by J. D. Robb
“I am so sorry, though I find it hard to imagine anyone not wanting you.” He kissed the top of her head. “That would never have happened here.”
“Yes, Cortez explained your way of caring for children,” Isabelle said, pretending not to understand his meaning. “Your community here is impressive, Sebastian, but it only works on a small scale with an enlightened man at the head.”
“Yes, I think the term is ‘despot.’ ”
She fisted her right hand and gently punched his left arm.
“You try so hard to make me see you as a dissipated, ruined man.” She straightened and raised one finger so he would know she was serious. “I tell you, Sebastian, the man I am getting to know is the one I saw on the beach today with the children. The one who took the blind girl up on his back and made her the leader of the group. The one who let himself be buried in sand.” She folded her hands in her lap and waited pointedly for him to answer.
“Yes, Mistress Nurse, I know you want to think well of me and I am sorry to have to explain to one as high-m inded as you that I play with the children so that when they grow up they will be loyal to me; they will stay and serve me as their parents have.”
“Oh, nonsense. You play with them because they remind you of what you miss the most.”
He laughed. “There is no discouraging you.”
“Oh, yes, there is. I have faced my share of disappointments in my life.”
“And convent life was one of them?”
“Yes.” She sighed and took his hand. “I was so very lucky to have a Mother Superior who understood me. When I was accused, more than once, of inappropriate behavior, she took me aside and counseled me.”
Isabelle rested her head against the wall and wondered what Mother would make of her now. “She knew that I was not flirting in a sexual way, but the priests were men after all. In the end she made me see that I did not want to be a nun so much as I wanted a sense of community, a place where I could belong, a place where I mattered to people as I had to my parents.”
Oh, it still hurt to talk about it and remember the day she had taken her one little suitcase and walked out of yet another home. A tear splashed onto her hand and Sebastian wiped it away with one of his fingers.
“We all want to belong, Isabelle.”
“I suppose so, and I was looking for it in the wrong place. We have something in common that way, Sebastian.”
He did not rise to the bait but asked, “How long were you in the convent?”
“Three years. The order helped me find a scholarship for nursing school, which is what I had an aptitude and inclination for. I finished my training as a nurse, went to work and found an organization that would train me as a physician’s assistant if I would work for their relief group for two years. I finished that work with the clinic in New Orleans after Katrina.
“Two weeks later I was in church when Father Joubay asked for a volunteer to come here for a year and here I am, sitting beside you on a gorgeous night wishing I was talking about anything but my past.”
“Such a colorful life it is.”
“I’m not sure if you’re joking or not. But since I left Nebraska it has been one adventure after another.” Isabella straightened and made sure she had his attention.
Oh, she certainly did.
Sebastian was watching her the way a child stared at a treat just out of reach or a shark biding its time until it could pounce. She looked away before the list of comparisons grew even more threatening.
“I’ve worked with prostitutes in Mexico and with the homeless in Thailand after the tsunami. I’ve treated child soldiers in Africa and seen a saint martyred.”
Tears threatened again, but Isabelle had had enough of them and she prayed, not for Joseph, her martyred friend, but for the lost souls, the men who had killed him.
“I have seen people die for lack of the simplest things and seen amazing recoveries. God works around us, through us and in us all the time. I know that as well as I know the hymns I sing.”
When Isabelle stopped talking, she was afraid he had fallen asleep. “I’m sorry, but you did ask.”
“And through all that you are still a virgin?”
“Yes, and if that is the only thing you care about, then I am sorry I told you the story.” She was more than a little peeved by his question. “I think you have some kind of sex addiction. It’s considered a disease now, you know.”
“Oh, what I have is worse than that. Much worse.” He scooped her up into his arms and set her on her feet. “I do not see how any man in his right mind could not pursue you.”
“They have. But I decided that I would wait until it meant more to me than another way to feel good.” She thought of something else. “Sebastian, in 2009, a woman has a right to say no and be respected for that decision.”
They watched each other in silence. Finally Sebastian said, “But you are not saying no to me. You would not have told me your story if you did not want to be closer, would you? And I would not have asked if I did not want to be closer to you.”
Exactly, she thought.
“It’s growing cool here, Isabelle. Come and have some tea or wine.” He started toward the stairs.
“Sebastian, it is hardly ever cool here.”
He looked over his shoulder and showed his dimples. “Pretend, Isabelle.”
When they reached his sitting room, he paused before he opened the door.
“Yes,” Isabelle said, looking at him with her heart in her eyes. “Tea, I think.”
His smile disappeared and he bowed to her as though she had just given him the greatest gift.
Nine
Sebastian could tell by her smile that Isabelle had just given him the greatest gift she could bestow. Not her virginity, but her heart. Her smile said it all. How he loved that smile. Ignoring the dread that came with the word “love,” he bowed to her, following her into his bedroom.
Isabelle ignored the long settee and walked over to the bed. “Tea, later.” She half asked, half suggested, and he knew for a fact she was a mind reader.
