Heartless A Shieldmaiden's Voice: A Covenant Keeper Novel

by S. R. Karfelt

  For years she’d dreaded when he realized it, but he seemed to be taking it rather well. Unable to confirm it, Carole simply asked, “Where do you want to be?”

  “With Beth!”

  She looked away. Beth would have a quite a fit. Oh, she’d smile and do her best to say something positive to Ted, but the poor young woman needed some space from her parents. As long as she stayed near cities, Carole had decided she’d be comfortable with it. Luckily Beth preferred cities. Besides, her daughter had bigger problems than the unlikely event of running into one of their kind. Until she had to suffer the consequences of her tongue without her parents to protect her, she’d never learn to control it. In the years since Carole’s father had been killed in the desert, she’d traveled the globe and came to realize just how rare her kind had to be. She’d never met another, not in the jungles of a rainforest and not even in the Alps. And anyway, poor Beth needed to have a life without her parents nosing into her business anymore.

  Ted said, “I’m not following her to University, Carole. I know you think I’m overprotective, but I think you’re under-protective. Beth still needs us. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about something on the Mediterranean, a nice villa where we can enjoy life, where no one can transfer me to Bangkok two days before Christmas. Wouldn’t you like that too?”

  “Greece sounds nice.”

  “Carole, I’m not asking you if a vacation sounds nice. I’m asking you to quit and retire to Greece with me. We can spend holidays like a family, before Beth is out of school and gone.”

  Roaring filled Carole’s ears. It wasn’t the voices, they were silent. It was panic. Ted watched her, those eyes every bit as attractive as the first time she’d seen him. He wanted her to give everything up for his fantasy. Work was the only thing that had ever made her feel like she had a place in this world. What would she do with herself without work? And what of Rutak Tural’s charge that she use his gift wisely? Both Rutak and her father had died so she could live. What was the point of her life if she no longer worked?

  Ted stopped pacing. “I hate your job. I hate knowing what you’re doing. I hate that you do it because of me. I hate the thought that you can stand in our kitchen and bake bread and then head off to God knows where and—” he mouthed the words, “kill people.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I think I know exactly what it is like. I’m the other side of the same coin as you’ve often pointed out.”

  He waited, still and watching, while her mind raced. Would she do this for him? Could she do this for him? Ted had always hated her work. Maybe it was the reason he still kept her just outside of his heart, why he never let her closer. He just didn’t know what he was asking. The choice came down to her heart or her life. The voices seemed to be listening, and even Carole didn’t know her answer until she spoke.

  “Okay. I’ll tell them next time they call.” Strangely it didn’t stop her heart, and the voices approved. “Yes, love. It is your reason for being.” Was it? Maybe it could be. Besides, there had been questions at work. Curious comments about her ability to still keep up, not many, but it wouldn’t be long before they did notice and wonder. She smiled. Yes, this felt right.

  Ted’s answering smile flashed. He shut out the light and shot across the room, gathering her into his arms. That night Carole felt certain she’d made the right choice.

  THE APARTMENT IN Skopelos had turquoise shutters and a wrought iron balcony with a view of the Aegean Sea. At first Beth seemed to love coming home to the white walled city for holidays. Then she stopped coming. Carole stood in the tiled entryway with Beth’s monthly letter in her hands. In the past seven years Beth’s life changed drastically too, and now instead of visiting she called her Dad every day, and once a month she wrote to her mother. Carole wasn’t certain whose life looked better on the outside and worse at heart, hers or Beth’s. Beth worked in International Banking, something to do with stocks. Carole had never really taken the time to understand it. The last two years Beth had been commuting between Amsterdam and Frankfurt by company plane, making an awful lot of money. Carole slid a finger along the flap of the envelope and tugged a folded piece of paper out. It hadn’t been written on, but a photograph had been tucked inside. It showed Beth sitting inside a private plane, clad in a dark business suit, her blonde hair upswept into a professional knot. On the back of the photograph she’d written: I found a place where people like my talent. Carole flipped it over again and examined the photograph. Beth’s eyes reminded her of her own now. She recognized pain. She dropped the picture in a drawer.

