With One Look (41 page)

She wiped at her eyes, peering closer. "Oh, look," she whispered. "It has a tiny scratch.” " "It's always been there."

"I never saw it before."

The tiny scratch was nearly worn smooth by the touch of the Reverend Mother's hand, and Jade closed her own hand around it. She looked back at the Reverend Mother. "I'll treasure it

always...." Her lip trembled with emotion. She caught it with her teeth, trying to tell herself it wasn't so, that this would not be the last time she'd see the old woman she loved, and yet—

"I shall miss you, Terese.”

The emotions swelled as Jade shook her head. "I don't want to part from you now! I need you—" She fell into the older woman's arms, clinging to her as if it was the last time she ever would.

"The parting is not forever, Terese."

These were whispered words of faith, faith in the reuniting of all love under God. Jade nodded slowly. "I love you." She mouthed the words because she no longer had a voice. Victor stepped into the still, dark church and Jade heard his boots. She shut her eyes tightly and forced herself to move away from the Reverend Mother. She clutched the small treasure tightly, cast one last look at the older woman, who had turned toward the cross to hide her own tears...

"Oh, Jade," Tessie beckoned in a whisper as the carriage passed on to the country road. "You gotta look, just for a spell. The day's a-gonna start as pretty as it ever has."

She sat up, slowly. The sadness of the good-bye had passed through her, leaving her curiously numb and exhausted. Tessie's smile filled with youthful levity and enthusiasm, the only way she knew to answer Jade's sadness. Refusing to let her withdraw again, she snatched Jade's pale hand in hers, pointing to the dawn's light breaking with a magnificent sunrise.

The sun slowly rose into a patchy blue sky broken by gray cotton clouds. It was just a dawn, an event that had occurred all over the earth every day for millions upon millions of years, and yet it was the first one she had witnessed in eight long years. It was not pleasurable. The colors were sharp, almost too painful to view. One hand went to her forehead to shield her eyes from the assault of changing light and shapes. She stared at a tree, a simple tree, one of the most common shapes on earth, and yet it took a full moment to know what it was she stared at. A small shock would pass on the heels of this queer delay.

The most ordinary sights struck her as bizarre or obscene: the way Murray's brows motioned like hands as he talked, the trickle of juice running down Tessie's face as she bit into an apple, the excessive love on Mercedes's face every time Sebastian drew near to inquire how they were doing. Even swatting at a bothersome fly felt singularly peculiar, jolting her with that sense of familiar and not ...

She remained unaware of someone who watched her so closely. Victor's eyes rarely left her person as he, too, was living his most precious dream. Jade was blind no more, and—dear Lord— he felt like singing his joy for all the world....

In mounting discomfort, she tried to fix her gaze on the steady movement of the horses' legs, but they blurred suddenly. She rubbed her eyes.

Mercedes watched this with alarm. Jade rubbed too hard. She reached across to catch Jade's hands in her own and gently draw them away. "Jade, darling, look at the pretty bluebells there."

A trapper's shack sat at the edge of a clearing. Surrounded by trees, a carpet of flowers spread out, the velvet blue petals opening to the warmth of the sun. Tiny white moths fluttered in the sunlight. She stared at the enchanting picture and—

Her heart started pounding. Harder and faster as her chest constricted. She was suddenly sucking in air, her breath choking her as trees, moss-laden branches, bluebells, the very sky, rushed at her. Her eyes widened to accommodate the terrifying bombardment of details, a thousand too many of them, and just as she felt faint, it stopped and she was staring into the room washed in blood.

Tears filled her eyes and she was shaking, unaware of the skinny brown arm holding her tightly, Murray shouting for Victor, Mercedes's alarmed cry.

Gloved hands fitted under her arms, lifting her quickly up and over a saddle. Victor held her tightly against his chest. "Easy does it, sweetheart.... Take deep breaths, that's it. It's all right now ... I've got you...."

Then it was gone. She gradually calmed down and looked over the settled landscape. She watched it wearily with mistrust, afraid it would start flying at her again. Then she closed her eyes and gathered her strength to part from him.

"I’m fine. Please."

He did not want to release her. Like a hunger it was, the need to hold her, different from desire, and almost as strong. "Are you sure?"

