Silk and Shadows

by Mary Jo Putney

  Instead, there had been only Weldon, mildly drunk and wanting amusement. At first Michael had not understood what the charming young aristocrat had wanted. Though uncomfortable with the way Weldon touched him, he had tried not to show it, not wanting to offend his benefactor.

  When Weldon's attentions became inescapable, Michael had tried to run away. He had fought, frantic as a trapped animal, when Weldon caught him and forced him down on the divan. But he had been only a child against a grown man.

  It was almost impossible to continue, for the years had not dimmed the images or the emotions. When Peregrine finally managed to speak, his voice was unrecognizable in his own ears. "I was not a whore, but he used me as one."

  From the sound of Sara's horrified gasp behind him, she knew what that meant. But she could not possibly know how it had felt: the shock, the horror, the pain. And most of all, the shattering humiliation, the knowledge of wrongness, of defilement that could never be cleansed away.

  "I fought. God, how I fought," he said bitterly. "Perhaps that was a mistake, for fighting excited him, but it was impossible to surrender to something so despicable. After a week or two, Weldon began to tire of fighting, so he tied me to the bed and used a whip to teach me better manners." Weldon had enjoyed that immensely, his eyes gleaming, hardening with arousal as he slashed away, over and over, with all his strength. It had been an African whip of rhinoceros hide, supple and evil.

  "You have seen the results of his whip. I still tried to fight, but I was half-dead, so he was able to subdue me with little effort." Weldon had also enjoyed the blood. Whenever Michael grew a little stronger, Weldon would use the whip again. Eventually, Michael stopped fighting. "I'm not sure how long he kept me there. A couple of months, I think. I lost track of time."

  As Sara walked up behind her husband, she saw that he was sweating, his white shirt clinging to his back in patches. She ached for him, for the terrified ten-year-old child he had been, and for the man who still carried mental and physical scars that would never disappear. Wanting to comfort him, she laid a: gentle hand on his arm.

  Lost in the past, her husband whirled around and almost hit her, his eyes jungle wild and his fists clenched. Barely in time he checked himself from striking.

  For an endless moment they stared at each other. Sara began to tremble, for his furious near-violence explained more about what Weldon had done to him than words could ever have conveyed. Her mouth dry, she asked, "How did you escape him?"

  "I didn't," Mikahl said bitterly. "Eventually Weldon decided it was time to continue his travels. Having no further use for me, he gave me to the local pasha with the suggestion that I be castrated. He said he was doing me quite a favor, for eunuchs could become great men in the Ottoman empire."

  "Dear God, how could any man do such things to a child?" Sara said, sickened by the knowledge that her husband might have been emasculated for a madman's whim. The passion and closeness they had shared, the blending of energies that joined and transcended them, might never have existed.

  "Weldon delights in hurting children. As a parting gift, he carved his initial on my hip and rubbed lampblack in the wound. It pleased him that one letter could do double duty: M for master and W for Weldon. I cursed him, and believe me, an East End slum child who has spent two years at sea is an expert at profanity. I swore that someday I would find him, and make him pay for what he had done." A muscle jerked in his cheek. "He laughed at me. After he left Tripoli, I'm sure he put me and my threats out of his mind. I was just one small episode in a lifetime of evil."

  "Yet against all the odds, you have achieved what you swore you would." Sara shuddered as she saw how viciously Weldon had perverted the truth when he had told her about her husband's past.

  Indeed, Mikahl felt a special kind of hatred for Weldon, but it was not that of a lover scorned. It was the hatred of a fatherless boy who had wanted to love, and who had instead been savagely betrayed.

  Mikahl was right: Weldon was truly evil. "How did you get from North Africa to Asia?"

  "Rather than having me castrated locally, the pasha decided to present me to the sultan in Constantinople, along with several other boys." His mouth twisted. "It's those wonderful green eyes you're so fond of. They make me memorable. I would have been infinitely better off with blue or brown."

  Sara flinched, feeling unreasonably guilty for having admired the intense, magnetic color.

