“Sometimes one has to do things purely out of obligation.” She said and he whirled on to her.
“Why?” he hissed and looked at her for a long moment and she knew he was not speaking of the ledgers anymore. And though the icy blue eyes and that cold stare, an exact replica of his father were killing her inside, Eileen did not look away. She knew that somehow if she did it would be taken as a mark of guilt. Then suddenly the raw emotions that had swum into his eyes closed up and he said once again in a calmer tone
“Why, do you keep these boys here?”
“They are good boys, unfortunate but brilliant. I am trying to give them a good education.”
“With all due respect to the work you are doing here Eileen, I think your education is lacking in something very important.
When she waited for him to explain he continued.
“Teaching them only Literature and arithmetic and the Holy book is not going to help them. You need to introduce general science. Because that is the need of the day.”
‘Funny Trev said the same thing a few days back.”
“Trevor comes here?”
“Yes, he used to come with the Doc to see Andreadora. And since she is gone they come sometimes to keep me company.”
A sudden feeling that he had somehow failed his mother crept inside Jim. He never thought of the solitude she would be enduring after the death of his grandmother. The fact that strangers had been taking care of the issue, irked him more.
As he rode back to the villa, the recipe book his grandmother had left for his wife tucked inside the pocket of his coat, Jim felt a strange tug in his chest.
He had no idea his grandmother owned a recipe book, least she knew how to cook until Eileen had given him the book saying that Andreadora had once said that she wanted to give it to Jim’s wife.
But that was not what was troubling him. What was troubling him was the quiet enduring look of the woman he had left behind. He had not missed the shadow behind her eyes as she bade him goodbye. Nor had he missed the thrill in those eyes at seeing him in the courtyard or the tremor in that voice when he had called her by her name.
Chapter 16
Sometime just before dawn, Alexandra floated out of languid slumber with a feeling of yearning desire. Even before she opened her eyes to the endearing, familiar, the silhouette of her husband stretched alongside her, she had felt the weight of his hard lean body crushing her against the mattress.
“Jim,” she said drowsily then and giggled as he echoed her tone mockingly as he called back her name.
“I am hungry.” He whispered in her ear before he caught the lobe of her ear between his sharp teeth, pulled at it then let it go as she hissed.
“It's four in the morning.” She said as he nuzzled the crook of her neck and tried to lose all his senses in the lush abundance of her hair.
“Haven’t you heard, love is timeless? I thought you were a learned lady,” he said accusingly, taking just enough time away from the work at hand before he nipped at her bare shoulder and her collar bone as he undressed her slowly
“Yours is rather shameless. We made love just before we went to bed.”
“It’s helpless.” he said, “against your powers of a siren.” He said drawing a finger down from the V between her breasts and circling around her navel
“And relentless, you seem to be going on and on.” She said as she slipped into the mindless swirls of lustful sensations. Fully aware of what his assault was doing to her senses, Jim bend down and retraced with his tongue the path his finger had taken. Alexandra fisted her fingers in hair with both hands. Then twisted and groaned as his tongue continued further down.
“Ok, you have proved you are a scholar after all. Now shut up and pretend you are a dumb waif for some time while I ravish you.” He said abandoning his quest suddenly and coming up beside her just as her breath had started to become laborious.
She stretched with longing curling the toes of one foot over those of the other. Jim firmly parted her legs and pushed his knee in between of them to keep them apart. Then caressed with gentle care the soft flesh of her thigh.
As Alex gasped and bowed upwards, Jim bent down and caught the peak of one creamy breast in his mouth and drew on it ruthlessly. She whimpered and gasped as he repeated the treatment with her other breast once he had had his fill with the first one.
Then he gently closed his fingers around her core and pushed them in. She came violently crying out his name as he caught the gasp with a consuming kiss. Breathless and riding on waves of acute desire as she succumbed to helpless abandon, Alex held on to him and a few last shards of sanity.
It always surprised him how, after going through this course countless times she still reacted with surprise and shock as he readied her for the final plunge. So he quietly but firmly pulled her knees apart and inserted himself into her slowly watching the play of emotions on her face and in her eyes. At first, he was careful and gentle. After all, the woman was carrying his child and he did not want to hurt either of them.
Slowly as the tempo increased and the desire for gratification built inside them, she pushed forward to give him better access and he seethed himself inside her to the hilt. Then he thrust himself into her with all his force and she cried out as they both reeled towards the peak. She came into his arms with shuddering release seconds before he poured into her bursting with fulfillment.
Chapter 17
“I went to see Eileen yesterday.” He announced at breakfast the next morning.
Alexandra tensed at once, her spoon full of porridge arrested in midair on its way to her mouth. Then the tension ebbed out of her shoulders and she closed her lips around the spoonful of warm oats as she saw him buttering his bread with relaxed unconcern.
“I went to pay the school the monthly inspection visit. Andreadora was very particular about it.”
“I think Eileen does a wonderful job with the school.”