She nodded curtly.

"Perhaps I should just keep you—"

Fringed in wet black lashes, the green eyes shot up to him, her expression a piercing blow. He set her back in the carriage seat. The unspoken agreement. She let him comfort her only during an attack, only during the dark dead of night when consciousness and will disappeared in sleep.

Carl started the horses off again. Murray attempted to get Jade interested in a chess game, but she did not feel up to it. Mercedes, thinking she could not resist, withdrew a picture book from her bag. It was a gold and leather-bound book of Russian fairy tales, and although it was written in Russian, the pictures were astonishingly beautiful exercises of fanciful imagination. It had been Sebastian's Christmas present. Jade just shook her head and turned away.

Only she wasn't gazing at the passing scenery. Her heated gaze rested on Victor, riding ahead with Sebastian. She could not explain it to herself and did not try. She felt powerless to turn her gaze from him, as if the violence of her emotions demanded the visual source.

Murray was watching Jade intently, shocked by what he saw. Despite Father Nolte's belief on the matter, that she was not mad, it was there. Brief flashes of pure madness in those furious green eyes, flashes that were as unmistakable and plain as day. She was not well, not even close....

Jade withdrew as the carriage moved on. She laid her head on Tessie's lap and kept one trembling hand on Wolf Dog, her eyes closed to the world.

The sun crested the meridian when the carriage reached the familiar rest stop. She heard Mercedes cry out: "Why, look who's here! Tis the Booraems!"

The carriage had passed a few other parties along the way, families leaving the city to escape the same yellow fever threat. Anyone who had a country estate and could leave the city was doing so without delay. The Borraems' country estate was about four miles away, and their party had just stopped at a small pond to enjoy a meal before continuing on their way.

Forced to remain in the city for a week, Monsieur Booraem was not accompanying his wife, Helena. Craig Booraem was an older gent from one of Baton Rouge's more wealthy German families. He had tripled an already sizable fortune within a very short time in the New World.

Victor had said Monsieur Booraem was one of the wealthiest men in the city, and had the distinction of being one of the few men Victor hated to meet in a business deal.

Jade and Mercedes were both immensely fond of Helena Booraem. She had won Jade's unconditional regard when Victor told her what he knew of Helena's efforts to silence an unnamed gossip concerning Mercedes's history. Apparently, shortly after Mercedes had married Sebastian, at a dinner party they had not attended, someone at Helena's table was about to share what she knew of Mercedes's past. Helena had stopped the other woman before a word had been uttered, and without anyone the wiser, had made it perfectly clear that such malicious gossip was an affront she would not tolerate.

Curious to meet Helena, Jade sat up and peered over Mercedes's head to catch her first glimpse of this good woman. Victor had already dismounted. He stood alongside his huge black gelding, one arm resting casually on his saddle while he talked amicably with someone who could only be Helena.

For several moments as the carriage drew to the spot, Jade watched the woman answer the dark blue gaze with smiles and laughter. The sight was like a hot dagger piercing her heart.

The carriage jolted to a stop. A warm breeze blew through the trees, shifting the afternoon light over the thick carpet of needles. People descended; greetings were exchanged. Jade stood still and ghostlike, unable to tear her startled gaze from Helena.

Jade had expected her to be beautiful, for something about the story of her warmth had suggested that she was pretty. Mercedes had affirmed that idea with detailed descriptions of the dark-haired Creole's beauty. So Jade was not surprised to find Helena admirably proportioned, her shiny dark curls cascading about her shoulders, slightly disheveled from the day's travel. What shocked her was the understanding her sight brought her from one brief glimpse of Helena talking to Victor.

They had once been lovers.

Mercedes had already fallen into Helena's warm embrace. Victor helped Jade descend, but she could not hear the women's exclamations over the pounding in her temples. Helena had turned to her, taking her hands. "Jade Terese, I cannot believe the good news! You can see! Everyone is talking about it! Oh, we wanted so to visit you! And now, mon dieu, this is the first time you've ever seen me!"

