Her trust was always what he’d wanted. Why, then, did he feel as if it were an unexpected gift—a gift he both desired and did not desire, an offering that weighed as much as a cannonball?
“You’ve already done so much for me,” she said, “when I’ve given you nothing in return.”
He dipped his head to hold her gaze when she would have looked away. “You’ll get your chance. There are no debts between friends.”
If only that were true. But hope was in her face—hope he’d put there, unworthy though he might be. “I told you about my past with Gary,” she said. “He’s left town, and I don’t know why. But the situation with him isn’t resolved. Not for me.” She squared her shoulders. “I’m still looking for my answers, and my memory. And I know where I have to continue the search.”
So she wasn’t giving up. Unfortunate—but Avery wasn’t here to harm her or stand in the way.
“How can I help?” he asked.
“I need to return to the place where I grew up, the resort my mother ran when I was a child. I haven’t been there since I left Manzanita years ago.”
And she was afraid. David got up and moved around the table. “You don’t want to go alone.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “It’s a … bit like walking into the dragon’s lair. Does that sword of yours work?”
“I’ve yet to slay a dragon, but I’m willing to try.” He lifted his hand, laid it gently along the curve of her neck under the silky wisps of loose hair. She went very still.
“You said you trusted me,” he said. “I would slay a thousand dragons for you, Jesse.”
A deep shudder ran through her body. Slowly she raised her own hand, reached behind to cover his.
“Thank you.”
How was it that the lightest of caresses, the unaffected words of gratitude, could be so charged with erotic power? David sucked in a breath and tried to remember that they’d been discussing his saber, not the other weapon he’d be very happy to employ at this very moment, on the floor or on the sofa or the table or wherever Jesse would permit.
However often he told himself that wanting her did nothing to further his cause, he couldn’t stop it. That desire was as much a part of this body he assumed as the feel of a heartbeat and the flow of air in his lungs. And it wasn’t Sophie he thought of. Never Sophie.
Jesse’s kiss had shown that she responded to him. Responded as herself. He’d come back to Earth to win forgiveness from his former wife. But Jesse was the one he wanted to win.
“Jesse,” he whispered.
She dropped her hand from his and moved restlessly, cueing him to withdraw. “I want to get an early start in the morning. I haven’t been sleeping much, so I’m going to bed early tonight. If you’re coming with me, maybe you need to conserve your energy.”
A dismissal if ever he’d heard one. And he knew why. She couldn’t help but feel what passed between them with every touch. “You’d send me back so soon?”
She flushed. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting … the place you come from. If you want to rest here …”
Yes. To stay with her as she made ready for sleep, to watch her lie down in her nightclothes in her solitary bed and imagine lying there with her, atop her, inside her—
“I’d offer you the couch,” she said, “if you need it, since you’re—”
“A ghost?” he said, forcing a smile. “I cannot maintain my physical form forever, but perhaps I can take my rest in a pleasanter place than limbo.”
“Then you’re welcome to stay.” She turned away quickly. “I don’t suppose you eat or drink? I never thought to ask.”
David was deluged by visions of steak and kidney pie, fresh butter on new-baked bread, chunks of pungent cheese. But the mere act of eating would deplete his energies, and he preferred to spare them for other opportunities.
“Thank you, but no.” He strolled into the living room and sat on the sofa. “Don’t let me interfere with your routine. It gives me pleasure to observe the simple tasks of daily life.”
She followed him to the doorway. “You … do remember what you promised.”
“I’ll not play Peeping Tom,” he said, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Though you are a very beautiful woman, Jesse. The temptation is considerable.”
She stared at him, color high, and folded her arms across her chest. “It’s not that I’m beautiful, is it? Or even that we used to be lovers. You haven’t had sex for nearly two centuries.”
He choked on a startled laugh. By Boney’s shrunken balls, she wasn’t so demure as she liked to pretend. A modern woman. He thought he could come to like modern women very much indeed.