  Ted sat on the balcony with the morning newspaper and his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. He whistled low. “Carole, come take a look at this.”

  Leaning over his shoulder she looked at the latest stock market numbers. Over the past couple of years they’d made a tidy sum of money themselves. Of course they’d had a bit to begin with. She’d barely touched her income over the years, and though her salary had never been more than a Private in the Marine Corp, she’d been given bonuses that she’d never paid attention to until her retirement. Carole had been dumbfounded to find between the two of them they had over a million dollars in savings, plus Ted’s comfortable pension. They’d celebrated by buying a flat of geraniums for the balcony and splurging on cinnamon ice-cream whenever they wanted. Ted seemed pleased that he could live comfortably, retired at the age of fifty-five. Every morning when he checked the stock market he announced, “This is the life.” He said it this morning and stood, his chair grating noisily over the concrete flooring of the balcony. Sweeping Carole into his burly arms he danced across the tiny space into the sunny front room.

  “We should go dancing every week. This is Greece, there’s probably a law about it. I don’t want to be thrown out over it.”

  Pressing her head against his shoulder, Carole felt his heart. He was happy. There was joy to be found in Ted’s happiness. He kissed her neck, and tugged her T-shirt down, stretching the neck until it bared her shoulder and kissing it.

  “You really do have beautiful skin,” he whispered, marveling as he ran fingers along her face and neck. Carole tugged his shirt up and over his head. They stood in the bright light of day and Ted cradled her in his arms, his perfect lips doing things to hers that brought goose bumps shivering over her flesh. She forgot about the look in Beth’s eye and her work.

  “Remember the drinking fountain?” he murmured, eyeing the fountain in the corner of the large room. Water trickled from the top of the colorful mosaic fountain, dribbling down to the wide bottom. When Beth visited, she marveled over it, saying it was her favorite feature in the room. An artist had been the previous tenant and lost his security deposit for installing it.

  “I remember everything about those weeks when we first met,” Carole assured him. Yanking her shirt over her head and kicking her shorts off, she grabbed Ted’s hand and led him to it. Sliding onto the damp edge she wrapped her arms around his torso.

  “We’ll probably lose our deposit if we break it,” he warned.

  “Let’s break it,” Carole pleaded, pressing her cheek against the old tattoo engraved over his heart. Beth. Carole kissed it, and when Ted tried to move away she held tighter, letting her heart brush over his. His heart beckoned to hers, tantalizing, always just beyond her reach. She wanted to dive into it, to know it, to claim it. Sometimes she considered claiming it against his will. Was it possible? Would it hurt him? After all this time, would he mind so much? Ted twisted, and the tattoo moved from beneath her lips. He lifted her, depositing her into an upper tier of the fountain with a splash, and began really kissing her. Distracted, Carole wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling him closer, allowing her heart to press softly into his.

  Ted shifted, adjusting her position slightly. Water spilled over the edge of the fountain in a small wave, splashing onto the tile floor. He froze. Carole glanced up at him in consternation, this was not the time to stop, and she was fairly confident the fountain c
ould take her weight. Ted stared across the room, and she glanced over. They were reflected in a large mirror Beth had given them. It had tiled edges that matched the blue fountain. Carole reached up to touch Ted’s face.

  “Hey? Remember me?”

  “Carole. Would you please stop!” Ted rarely snapped, and she stared up at him, unable to follow.

  “What? What did I do? What’s wrong?”

  He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Right now, everything. Stop with this thing.” He thumped a big hand against his chest, reached to touch Carole’s and seemed to think better of it, pulling his hand back. He scowled at her in the mirror.

  “You never change.”

  Carole looked at herself in the mirror. She ran a hand over her head. The messy hair was always wild. She tried to smooth it.

