Silk and Secrets

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Even so, I should have died because I was so far from the shore, but a squall blew up. The way the storm pounded, I thought I really was drowning. I remember it in horrible detail, right up until the moment I lost consciousness. By then, I must have been very close to the shore, because I learned later that the waves washed me up safely near a fisherman's cottage. He and his wife took me in, naked and bleeding."

  Juliet turned toward him, her face stark as death. "There, at their cottage, I miscarried. I killed our child, Ross." Silent tears ran down her cheeks. "You wanted to know the worst, and there it is. I tried to kill myself, and instead I murdered our child."

  She had warned him, but even so, the savage, visceral shock of her story was greater than anything he could have imagined. He felt as if an iron band was tightening around his chest, crushing his heart and soul.

  Blindly he turned to the window and threw open the shutters as his tortured lungs struggled for air. He stared into the empty night, so saturated with pain that he could not separate his own from Juliet's.

  So they had once made a baby together. The child would be almost twelve now, but would it have been a son or a daughter? Red-haired or blond or some unexpected variation? He tried to bring an image into focus, but he couldn't. Instead, his mind unexpectedly dredged up a half-forgotten memory.

  Ross was his mother's child. But when he was grown, she told him that she had miscarried twice after his birth.

  Because of her vivacity, his mother had been called "the laughing duchess," while her quieter twin sister, Sara's mother, was termed "the smiling duchess." But once, when Ross was about four years old, he had found his mother curled in the corner of the great hall of the Norfolk mansion, weeping hysterically, her beautiful face slashed by her clawing nails.

  Terrified, he had run to find help for her. It had been hours before his father had been able to leave his wife long enough to look for his son, who was hiding in a corner of the attic too small for an adult to enter.

  The duke had coaxed Ross out onto his lap. His own face marked with grief, he had explained that Ross's parents had wanted another child to love as much as him, but it was not to be, and his mother was mourning the baby that would never be born.

  It was a long time before the duchess was her normal self again, and there were no more pregnancies; Ross suspected that his father took steps to ensure that his wife would not endure such emotional and physical punishment again.

  But Ross had not forgotten his parents' pain. A dozen years later and in a far country, he mourned his own lost child.

  Yet that sorrow was only one among many, a distant ache, not quite real. There was far more immediacy in Juliet's wrenching account of all that had happened in Malta. Like a kaleidoscope that had been twisted, the past had just taken on an entirely different pattern.

  Now that he knew the whole, he could believe her claim that she had never stopped loving him, for it was clear that what had kept them apart was not lack of love but her soul-destroying guilt. If the circumstances had been reversed, he might have felt as unworthy and self- destructive as she had. Understanding that made it impossible to condemn her.

  The wind caressed his face like a cool hand, and he realized that his cheeks were moist. There was a fitting symmetry to the tears, for he had not cried since that night in Malta, when he had wept for the loss of his beloved wife. Then his tears had been for himself, but this time most of his grief was for Juliet, and for the knowledge of how different things might have been.

  It was a mark of Juliet's fierce sense of honor that she took full responsibility for what had happened, rather than trying to blame anyone else. Yet she had been scarcely more than a child herself, so confused and tormented that she had tried to take her own life.

  Too vital to seek death again but convinced that she had sinned past redemption, she had turned her back on all she had ever known and run to the edge of the world. There she had turned all her personal and financial resources to helping others.

  Ross raised his hand to his head, where the bullet wound was throbbing under the bandage, beating like the king's drums of Bokhara. Inside he felt hollow, not like a drum, but with a strange blankness that he could not define.

  Slowly he realized that it was the emptiness of deliverance, not loss. For years the legacy of his marriage had been pain and guilt and anger.

  The pain was a bone-deep part of what had shaped him, but now that he knew Juliet had not left because of some dreadful failing on his part, his guilt dissolved. Infinitely more important, he realized that his anger was gone as well.

  In Malta, when he had learned that his wife had betrayed their love and her marriage vows, his fury had equaled his anguish. Though with time his agony ebbed until it was a chronic ache rather than a raging insanity, for over a dozen years he had lived with anger, even when he and Juliet had been at their closest in Bokhara.

  But now that he knew the truth, anger was replaced by compassion for a desperate, terrified girl.

  He turned back to the room. Juliet was curled up in a shadowed corner of the divan, her head bowed forward and her copper-bright hair rippling over her drawn-up knees like a mourning veil.

  His wife, whose warmth and courage and quixotic gallantry made her unlike any other woman he had ever known. If she'd had a simpler nature or less unflinching Scots integrity, their marriage would have been easy. Yt if she had been anything other than what she was, he would not love her as much as he did.

  As he gazed at Juliet, his emotional turbulence began ebbing away, leaving grief-scoured clarity in its wake. It was another irony that he had thought she had chosen to become a wanton, yet she had lived more chastely than he, and God knew that he hadn't lived a very rakish life.

  Apparently nature had intended them both for monogamy. Passionate monogamy with each other.

  A jury of moralists would judge Ross more sinned against than sinning, but he had no interest in assigning blame. Nothing could be done about past mistakes except to try to learn from them; what mattered now was the future.

