The Actuary

by K T Bowes

  Chapter 50

  “What was that about?” Emma’s mouth hung slightly open as she stared at the empty corridor. “Did you see where he went?” Panic and annoyance vied for attention as Rohan placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  “I didn’t think he would take it so plokho!” Rohan’s face looked ashen, the honey colour stripped from his complexion in the bad lighting. He bent and retrieved his other crutch, righting himself but not moving.

  “I’ll go after him,” Emma sighed. “He can’t have gone far.”

  Within minutes she was back, her face a mask of fear. “I can’t find him, Ro. I checked all the rooms on that wing and we know he’s not on this one.” She ran a frantic hand through her hair. “I called and called him and he’s not answering.” A sob caught in her throat.

  Rohan smiled kindly at her and jerked his head towards the centre of the house and the huge hallway. “Go. Sit in the window seat we passed back there. I’ll find him.”

  Emma looked doubtful, trotting to the end of the corridor to the hallway and then casting about her. “I didn’t check upstairs.” She pointed back behind them at the oak balustrade. Rohan shook his head.

  “I know where he is. I heard.” He pointed at his ear and then gave Emma a long fortifying kiss before sending her to the square room on the left to wait. Kieran’s stumbled will reading came back to Emma. Rohan stopped in the doorway and fixed his gorgeous blue eyes on her. “I’ll bring him back. Trust me, Em. Please? I’ll prove I’m worthy of it.” Rohan set off towards the stairs and Emma stood in the doorway and watched his laborious progress. Her heart vied with the combined agony of giving up either one of her boys and she fought the urge to cry and beat her fists on the old wooden floor beneath her feet. Why would Nicky take their relationship so badly? It seemed unexpected and so unlike his previous overtures.

  Rohan turned to the right to face the stairs which led upwards, each dogleg representing a face of Everest to him. Emma crept close and watched as he leaned forward and shoved one of his crutches up onto the fourth step. With huge physical strength, he used the other crutch and the handrail to begin his ascent. He kept the crutch in his right hand, his arm rigid as he hopped up onto the first tread, the handrail to his left taking some of the strain. His shoulder and arm muscles bulged through his jacket and Emma watched him breach the first four steps with apparent ease. Rohan retrieved the dormant crutch and laid it flat along the eighth step, moving upwards again at surprising speed. The stairs punctuated in front of him at the first landing and then Rohan began again. Ceasing to worry, Emma lay her head back against the wall and sighed. When Rohan was finally out of sight, she heard him make his way across the upstairs landing and begin his search of the upstairs. “I’m going to bloody kill you, Nikolai Harrington!” Emma muttered, returning to the empty room. Then she hurled herself onto the window seat to wait.

  Half an hour passed. Half an hour of walking to the bottom of the stairs, listening and then walking back to the window seat. At one point, Emma left and wandered to the downstairs cloakroom on the far side of the kitchen, disturbed when the elderly pipes clanged and banged in protest at the toilet flushing.

  “This is ridiculous!” she told herself, staring at her foot as it rested on the bottom tread of the stairs. Then she removed it for the hundredth time. Rohan said he would find him and unless he fell into the same peril as Nicky, he must have. Emma listened for movement, holding her breath when she recognised the sound of Rohan’s crutches padding along the wing above her. The metal fixings clinked and clanked in the silent house and Emma released the breath with a whoosh as she heard Nicky’s level voice.

  The boys looked unconcerned as they stood at the top of the stairs. Emma experienced a flash of anger at what they’d put her through in the last half an hour, tempering its effects as irrational and foolish. Emma walked slowly to the bottom of the stairs and watched her men interact. “Hold it like this, Nikolai,” Rohan told his son, putting the crutch upright in his small arms and directing him towards the carved oak bannister rail. “Hold on with one hand and carry viz other.”

  Emma bit back concern as tiredness made Rohan’s native accent bleed into his English. She loved it but would never tell him she noticed.

