I suppose.”

“Marc—”

“It’s a pity though. You look very fetching in my shirt. However, since I don’t intend that anyone but me should enjoy the sight ...”

She felt a ridiculous impulse to laugh despite everything. Since it had honestly not occurred to her that he would still want to marry her after learning the whole truth, she was at something of a loss. “Marc, you
can’t
want to marry me!”

“I will marry you,” he said, “by Friday.” He was getting a clean shirt out of the wardrobe, and paused in the act to send her a very calm look of utter determination. He smiled gently. “At the latest.”

She started automatically to unbutton the shirt she wore. “It’s impossible, you must see that.” Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, and she thought again that it was too difficult, protesting what she wanted.

What she wanted with everything inside her.

“On the contrary, it's quite possible.” He shrugged into his shirt as she shrugged out of hers, and he paused a moment to enjoy the sight of her. “You must heal fast,” he said absently. “The bruises are already fading. By the way, have I told you lately how beautiful you are?”

Catherine pulled her shift over her head and gave him a look that was a bewildering mixture of frustration, pain, laughter, and pleasure. She didn’t know what she was feeling, and it was very unsettling. He simply wasn't reacting to this the way she had ex-pected him to, and having prepared herself as much as possible for tearing pain, she was somewhat adrift. “Don’t say that, dammit, I’m trying to—”

“What you’re trying to do, my darling Catherine, is useless.” He buttoned his shirt, tucked in the tail. “Do I need a coat for the doctor? No, I don’t think so.”

“You won’t listen to me!” She was half laughing and half crying.

Tyrone lifted her chin with one finger and kissed her lightly, then began helpfully buttoning the cuffs of her blouse. “No, I won’t. I learned a very long time ago how to fight for what I want.”

Abruptly bemused, she said, “Are you going to keep dressing and undressing me?”

He grinned down at her. “I like it. No, don’t braid your hair— it’s beautiful just the way it is. I may let you put it up for parties, but nothing else.”

She eyed him somewhat warily. “You’ve gotten very bossy all of a sudden.”

“It’s your own fault, and you’ll have to take the awful consequences from now on,” he said to her in a very polite voice.

“The consequences of what?”

“I believe it’s called the pendulum effect.” He looked thoughtful. “The pendulum swang one way when you wouldn’t let me take care of you for so long; now it’s swinging drastically the other way since I can.”

Catherine shook off fascination, realizing they’d gotten off on a tangent. “Marc, I can’t marry you!”

“Of course you can, darling.”

11

A
quarter of an hour later, when she walked beside him down the wide stairs to talk to Dr. Scott, Catherine had stopped protesting. She felt very peculiar, caught somewhere between giddy happiness and echoes of pain and fear. She couldn’t forget the threat hanging over her head, but she loved Marc too much to be able to fight against his determination to marry her.

If this was a dream, she never wanted to wake up.

Dr. Scott was pacing restlessly in the study when they came through the doorway, and turned to look intently at them both.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Tyrone said calmly.

Dr. Scott’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Good morning.” His gaze moved to Catherine’s face, no longer so pale, and wearing a bemused little smile.

“You wanted to talk to us?” Tyrone asked, guiding Catherine to the long couch and waiting for the doctor to take a chair before he sat.

Dryly Dr. Scott said, “You’ll forgive the intrusion, I think. Am I correct in assuming, by the way, that you’ve persuaded Miss Catherine to marry you?”

“Certainly I have.” Tyrone smiled suddenly. “I had the devil’s own work of it though.”

“I can imagine.” Dr. Scott sobered then and looked very gravely at Catherine. “You don’t have to be afraid of going mad, child,” he said firmly.

In the darkness of her eyes a light stirred, and she glanced at Tyrone before looking back at the doctor. “I don’t?” Her voice trembled, revealing how afraid she was to hope.

“You knew I’d written to colleagues in London?” He waited for her nod, then went on. “The packet from England came in this morning, and the answers we wanted as well.”

“What are the answers?” Tyrone asked. The cold fear for her that he hadn’t allowed her to see was beginning to ease.

“Confirmation from the doctors who treated Catherine’s mother, and a bit of research into Lucas’s family, particularly his parents. They died sane, by the way, and of natural causes. No history of brain disorder. There was only one answer left, only one possibility given the facts. Syphilis,” Dr. Scott said. “It’s what drove Lucas mad, and it’s what killed his wife.”