Sebastian watched her take off her shoes, brush sand from her feet. Her toes were as sweet as the rest of her, and he realized she did not know the first thing about seduction.
“Isabelle, I’m supposed to help you take your clothes off.”
She wriggled out of her pants and thong and was naked from the waist down. “Oh, no, really?” she said with a tone that told him she knew exactly what she was doing. “Let me help you undress first.”
She climbed up on the bed, giving him an arousing view of her backside, from the waist down, and then turned to face him, kneeling up on her knees, so that they were of the same height.
“I was hoping you would be wearing that Regency costume from the other night. Untangling that cravat would be fun, and we could use it for so many other things.”
She unbuttoned his shirt. The placket ended in the middle, so she pulled it up over his head. When they were face-to-f ace again, she pressed her lips to his.
That kiss was more than Sebastian could stand. He pushed her back on the bed and she let him, laughing and tugging at the fly on the cotton pants he wore. They wrestled like puppies as they undressed, helping, hindering and teasing. They came together as though the other was all the covering they would ever need.
He should go slow, Sebastian reminded himself. She was unschooled, untouched.
When he moved from her lips to kiss her neck and caress her breast, she sighed with such anticipation that he knew slow was not what she wanted. In a wordless communication he had never experienced before, Sebastian knew what she wanted, when, where, how. Her first orgasm came when he touched her between the legs, using his hand to cup and caress her silkiness.
She threw her arms out and then around him, pulling him closer so that his manhood could feel her warmth. “Don’t stop.”
Obeying her, Sebastian pushed himself into her, not as gently as he might have, and she arched up under him. They moved
together and when his seed spilled into her, she held herself tight against him as if she needed every bit he had to give.
They played and slept and made love as the moon passed their window and the night waned. When the sun began to lighten the sky, the bed was a tangle of linen, the pillows long gone. Sebastian pulled the curtains around the bed while Isabelle slept, to give them some privacy when the servants brought hot water.
Sebastian watched the dawn and wondered what love meant.
He felt her hand on his back and then her lips where her fingers had touched. “I feel like we are in our own Eden. Come, my Adam”—she held up her arms offering herself to him—“ help your Eve greet the day.”
Lovemaking gave her a glow that made her more womanly than she had been twelve hours before, but Isabelle Reynaud was as fresh and sweet as ever.
His world had not changed either. The battery-operated clock on his nightstand still pointed to midnight as it had for fifty years. If he had harbored the tiniest hope that truly making love with someone so generous and untouched would change his life, then he was disappointed. He did not dare hope that Isabelle would spend her life with him. There were too many forces who would not allow him that kind of happiness, that “living life to the fullest,” as she said.
As he leaned down to kiss her, Sebastian wondered if he was Adam to her Eve, who was going to play the serpent?
When Sebastian invited her to share breakfast with him, Isabelle accepted, hoping, praying that this was the beginning of a lifetime of days and nights together, but first she had to tell him the truth.
“Sebastian, I know about the curse. Esmé gave me the details weeks ago.”
He answered with no more than a slow, considering nod as he poured her coffee. Isabelle could not tell how he felt about her announcement.
She tasted her coffee and found the brew too strong for her taste. After adding enough milk to temper the flavor, the coffee was more white than brown.
“Angelique drank hers the same way.” Sebastian’s eyes burned into her as he spoke. “But that is the only way the two of you are alike.”
“Good,” Isabelle said, “because I do not believe in reincarnation.”
“Angelique was tall and I guess you would say buxom, but in 1810, her size meant she was healthy and well-to-do. Her skin was a creamy brown and she was beautiful in that way that mixed-race children can be. Her blue eyes were startling and her teeth so white and healthy they did not look real. She was perfect.”
“You have no portrait of her?” Isabelle reminded herself that Angelique was a memory two hundred years old and did her best to ignore the sting of jealousy.
“No, I have no painting.” His voice was filled with regret. “The artists here were not very skilled. I did not want to waste my money on a second-rate image when I had the real woman beside me all the time.”
They sipped more coffee, and Isabelle ate some of the bread if only to pretend that everything was all right.
“What version of the story did Esmé tell you?”
Isabelle recounted the conversation as accurately as she could recall.
“Esmé is honest; I will give her that. It’s the truth or as close as makes no difference.” He shrugged, not very successful in hiding the misery the story recalled. “To this day I can dream of Angelique drowning, her heavy cloak and skirts dragging her down, fighting, fighting to stay afloat, to stay alive.”
“Stop. Stop it, Sebastian. It does you no good to relive something that you had no control over.” What kind of love had they shared that he could still feel this pain two hundred years later?
“You think I had no control? I could have told her to wait until the storm season was ended. I could have tried harder to control my lust. I could have prayed instead of cursed when she told me she wanted to stay longer.”
“You missed her.” She swallowed hard. “You loved her. It is perfectly understandable.”