“Would you take pity on me, Jesse, and cure my deprivation?” he asked, leaning forward.
“Will it save your soul?”
If only it could. But if there was a way to bed Jesse and win his freedom at the same time … David groaned inwardly at the increasing pressure in his groin.
Jesse was backing away, disappearing into the kitchen. But she had almost—almost—made an offer. David censored his increasingly torturous thoughts and closed his eyes, drifting into a semiphysical state where he could still feel the sofa under him and smell the delicious scents that came from the kitchen. Bread, he guessed, and jam, and hot tea. His mouth watered.
Small things he’d never appreciated when he’d had them, like the sound of a baby’s cry and the rhythm of hoofbeats on cobbles and the faintly off-key strains of a country dance. The fragrance of dew-splashed roses in the morning and the pungent odor of London’s streets on a hot summer’s day.
In Jesse’s home he could begin to remember these things. The armor of years sloughed away, and he was a boy again. Lancelot, who still had hope and could find pleasure in so little.
He caught Jesse tiptoeing across the room as if not to wake him. He maintained the illusion of sleep until she’d gone into her bedroom and closed the door.
He could walk through any wall she chose to put between them. When there was silence in the cabin, he went to her door and paused.
Once before he’d found her sleeping. The sight had been arousing then—but now, with his desire heated to fever pitch, he wondered how he could keep his hands from her. From her hair, her skin, her body. Or his mouth from her lips and breasts and sweet feminine secrets.
Had he been a truly honorable man, he could have used that excuse for not intruding on her privacy and breaking his word. But he was not honorable. He retreated because he knew he would not be able to control himself, and a false step would destroy Jesse’s trust in him.
He’d been wrong about being able to remain in this house with Jesse, bound as he was. He sought relief outside, under the hills and the stars and the sky. Living men and women could lose themselves in true sleep, but he could only choose his form of wakeful emptiness.
He set himself to wait out the lonely night.
“Have you ever ridden in a car?”
Jesse stood beside the open door of her vehicle, smiling at David with a mischievous glint in her eye.
For a woman about to face a challenge she greatly feared, Jesse had greeted him quite cheerfully. She was armored in determination, and even the bright summer morning seemed to bolster her tenacious good humor.
David moved closer to the horseless carriage and touched the warm metal surface. “I know about them,” he said. “News of the world did reach my corner of limbo from time to time. Your modern conveniences don’t unduly shock me.”
She slid into the seat behind the wheel and pushed open the opposite door. “You can ride with me—unless you’d rather meet me there.”
No, indeed. David had a peculiarly keen desire to stay at Jesse’s side. “I can hardly decline such a fascinating experience,” he said.
“Then hop in.”
He did so, gingerly, and in spite of his bravado he winced when the engine engaged. He felt a stab of longing for his faithful army mount, Cyril. If there was any justice, Cyril had survived the war
and conferred his courage on many generations of colts and fillies.
Cyril wouldn’t have had much use for this contraption. Jesse maneuvered the noisy vehicle down the paved roads while David observed with impunity the passing townsfolk who weren’t aware of his existence. Within a quarter of an hour they’d left Manzanita’s outskirts and reached Jesse’s destination.
From outside the heavy wire fence that protected it, the resort appeared as a cluster of smallish buildings barely visible behind a thick screen of trees, a wide clearing, a miniature lake, and woods that bounded it on three sides. Jesse got out of the truck, released her breath in a long rush, and strode toward the locked gate.
“The place was sold after my mother died,” she said, subdued as she wrapped her fingers around the wire. “I was told that someone else tried to run it for a while, but they couldn’t make it profitable.”
“And you grew up here,” David said, joining her.
She didn’t answer but knelt to examine the base of the fence. “Someone’s already been in here. The fence is cut.” She returned to the truck for a pack, then knelt to pry open the cut section of fence. The resulting opening was wide and tall enough for a man on hands and knees.