  Ted pulled away from her, leaving her sitting inside the fountain. “I’m not talking about your stupid hair, Carole! But since you’re bringing up appearance, look at you!” He gestured towards the mirror.

  “What?” She couldn’t see anything to upset him.

  “You still look eighteen years old.”

  “I do not!” she protested.

  “As much as you ever did, you do. Look at me, Carole. I look like your father.”

  Ted grabbed his shorts and tugged them on.

  “Ted! You do not look like my father! You’re my husband, you’re beautiful! There is absolutely nothing about you that I don’t find embarrassingly delicious.”

  “Oh don’t start. I have eyes. We look ridiculous. Look at us.” He lifted her off the perch to stand, facing the mirror. Ted had gained weight over the years, he was bigger. She liked big. Running a hand over his stomach, she felt a thrill in her own. Drawn again to that heart, she leaned towards him.

  “You have no idea, how—”

  Ted flinched away. “Please don’t, I just asked you not to do that thing. Every time I touch you, you’re crawling inside me. Can we just have one normal thing in our relationship? It’s not bad enough that we don’t even look normal!”

  “Oh come on, Ted, yes we do. You’re thirteen years older than me. That’s hardly abnormal.”

  “Just stop. Thirteen? Carole, you don’t look a day older than Beth does. It makes me self-conscious.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not my daughter, you’re my wife.”

  “So what are you saying? That you don’t want me anymore because I don’t look old enough?” Carole said it half-joking, wishing Ted would laugh—he didn’t.

  Grabbing his shirt off the floor, he pulled it back on. “Of course I want you; half the guys who look at you want you.”

  “I don’t care what other guys want! I care what you want!”

  Ted picked up her clothes and tossed them at her. Crossing to the balcony, he carried his breakfast dishes into the house and put them on the tile counter while she put her clothes on. After meticulously refolding the newspaper and setting it aside, Ted finally looked at her.

  “Would you be completely honest with me? Beth-like honest about something?”

  “Are you sure you want me to?” Can I be? What does he want to know? Carole tensed, and the voices began their mantra about hiding, as if Ted didn’t already know enough. She would tell him anything he wanted to know, even if she didn’t want to.

  “It really doesn’t bother you? The difference in our ages?”

  Carole opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a finger. “I know you’re going to say it’s only thirteen years. Please don’t insult me. Does it bother you?”

  Ted was right. The years between them looked more like thirty now, and she suspected in time it would only grow wider. She ignored the voices. “No, I don’t care how old you get.”

  Candid blue eyes studied her, and it struck Carole for the very first time that Beth’s gifting may have come from her father.

  “Does it bother you that—apart from Beth—we have nothing in common?”

  “That’s not true! We have things in common!”

  Ted shook his head. “No, we don’t. I’m an old guy who likes to go fishing on weekends, who eats junk food and watches TV. The only thing we have in common is Beth.”

  “We both like cinnamon ice-cream,” she said, then flushed, glancing at the floor. Ted was right. After all their years of marriage that was the only other thing she could come up with.

  “I don’t care,” she whispered, returning his gaze. “It’s not about what we have in common or looks.”

  Ted ran a hand over his chin, keeping his eyes on hers. “Does it bother you that more than ten years ago I made you a promise that I would find a way to make it right, to atone for the first half of our marriage, and though I’ve tried, the truth is there is no atonement, and what’s worse is I can’t ever be what you need?”

  Carole leaned against the fountain, her heart sinking. She swallowed down a wave of nausea, and took a deep breath. “What do you mean?” Her voice came out a whispery quaver.

  “You know what I mean, Carole. The heart thing. Does it matter that the reason I cheated, that the reason I once put so many women between us, was because it kept your heart at a safe distance?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and bent forward slightly, trying not to vomit, trying not to launch at him just to feel the satisfaction of beating him to a pulp.

