Spirit of the Ruins

by Jenny Lykins

  As the door closed behind her, Ty walked like a doomed man toward the confrontation with his brother. What had Dan come home with this time? Another two hundred pound St. Bernard? A bottle of whiskey? A Vietnamese pot-bellied pig? A girl?

  Dan lounged on his bed in the middle of the war zone he called a room. Alone. No alcoholic fumes wafted on the air, and no animals or girls scurried out of sight. Ty strolled in, dumped a pile of dirty clothes out of a chair, then flipped it around and straddled it facing Daniel. He took a good, long look at his brother.

  Hell.

  He wished it’d been a girl.

  The throbbing in his head doubled. His teeth clenched so hard he thought his jaw would lock.

  “Dan,” he stated with absolute calm, “you have a ring in your nose.”

  Dan gave him that emotionless stare he’d mastered over the last year or so.

  “What’s your point, Ty?”

  Ty stared at the small silver ring piercing Dan’s left nostril.

  “Take it out, Dan.”

  “I don’t think so, Ty.”

  Ty rose from the chair and towered over the brother who would be bigger than him in a few years.

  “Let me put it to you this way.” He managed to keep his calm. “That ring’s coming out, and my way is a lot more painful than yours.”

  Dan stared him down, a challenge in his eyes as he gauged whether Ty was bluffing.

  Ty took a step toward him.

  “Okay, okay!” Dan flinched, then fumbled with the nose ring until it slid free, leaving a tiny red hole behind.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Dan? Are you into self-mutilation now?” Ty snatched the ring and flattened it between his fingers. “I asked you a question.”

  “Ah, hell, Ty. All the guys are doing it.”

  “Don’t say hell!”

  “You said it first!”

  Ty scrubbed at his face. Whatever happened to the brother who followed him around like a puppy?

  “How about these?” He waved the cigarettes under the freshly-pierced nose. “Are all the guys doing these? Because I gotta tell ya, Dan, you’re runnin’ with some pretty stupid friends. I thought you were smarter than that.”

  Dan squirmed under the assault of the cigarettes, but Ty couldn’t let up. Not this time.

  “How much do you remember about Mom, Dan?” He crushed the cigarettes in his fist, then tossed them on the littered desk and lowered himself back to the chair.

  Dan stared at the rumpled bedspread and shrugged.

  “Do you remember her at all?”

  His brother had only been five when their mother had died. How much would a five year old remember?

  “A little,” Dan said grudgingly.

  “Do you remember her wearing those scarves after the chemo?”

  Dan gave a slight nod.

  “Do you remember that hacking cough that she always said was a cold coming on?”

  No response this time.

  “Do you remember her lying in the hospital, gasping for breath as her life left her?” Ty picked up the cigarettes and tossed them onto Dan’s lap. “Because I do! All because of those.” He pointed at the cigarettes. “All because of a cancer stick. She died because of those, Dan, even though she’d stopped smoking. She stopped too late and she died. If it weren’t for these,” he jumped up and snatched the cigarettes, hurling them across the room, “she’d still be alive. Do you know how hard it was to watch her die? I was twenty years old and I held her hand until it went limp in mine. I won’t watch you die like that, damn you. If you ever pick up another cigarette, I’ll beat the living daylights out of you and I’ll draw a crowd while I’m at it. Do you hear me?”

  Dan sat there, sullen and silent.

  “Answer me!” Ty roared. Judas Priest, his father’s voice had just come out of his mouth.

  Dan finally nodded, still staring at the pattern on the bedspread.

  “Are you going to smoke again?”

  Dan gave one single shake of his head.

  “Swear it,” Ty demanded. If Daniel gave his word, he would never go back on it. That’s one thing he could say about the sixteen year old. He kept his word.

  “I swear.”