“My grandmother thought so too. The inspections were just her way of proving she was not partial to anyone.” He said taking a bite out of his toast.
She quietly ate her porridge and looked at him from the corner of her eye.
“How did it go?” She murmured afraid that the magic of the moment would disappear if she spoke any louder.
He nodded and continued to munch. Then he took a sip of his coffee from the cup beside him and placed it back on the saucer.
“Did you know Eileen took boarders?”
She put the spoon down this time and dabbed at her lips with snow-white linen. Then nodded slightly.
“She took in her first just before Andreadora...before the harvest festival” she amended.
“Is that why you took the Darwin twins there?”
“Sent. I wouldn’t have dared take them there after the way you behaved.”
“Didn’t stop you from walking out on me spurting venom.”
“I was angry.” She said looking down at her lap. “I could not bear the pain of the Darwin twins. I grew up as an orphan and I know how it feels to be uncared for. I just wanted to reach out to them. Exorcise that pain. I did not mean to cause you any. That would never be my intention.” She said and her voice shook.
Jim got up from his place slowly, came around to her, then most unexpectedly bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheeks. There was just a trace of his carnal desire in it, but it sent a tremor of anticipation through her body.
“I love you Alex. The two souls you tried to save are thriving well under Eileen's care. You may visit them if you wish. I must leave, Trevor must be waiting for me.” He said and walked out. In the doorway he turned, looked at his wife who was watching him with the most serene expression. Then he strode back to the table and reaching into the pockets of his work pants he pulled out a small tattered book. He dropped it in front of her.
“My grandmother left it for you. She had entrusted Eileen to pass it on to you. She gave it to me yesterday.” Having said that he left.
Ale
x sat there for a long time, contemplating her tattered but valuable legacy. She picked up the book and her heart did a summersault. She had not spent as much time with Andreadora as either Eileen or Jim. But nonetheless, her association with Andreadora had been a valuable one.
As Rosa started to clear the table Alex rose from the table, lost in the pages of the tattered old book, and walked out into the yard. She sat on a wooden bench under an old oak and started turning the pages carefully. She smiled as she came to the recipe for apple pie. She remembered a conversation between Andreadora and Morgan who had once argued on the usage of cinnamon in apple pie.
“There’s no place of an exotic spice like that on in the good old nave pie.” Morgan had tried to brush off the idea.
“My grandmother always said a pinch of cinnamon could give a delicious edge to the pie.” Andreadora had insisted. And there in the book under the recipe was a little note with an asterisk telling how a pinch of cinnamon can add a rich flavor. Alex smiled down at the page, one hand resting on her bulging belly.
As she tried to turn the page with her other hand the book slipped and dropped to the floor. The binding was old and some loose pages flew out and scattered around. As Alex bent down and started picking the pages she came to a folded piece of paper, that was not one of the book’s original page. Curious she opened the sheet.
It was a letter, written on a fairly recent Sullivan letterhead. Before she could realize that it was a private letter addressed to someone else and perhaps that someone had not yet read the letter, or may be Andreadora had died before she could hand over the letter to the intended person, Alex had already read the first couple of lines. And then she was hooked.
She sat back down on the bench lost in reading. When she was done she looked up at the sky and pressed her lips heard, tears were flowing down her cheeks and her hand trembled slightly.
Jim, she needed to find Jim.
Chapter 18
Jim and Trevor were working in a field just north of Gray Cottage. When Jim saw the picture perfect figure of a woman walking towards them from the fields he recognized her at once to be his wife. The next moment his keen observation told him she was walking too fast. The fine tuning, he had with her mind told him, even before she had reached him that something had upset her.
“What…is…this?”’ she said to him hissing and out of breath, waving the letter in front of his nose.
Jim did not move, nor did he attempt to take the letter from her. Trevor stood next to him glued to his place with shock and fear.
“What is this?” Alex screamed this time. She had been ignoring the dull pains that had started to origin in her lower back since after breakfast. She had ignored them as they had become sharper as she had plowed through the fields. Now the anguish of that pain pushed forth in her scream.
Something in that voice and the way her face contorted made Jim act fast. He took the letter from her hand and read it, throwing furtive glances at her as she struggled to stand straight.
Trevor who had seemed rooted to his spot till then, suddenly felt that something was wrong with the wife of his employer. The first person that came to his mind in that moment was Eileen. He looked towards her cottage just a few feet away. He then remembered that the Doc was supposed to be having Lunch with her today. He was now sure that Gray Cottage was his next destination and he slipped away like a shadow, unnoticed.
A quick glance down the sheet of paper told Jim that it was a letter addressed to him by his grandmother, just a day before she had died. In the letter Andreadora had apologized to him for coercing him into doing something he had not wanted to do, blackmailing him and turning his marriage into a wager.
“Is that all I have ever been to you? A gamble? And is that all our marriage has been? Just another deal?” Alex asked him in an accusatory tone. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and she was keening. The hurt in her eyes was killing Jim.