  Sinew and muscle stood out on Rohan’s neck as he used his upper body strength to negotiate the stairs. The last barrier protecting her heart shattered as an old love flooded through, tightening her chest and causing a pressure to build in her throat. In her memories, Rohan struggled down the stairs at the vicarage, holding onto the wound from his appendectomy. His face registered agony from the cruel staples pressed into his flesh and thirteen year old Emma felt an uncontrollable surge of love for the teenager. Rohan was like a drug to her from before puberty. She needed him as she needed oxygen. He smiled at her back then, pretending like it didn’t hurt. He did the same now, brushing off his infirmity against the honesty of her gaze.

  “Sorry, Mummy.” Nicky pressed his face into her stomach, accidentally bashing her ankles with the crutch. Rohan levered himself down behind the boy and alleviated him of his metal burden.

  “I taught you never to run off,” Emma said, surprised at the cold element in her voice. “It’s dangerous.”

  Nicky put his head back and Emma looked down into swollen, bloodshot eyes. His chest gave a little hitch which suggested his tears had evolved into full blown hysteria. She caught Rohan’s eye and he smiled, a hint of satisfaction in his blue eyes. He dealt with it. She was no longer alone in the parenting game. “Mummy?” Nicky’s throat constricted the word as his body rebelled against the gulped air in his lungs. “Mummy, I’m so sad ‘bout Uncle Anton. And Daddy said I will be a wise man and the nasty lady can’t stop me. I’m sorry I runned away. I didn’t want to tell her if you and Daddy did kissing but I saw.” The child’s whole body shuddered and Rohan laid a strong hand on his tiny shoulder.

  “Papa sort it all out. Zapomnit'.”

  “I remember, Dad.” Nicky gave another gulping swallow and Rohan shook his head furiously at Emma to warn her to stay quiet.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll make you a wise man costume, Nikolai. And we’ll practice your words.”

  “I don’t say much,” Nicky smiled. He leaned sideways and touched Rohan’s thigh with his small hand. “I love you being my dad,” he said with genuine affection.

  “Thank you,” Emma mouthed and stroked Rohan’s rough cheek with a soft palm. “I feel tired now. I’ll look at the upstairs another day.”

  “I found Uncle Anton’s room,” Nicky smiled up at her with a tearful hiccough punctuating his sentence. “I smelled his smell in a bedroom. Can we live here and please may I have that blue bedroom to sleep in? It’s right next to the massive big room which can be yours. Then I can still hear you when you get scared and cry.”

  “We’ll see, baby,” Emma soothed, knitting her brow at the extent of the small boy’s understanding. “For now though, let’s go home.”

  Later, after a hastily scratched together dinner of cheese toasted sandwiches, Emma faced Rohan as he lay on her bed. “Are you freaking kidding me? Felicity said what to my son?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Rohan replied, his tone serious. “She said she’d stop him being in the nativity unless he promised to tell her what we were doing. She also told him we were disgusting and she’d get the police involved. From other things Nicky said, she’s been feeding him little er...” Rohan struggled with the English word, unusual for him. He spread his hands, asking for help.

  “Tidbits? Snippets?”

  Rohan shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. “Things to make a small boy scared of her. Izvergi.”

  “What’s that?” Emma scratched her head, perplexed. “Beast? Monster?”

  “Da! Fiendish things of the night.”

  “I’ll kill her!” Emma thumped her fist on the bed. “The selfish little...where does she live? I’ll go round now and show her what fear is!” Her brown eyes glared in her face and Rohan smirked
and dragged her body into his.

  “Hush. I said I’d deal with it. He’s my son. Let me be his papa.”

  “I’m trying. It was difficult staying downstairs while you talked to him. I wanted to rush up and make it better. It’s how things have been for the last six years; just me and Nicky.”

  “I know, dorogaya. I know.” Rohan exhaled and his breath ruffled Emma’s hair. His arms felt strong around her and she pushed into his chest. His lips on the top of her head felt safe and comforting, but the sickness had already taken hold in the pit of Emma’s stomach. Rohan knew. He stroked her back and whispered gentle Russian words into her ear.

  Emma groaned, keeping her voice low. “It’s that word, disgusting. Your mother called me, gryaznyy. Anton said it means filthy. It tainted everything, even Nicky’s birth. If it hadn’t been for Lucya, I’d be more of a mess than I am already. I always wondered if Alanya suspected the baby was yours; until that bitch kindly informed her Nicky had Anton on his birth certificate. Your mother knew I loved you. I’d like to say that’s why she hated me, but I don’t feel inclined to make excuses for her.”