“I do not know if it is. I didn’t miss her so much as I missed the comfort of her body, the way she worshipped me and everything I did. Does that sound like love to you?”
Isabelle didn’t answer.
“No, Isabelle, it was no more love than what you feel for me.”
“And how would you define that?”
“Curiosity. You are a normal, healthy woman and much too old to be a virgin. You are a generous woman and think that if you share yourself with me enough, then all my problems will be solved. You are wrong.”
“No,” she said slowly, “what I think is that if you love me enough, then all your problems will be solved.”
“After two hundred years of trying, I suspect that love is beyond me.”
“Only because you confuse lust with love.” Her hand shook as she put her cup down.
“Do not play with the words,” he said, showing the first anger since the discussion began. “Love and lust are not the same and I know the difference.”
“But they are not exclusive,” she said with heat in her voice. Not that anger would make him listen to her. “I think lust is the body’s longing for love. Lust and love combined are as perfect an intimacy as a man and woman are capable of.”
With a jerk of his hand he dismissed the subject, standing. He looked away from her, his expression more frustrated than annoyed.
Isabelle stood up too. It took a lot of trust to argue, and they had pushed trust to the limit for today. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek into his back.
“I have to work. I will come back to sing this evening.”
She felt him relax. Because she had stopped questioning him? Because she had said she would come back? Because she left the choice about their future up to him? Because she had not said “I love you”? Probably all of them.
“I will walk you as far as the gate.” This time he took her hand and wrapped it around his arm. “Holding hands is for children. This is much more intimate.” The way his arm brushed against the side of her breast was proof enough.
They walked halfway across the courtyard in silence. Isabelle breathed in the morning air, living in the moment, knowing there was more to come. “It’s so lovely not to be in a hurry. Life in the States is lived at a running pace. I prefer this.”
“Two hundred years of this much quiet is more than anyone needs.”
“Do you wish you could die?” The question popped out before Isabelle remembered she was not going to pester him with any more soul-searching.
“Isabelle, if I knew the answer to that, I am not sure I would tell you.” He was quiet a moment more and then told her, “I don’t think I can. I tried to drown myself before I had been cursed for six months. But someone rescued me. I paid someone to run me through with a sword, but he fell and killed himself instead. I ran into a burning cottage to rescue a child, hoping I would die. I wound up miserably burned on my hands and arms. It took two years to recover completely.”
“I imagine that you gave up after that.”
“Yes. And before you can ask, I tried to leave for the last time about twenty years ago. I cannot. There is no way to explain the force that keeps me here, but it is not human or man-m ade. And at this point there is a whole village of people who depend on me for their livelihood.”
He was nobler than he gave himself credit for.
“Woman, stop looking at me as though I belong with your martyred saints. Go now. I will see you this evening.”
She kissed him, a quick kiss of promise and parting. If she had known what was coming, she would have made the kiss a farewell embrace he would never forget.
Isabelle was committed to her work. It had always been what came first in her life. Last night had changed that. She could hardly wait to see Sebastian again, to do whatever he wanted to do up to and including making love all night long again.
She was not sure if Sebastian loved her beyond amused affection and passion, but she loved him. Their future was uncertain at best, but their present was filled with hope.
Isabell
e changed and washed up as quickly as she could and hurried to the healer’s house. Esmé looked awful, as though she had drank and smoked everything she could think of. Why was she at work if she felt so bad?
“You bitch!” The healer wailed and tried to slap her. Isabelle knew how to defend herself and, in less than a minute, Esmé was on the floor, with Isabelle sitting on her back.
“Why are you calling me names?”
“You slept with him.” With that, Esmé’s rage disappeared. It felt as though she were a balloon that had lost all its air. Isabelle moved off her back and sat on the floor beside her.
“Yes, I stayed the night. Why does that upset you?”
“You are still as pure as you were yesterday. He loves you?”
“I don’t know!” Isabelle’s uncertainty came out as anger, and she took a deep breath and tried again. “He hasn’t said the words, but I love him and I think that’s what matters.”
“How can you love someone you hardly know?”
“I have never thought loving someone was about time, but about the connection you feel with them. You know what I’m talking about if only because you and I do not have it.”
“You hate me.”
A hangover-i nduced pity party was imminent. Isabelle got up and went to find the teapot. “I like you and respect your work immensely, Esmé. But there is something missing. Or something so important to you that it will keep us from being any closer than professional colleagues. If friendship is important to you, then you will tell me what it is.”
“No.” Esmé struggled to her feet. “But I can tell you that I can no longer work with you. Leave this house and find some other way to amuse yourself.” Esmé grabbed the teacup from Isabella and pushed her toward the door. “And stop being a fool. Of course it matters if he loves you. If he doesn’t, you will be sent away the moment he grows tired of you or when you begin to demand too much. He is just a man after all.”
Ten
Before Isabelle could answer, argue or leave, a man and woman came through the door carrying a boy whose foot was covered with blood-soaked linen. She could not recall their names but did remember that they had been among the first to come for inoculations.