Heart of the Tiger

by Lynn Kerstan

  “Thank you for telling me,” Mira said. “I have wondered. And worried.”

  They shot another round, and this time, two of Cory’s arrows stuck the outer ring of the target. A little at a time, Mira thought, pleased to hear her laugh with delight at her accomplishment. One step after another.

  Half an hour later, when Cat and the duke thundered into the stable yard, Mira was waiting with her mare, a large picnic hamper affixed behind the saddle. Lacking a riding habit, she wore a brown wool dress, a darker brown redingote, a small fur-lined hat, and leather half boots. She thought she looked fairly presentable, in spite of reddened eyes and the hot flush on her cheeks. Just seeing him caused her to remember what they had done together—well, what he had done while she waited for herself to go into a panic—and how foolish and silly he must think her to be.

  For other reasons now, the fear was back, its talons sunk into her as deeply as ever before, the last great obstacle looming only an hour or so away. Forcing her hands to unclench, she watched him swing lithely from the saddle and stride in her direction, a look of concern on his face. A glimmer of something else in his eyes, she saw as he came up to her. Uncertainty? Shyness?

  But he was a Keynes, and as always, he came directly to the point. “How are you? How do you feel?”

  “Very well indeed,” she said truthfully. So far as it went. He was referring to last night, and lingering consequences, but there were none. If she passed the final test, she might even want another night just like it. Or one in which the main event lasted longer, as he’d told her it sometimes did.

  The lines of tension at the corners of his mouth relaxed. “I’m glad to hear it. And I see you are ready to go. Cat thinks it will snow later today. Would you rather wait until the weather is more dependable?”

  The air was crisp, she supposed, although the exertion at the archery butts and her apprehension had caused her not to feel the cold. But the pale winter sky was clear, and truly, she could not postpone this for even one more day. “We won’t be traveling far,” she said. “Perhaps I should fetch my cloak.”

  “I’ll get it for you. Bear with me. I’ll be gone several minutes.”

  Twenty-three minutes, it turned out, not that she was counting. She used the time to check the map she’d drawn with the help of the stable master, who helped her attach her bow and quiver to the saddle. It was an impulse, taking them along, but once the thought popped into her head, it refused to leave.

  Tallant returned wearing a charcoal-colored greatcoat, a wide-brimmed hat, and carrying her blue cloak over his arm. At her request, he bundled it up and tied it to the wicker hamper. Then, raising an eyebrow at the sight of her bow, he tossed her onto the sidesaddle and handed her the reins.

  They rose in silence for about half an hour, past fields of newly sewn winter wheat, pastures of sheep and cattle, the occasional cottage. Leaving Tallant land, they turned onto a narrow road that cut through an expanse of woodland. All around were the colors of the season, black and gray, biscuit and brown and fawn, patches of green moss, the red-berried, shiny green leaves of a holly tree, the darker needles of the evergreen yew. Skeletal oaks and birch reached naked branches to the powder-blue sky.

  There was space to ride side by side, but barely enough space for a coach and four. She could quite imagine that in a rainstorm at dusk, a driver would fail to see a girl leading a horse along the side of the road. It had been a credible story, and had been believed. But this was never a road she had been on, that she remembered.

  They came over the crest of a hill, and at the bottom of a long slope, she saw a single-arched stone bridge. Her hands tightened on the reins. Her skin went clammy. She looked over at Tallant and saw him looking back at her, his expression unreadable.

  When they arrived at the bridge, she drew up. The stream, pocked with rounded stones, ran north to south, from her right to her left. It was about ten feet across, swift currented but shallow. From the watermarks on stones and tree trunks lining the bed, she could see that in heavy runoff, the stream would become a torrent. It must have been like that on the stormy night when she was brought here.

  Tallant, without being asked, dismounted and helped her down. They walked the horses a little way beyond the bridge, to a spot where the ditch along the left side of the road was not so deep. With care, they picked their way across it and into the woods, tethered the horses, and curved around to join the stream and walk alongside it for about a hundred yards. There it took a turn to the right. Small boulders were strewn along one side of the bend, and just past the curve, the thick, exposed roots of a large tree stretched into the stream. She went still.

  All this time, the duke had said not a word. Nor did he now, as she looked at the place where she had been found. It fit the description exactly, even a dozen years later.

  A breeze had picked up, stirring the dry grasses and brackens. Water gurgled at her feet. She wrapped her arms around her waist, felt the sheltering presence of her husband at her side, the silence of his attention. She sensed that without knowing, he somehow understood.

  “On my fifteenth birthday,” she said, “my father gave me a horse I had coveted. He forbade me to ride without an escort, as always, but I could not wait. Back then I was willful and spoiled. It had been raining off and on all day, but during a lull, and while the stableman was at his meal in the kitchen, I saddled Caliban and stole away. I didn’t mean to be gone for long, but when I took him across a wide field for a gallop, he caught a foreleg in, oh, I can’t say. A rabbit hole, perhaps. He went down, and me with him. We were neither of us badly hurt, but he’d injured his leg enough to cause a limp. I set out leading him, and then it began to rain, pelting rain, with thunder and lightning. The ground became a quagmire of mud. I kept trying to find a road, and when I did, I had no idea which direction to go. I could scarcely see at all.”

