Silk and Secrets

by Mary Jo Putney

  Considering what he had endured, such change was not surprising. Yet now he was almost a stranger and she was unsure how to talk to him. Though the last thing she wanted was company, he'd seen her and she couldn't turn away.

  With some reluctance she joined him, hoping that the darkness would conceal the marks of distress on her face. The moonlight was bright enough to show that her brother looked much better: relaxed, shaved, and with his hair trimmed to European length. "Quite an improvement," she remarked.

  "Amazing what solid sleep, a good meal, and a visit to the bathhouse will do for one's mind and body," he said as he turned to face her.

  She gestured at his right eye, which was now covered by a neat black patch. "Very dashing."

  "I don't know about that, but at least I won't frighten any small children." Absently he fingered the eyepatch. "This happened when the amir's men tried to beat a confession of espionage out of me. The other eye was injured at the same time, but it healed without permanent damage."

  "Thank God for that," she said fervently. "You were lucky."

  "So I was. Losing the sight in one eye is a nuisance, but losing both would be a disaster." He turned back to the wall and gazed out toward the desert. "In a fortnight or so, I should be ready to go down to the Persian Gulf and take ship back to India."

  Juliet frowned, not wanting him to go before they had a chance to make up for some of the lost years. "There's no need to rush—you can stay as long as you like."

  She poked his ribs with a gentle forefinger. "I'd like to fatten you up. Also, Mother is waiting in Constantinople for Ross to return. She swore she wouldn't go home until he came back safely. At this season, it would take only a few weeks for you to go there and she'd be ecstatic to see you. Your survival will confirm her maternal intuition that you hadn't died."

  '"For once, her instincts were right." Ian smiled a little, the pale moonlight illuminating his thin face. "I'd like to see her, but I can't take that much time. Remember, I'm an army officer and must return to duty and report on what happened. Besides, I have... other obligations in India."

  "I'm sorry, I forgot that Ross said you were engaged. Tell me what your fiancée is like."

  "Georgina?" He hesitated. "Beautiful and charming. Blond hair and blue eyes. Her father's a colonel, so she'll make a wonderful army wife. She always knows exactly what to say and do." After another pause he added, "She was the most sought-after girl in northern India."

  Depressingly, her future sister-in-law sounded like the sort of female who would disapprove of Juliet. "Will Georgina and I like each other?"

  "Well, I don't think you will dislike each other." Ian shook his head, then braced taut hands on the top of the stone wall as he said with sudden frustration, "Every day in that damned hellhole I thought of Georgina. She became a symbol of everything clean and sane and whole—of everything I was afraid that I would never feel again. Yet in my mind, her face is a blur. I can't even remember what she looks like."

  "That's hardly surprising, considering that almost two years have passed since you saw her," Juliet said soothingly. "India must seem distant and dreamlike now, but when you return to your old life, everything will fall into place."

  "I don't know if I can return to my old life," he said, his voice low and bleak. "Everything I believed in has been broken, and I don't know if the pieces will go back together again."

  Her brother's despairing words made Juliet feel closer to him than at any time since they had met in Bokhara, for in their sorrow they were truly kin. She laid her hand on top of his where it rested on the cool stone. "Give it time, Ian," she said softly. "You've been free for only a week. And after all you've been through, it won't be surprising if the emotional damage takes longer to heal than the physical."

  She had wanted to comfort him, but to her horror, her words undermined her own frail self-control. As grief surged through her, she bent her head in a vain attempt to hide her tears.

  Distracted from his own misery, Ian said with concern, "What's wrong, Juliet? Something to do with Ross?"

  "He's leaving for England tomorrow. I don't suppose we'll ever see each other again." She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her silk caftan, then said helplessly, "Oh, Ian, I've made such a mess of things. A dozen years ago I left Ross in a fit of temporary insanity, then compounded my mistakes until they were unforgivable. Now it's too late."