  "The ship reached Constantinople and moored for the night before unloading," he continued. "I was able to jump overboard and swim ashore. I had learned some Arabic and Turkish by then, as well as many Muslim customs, so I was able to pass as just another street child of uncertain ancestry. Fairly soon I had the luck to find work with a Persian merchant who had no children of his own. When he saw that I was interested, he taught me accounting and business. After he died, I became a trader myself along the old Silk Road across Turkestan. The rest you know."

  "It's incredible that you survived, much less that you became the man you are." Sara shook her head, having trouble grasping the enormity of what her husband had endured, and how he had transcended it. "And after all these years, you have come to England to bring Charles Weldon to justice."

  "Exactly. To make him suffer, and ultimately to kill him." His low voice vibrated with emotion. "Now do you understand why my vengeance is justified?"

  "I can't condone your desire to take the law into your own hands, though I can certainly understand it." Sara closed her eyes, a spasm of pain going through her. "Weldon deserves to be punished for his crimes, but what you are doing goes beyond simple justice to torture and murder."

  She had the cowardly wish that Ross had not told her what was happening. But now that she knew, she could not turn her back on that knowledge. Fearing that she might faint, she sat down in her wing chair again as she rubbed her temples. "I have no right to judge what you are doing to Weldon. But nothing—nothing—can justify hurting others as you pursue your revenge. That's wrong, Mikahl. No matter how much you have suffered, you have no right to hurt the innocent."

  Peregrine was jarred. He had thought that once Sara knew, she would accept. "You make too much of this," he said, anger rising again. "You are condemning me for damaging a railway that might have failed anyhow, for not closing a brothel that would be in business again in days, and for considering actions that I never actually performed."

  "I don't think this is something that we will ever agree on," Sara said wearily. "Go ahead and enjoy your revenge. Revel in every wicked moment of it. Kill Weldon with your bare hands."

  As she watched him with great haggard eyes, the ticking of the clock could be heard, sharp and insistent as the hoofbeats of hell. Her voice a raw whisper, Sara finished, "But I cannot live with a man who is wantonly injuring innocent people."

  Chapter 25

  I cannot live with a man who is wantonly injuring innocent people.

  Sara's words hung in the air like smoke. At first Peregrine did not comprehend her meaning. Then annihilating rage swept through him. He strode to her chair and grabbed the arms, his fingers digging into the upholstery to prevent him from doing violence to his wife. "How dare you give me an ultimatum! Do you seriously think you can force me to tamely turn away from what I have lived for?"

  She stared up at him, her eyes dark pools of pain. "There can be no ultimatum since I have nothing to bargain with." Her quiet words undercut his rage. "I know my love means nothing to you, so I have no power to force you to change. Nor do I have the right to even try. We are what we are, Mikahl. You must crucify Weldon, just as I must leave you."

  Her words struck him like a physical blow. He stepped back from the chair, too numb to know what he felt. "This is the first time you have mentioned love. What does the word mean to you? Some kind of superior weapon for controlling me?"

  "I never spoke of love because I never thought you wanted to hear of it," she replied, bleak as dust. "I have loved you almost from the day we met, or I never would have done so many thi
ngs that went against my principles."

  "You seemed to enjoy them at the time," he said caustically. "Isn't that why you married me?"

  She shook her head. "If you mean lust, no, that isn't why. I married you because I was in love with you. Why else marry a man who I knew would break my heart?"

  He stared at her, astonished. "Just how was I supposed to break your heart?''

  "By leaving me." Wearily she brushed back her heavy hair. "When we married, I didn't believe it would last long. And I knew that when you left, it would hurt like nothing else I have ever known. But I wanted so much to be with you that I was willing to pay any price in future pain."

  He felt as if he had somehow landed in a strange country with no familiar landmarks. "You seriously believed that I married you with the intention of deserting you?"