  It was tempting to stay with the simple part of the story, which had never been a secret. But the rest of it must be told, for the first time, and to this man. “It had gone dark. I had been walking more than an hour when I heard horses coming up behind me, so I moved to the side of the road. A large coach swept by, but a little way past me, it pulled up. A hand came out of the window and beckoned me forward. When I got closer, I saw the crest on the panel. I wanted to run then, because the neighborhood children had been warned to keep clear of the Beast. He was the local bogey man, all the more terrifying because none of us had ever seen him.”

  “But he was smiling when I got to the window, and spoke kindly to me, and asked where I was supposed to be. When I told him, he said we were much closer to his estate than to Seacrest, and that if I would accept a ride for a little distance, he would send a message to my father where I could be found. A servant took Caliban and tied him to the back of the coach.”

  She was there again, seeing it, feeling the heavy rain on her body, the mud seeping into her short riding boots, the lure of a dry, well-lit carriage. When the door swung open, she climbed inside. The man . . . the Beast . . . had looked much as her husband looked today, slim and long limbed, a shock of black hair, white teeth, and clear, colorless eyes. She had been embarrassed, streaming water all over the maroon squabs and carpeted floor. Had been about to apologize when the coach set out, picking up speed. Caliban!

  “Mira?”

  She calmed her breath, which had picked up speed as well. “I beg your pardon,” she said, still not looking at her husband, not daring to look at him. “I’m tangled up in unimportant details. The coach began moving, so swiftly that I protested, and he slapped me. No one had ever struck me before. I was so stunned, I barely reacted when he grabbed me and swung me onto his lap, one leg on either side of him. His hands were so large and strong. I struggled, but he held me with one hand and pushed up my skirts with the other. Did something else. Opened his trousers, I realize now. Put his hand where . . . where—”

  She
shuddered. It was happening now, as it had happened then. From a distance, she heard her voice, unnaturally calm, relating the tale. “I began to scream, and he hit me again, and put a hand over my mouth. He said that he would do as he wished with me, and that it would hurt, and that he wanted it to hurt. If I pleased him, he would let me go free. But if I did not, he would give me to his servants as well. And if ever I told anyone what had happened, no one would believe me because he was a duke and I was only a foolish girl who had taken a fall and hurt her head. If I told, he would hear of it. Then he’d punish my father, and take everything we had, and put us into dark cellars from which we would never escape. He told me to promise I would never tell, for my father’s sake. So I did.”

  “Mira.” Her husband’s voice was soft. “You needn’t go on.”

  “I know. But she must. She is knotted up inside me, keeping her secrets still. And she was wrong to do what she did, and to never tell of it. Until she speaks, I will always be her and always be wrong. Always be responsible. You needn’t hear it. I can tell it to the trees if you’d rather, and to the stones. But I must tell it.”

  “Then I must hear it.”

  “Just . . . stay with me a little while longer. Be a stone, and pay no mind to what I say. It helps that you are here.”

  He said nothing, did not move, and that was what she required of him. Closing her eyes, she dove deep inside herself, to where a young girl had been curled up and weeping for all these years, and gave her a voice.

  “I promised to keep silent,” she said, “and felt myself lifted up, his hands on my waist, and brought down again. Onto him. I didn’t know what had happened. But it hurt so. Oh God, it hurt. And I bit my tongue, because he said I mustn’t scream and mustn’t mind, but then he . . . he pulled me up again, and down, again and again until I couldn’t bear it. And I began to scream and scream and scream.”

  “His hands went from my waist to my throat. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream anymore, because his thumbs were . . . I don’t know. Then he was beating my head against the wood panel, and I heard him shouting, Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And after that, there was nothing.”

  The blood pounded in her ears like the rush of water at her feet. Like the blood that had flowed between her legs. “I should have told you,” she said, “before last night. Before I asked you to . . . to touch me. I thought—” Speech came hard to her now. “If I discovered I could not be a wife to you, then I wouldn’t be required to admit the truth. There would have been no reason. I debated for weeks, which to try first. I made the wrong choice, the selfish choice. You didn’t know I had been with your brother. What I had become. You had a right to know.”

  “I did know.” Straightforward, without pity, as he always was. “Or rather, I had guessed. Jermyn always preferred young girls. He used to take them, the maids or children of the servants, to the stable. After a time, they would leave the estate, their families with them. There is more, but you needn’t hear it. When I sent the Runner to guard Cat, he heard the local rumors about Jermyn’s incest with his older daughter and told me of them. Cory had every reason to want him dead. You wanted to kill him as well, and the reason had to be other than the theft of your property. It had to be . . . what it was.”

  She risked a glance at his face. “You knew? And you didn’t mind?”

  “In the sense you mean that question, of course not. Except—” He looked off into the distance, frowning. “Except that I would put you in mind of him, and make it all the more difficult for you. It was I who made the selfish choice, by taking you into my bed. Only a woman of your courage could have endured it.”