David melted through the fence and met Jesse on the other side, offering assistance. She brushed off her jeans, gaze sweeping the deserted compound.
“I don’t … even know where to start,” she said.
David kept a firm grip on her arm and felt her tremble. “What exactly do you hope to find?”
“I had a dream … about my mother and Gary fighting in the cabin where we lived. I’m convinced it had an important meaning, but that something was missing.”
Her words didn’t make complete sense, but David didn’t blame her for her distraction. He remembered returning to the ruins of Parkmere Hall after Sophie’s death, numb and empty, unable to bear the sight of the devastated rose garden she’d loved or the home he’d spent so much effort avoiding. The ghosts—real or illusory—of his indifferent father and autocratic mother walked what was left of the charred halls and blackened chambers, leaving no room for any shade Sophie might have left behind.
How he’d hated being there. He knew how Jesse must feel, and he wouldn’t let her suffer alone.
“Were you ever happy here?” he asked. “Have you any good memories at all?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes. Sometimes my mother would be sober for a while—months at a time. Before Gary came—” She shook her head and burst into motion, striding toward the nearest buildings. David matched her frantic pace. At the last moment she veered away from the cabins and went to the lakeshore, to a crumbling pier that jutted out over the water. The skeleton of an old rowboat lay beached on the gravel.
“We used to row out on the lake, when no one else was staying here,” Jesse said. “There were usually just enough guests during the year to keep us going, but I liked it when it was just me and Mom. Then she had time for me. It was our own little world.”
“And your father?”
“He left when I was seven. He just disappeared. I think he sent money for a while, but …” Her fists clenched.
“Why did he leave you?”
“I think that he … expected more than my mother could give. He hated her drinking.” She jerked her head in a silent gesture of denial. “He abandoned us. That’s all there is to it.”
“And you hate him for that.”
She looked at him bleakly. “Shouldn’t I? He never bothered to get in touch with me. Not even when Mom died. Not until he was dead. Then I found out he’d become very rich after he’d left us, and he willed his fortune to me.”
David let go of her arm and moved away, staring at the fringe of woods along the opposite shore. Not until he was dead. Ironic that David should be in the same position. Had Jesse’s father hoped to win her forgiveness postmortem? Had it been belated love or guilt that had motivated him at the end?
It didn’t matter. Jesse hadn’t forgiven.
“There’s no point in putting it off,” Jesse said. She threw David a look of appeal that reminded him how ignorant she was of his need for her absolution. “Will you come with me to the cabin?”
He rejoined her, and they walked across the open meadow to the buildings along the east shore of the lake. The twelve or so small cabins were strung along the lake, anchored at one end by a slightly larger cabin, a second structure Jesse identified as the lodge dining room, and several outbuildings.
Jesse headed for the larger cabin. Unlike a few of the smaller cottages, it hadn’t been badly damaged by the ravages of time and weather. A battered, rustically carved “Welcome” sign hung askew on the door. Jesse hesitated at the threshold, biting her lower lip.
“I haven’t been here since they took me to the hospital,” she said. “I … don’t know what I’m going to find.”
David touched her shoulder. “I’m with you, Jesse.”
She turned to him suddenly, grasped his hand, and stared into his eyes, as if testing his sincerity. Then she released him and gripped the doorknob.
It turned easily, unlocked. She let the door fall open. Over her shoulder David could see a small room and adjoining kitchen, a few pieces of worn furniture, a scattering of dried leaves and pine needles and other debris. Festoons of cobwebs hung from the walls and ceiling. The kitchen window was broken, another badly cracked.
Clouds of dirt and dust flew up under Jesse’s feet as she walked in. That another person had been in the cabin before her was obvious from the track of footprints crisscrossing the room. Jesse hardly seemed to notice.
She didn’t speak at all, and David could well imagine the reason for her muteness. She made a circuit of the room, touching the furniture and coughing behind her hand at the dust she raised.