  If anything positive was to be salvaged from the wreck of the past, the initiative must come from him. Juliet condemned herself too severely to think she was worthy of happiness, so he must find a way to bridge the distance between them.

  He took a deep breath, then crossed the room and sat down next to her. "I know the worst now, Juliet. You were right that the truth hurts, but wrong that I would hate you. I still love you, and I still want to spend the rest of my life with you."

  She raised her head to reveal a face ravaged by tears. "I betrayed you unforgivably, in every way a woman can betray a man. How can you possibly want to live with me again?"

  "The most unforgivable thing you did was to leave me, and that can be corrected." He literally pried her fingers free from where they were clenched around her knees, then took one cold hand between both of his. "It isn't my forgiveness that you need, Juliet. It's your own."

  Her mouth twisted. "You said that I was like Lady Hester Stanhope, and it's true, for the people who most deserved my love and loyalty are the ones I hurt most. You, my family, the child I might have had if not for my own wicked mistakes."

  He shook his head. "I was wrong, for you are not like Lady Hester in the ways that count most. You have her courage, but where she was arrogant, you are loving. You judge yourself far too harshly, for your errors were those of youth and confusion, not malice or pettiness."

  Her expression showed that she was unconvinced, so he said in a conversational tone, "My outspoken mother always did her best to educate me about women, for she believed men and women should understand each other better. Once she told me that the early months of pregnancy can bring wild, unpredictable mood swings. Surely that was part of the irrational panic you felt when you discovered you were with child."

  He began chafing Juliet's hand between his, trying to restore warmth to her chilled fingers. "Perhaps you would have had the miscarriage even if you had stayed home. Many pregnancies end
in the first two or three months. In fact, if the pregnancy was going badly, it might have affected how you were feeling. That happened to the wife of a friend of mine.

  "She ran away too, but being much less adventurous than you, she only made it as far as her mother's house, where she miscarried in more comfort than you did. She's had two children since without problems."

  There was a long silence before Juliet said wearily, "If that was also true of me, it would explain a great deal, but nothing can really absolve me of responsibility for my actions. I showed every variety of bad judgment."

  "If one can't show bad judgment at eighteen, when can one do it?" He opened her hand and began tracing the lines of the palm. "Being right is all very well, but it's through our errors that we grow. You made mistakes, but you have also punished yourself greatly for them. Don't you think you've suffered enough?"

  "But you suffered as much or more for my mistakes," Juliet said sorrowfully. "How can I ever make that up to you?"

  He smiled a little. "That's easy. The way to make amends is by being my wife, not by condemning me to a lifetime of loneliness."

  Her fingers curled around his. A little desperately, she said, "I don't understand how you can still want me."

  For a baffled moment he wondered what more he could do, for he had already said as clearly as possible that he loved and wanted her. Then he thought of the storytellers he had heard through the East, who knew how to multiply the power of words. It was worth a try. "Let me tell you a fairy tale."

  She gave him a puzzled glance, so he tugged on her hand. After momentary resistance she allowed herself to be extricated from her corner.

  When she was seated on the cushions beside him, he began, "Long ago, in a far green country, there was a young man called Ross. Although he was reliable, serious, intelligent, and honorable, he was not very interesting." Ross thought a moment. "Probably all of those boring virtues are the reasons he was dull."

  Juliet opened her mouth to protest, but he said firmly, "Silence. This is my fairy tale and I get to tell it my way."

  In a lilting voice he continued, "The fellow had romantic dreams about visiting distant lands and having adventures, but being sober, more of an observer than a doer, and, as I said, more than a little dull, he might never have tried to make his dreams come true.

  "He wasn't a prince, not even a lord except by courtesy title, but one day he did meet a princess named Juliet. Not only was she the most beautiful girl in the world, but she actually had lived in foreign lands and had had adventures, not just dreamed about them.

  "When he was with her, everything seemed possible, the sun shone more brightly, and she made him laugh. With her he was immersed in life, not just an observer, for she brought out a passionate side of his nature that he had not known he possessed. Not just passion of the body, but of the spirit."

  Ross raised her hand and kissed the palm, pressing his lips against the heart line. "He hadn't known what he was missing until he met her. Being no fool and quite madly in love, our hero persuaded his very young princess to marry him before she had time to have second thoughts. At first he was sure that, as in all fairy tales, they would live happily ever after.

  "But any story worth telling needs conflict, and this conflict began when a dragon of dubious nature carried off the princess. Or perhaps she ran away with the dragon voluntarily—that part of the story is a little unclear and not really important. What mattered is that when she left, she took away the sunshine and all the laughter died."

  Ross could feel Juliet shrinking away from him, so he put his arm around her shoulders to keep her near. "Don't worry, the story isn't over. For the next dozen years, our hero did proper heroic things. He visited exotic lands, had adventures, saw wonderful sights, and met fascinating people. Sometimes he went home and wrote books and gave a few lectures and was told what a fine, brave fellow he was.