  “All right, then.” Ty scraped his fingers through his hair. He paced the entire step and a half of floor that didn’t have something strewn on it, calming himself, trying to let go of his frustration. “Look, Dan, I may not be the best brother in the world, and I admit I make a lousy parent. But nobody handed me a ‘how to’ book when Mom died. I’m working this parent thing out as I go along, and until somebody writes me an owner’s manual on how to raise a kid, you’re going to have to deal with my mistakes and I’m going to have to deal with yours.

  Dan stared at the bedspread, a little less sullen.

  “Want to go see a movie tonight?” Ty changed his tone as well as the topic. If Celia thought they needed to spend more time together, now was definitely the time to start. He’d give Dan his undivided attention. And that would keep his mind off Callen. Two birds with one stone.

  When Dan left for school, Ty crashed on the couch, exhausted, numb, empty. He slept in fits, forcing himself awake each time his dreams turned to Callen, until he finally gave up and trudged outside to collect his equipment from the car. He organized his office, mowed the lawn, cleaned out the garage, then, with hours left to fill, he wandered into his brother’s room and rolled up his sleeves.

  Dan brought Sam home with him after school to do their homework, and Ty had to agree with Celia’s assessment of the boy.

  When Sam left, Ty and Dan had dinner on Beale Street, then drove back east to find the goriest, most action-packed, shoot-em-up movie playing. They pigged out on popcorn and Cokes, then hit a pool hall near the university. Dan managed to beat Ty in at least one game fair and square.

  When he went to bed that night, Ty slept like the dead, exhausted both mentally and physically. But even his exhaustion didn’t keep the dreams of Callen at bay.

  *******

  A car horn honked outside, but Ty rolled over in bed, taking the pillow with him, and sank back into the dream…

  He scooped Callen into his arms, took those creaking stairs two at a time, then they fell onto the bed in a tangle of skirts, petticoats, arms and legs – laughing – until they looked into each other’s eyes. Suddenly, with a will of their own, his shaking fingers untied ribbons that laced the back of her gown together. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt while warm, humid air scented with honeysuckle and wild locust billowed through the sheer fabric at the windows, caressing his skin as she bared it, sending his drawings of her fluttering from the nightstand just as butterflies fluttered in his stomach.

  He let the feelings come, amazed that they came at all. For so long he’d been the sensible one, taking on the burdens, shutting out the temptations of life for fear he would succumb to them.

  But Callen wasn’t a one night stand; a brief encounter to assuage his baser needs. She was the woman he had loved from the moment he’d watched her walk through that ghostly door. No. He mentally shook his head. He’d loved her even before that. From the moment he’d ridden beside his father up the Windsor drive, intimidated by the opulent home, his little boy heart still raw from the loss of his mother.

  No, Callen was his wife now, and before he rode off to war in just a matter of hours, he would make their wedding night together perfect; burn the night into her memory, her soul, as surely as she was burned into his.

  With her cradled in his arms, he forced himself to slow his frantic hands, to gentle his touch and claim her mouth with a warm, languid kiss. His callused palms skimmed across skin as soft and smooth as velvet, shoving away bodice, lacy chemise straps, only to encounter her corset cover.

  Hell.

  Women wore too damn many layers.

  The rigid corset barred further exploration. He fumbled through the layers for the lacing strings, tempted to snatch up his freshly-sharpened bayonet and slice away the blas
ted clothing and the infernal string, right up its crisscrossed center. But instead, he took a deep breath and slowly worked at loosening the infuriating garment.

  Callen pulled his shirt free from his trousers, then scorched a trail with her hands from his back to his shoulders, pushing his shirt down over his arms, pinning him to stillness while she smiled against his lips.

  “It unhooks in the front,” she whispered, her voice husky, out of breath.

  With a groan he kissed her harder, then rose to his knees, pulling the shirt from his arms and flinging it into a corner. The loosened top half of her gown soon followed, leaving him to stifle a gulp and ponder the problem of a buttoned corset cover, a hooked corset, and a chemise that neither buttoned nor hooked.