He looked down at the letter as if the answers to his problems could be found there. It was clearly incomplete. His grandmother must have intended on completing it once she was back from the Harvest festival. But she had never gotten a chance. And her partial avowals of regret had given Alex a completely different impression of his intentions towards her.
He had married her out of helplessness, out of a blackmail. But all that had changed a long time back. The quiet and serene girl, her fiery spirit, the whiskey colored eyes had conquered him long back. He was now completely and irreversibly in love with Alexandra Sullivan.
“Alex, it’s not what you think it is.” he said and practically heard the hollow ring of his words.
“You used me,” she said indignantly. “I considered this marriage sacrosanct and gave all I had to it. I gave up who I was in order to please you. And all this while you had been playing a game. That’s what it has been for you all this while, a bet?”
She said, looking at him pleadingly, hoping he would deny it. But he did not. He could not.
“Alex…” he put out a hand to reach her.
“No…,” she said and pointed a finger at him warning him to keep his distance. Her hair was all distorted, the eyes were red and she trembled like an autumn leaf. In that moment Jim just wanted to gather her close and keep her warm and safe. He looked pleadingly at her, beseeching her silently to understand but standing just next to him she seemed a thousand miles away.
Suddenly she balled her fists and moaned. A tearing pain had shot through her body and she went down on her knees. Jim bent down to support her. She was beyond the point of consciousness and did not resist.
As he stood her up, taking all her weight on to himself, she saw Eileen and the Doc striding towards them through the fields followed by a haggard looking Trevor. He had never thought he could be so thankful to see the bloke in his entire life.
“Mother…Alex…I think she is dying.” he said pathetically.
The earth stopped moving for Eileen, in that moment. Then in the very next one, she pulled herself out of the haze of emotions that were swirling inside her. Whether he called her mother or no, her son needed her right now.
“Jim” she called out sharply, “There is nothing wrong with Alex. She is going into labor. We have to take her to the cottage…now.”
Alex who had momentarily floated out of her mist of semi-consciousness fought him with all her might. She pushed away Eileen’s hand when she offered to hold her.
“Don’t touch me Jim Sullivan. You disgust me. You are just a hard-hearted scoundrel, for whom everything is a game to be won.” When Eileen tried to help her once again she turned on to her vehemently.
“Stay away from me. Your son has no feelings; no humanity he is just an emotionless empty shell. And you have made him so.”
Jim and Eileen looked at each other more with worry that anything else.
Then Jim snapped out of his trance and picked up the semi-conscious Alex into his arms and started towards the cottage followed by the rest of the party.
Chapter 19
Ruth Andreadora Sullivan was born a little before dawn. When Jim held his daughter for the first time, he was bewitched. The wee little thing had firmly closed her fist around her father’s finger and Jim had felt the squeeze of that fist around his heart. She had a firm grip and a blue gaze, just like his.
As his mother carried the baby away, Jim turned to his wife who had been sleeping peacefully since the time he had entered the room. Quietly he lowered himself onto the bed next to her and covered her hand with his where it rested over her midsection.
“Alex,” He said tentatively as she slowly opened her eyes.
“Jim, did you meet our daughter?” she said weakly but with a twinkle in her eyes. Jim nodded then said,
“She is beautiful, Enchanting, just like you.”
“She has your eyes.” she stated simply.
“Alex, about what happened in the field this morning…”
“I apologize for my behavior then; I was in a lot of pain.”
; “Does that mean, you forgive me?” he said taking both her hands into his firmly and squeezing.
“As usual, you are not listening. There is nothing to forgive. I am not mad at you”
“Oh you were plenty mad,” he said smirking at the memory, then suddenly narrowed his eyes and looked down at his wife.
“What do you mean, as usual.”
“You know what I mean sweetheart. You are usually headstrong and bossy. And your daughter is just like you. As soon as she was born she created a huge racket and insisted that she be cleaned and wrapped and fed before anyone attended me.” Jim smiled dreamily.
“Poor Trev was out of his mind. He helped me get you here without complaining once of the obscenities you hurled at us. For that alone, he ought to get a rise.”
“The Doc and Eileen took good care of me.”
“Yes, they are a good team.” He said pensively. The suddenly looked down at her and said watching her reaction.
“They are getting married.”
“I know.” She stated calmly
“Why didn’t you tell me if you knew.”
“Doc just told me, while I was in labor. I thought he was trying to distract me.”
“Don’t know about you but I was distracted, shocked, stunned.”
“Jim.” she said, and he knew she was going to bring up the subject they had been both skirting around.
“I am sorry for what I said to you and Eileen, back in the fields. But you need to let go of your resentment.”
“Why?” he asked sulkily, not looking up at her, toying with her wedding band.
“Because it has let go of you. For some time now, I have noticed, you don’t feel the same antagonism for her, as you used to. But like I said you are stubborn and wouldn’t let go of the feeling. Being angry is easier for you than loving. That way you get to hide your emotions.”
“Quite the psychiatrist, aren’t we?”
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