  "Sometimes—not very often—he met another lady he liked, but he never found one who could make him forget his lost princess, or who could touch his deepest emotions. It was quite a decent life, for he achieved many of his dreams, and somewhere along the way he became much more interesting. But he never achieved the deepest, most secret dream of all, which was to find his long-lost princess.

  "Then, just before his traveling days were done, he went on one last quest. And when he did, he found Juliet again and learned that she was not just the most beautiful woman in the world, but also the bravest. Occasionally he wanted to turn her over his knee and paddle her lovely derriere. More often he wanted to make love to her. When he finally did, he realized that he loved her as much as he had when he was twenty-one."

  Ross turned on the divan so that he was facing Juliet. Her body was less taut now, and when he pulled her closer, she slid her arm around his waist and let her head rest against his shoulder.

  Softly he continued, "His princess felt that she had betrayed him, but he knew that he could trust her with his life, and he did. Together they were able to achieve the impossible. She even saved his life by slaying a very ugly monster, which was not a very ladylike thing to do, but vastly useful."

  He began stroking her hair, letting the bright spun-silk strands drift between his fingers. "By the time the quest had ended, our hero loved his princess more than ever. He knew that if he couldn't persuade her to come home, he would never have sunshine, or laughter, or passion again."

  No longer a storyteller, Ross whispered, "Believe that I love you, Juliet. Then let us begin a life together again."

  She caught his hand and held it against her cheek, not looking in his eyes. "It's strange," she said, her voice haunted. "More than anything on earth, I want to please you. I used to have fantasies that I would sacrifice my life for yours, and just before I died, you would forgive me. But while it would be easy to suffer for your sake, it's hard, so hard, to do something that will make me happy when I don't deserve it."

  "If you want to please me, you have no choice but to be happy yourself, for when you are miserable, so am I." Ross's fingers tightened around hers. "Separately, we are two restless, lonely people, but together we can make each other whole. There has been enough pain, my love. It's time for joy."

  Juliet felt as if her heart was breaking. She did not deserve such love and loyalty, yet Ross was right. They were bound together for life. Nothing in the past had severed that bond, and she knew intuitively that nothing in the future would either.

  Ross had also been right to say that it was not his forgiveness that she needed, but her own. It was time to forgive herself, for both their sakes.

  She inhaled deeply, than raised her head and looked into his dark eyes. "I often wondered why I didn't die in Malta. Perhaps... perhaps it was to give me a chance to make everything up to you."

  Forcing her tears to remain unshed, she gave her husband a tremulous smile. "If you're sure you need me to be happy, I love you too much to say no."

  There was a still moment when nothing more was said because nothing needed to be. Then Ross reached out and opened Juliet's silk caftan to find the ring suspended around her throat. Taking the chain in his hands, he broke it with one quick movement, the links biting into his palms, then took the ring and dropped the chain on the divan.

  Slipping the gold band onto the first knuckle of her third finger, left hand, he caught her gaze with his and said solemnly, "I, Ross, take thee, Juliet, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, and cherish, forsaking all others, till death do us part."

  Sliding the ring all the way onto her finger, he finished, "With this ring I thee re-wed." He raised her hand and pressed his lips to her taut fingers.

  The tears she had tried to suppress began slipping down Juliet's cheeks as she lifted his left hand and clasped it tightly against her heart. Phrase by phrase, she repeated the vows, then finished, "Whither thou goest, I shall go, beloved husband, for I am yours, body, mind, and soul.
" Leaning forward, she kissed him, her touch both thanks and promise.

  As breath and heartbeats quickened, Ross swept Juliet into his arms and carried her to his bed, and there they reconsecrated their marriage. For the first time since they had met again, there were no shadows or unanswered questions between them; the worst had been revealed and it had not destroyed their marriage, but made it stronger.

  They made love with passion and tenderness and a depth of tempered emotion more profound than anything their youthful selves had been capable of. Afterward they lay in each other's arms and talked of a future that was no longer forbidden ground.

  Finally their voices slowed, but before they drifted into sleep, Juliet dared to ask a question that would have been unthinkable before. "If I had learned that you were in Malta and gone to you instead of the sea," she said hesitantly, "would you ever have been able to forgive my unfaithfulness?"

  His brows drew together as he gave her question serious thought. "I would have taken you back because I loved you, and because you were my wife," he said slowly. "And I think we could have been happy again, but I would never have forgotten, and what you had done would have always been between us, like an indelible stain.

  "But I feel as if we have spent the last four months forged by fires that have burned away everything unessential. Malta seems so distant, so unimportant, that forgiveness is not even an issue because what we have endured has melded us together so closely that there is no room for shadows. For me, the past truly does not matter. What matters is now, and that we love each other."

  Content, Juliet rested her head on his shoulder and prepared to sleep in his arms. In a voice meant more for herself than Ross she whispered, "Now and forever, amen."

  Epilogue

  Southhampton Harbor

  October 1841

  As porters carried their luggage from the stateroom, Juliet lay back against the sofa pillows and watched dreamily. She had done quite a lot of that lately, as she and Ross had slipped seamlessly into a marriage that combined the comfort of long acquaintance with the passion and wonder of first love.