  He stared at the troublesome garments, careful to keep his expression all-knowing. Would she find him lacking if she knew him to be as inexperienced as she?

  Though he’d grown to manhood in relative seclusion as a plantation employee, he had to admit that more than a fair share of ladies – and other females – offered freely the experience he now could put to such practical use. But his father, a man with deep moral convictions, had once told him that giving in to his primal instincts was the easy way out. Any man could, with very little effort, find a willing woman if he looked long enough or had enough money. But just as a husband expects his wife to come to him untried, his greatest gift to his bride would be to give to her, as well, what he’d given to no other woman.

  The advice, and the memory of the love between his parents, had left such an impression on Tylar, he’d chosen the more difficult path and kept that gift to give to Callen. And though he regretted it not for a moment, he had no desire to have his wife think him an inexperienced, bumbling fool.

  With a deep, calming breath, he set to work on the tiny buttons of the corset cover. Once the garment fell open, Callen sat up, eyes downcast, and helped him slip the fabric from her arms, her cheeks stained a vivid pink even in the dim glow of the candles.

  Was she frightened? Repulsed? Had her mother prepared her for what was to come?

  All the horror stories he’d ever heard rampaged through his mind. Brides screaming in pain, begging husbands to stop, or lying there like a corpse after having been instructed by other women to show no encouragement for a deed they viewed as foul, while the groom consummated the marriage on his own. Bloody sheets, sobbing wives, women who banned their husbands from their beds at the first possible moment.

  He would not allow a night like that for Callen. If he had to stop this very moment and leave his bride a virgin, he would, rather than leave her with bitter memories of an act that should be cherished as sacred, that should be as wondrous for her as for him. He would not leave her with bitter memories of their first night together as husband and wife.

  Gently, he tipped up her chin with his knuckle until her dark brown gaze rose to meet his. He asked her, with his eyes, and she answered just as silently. She had no fear, no revulsion, only a want and need as strong as that which already raged inside him.

  He forced a reassuring smile, leaned in slowly to rain little, sipping kisses against her lips. When she sighed, he breathed in the sound, swallowed hard, then took hold of the top of the rigid corset and started unhooking. The heat of her skin through the underlying chemise flamed against the backs of his fingers, sending sparks through him like flint dragging across stone.

  With each freed hook, the fire in him licked higher…and lower. When, finally, the corset fell away, both his hands and hers tore at the chemise, dragged it over her head, sent it flying to the floor as they fell together, wrapped in each other’s arms, bare flesh against bare flesh for the very first time. He savored the exquisite, unique feel of her, explored the silky wonder of her warm skin while she, in turn, learned the contours of his chest, his back, his shoulders…torturing him so, he had to wonder if she, too, burned with that same explosive need.

  The look in her eyes answered that question.

  His gaze heated as it wandered downward, following his hands, memorizing every detail from her soft lower lip to the swells that so perfectly fit his hands, to the odd little birthmark just above her navel. He swallowed back a groan.

  The rest of their clothing fell away then, piece by agonizing, thought-muddling piece. He tried to hold back. He tried not to frighten her. How long was an appropriate time to reassure a bride before he could, in good conscience, give her the ultimate gift? Would she even view what would come next as a gift? Could he do this without hurting her?

  Damnation! Did all men have such doubts the first time they—

  “Tylar,” she whispered, and then her lips wiped all those doubts from his mind. Indeed, she managed to wipe his mind clear of any form of coherent thought whatsoever.

  He rolled atop her, his heart thrumming, his head spinning.

  One moment they were two people, breaths coming quickly, hands frantic to learn each other in the most intimate of ways, and the next moment – the next exquisite, explosive, exhilarating moment – they were one, joined body, mind, and soul forever with each heavenly, torturous movement of—

  Brrrnnggg!

  With each heavenly, torturous movement—

  Brrrnnggg!

  With each—

  Brrrnnggg!

  “Hell!”

  Ty threw the pillow he’d been cradling across the room, kicked away the sheet that had somehow wrapped around him, then snatched up the phone.

