by Bowes, K T
“Ok,” Logan kissed the top of her head. “I’m just trying to be completely open and honest with you.”
“I know, but it’s actually a bit too much at the moment. I’m not used to it and all this talk of your previous sexual partners isn’t helping our save-the-marriage-spirit. It makes me want to run away and hide.”
“Do you want to save our marriage, Hana?” Logan asked, leaning back to see his wife’s face properly. His grey eyes were intense and glittered with hope.
Hana looked up at her husband. He towered over her like a massive presence, full of bearing and authority and it was frightening to know she had the power to strike him down with one word. He was her strong rock with a hidden fissure right down the centre, fragile and flawed in its tainted excellence. He completed so much of her that without him, she no longer knew who Hana was. She shook her head as she started her sentence and saw him already diminish before her. “I don’t think I know how to live without you,” she said and Logan’s face moved through a range of raw emotions as he struggled to process the confusing yes.
He held her tightly in a body that shook with reaction. He resembled a foal using his brand new, wobbly legs for the first time as Logan Du Rose allowed himself to grasp hold of the relief that smothered his senses. “I promise it’ll be different,” he said with a quiver in his voice.
“Logan,” Hana whispered as she snuggled into his armpit in the huge bed. She felt him stir next to her and the arm around her back pulled her in tighter. “You told me that you’d never been so drunk you didn’t know what you were doing. Was that a lie?”
“No,” he replied without the customary irritation. “I’ve never lied to you. I said it because I believed it. I really thought I never had.”
Logan stuck close to his wife in their big bed, keeping one large palm on her skin at all times. It was as though he still expected her to disappear in a puff of fairy dust and leave him alone and bereft. Whenever Hana woke up, the heat from his body radiated across towards her and even when she moved away, Logan quickly disturbed and followed after. Without meaning to, he contributed to a poor night’s sleep for his exhausted, pregnant wife. He had offered to sleep in the spare bedroom with his dumped belongings, but she refused in their spirit of reconciliation.
In the early hours and wakeful, Hana turned over on her side, shielding her stomach from his strong bent knees and studied her husband’s face. He looked peaceful with the moonlight dappling on his face through a chink in the curtains. Logan was handsome, dangerous and beautiful, his long dark lashes resting like silken wings on his cheeks, shrouding piercing eyes that possessed far too much understanding sometimes. He was everything Hana had ever desired in a husband, courageous, sensuous and loyal. She always knew a frightening turbulence lay beneath the muscular chest, but until yesterday, never comprehended how deeply or rapidly those waters moved, containing the power to sweep everything away. Logan Du Rose was an enigma and Hana would never completely fathom his ways. But she broke him, callously and deliberately and she owed it to him to help glue the shattered pieces back together.
“I’m sorry God,” she whispered into the half-light. “I pray that you and my husband forgive me for the things I said. I’ll never poison his children against him. I love him. I won’t let history repeat itself, not through him and definitely not through them.”
Hana stroked her husband’s stubbled cheek and saw his eyes snap instantly open. His pupils regulated themselves quickly against the growing light and his fingers gripped her waist in possessiveness and fear. “It’s ok,” she whispered into his confusion and shifted her body so she could put her arm around his neck and pull his cheek onto her breast. It was a shameful realisation that in their years together, Hana regularly sought physical comfort from him, but rarely offered it. She pulled his head fully onto her chest so his hair tickled her nose and wrapped both arms firmly around Logan’s neck. It was an act of open maternalism and Logan accepted it, resting his head half on her bare shoulder and half on her breast. Hana sensed him relax and allow himself to be temporarily cossetted, like a horse that permits the saddle for only as long as it chooses to be compliant. But it was new and exciting and Hana felt a wave of power.
As he awoke fully, Logan’s hand strayed from Hana’s waist to the smooth, rounded skin of her belly and he sought comfort from his sleepy son, who kicked him in response. He snuffed out a hollow laugh into her skin and then moved his head so their eyes met. “Stay with me, Hana,” he said, half command, half plea and she nodded, a slow action full of surety.