Jade stared aghast, frightened by the woman's hypocrisy. She could not speak. Her mind suddenly teeter-tottered: Helena's lustrous curls, her own dark hair loosely and unattractively contained in a thick knot at the nape of her neck; Helena's warm smile, her quivering lips; Helena's pretty traveling clothes, her own ugly muslin skirt and plain white cotton shirt; Helena's voluptuous sweeps and curves, her own frail frame.

She snatched her hands away and unconsciously grabbed a handful of her skirt, while her other trembling hand nervously pushed loose hairs from her face. Terrified, she was unaware that everyone had stopped talking, that everyone was watching tears fill her eyes. She felt Victor's arm come around her shoulders; she heard him pronounce her name with a question mark.

She twisted from his arms and began backing away. She turned and ran. The world flew past her; trees and spindly branches, the dark of the land thickly covered with wild scratching ferns, flying, all of it flying and then spinning, needles and twigs cutting her bare feet, fire leaping in her lungs, and still she ran.

Victor suffered a few moments of stunned incomprehension before taking pursuit. She had a considerable lead. Her panic and fear produced unnatural speed. Had he not been directed by Wolf Dog's barks he might have lost her completely. He finally caught sight of her disappearing through the trees ahead of him.

Jade screamed as the unmercifully strong arms grabbed her from behind and put a harsh brake to her flight. He lifted her off the ground while her arms and legs still fought wildly to escape.

"Slow down," he demanded. "Just slow down."

She collapsed all at once, and they both fell to the ground. "My God, Jade! What's wrong?"

"It hurts!" she cried. "Everything I see hurts to look at! I want to die, I just want to die." And then, dear Lord, he watched as her hands went to her eyes, rubbing, rubbing too hard.

He caught her hands and held them protectively in one of his own. "Let me help you, Jade," he whispered. "Stop pushing away from me and let me love you again."

The words crashed through the tumult of her fragmented thoughts, and she stiffened, at once pulling away. "No! Never! You hurt me most of all!"

Victor didn't stop her as she leaped to her feet and disappeared quickly through the trees.

He laid back against the ground, stared up at the patch of blue sky he could see through the branches, and for a while he didn't know what to do, didn't know what he felt. Several minutes passed before his thoughts settled.

A conviction first rose above all feelings. He would win this war with her. If it took a month, two months or a year, he would win. He would live to see the day her health and love returned.

That love, Jade's love—how it had captured him so completely, so quickly! It was a mild shock to realize that not so very long ago his eyes had first settled on the beautiful young lady seated in the theater. The time was a curious reference point, for at any given moment he could conjure a thousand different pictures of Jade, of their life together.

Memories drifted through his mind, each marked by an abundance of laughter and playfulness and joy, many marked by a darkly erotic passion that lit his body and soul with undying hunger. And, as he stared unseeing at the darkening sky, he remembered lying on the bed with a book, waiting for her, as she emerged from the dressing room in one of her nightdresses. It was made of transparent silk, and in the light, every ounce of her slender figure had been revealed for his pleasure. She'd slipped onto the bed, resting on her hands and knees. Her hair slid over her shoulders, partially hiding her form. A thoughtful expression sat on her face as she gently touched his cheek to know if he smiled or not, and unable to discern his mood, she had asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"I do not want to upset you."

"Tell me. My imagination will make it worse than it ever could be in fact." "Very well. I was thinking of ... my ghostly lover."

She had looked shocked. "An imaginary lover?" "Aye."

"Someone you fantasize about?" "Aye."

"And what does this imaginary lover do that your flesh-and-blood wife does not?" A low chuckle sounded as he considered her. "She lives for my pleasure."

"I live for your pleasure...."

"She answers my every command without thought or question past pleasing me with her obedience."

Her breath had caught; her eyes had sparkled. "I, too, answer your every command with neither thought nor question...."

"Oh?" He had chuckled again. "I think my wife is too young, still too innocent for the

part...."

"No," she had whispered. "I will prove it now...."

The erotic memory heated his blood; his pulse quickened as he lay on the forest floor. He

could not count the ways in which she had proved it, over and over. In a similar way that theology had transformed his father's life, Jade had transformed his. After all he had been through in life, all he had experienced and all he had hoped for, he had suddenly found an exciting and unexpected new meaning in existence. Things seemed suddenly to matter more, to be more important to him.