  "Nothing so calculated as that," she said slowly. "I think you married me for a number of small reasons that together tipped the scales. I amused you. You had some regrets over ruining my reputation. You were intrigued by the thought of marrying a duke's daughter, and you desired me. Now I see that I was also a prize that you had won from Charles Weldon. Stealing an enemy's woman is a classic form of revenge."

  She leaned back in the chair, her face deeply sad. "But you never spoke of love. Now I understand why—with so much anger and hatred in you, perhaps there is no room for love."

  "If I did not speak of love, neither did you," he pointed out, his voice brusque.

  "Our backgrounds were so different that I didn't know what words of love would mean to you." A corner of her mouth curved ruefully. "And I suppose pride was part of it. It was bad enough to be sure that I would lose you. I didn't also want to appear pathetic by wearing my heart on my sleeve."

  "What the bloody hell made you so sure that I wouldn't stay with you?" he exploded. "You keep coming back to that, and I don't understand why. Yes, my background is different, but I have usually been a man of my word. Did you think that marriage vows mean nothing to me?"

  "After a lifetime of wandering, I couldn't imagine you staying in one place. You told me that you had never considered marriage, so I thought that when the impulse waned, it would be just a matter of time before you became restless and left." Sara paused, searching for words. "If I had known you were English, I might have been more optimistic about our marriage, for there is more common ground between us than I thought. In fact, there have been times in the last few weeks when I have believed it was possible..." Her wistful voice traded off.

  Peregrine wanted to refute her cool reasoning, to throw it in her face and growl that she was wrong. Yet he could not, for all her reasons had a grain of truth in them. Nonetheless, the conclusion she had drawn was wrong, for his desire to marry her had been much greater than the sum of her reasons.

  Feeling that he was suffocating, he untied his cravat and pulled it off, drawing it roughly through his fingers. "That is a fascinating set of thoughts you have invented to put into my head, but you have missed a point. I have not left you, nor do I have any intention of doing so. It is you who are threatening to leave me, not vice versa."

  She buried her face in her hands, the hair falling away from her fragile nape. "Ironic, isn't it?" she whispered. "I knew that you would break my heart. It just seems that I was wrong about how it would happen."

  "If your heart is breaking, don't blame it on me," he snapped. "I have tried to be a good husband. Until tonight you have had no complaints."

  She raised her head at that. "I still have no complaints—you could not have treated me better if you did love me. What I find intolerable is how you are treating the rest of the world. Because of your private vendetta, Ross almost died today."

  "Do you think I don't regret that?" he said savagely.

  "I'm sure you do, but you are still responsible." She looked at him pleadingly. "Don't you see how you have let your passion for revenge corrode your life and mind? Yes, Weldon behaved with appalling savagery, but was what he did to you any worse than what was done to Jenny Miller when she was put in that brothel? Your vengeance comes at too high a price, for it has cost you your soul."

  He was struck by a sudden image of Jenny as she might have looked her first night in the brothel. Her childlike face mirrored everything he himself had felt as Weldon's victim.

  "That is hardly an argument for sparing Weldon," he said harshly. "Dear Charles is the man who took Jenny's virginity. She was so pretty that he had to have her himself. Then he made her play the part of virgin over and over for whatever man had the price. He used to visit her regularly. If I gave Jenny a knife and held Weldon down for her, I think she would cheerfully cut him into ribbons herself."

  Sara's mouth twisted. "How many other Jennys suffered the same fate in the weeks you have been spinning your web around Charles Weldon? Was prolonging your revenge worth their pain?"

  There was no answer he could give in return, for finally he understood why Sara was so profoundly upset. But she was being naive. He could not change the world's evil, but he could see that Charles Weldon paid a price commensurate with his crimes.

  Tiredly he said, "It was been a long and difficult day, and both of us have been half out of our minds with worry about Ross. Let's go to bed now and finish this discussion in the morning. All we are doing now is hurting each other."

  "Nothing will be different in the morning." Sara stood and turned away from him. "But you are right, it's far too late to start packing. I will sleep in one of the guest rooms."