“I will,” she answered.
Logan’s fingers moved over her hip and down her thigh, his long hand spanning the width of her leg. His thumb strayed and she sighed and bit her lip, looking at him with accusation. He smiled back in answer and kissed her with his full lips, pausing only to promise, “I love you. I won’t let you down.”
“You’d better not,” Hana replied, the threat no longer veiled but out and in the open. Logan’s eyes glittered with the addictive lure of danger and Hana saw the moth in him dance with abandon around the candle flame. Logan came alive again, out of the harness and back in control, his mana restored. Only this time, he knew what it took to break him and wisdom and bitter experience would stop him pushing his wife to that point again. He pulled her half onto his body, her rounded stomach in the way.
“I love you, Hana Du Rose,” he said, his eyes sultry and full of promise. He ran both hands up the back of her neck and into her hair and Hana closed her eyes and gave in to his kiss.
Chapter 18
Hana couldn’t sleep as the child in her belly kicked and turned like a Judo professional. Indigestion plagued her and she went to the living room with her gloves and another of Phoenix’s diaries. The revelation about Kane and Caroline’s parentage had been dreadful and Will had confiscated that book, only allowing Hana another tome if she promised not to destroy that one either. “Just cos youse don’t like what’s in it, don’t mean youse can bugger it up!” he shouted at her.
“But I wanted them in order,” Hana grumbled. “It’s too hard reading them out of chronology. You’re mean!”
“Take it or leave it,” Will warned and Hana had grabbed the proffered manuscript and beat a hasty retreat.
Hana settled down on the cream leather couch and pulled her cotton gloves over her fingers. She sat for a moment and then got up again to pull the curtains closed against prying eyes. The feeling of being watched seemed constant and Logan had laughed at her earlier when she wanted to close their bedroom curtains. “What’s the point?” he said. “There’s nobody for miles.”
Hana shrugged and pulled the expensive swags of material together, overlapping them in the middle. She sat back down on the sofa and reached for the diary, turning to a date which preceded Logan’s birth, way back in the summer of 1967.
‘It is not over. They came looking for the blonde drover. His brothers travelled down from Auckland in search of him. They will not leave it. JD has dealt with them but the rumours have begun in the township. I am at a loss to fix this. Damn that foolish woman and her fancies. He tells me it is done with but I am not certain. I asked JD how he dealt with it but he wouldn’t tell me. It would not have been pleasant and I am fearful.’
Hana sighed and laid the book down on her knee. “Who’s JD?” she asked out loud and the silence offered nothing back. Hana curled up on the sofa and thought. She had a memory of Logan saying someone else owned part of the property and felt sure that the mysterious JD had cropped up then. That would suggest he was still alive. She didn’t want to raise the question with Logan again, afraid that if he probed her for the reason behind her enquiry, she would blurt out the information about Caroline and Kane before she could stop herself. It burned like a hot knife in her chest and made her want to find the damning diary and destroy it once and for all. But it would make no difference because she knew. The awful secret was already out there and it was only a matter of time before it burst into the open
like a catastrophe.
“Why are you telling me all this?” she asked the ghost of Phoenix Du Rose, hidden within the fragile pages. Hana’s white gloved fingers stroked the ink and she felt wretched. “You couldn’t have picked a worse secret keeper,” she said to the diary. “I’m almost scared to read any more.” But she had to. Hana read on, cringing with the next entry.
‘The police came today. They were white men, aggressive and overbearing. JD became animated and I feared that they would carry him off. One of them disrespected me. He spat on the whenua at my feet and JD was sent into a fury. I thought he would hit the constable and then where would I be? He is the only protector I have left. Thank Atua for my Reuben. He was quick to smooth things over. He has no idea about the absence of the blonde drover and was convincing with the constabulary men. He thinks the man ran away after their fight. He fought with his father afterwards in an angry exchange although it was one sided.’