  "Ross won't take you back?" Ian said, surprised. "I've always thought he was one of the most understanding men I've ever known. He certainly seems to love you still."

  She shook her head. "He wants me to go with him, but I can't. He doesn't know what really happened, and I can't bear to tell him." Her voice broke. "I'm hurting him terribly, but telling him the truth would hurt him even more." For a moment, her husband's words repeated themselves in her mind: I can't think of a single damned thing you could reveal that would make me feel worse that I feel right now.

  The problem was, Juliet knew better than that.

  "What happened?" Ian asked gently. "Is it something that you could tell a brother, if not a husband?"

  Juliet considered pouring out the whole sordid tale, but her stomach curdled at the thought. "No," she whispered. "I can't tell anyone. I just can't."

  "Try," Ian said crisply. "If you have a secret that affects Ross, it's selfish to keep it to yourself. Let him make up his own mind." His voice softened. "Happiness is a fragile commodity, easily lost and not easily regained. Don't throw it away because you did something stupid a dozen years ago."

  His arm went around her shoulders. "When you wrote and told me you were getting married so young, I thought you were insane," he said reminiscently. "Then I came for the wedding and met Ross and decided he was insane for wanting to marry a hellcat like my little sister."

  Hurt, Juliet tried to pull away, but her brother's arm tightened around her. "Show the head of your family some respect, vixen," he ordered, a trace of humor in his voice. "The fact is, you two are uniquely suited to each other. It was true when you married and it's even more true now. Don't let something so precious be destroyed without trying your damnedest to save it."

  No longer able to control herself, Juliet began to cry, deep, painful sobs that racked her entire body. Her brother's other arm came around her, warm and reassuring. In spite of his thinness, he had the tenacious strength of steel wire.

  Ian held her until her tears had abated. "When we were children, I thought you were the bravest person in the world," he murmured. "I was pushed to the limits of my courage to keep up with you. Use that bravery now. Don't let fear prevent you from telling Ross the truth. He may well surprise you."

  Juliet made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a hiccup. "You thought I was brave? When I followed you on your escapades, I was usually terrified but didn't dare admit it for fear you'd be disgusted and never let me go with you again."

  "Really? Then it's a miracle we didn't get killed while trying to prove our fearlessness to each other." He brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of his knuckles. "Go and be brave, Juliet. Cowardice costs more and hurts worse."

  She closed her eyes and laid her head against Ian's shoulder, hoping that some of his tempered strength would flow into her. Telling Ross what had happened was not what would take the most courage, though God knew that confession would be excruciatingly difficult.

  Yet tell him she must. Because the subject was so painful that she was incapable of reason, she had never, until Ian had pointed it out, seen how selfish her secretiveness was. She had not wanted to have Ross hate her, yet hatred was the one thing that might persuade him to end their marriage.

  As he had said, she owed him the truth, and in a very real sense the truth would set him free. Not her; she was imprisoned in a cage of her own forging, but for Ross's sake she must find the strength to reveal all that had happened in Malta. Not only would it free him, but it would also reduce his anguish, for he would no longer grieve so much for what might have been.

  It wou
ld be a strange gift of love, but it was the greatest one within Juliet's power. It was also the ultimate test of her courage. Opening her eyes, she said unevenly, "Very well, Ian, once more you've shamed me into pretending that I'm braver than I really am. I'll do what I should have done long since."

  "Good girl. I always knew you could do anything."

  "Fooled you again," she said with a watery chuckle. "I'm so glad you're alive, Ian!"

  "So am I." He hugged her shoulders. "Amidst all the high drama of escaping from Bokhara, I never said a proper thank-you, but believe me, I am intensely grateful for what you and Ross did, and Mother too. I'm lucky to have such a family."

  More words were not needed, for the silence was warm with the closeness Juliet had feared was gone forever. For that, if for nothing else on this dreadful night, she was profoundly glad.