  “I’m not justifying it, but in Russia when we blend families, we accept those new siblings as blood. She saw you as my sister so to her, it was a bad thing. You have to admit, she never treated you any better or worse than she did me and Anton. She was pretty awful to all of us.”

  Emma grunted and kept silent, not wanting to accede anything to Alanya, least of all fairness in her cruel upbringing. She pressed her face into Rohan’s blonde chest, moving his shirt aside with her fingers to touch the muscular chest and feel closer to him. The metal dog tags cut into her cheek and she moved them in frustration before giving up and sitting upright. “Do you think we’re disgusting?” she asked, her tone defensive.

  “No! Never. We aren’t blood and didn’t choose to be put together in one family.” Rohan ran his hand up Emma’s thigh, his grip firm against her jeans. “My love for you was always different to Anton’s. He cossetted you like a tiny flower, protecting and nurturing. I battled with my feelings and was shy of you for years. I kept myself separate until I understood what it was and then I kissed you. Remember?”

  Emma nodded and allowed a tiny smirk to light her face with pleasure. “I remember.”

  “Lie down with me?” Rohan’s voice sounded seductive and sent a shiver down Emma’s spine. His fingers strayed from her thigh to the button at the top of her jeans and she put her hand over his, halting his progress.

  “I can’t. I’m too angry!” Her tone was huffy with a hint of stubbornness. “And your army tags are getting on my nerves. They keep smacking me in the face.”

  Rohan hauled himself up to sit next to Emma, punching the pillows behind him to get comfy. Then he undid his shirt buttons one at a time and pulled the fabric slowly from inside his pants. Emma watched in her peripheral vision, ogling the firm abdominal muscles and smooth skin, watching them flex as he moved to slip his shirt off his shoulders. She caught sight of the firm biceps which had bulged through his shirt sleeves as he hauled himself up the long staircase earlier. She couldn’t resist turning her head for a sneaky look. Rohan’s deft fingers plucked the metal chain and pulled it over his head, dropping it onto the floorboards with a clunk. “I told you I’ll deal with school so you don’t need to be angry. Now dog tags is all gone.”

  Emma grinned and turned her face away. “That’s bad English and Nicky will hear us. It’s embarrassing!”

  “Da, embarrassing, but not disgusting. Get here woman, I have zmeya to show you.”

  Despite herself, Emma snorted, glancing back at the bedroom door and covering her mouth. “Is this your famous trouser snake? Because I’ve seen it and I’m not impressed.” She squeaked as Rohan grabbed her, hauling her down the bed and biting her neck.

  “Too loud!” he chuckled into her soft skin. “My room has more sound proofing. When will you move in there?”

  Emma became still. “I don’t want to. I have images of Felicity in there with you, giggling up a storm and I can’t do it.” She sighed, adding, “Sorry. I know you’ve set that room up to make it easier for you, but I don’t think I can. Nicky and I slept in there when you were away and it wasn’t a great time for me.”

  “Ok.” Rohan sounded philosophical. “Then I’ll move into this room.” He worked his fingers under Emma’s sweatshirt and laid his palm gently over her stomach. She flinched as his soft movements tickled but another feeling grew, something deeper which emanated from her chest. She waited, allowing it to spread and take hold of her, experiencing the spiritual communion between an excited father and his unborn child filling her heart and soul. It was powerful, breath-taking and full of wonder. Emma choked and spluttered as the nakedness of it overwhelmed her, driving home the emptiness of her pregnancy with Nicky and the months filled with terror and dread. This felt so different and the dismay seeded itself again with phrases like, it will never last, you’ll end up alone again like always.

  “Chto?” Rohan’s alarm and instant concern was touching and his strong arms around Emma were welcome, shoring her defences against depression and misery. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, holding her tightly. “I’m here.”

  Emma cried against Rohan’s silken skin and breathed in the warm masculine scent. But she had already seen the light in his eyes at the adrenaline rush which came with danger and the sense of aloneness snaked back into her heart. He was here for now maybe, but the Actuary would soon be gone again, roving the world for risks to neutralise, silently, with calculation and skill. Aloneness would take up residence with Emma and stay for good one day.