“Whoa,” Hana sat up straight in shock. “Back up there a minute Phoenix. What did you just say?” Hana read it again. “So the cops came looking for the blonde man and this ‘JD’ sent them packing. So how come in the same sentence, Phoenix says that she had no protector but then Reuben has a fight with his father. That doesn’t work. Henri died when Reuben was a child and this diary is dated years later when Reuben was an adult. Unless...oh no.” The dawning realisation made Hana feel tight in her chest. She pressed her right hand onto the pacemaker, checking it was still there. “Oh no.” Rational thought drained away from her as she struggled to process the woman’s words. Henri Du Rose was not Reuben’s father. “So who is?”
If the man was not a Du Rose then neither was Reuben and that meant nor was...“Oh, please no. I can’t take any more of this.” Hana closed the diary with a careless snap. If Logan wasn’t a Du Rose it would kill him. Hana felt the weight of ages settle on her head and hated Phoenix Du Rose for her betrayal. Now she not only knew her daughter’s forebears were murderers, disposing of the blonde drover because of his indiscretion, but also that Phoenix herself had birthed a child out of marriage. Hana’s body felt heavy and sick and she put her head between her knees to get rid of the lightheaded feeling. She groaned and covered her head with her arms.
Logan found her like that. “Hana, what’s wrong?” He sounded panicked and anxious.
“I just don’t feel good.” Hana pulled a cushion towards her to cover the object of her misery, lying impassively on the sofa next to her.
“What can I do?” Logan sounded so frightened she felt her heart weighed down by guilt, only adding to her burden.
“I just need to go to bed,” Hana wailed. “I need you to hold me.”
Logan picked his wife up in one fluid motion and Hana watched with horror as the cushion moved, exposing the ruined leather cover of the diary. She lay her head against her husband’s shoulder and closed her eyes, praying that the cursed thing would just disappear in the night. If Logan found it, he would be irreparably broken. It could undo everything he knew to be truth. “Oh God,” Hana cried into Logan’s bare shoulder and he stopped in their bedroom doorway.
“Hana, I’m getting the doctor. You’re scaring me.”
“No, please. I’m sorry.” She kicked her legs in protest. “I’m just tired. Please, I want to go to bed and be held.”
Logan laid Hana on his side of the bed and she scooted over so he could get in next to her. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” he asked and she shook her head in the darkness, her hair swishing on his pillow. Logan brushed her fringe back from her forehead and kissed the soft freckled skin, pulling her into his broad strong chest so that her nose tickled with the hairs and made her want to sneeze. “Whatever it is,” he breathed into her ear, “it will be ok.”
Hana pulled herself in even closer, wrapping her thighs over Logan’s legs so that there was nothing between them. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. Never. “Hold me,” she begged him, deceit and treachery scoring her heart into ribbons.
“Was it a dream?” Logan asked and Hana shook her head against his chest.
“No,” she replied truthfully. “It was a nightmare.”
Hana woke up the next morning, the sickness and sense of distress still thick within her throat as soon as she opened her eyes and remembered. Her face was pushed into her husband’s brown chest and her nose pressed upwards like a pixie’s. They had jointly occupied the tiniest space in the huge bed, tangled together like fishing line. Hana stirred first and Logan’s arms tightened round her in sleep, his heavy bicep weighty against her temple. Hana ran her fingers down his back, making him squirm and wake up to her kisses. “You all good now?” he asked her with concern in his grey eyes and Hana nodded and faked a smile.
“Yes thanks. Your cuddles fixed it.”
Logan kissed the top of her head and snuggled her in. He held her quietly for a long time. Against her better judgement, Hana fingered the detonate switch and sought clarification from the only person on hand who might know the answer. “Loge, what do you know about a blonde drover?” She ran her fingers lightly over her husband’s taut stomach muscles as she played with fire and cursed her own curiosity. He shuddered and grasped her fingers to stop the tickle spreading.
“Flick?”
The answer surprised her. “No, not him. Years ago. Before you were born. There was a blonde drover that apparently had an affair with your Aunt Antoinette and then disappeared.”
“I don’t know anything about him. Where did you get that from?”