  * * *

  Knowing that her resolution would not last long, Juliet went to her bedroom only long enough to comb her hair, splash cold water on her face, and fortify herself with several handkerchiefs—large businesslike ones, not the frilly decorative kind. Then she took an oil lamp and made her way through the dark passages to Ross's room.

  The door was unlocked, so she entered and hung the lamp on a hook, then went to the bed and looked down on her husband. Even in sleep, his face looked strained.

  When she touched his shoulder, his eyes opened instantly and his whole body went rigid, but he did not move. After a long moment of mutual study he said, "I sincerely hope this is not a misguided attempt to seduce me into temporary compliance."

  Ross wasn't going to make this easy for her. "No such thing. I'm here because I decided that you were right. I do owe you the truth, no matter how painful it is." Her voice wavered. "Just don't say later that I didn't warn you."

  "Then what happens?" He pushed himself up in the bed, the rumpled sheet falling about his bare waist. The honey-toned lamplight delineated him with heart-stopping clarity: the broad shoulders, the hard muscles, the gilded hair where a narrow bandage covered the wound he had received the day before. That and the ugly blue-black bruises he had suffered in his fall were all that kept him from appearing inhumanly perfect.

  Wrenching her gaze away, she said, "That's up to you." She began to pace fretfully across the room, keeping to the shadowed end. "I'd better say this quickly, before I lose my courage."

  "Go ahead." His voice was very low, as if he feared that a hard word would make her take flight.

  Hands clenching and unclenching, she said, "What I said about being afraid of losing myself if I stayed in England was true. Sometimes I feared that I would be engulfed by you, would vanish entirely—not because of anything you did but because of my own weakness.

  "Growing up, I had to struggle constantly against my father to be myself. I managed, but nothing prepared me for marrying you—for being so much in love that, if you'd asked for my soul, I would have given it to you in an instant. Still, in time I think I would have become strong enough to be both your wife and myself.

  "Then something happened that made my fear so overwhelming that I felt I had to run away. I discovered..." She stopped walking and swallowed hard, finding it almost impossible to say what she had never before spoken aloud. "I discovered that I was pregnant."

  She risked a glance at Ross and saw that he was staring at her as if she was a stranger, his face like stone. In a spurt of words she continued, "I didn't feel old enough to be a wife, but I married you because I was too much in love not to. The knowledge that I was soon to become a mother terrified me.

  "Much later, I came to understand that part of the problem was fear that I would become like my own mother. I think she had spirit once, but having four children and being utterly dependent on her husband crushed it. Her life revolved around placating a difficult bully. I swore I would never be like her."

  "Did you think I was a bully like your father?" he asked, his voice dangerously controlled.

  She made a sharp gesture of negation with one hand. "No, of course not, but you would have gone in the other direction and become too considerate, too protective. If you'd known I was pregnant, you would have wrapped me in cotton wool. Would you have taken me on the adventurous trip to the Middle East we had been planning?"

  "I don't know. Certainly I would have been concerned for your welfare." The hand resting on his knee clenched. "You were right. I would not have wanted you to take unnecessary risks."

  She felt distant satisfaction when he confirmed what she had suspected, but hastened to add, "That was only part of the problem. Most of my fear was blindly irrational."

  She began pacing again, searching for words that could explain the inexplicable. "I had a... a sense of doom, a conviction that staying with you would destroy both of us; I would become a woman that I despised and you could not love, and only duty would keep you with me. Yet I couldn't talk about my fears, because pregnancy is supposed to be an occasion for joy—I was sure no one would understand, that there was something horribly wrong with me for feeling as I did.

  "I felt trapped in an impossible situation. When you left for a few days to visit your ailing godfather, I found myself taking wild risks when I went riding, secretly hoping for an accident that might solve the problem. That's when I knew that I had to get away, before something terrible happened, and before my pregnancy was so advanced that you would notice. I bolted on sheer impulse and took ship for Malta, which my family had visited once and I remembered fondly."