  “WHAT?”

  “Hello, there!” a nauseatingly cheerful male voice all but shouted. “Is Ty around?”

  Ty rubbed the back of his neck, kicked one last rumple of sheet away from his feet, and took a deep, calming breath.

  “This is Ty.”

  “Ty! I’m Robert with Unified Alternative Credit, and since you have such an exemplary credit standing, I wanted to let you know that you qualify for a no-annual-fee platinum card with a fixed rate of…”

  Ty dragged his mind, kicking and screaming, into the present, away from the feel and smell and taste of Callen, away from making love to the woman who would haunt him for the rest of his life, away from the wedding night they would never have, to the sound of a man trying to sign him up for a freakin’ credit card!

  “Robert!” he yelled into the phone with every ounce of rage inside him. “First,” he said, before the guy had a chance to take another breath, “I want you to put me on your ‘do not solicit’ list,” – he gripped the phone hard enough to crack it – “and then I want you to take that list, roll it up into a tight little roll, and—” He clamped his lips shut, ground his teeth, let out a frustrated snort at the little voice in his head saying He’s just doing his job.

  Oh, hell.

  “Just put me on the ‘do not call’ list,” he ground through clenched teeth.

  “Of course, sir, but if you should change your mind you can reach us at—”

  Ty managed not to break the phone when he slammed it down.

  He grabbed the other pillow and slapped it over his head as he wallowed back down into the nest of covers. As an afterthought, he knocked the phone bungie-jumping across the room, then waited for that obnoxious off-the-hook beep to stop before trying to pick up that…dream…where he’d left off.

  Try as he might, the wedding night, and all that came after, eluded him. But the dream haunted him. The memory haunted him. Why had he dreamed as if he were Tylar? Had Callen’s stories of him, her insistence that he was her husband, subconsciously caused Ty to identify with some long-dead Civil War soldier?

  Had he lived it?

  Could part of him – his essence, his spirit – have been Tylar McCall in the 1800s? Had he married Callen, fathered a son, died at Shiloh? Had that dream really been a memory of his wedding night? Had the vague dreams he’d had lately of Shiloh been memories? Certainly that concept was no harder to explain than the question of why he had a double in the 1860s who not only looked like him, had the same name, but even had the same signature and style in
art. For that matter, was a previous life any harder to believe than the fact that he’d traveled in time?

  *******

  Callen let Tylar’s letter fall from her fingers and drift to the floor. She had no need to read those lines again. Every word burned in her memory like blisters that wouldn’t heal. You must believe that I’m not your husband. He died a hero’s death. I will always remember you and my brief stay here with fondness.

  How could something so intangible as words cause more pain than any physical torture? How could a word such as “fondness” suddenly sound so despicable and cold?

  He would remember her with fondness. Did he think he had softened the blow of his leaving by telling her she would be a fond memory?

  She stared out the window of the overseer’s cottage, swiped away a lone tear that had escaped her iron will.

  It would have been better if he had never come. Her life had been hellish before; a widow, a beloved son taken from her because he wasn’t perfect, a brother who’d become barely recognizable with his sullen, unpredictable moods, insisting she marry a man she didn’t love. As a widow dependent on her brother, she’d had no hope. Now she had no hope, but now she also knew she had a husband out there who either did not want her or did not care enough to remember her. However, the cut that wounded deepest was that Tylar knew he had a son, had met that precious child, then had walked away and left him to be raised by strangers. Truly, this was not the Tylar she had married – loyal, a best friend, a man who would take care of his family, first and foremost, no matter what the sacrifice.

  No, he was not the man she had married, but he was her husband, and now she would carry the memories of their last few days together with every breath she drew, until she breathed her last, and she would feel the betrayal with each and every one.

  She would also forever wonder where he was, if she would suffer an accidental encounter with him, if he was safe, or even still alive, if he had a new wife, children who were siblings to their own dear child…