Hana guarded her secret carefully, choosing her words. “Just some stuff I read. It doesn’t matter.”
“Ok,” Logan turned on his side, his eyes crinkled at the edges. His beard growth scratched Hana’s cheek and she squeaked and pulled away from him. “You had me worried last night,” he ran his finger down her face and smoothed it behind her neck and into her hair. He kissed her forehead. “I woke up and you were gone. I...” he ran his tongue over his lips. “I thought...maybe...”
“No, Logan,” Hana silenced his words with a kiss. “I had indigestion and went to sit in the living room. I should have just got some milk. I wish I had,” she sighed with conviction. “If I’m going to leave you, you’ll know. I’ll be loud and shouty and there won’t be any doubt about it.”
“You snuck out before,” he said accusingly, sounding like a child.
“I went to a hospital appointment and you left me no choice,” Hana replied, with warning in her tone. “I thought we were good now. Aren’t we?”
Logan nodded. “I can’t bear the thought of not coming home to you. My life would be as empty as it was before. My family’s all I’ve got. At least now I know where I’ve come from and with you and Phoe and our baby boy, I know where I’m going. It’s all that matters to me.”
Hana pressed her lips over Logan’s, desperate to stop him talking. Tears welled up behind her eyes and caused a pressure across the bridge of her nose. “Sshh,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now I’ve got this hunk who knows how to show his feelings. It’s actually quite a turn on.”
Logan laughed and looked embarrassed, but his eyes showed a wariness that warned Hana. He knew something was wrong and suspicion leaked out of every pore of his body. She slipped her index finger into the waistband of his shorts and sought the curve of his hip, running her fingers lightly over it. “How long before you have to be at work?” she whispered and injected mischief into her green eyes.
Logan smirked, instantly distracted. “I’m the boss,” he said huskily. “I don’t have to go in at all.”
Chapter 19
Hana slapped the diary onto the workroom table, the bang it made resounding throughout the museum. “I can’t do this anymore,” she postured with her hands on her hips, her stomach poking incongruously through her sweatshirt.
“Don’t do that!” Will’s wheelchair squeaked on the polished floor as he wheeled himself towards her. “You’ll crack the bloody binding.”
“I want to put i
t on the fire!” Hana stated, her cheeks flushed and her red hair floating round her face like a halo.
“What now?” Will reached for the book and cradled it in his hands like delicate china. Hana looked around the empty workroom and lowered her voice to a frenzied squeak.
“It says, Logan’s not a Du Rose!” she raged. “It says that Phoenix had an affair with a mystery man. He was Reuben’s father and not Henri Du Rose. The whole damn family is a farce. I’ve had enough! I can’t cope with this mess. I don’t need the extra upset. Every time I open one of her diaries, I learn something even more dreadful than the last hideous revelation. I’ve had enough. Just seal them, hide them - I really don’t care. But I suggest you keep them away from me or I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”
“Sit!” Will dragged a chair behind Hana’s legs and glared at her. She sank into it, wringing her hands together and staring hungrily at the diary. Phoenix Du Rose called to her from the pages and Hana turned her face away. The problem was that she desperately wanted to open it and find out more. It had successfully sucked her into its intrigue and mystery and it took every ounce of her willpower to resist.
“Hana,” Leslie’s voice clanged in the silence of the museum and Hana jumped guiltily, shooting a look of terror at Will. Satisfied she was listening, Leslie continued. “Me an’ Alfie’s taking Phoe to the zoo. We’ve got Nev’s wee one an’ all. That ok with you?”
Hana’s brow knitted in anxiety and Will’s face softened. “Er...I’m not sure.” Hana rose to a standing position, still wringing her hands. “How long will you be?”
“Just a couple of hours, tuhi māreikura. Is something the matter? She just wanna come and see the elephants. But it’s ok if youse not happy with it.”
“She’s fine,” Will interjected. “Go. Have a good time. Leave the missus with me.” He reached up and gripped Hana’s writhing fingers in his claw like hand. Relieved, Leslie withdrew her head and closed the door.