  He had not believed that she seriously intended to leave. How could she, when there was so much between them?

  Catching her by the shoulders, he spun her around before she could reach the door. "Oh, no, sweet Sara," he said softly. "You married me for better and for worse. There were no special clauses in the marriage service to cover philosophical differences. You promised to be my wife, and I am not releasing you from your vows. The fact that you had the mad notion that I would leave you does not justify your leaving me."

  She simply looked at him, her great eyes bleak with sorrow. "This is not an Asiatic harem, Mikahl. You can't stop me if I want to leave. At least, not for long.''

  He opened his mouth to talk, then stopped. There had been too many words already. Instead he pulled her close and kissed her, using all his strength of will, all of his mesmerizing ability to attract, to make her yield.

  For a moment Sara was stiff in his arms. Then she made a low, despairing sound and opened her mouth under his. "I love you," she whispered, her voice thick with longing. "May God forgive me, in spite of all you've done, I can't help loving you."

  When her arms went around him, triumphant desire flared, for he knew that he had won. He had been a fool to argue; what bound them was beyond words and philosophy. His hands as hungry as his mouth, he kneaded and shaped her gentle curves.

  As Sara moaned and pressed closer, he untied her blue robe and let it drop to the floor, then pulled her nightgown over her head. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he lifted her from her feet and carried her to the bed.

  Her slim, graceful body was overpoweringly erotic, and his fingers were rough with impatience as he stripped off his clothing. In a lifetime of intensity, he had never desired a woman as much as he desired Sara now.

  He lay down beside his wife and bent over to kiss her, then stopped, shocked to see that she was crying. As her gaze locked with his, soundless tears ran down her cheeks, and every one scalded him like acid.

  He had never seen Sara cry, not after her rough initiation to passion, not on their wedding night when he had laid bare her hidden scars, not even when she feared Ross was dying. But her tears were not a sign of reluctance, for her desire was as urgent as his. She caught his shoulders and pulled him down so that his body pressed against hers. Then she branded her husband with mouth and nails, alternately fierce and tender as she proved her love without words.

  He had never before made love to a weeping woman, and he used every art at his command to dry her tears with p
assion. She responded without reservation, and when he gave her the most intimate of kisses, it took only moments to bring her to a shuddering climax. She cried out and lay still for half a dozen ragged breaths, one arm thrown across her eyes.

  For the first time in their marriage, Sara boldly returned the intimacy. After pressing him back against the pillows, she used mouth and tongue to cherish what might have been sliced away when he was a child. With uncanny instinct, she teased and aroused, then slowed to prolong the ecstasy.

  When he was on the verge of disintegrating, Sara lay back and caught his arms and drew him into the ultimate joining. As he drove into her, she whispered his name over and over, like a broken prayer.

  Yet still she wept, even as her body thrust and clashed against his. Her tears were a potent aphrodisiac, inflaming him to madness, urging him to fill her with passion until there was no more room for grief.

  After desire and grief had culminated in blazing rapture, they lay twined together, hearts pounding in tandem. At length he wordlessly rolled to his side and pulled her close, burying his fingers in her thick, tangled hair. Sara's light breath caressed his damp skin as she drifted into exhausted slumber.

  He did not allow himself to fully relax until she lay still and pliant in his arms. Finally he slept, secure in the knowledge that his wife had forgotten ever having harbored foolish thoughts of leaving him.

  * * *

  Sara slept for perhaps three hours. When her eyes opened, there was light in the room, and she guessed that it was a little after dawn. Mikahl lay on his stomach, one arm thrown across her waist, both protecting and imprisoning. His face was just inches away. Relaxed in slumber, his stern features became handsome and youthful. Seeing the long black lashes against his cheek filled her with tenderness.

  Though she was saturated with leaden fatigue, Sara's mind was quite clear. Perhaps it would be easier if she left later in the day when he was out, but she had a frantic need to escape as soon as possible. Leaving would get no easier with time, and knowing she could not stay would make every moment agony.