  “It isn’t like that. Truly. When I look at you, I don’t see him. When I am with you, I do not think of him.”

  “But you did, when first you saw me. You did, when I first touched you. From the beginning, you were careful to stay out of my way.”

  It seemed years had passed since then. “The resemblance was striking, yes, and for all I knew, you were like him. There was no reason to believe otherwise. But your kindness to my father forced me to reconsider. If I avoided you, it was for quite another reason, although at the time, I didn’t know what it was. I’m not sure, even now, that I understand why.”

  “That night, in the Limonaia.” His voice held a trace of doubt. “I cannot have mistaken your repugnance.”

  “It wasn’t for you. When you touched me, I—I was in the coach again, with him, and his hands were around my neck. I was there. It persuaded me I dare not ever let you touch me again, which is why, later that night, I refused to let you help me through the window. I was afraid, not of you, but of how I would react. Then David fell asleep, and I required your help, and when you touched me, it was nothing.”

  She looked at him again. “Have I insulted you?”

  “I’m getting used to it, Duchess.”

  But he’d given her an encouraging smile, so she continued. “Nothing was not the right word. No moment I have spent with you has been without significance. But you must let me stumble through this by misdirection, sir. I haven’t yet got to the difficult part.

  “It was there”—she pointed to the nest of entwined roots—“that I was found. I have little recollection of the weeks after that. For much of the time, I remained unconscious. I am told that few believed I would survive. But I did, and when I awoke, I had no memory of what had befallen me. I could not speak. When he strangled me, he did damage to my voice. It came back, after a long time, but only to the degree you hear.”

  “I think it lovely,” he said.

  “Yes. Men do think that. It makes them imagine I am gentle and docile, when I am nothing of the kind. But it wasn’t only my voice went bad. For nearly a year I could not read or write properly. Letters got jumbled around. I would look at a word, like cat, and see act. Or tca. I could not put words together in speech, even in a whisper. I thought he had ruined, not only my body, but my mind.”

  She looked up. Clouds rode in from the sea on a freshening wind. There would be snow, as Cat had predicted. “I remembered, long before I could speak, what he had done. The images came to me first in nightmares, so vivid I could feel him. Smell his breath. Hear my own screams. Then, I could not distinguish memory from dream. After a time they came together, until I was sure of each detail until the point I went unconscious. But I never told anyone. I kept pretending what had once been true, that I could recall nothing except taking Caliban out, and falling, and starting to walk him home on a strange road in the rain.”

  “It’s as well you kept silent,” he said. “You could prove nothing. And my brother would have carried out his threats.”

  “He did so anyway, when he got around to it. Had he not been killed, he would have finished what he began. My silence bought, for me and my father, a little time. No more than that. And in the interim, others suffered because I did not speak. The blood of every girl he raped is my responsibility.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Knowing has nothing to do with feeling.” She was at a gallop now, the words racing from her tongue faster than her mind could put them together. “I am not so vain as to think my accusations could have stopped him. But it fell to me to try. The truth was in my hands and I buried it inside me. Worse. I put myself into his hands by going out when I should not have done, and accepting his offer of a ride, and climbing willingly into his coach.”

  “Once he saw you, he would not have let you go.” Impatience in his voice now. “You were not complicit, Mira. Not at fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter! I can control only myself, and I did not. I should have spoken, and I did not. Even when it does no good, we must speak out. Tell the truth. Defy evil, and point the finger at it, and if we must, suffer for doing so. Because when we are silent, we make it easy for them, for people like your brother. We say, ‘Go ahead. Do what you will, so long as you don’t do it to me.’ Cor
y, I am sure, would have been assaulted even if I had spoken out. The others, too. There must have been others. But I am . . . I . . . Oh God. I am guilty. Because I knew. It wouldn’t have helped. But I should have tried.”

  Her face was hot. Her cheeks wet. Wet. Her eyes felt on fire. She was weeping. Had not wept since . . . she could not remember when. Before she was fifteen. Before she turned to ice.

  And there were arms around her, and a warm face against hers, and a heart pounding in rhythm with her heart.

  “She was a child,” said a voice, soft as her own, at her ear. “You need to forgive her, Mira. As you would forgive Cat, if she’d just told you the story you told me. Forgive her, and set her free.”

  “Y-you don’t,” she managed to respond after a long time. They were on the ground together, she realized, him sitting cross-legged, she encased in his lap like an egg in a nest. “You haven’t forgiven yourself. Guilt is heavy in you as well.”

  “But I was never young, or innocent, or incapable of killing. Keynes men emerge from the womb with knives in their hands and murder in their eyes. My decisions and failures are not yours, Mira. I think you made all the right choices, and that you are guilty of nothing. But if you feel otherwise, then you must come to terms with your decisions. Hari can advise you.”

  “Does he advise you?”

  “Constantly. I never listen. But with you, Duchess, I will strike a bargain. Once you have made peace with yourself, I give you leave to work on me.”

  A chaffinch swooped by. Pink, it called. Pink.

  She looked up at her husband, at his unsentimental expression, at the steel in his eyes. “What makes you think I shall wait as long as that?”