  “Does it matter,” Ted continued, his voice low, as he took one step towards her, “That I wouldn’t blame you for taking revenge even now? I had no right. I should have told you the truth long ago. Does it matter that part of me always wanted to let you in? Does it matter that it has taken me all these years to realize the truth, that I know—for a fact—that it’s too late? Maybe it would have worked back in the Marshal Islands, but now it would kill me.”

  Sweat broke out over her forehead, and a hot flash lit from her feet and rose to prickle over her head. She glared at him. Right now she didn’t care if it killed him. He’d claimed her his way long ago, what right did he have to deny her? She’d waited years!

  He smiled faintly. “Does it matter that it would kill you too? To do that to me?”

  “No!” she shouted, and it came out a strangled sob.

  “Does it matter that that is the only reason I won’t let you, Carole? Do you want to leave Beth completely alone? You’re the only tether she has to—this world. Don’t leave her alone like you were.”

  Carole stood and turned her back on Ted. Grabbing onto a top tier of the fountain, she squeezed with all her might. Bits of tile and concrete broke off in her strong hands, plunking into the pool below. She bit back a scream of fury. She sensed Ted come nearer.

  “Don’t touch me. I don’t care about Beth right now. Don’t touch me.”

  “So it does matter?”

  “Yes,” she growled.

  “Does it matter that you are my heart, and I love you?”

  Half the tier came down beneath Carole’s hands. Chunks of concrete shattered against the tile floor, and water raced like whitewater into the lower pool, splashing over the edges and foaming over her bare feet. She spun around.

  “Now you say it? After years of denying me the comfort of those words! Do you think I didn’t know you loved me? I knew! You’re the idiot who didn’t know it! I want to hate you right now! I want you to feel my years of pain right now!”

  “I’ve already felt it,” Ted said, his blue eyes full of tears. “I shared it. I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

  “Spare me!” Carole shoved past him, and ran onto the balcony. Scanning frantically, she ignored the voices and jumped. Landing easily on the street below, she ran, her bare feet skimming over rough pavement.

  IN THE DISTANCE the turquoise Aegean sparkled, a brilliant backdrop to the white walls of Skopelos. At a tourist area, Carole dropped to sit at a café table. Rubbing hands over her sweaty face she rested her head in her hands, elbows digging into the scroll design of the metal table top. Her bare feet burned after runni
ng over concrete for so long, and her stomach snarled with hunger. She sensed Ted’s approach, his shuffling gait as familiar to her as the continual condemnation of the voices in her head. Without a word he dropped a plate of food on the table, and slid it towards her until it rested against her elbow. Then he settled into the tiny chair beside her, holding out a fork to her. Waiting.

  Dropping her hands, Carole nabbed the fork and shoveled food in, quickly chewing the mixture of beets, peppers, and rice without really tasting it. Ted watched her through sad eyes, but she refused to meet them. Let him be sad. Did he expect her to understand his rejection? Or to take the blame for his years of philandering? Tired as she was, ire burned in her heart again. Maybe she’d take to the water and swim. Maybe she’d get on a boat and never come back. She jabbed the fork roughly into a piece of tomato and several olives shot off her plate. So what if Ted could find her here inside the walled city? So what if his heart brushed against hers? Let him try to find her in the outside world. Good luck with that.

  Wallowing in anger, it caught her off guard when Ted suddenly sprang to his feet, knocking the table out from under her. Instinctively Carole leapt off her chair, landing in a half crouch as a scooter shot past them, the driver’s leg brushing against Ted’s. One of the scooter wheels hit the table leg, flipping it over and taking out another table in the process. Several diners scattered, hurrying away from the commotion.

  “Whoa!” Ted shouted after the retreating motorbike. The only response was a rude hand gesture shot in their direction. Ted reached back for her and hugged her to his side. His clean white shirt smelled like cotton and sunshine. Hot concrete burned against Carole’s blistered feet, and she shifted to stand in Ted’s shadow.

  “General?” A man sitting at far table stood. “General White? Sir!”

  Carole instantly recognized the tall black man with the fine-boned features. He wove his long body between café tables to stand by Ted.