  Her head was throbbing and she raised one hand to her temple, knowing that the dull pain was because she was coming to the worst part. "By the time I reached Malta, I knew I had made a terrible mistake, but I was also sure that I had burned my bridges too thoroughly to ever go back. In my logical madness I knew that you might want the baby for dynastic reasons, or at least because you would feel responsible for it, but you certainly would never forgive a wife who had subjected you to such public humiliation."

  Briefly she closed her eyes, remembering. "If I had known you were coming after me—if you had arrived even a few hours earlier, everything would have been different," she said despairingly. "But 'ifs' aren't worth the powder it would take to blow them to hell."

  She drew a shuddering breath. "I still don't understand why I did what I did. There was no point where I made a deliberate choice to betray you. But I was eighteen and a fool, desperately lonely and sure that I was already ruined. The Comte d'Auxerre was amusing and flattering and looked a little like you."

  She swallowed hard. "I thought that just for one night, he might keep the loneliness at bay, so when he asked to come to my room, I... I let him."

  His voice edged like broken glass, Ross said, "For God's sake, Juliet, don't tell me any more about this."

  "Please, bear with me," she begged. "You need to know to understand what happened later." Her face twisted with bitter regret. "It's hard to believe how naive I was. Girls are warned never to be alone with men because a male touch will rouse us to helplessly wanton behavior, and I more or less believed that, because when you touched me I definitely lost all sense and control. I knew better than to think lying with another man would be the same, but I did think that for a few hours I might forget my misery."

  Her restless pacing had brought her to the wall, and she stopped, staring blindly at the rough plaster. "I was so wrong," she said wretchedly. "I soon realized that I had made another horrible mistake, but... I felt that I couldn't draw back, not after I had agreed. I loathed every moment of it, not because of anything he did—it was just that he wasn't you. I felt like a whore. I despised him, and even more I despised myself. I was too ashamed to admit how I felt, so I pretended that nothing was wrong, but I made him leave as soon as I could."

  Juliet turned to look at Ross, her gray eyes as dark and frantic as twisting smoke. "That was the only time I ever broke my marriage vows, Ross. I hated what I had done so much that I could never bear to let another man touch me. The rumors that trickled back to England were just that�
�rumors. I suppose they were inspired by the fact that I was young and wild and heedless, but I swear there were never any other men after that night."

  Ross could no longer endure lying still, so he rose from the bed and jerked on his chapan, as if the garment could protect him from the dark emotions swirling through the room. He did not approach Juliet; he did not dare. It was bitterly ironic to learn that if he had reached the Hotel Bianca earlier, his wife would have welcomed him with open arms.

  Instead, they had come within the width of a single door of each other. But because he was too late, they had both been utterly desolate, and utterly incapable of comforting each other. It was a bleak picture, but he steeled himself for worse to come. Tightly he said, "What happened then?"

  Juliet spun away, her movements brittle and graceless. "I felt filthy, defiled... as violated as if I had been raped, but this was worse because I was responsible. No one made me do what I did. It was my mistake from beginning to end. More than anything on earth, I wanted to die."

  Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "So at dawn the next day I rode outside Valletta to a lonely cove, stripped down to my shift, and I... walked into the water."

  Ross watched her with rising horror, the image of the desperate girl she had been as sharp as the reality of her now. Never, even at his most anguished, had he thought of taking his own life, and he could only dimly imagine what kind of distress had driven Juliet to want to kill herself.

  Reminding himself that she hadn't succeeded, he asked, "Who or what saved you?"

  "The fact that I was too much of a coward," she said with sharp self-disgust. "I swam until I was too tired to lift my arms, then relaxed and prayed for oblivion so I would feel nothing more. But I found it isn't true that drowning is a gentle death. My mouth filled with water, my lungs burned, and I panicked, so terrified that I had the strength to start swimming again.