“I remember … we used to play Scrabble, sitting right here on the couch with a TV tray,” she murmured. “Just Mom and me. And in winter we’d read aloud in front of a blazing fire.” She crouched before the cob-webbed fireplace. “I was always scared of getting too close to the flames. Mom never teased me about it, but Gary …”
Gary. Avery. Jesse might well be afraid of fire. David swallowed and watched her rise and walk to the nearest window.
“It’s so dark in here,” she said. She pulled at the curtains to open them, and the rotten fabric ripped in her hands.
She stumbled back into David’s arms. He steadied her and listened to the rasp of her breathing, so charged with distress. He wanted to hold her close to his heart, ease a little of that familiar pain.
But she pulled free and walked into the kitchen.
“It … used to be filled with sunlight,” she said. She turned her back to the dirty, broken window and opened a cupboard above the tile counter. “They didn’t even bother to take out the dishes.” She removed a chipped plate and pressed it to her breast. “No one would have wanted them, anyway.”
Except Jesse. She continued to hug the plate as she gazed about the room. “My dream was set here. They argued, and then it filled up with water.…” She put the plate down and opened each of the cupboards in turn, then left the kitchen for a short hallway.
She seemed in control of herself, able to master the crippling emotions she had feared. But when she entered the first of two bedchambers, she went rigid and far too quiet.
The room had the look of one designed for a young child, with faded but cheerful wallpaper, plain furnishings, and the remnants of toys. Jesse picked up a three-legged model horse and set it carefully on a shelf. It toppled over again, and Jesse simply stared. Minutes passed, and still she didn’t move.
“Jesse,” David said. He gathered her in the curve of his arm, ignoring the baser feelings that arose in him when he touched her. “You’ve seen enough for now.”
“No.” But she remained where she was, neither fighting his embrace nor returning it. “Something’s missing. Somewhere—”
“Then perhaps a bit of fresh air will help restore your memory.” He turned h
er toward the door. “Come. Let me take you out of here.”
She crumpled in his hold, her body admitting what her face would not disclose. She held on to him, and he felt strong—strong and wanted and needed, hating the people that had made her suffer as he’d hated little in his life.
He took her outside and found a seat for her on a tree stump, his hand at her back. She ducked her head between her knees and covered her eyes. He thought she might be weeping; he hoped she would grant herself that release.
But when she looked up her eyes were dry, and he knew she’d won another struggle against the weakness she saw in her own soul. To be so vulnerable before David would surrender too much of herself—more than even her newfound trust for him would permit.
So her pain stayed locked inside. David felt it nonetheless, and it pounded away at the walls he’d built within himself so long ago. Walls he hadn’t known existed until he began to discover Jesse’s.
He didn’t want to look behind his own walls. He preferred the surface, the shiny facade, the protective veneer. Limbo had stripped that from him, but he hadn’t learned. He was still—
“Tell me about your childhood,” Jesse said, startling him. “I know you said you don’t remember much of your life. But maybe now that we’ve been talking … maybe it’s coming back to you. As mine is to me.” She looked at him with earnest entreaty in her troubled eyes. “Did I … did Sophie know you as a boy?”
He wasn’t tempted to laugh, though she might have read his very thoughts. Wasn’t it a way he could offer consolation—by sharing his past, letting her know she wasn’t alone? Wasn’t it the right time to begin preparing her for what she had to be told, sooner or later?
He sank into a crouch beside her. “I am starting to remember,” he said. “Do you wish to know about my idyllic upbringing among the landed aristocracy?”
“Was it idyllic?” she asked. “Did you have a happy childhood?”
He closed his eyes, as if drawing on images that were only just returning. “I was privileged,” he said. “I wanted for nothing. My father and mother came from long and distinguished bloodlines and considerable fortune. The viscounts of Ashthorpe were good ton, even if they seldom ventured from the country.”
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