In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Jamie, the baby will be fine. We will worry about custody arrangements after she’s born.”

  “But you don’t love him,” he said it as fact, flatly.

  “Does it matter? I am very fond of him though, if that gives you comfort.”

  “No,” he said tightly, “it does not give me comfort. Fond of him—do you hear yourself, Pamela? What sort of a life is that?”

  “It’s the best one I can make for myself and the children now, Jamie. There won’t be another man that I love outside of yourself and Casey. This is an arrangement, not a love match. He offered it as such and I accepted it in kind.”

  “You’re a damn fool if you think he isn’t hoping for more from you.”

  “I’ll not short shrift him, he will have the things he wants—companionship, a woman to keep his home and his bed for him.”

  “So, you’ll go to his bed?” Jamie’s tone was level, but the fire in the green eyes was anything but.

  “Yes. It wouldn’t be fair nor right to do otherwise.”

  “Pamela, you’re not a woman built for a relationship like that—without love, without dreams, without passion and desire.”

  She sighed; she was tired and knew this conversation was very dangerous ground for the both of them. She knew she should pull her hand out of his, and yet she couldn’t quite make herself do it.

  “I can’t afford anything else, Jamie, you know that as well as I do. Seen in that light, it’s the only sort of match that makes sense for my life.”

  “Can you at least consider what Casey would think of this? Would he want his children raised in a house with that bastard?”

  “No, he wouldn’t, but as he’s gone, I can’t make all my decisions based around what he would want. There are circumstances that he couldn’t foresee.”

  “What circumstances?” Jamie asked, concern edging the tight anger in his tone.

  For a moment, she wanted to tell him, she wanted him to take charge and fix things for her as he had done so often in the past. But many times, she knew, it had been at great cost to himself, and she couldn’t do that to him again. Her life was moving in another sphere now and she owed it to Jamie and to Noah to remember that. As if to underscore her thoughts, a voice spoke behind her. “Pamela.”

  She whirled around like she had been prodded with a hot poker. Noah stood in the doorway; his stance was casual and the look on his face as cool as a fresh frost. A rush of sick adrenaline went through her as she wondered how much he had heard. When he spoke again, his words were directed at Jamie, though his gaze was fixed upon her and the hand which was still held in Jamie’s.

  “My fiancée is tired,” he said, “an’ I’m goin’ to take her home.” There was an unmistakable emphasis on the word ‘home’ as if to make it clear he was the man who would soon share one with her.

  Jamie’s eyes elongated and she could see he was about to make an angry retort. It was up to her to halt this before it went any further. She did not think she could manage a scene between the two men.

  “Jamie, please,” she pleaded, her voice little more than a whisper.

  He looked at her for a long moment and then nodded and stepped back, letting her hand go. The sapphire felt twice as heavy as it had before he had touched her, as though it had gone through some physical change in those minutes.

  The few steps it took to reach Noah, seemed like a journey across some other distance, one that could never be crossed again nor taken back. He reached his hand out to her, and she took it, though she could still feel the imprint of Jamie’s fingers along her own. She followed Noah out of the room, and did not look back to where Jamie stood. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done.

  Noah helped her into her coat and then she gathered the children together—Isabelle much appeased by the return of her crown and Conor darkly silent while she helped him with the buttons on his coat. She despaired of him ever truly thawing out enough with Noah to form some sort of relationship. Conor was a Riordan through and through and she had never known a more stubborn lot of men. ‘Stubborn as the rocks in the field and twice as hard-headed,’ Casey’s grandmother had once said, and Pamela knew it for no small exaggeration.

  They bid farewell to Patrick and Kate. She was grateful that Pat, who usually knew when something was awry, was too absorbed in Kate to notice the tension in their little group. The ride home was short in distance but very long on silence. Noah was not an easy read even at the best of times, but in moments like this one, fraught with things unsaid, he was about as decipherable as a pillar of stone.

  The sun was setting as they drove down the lane to the house. Noah helped her with Isabelle, and Conor begged the key from her so that he could go ahead into the house. He would, she knew, disappear upstairs before Noah entered the house. Noah hesitated on the doorstep after opening the door for her so that she could carry the slumbering Isabelle in.

  “Will you please come in?” she asked him, and he nodded, but still didn’t speak.

  The house was quiet around them, Rusty coming to curl about her legs immediately. Noah took Finbar outside. The dog was still a bit wary with him, but he no longer growled at him, which was an improvement.

  She could feel Noah’s presence even after he went outside. He didn’t seem angry, nor did he seem particularly lighthearted. He might not mention what he had seen in the store room, but she was going to have to. The man would be her husband in a little more than two months and she didn’t want things to start out on a shaky foothold. He had said he valued her honesty and so it was the one thing she could give him without stint.

  She put Isabelle to bed, managing to remove her dress and shoes and socks, and even the much abused ‘cwown’ from her sticky fingers. She put her to bed in just her underwear; the night was warm and she would be more comfortable this way. She was aware of Conor’s gaze following her as she tucked Isabelle in and smoothed her wild hair off her face before kissing her cheek and turning to her son, where he sat in his bed on the other side of the room, his damp hair and the strong smell of mint advising her that he had brushed both hair and teeth.

  She sat on the edge of his bed. “Do you want me to read to you tonight?” Normally, she would worry that if she lay down with him to read, she would fall asleep. Tonight, it was likely that the anxiety of having to talk to Noah might well keep her awake if nothing else would.

  “No, I can read to myself,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” He seemed unsettled, and she thought perhaps if she read to him it might help.

  “Are ye okay, Mama?” he asked, small face concerned.

  “I’m fine, Conor, just tired.”

  “You should go to sleep soon. Tell Mr. Noah to go home.”

  “I will, sweetheart.” She smiled down at him, though she knew it was a tremulous smile at best. Conor looked at her with the dubiousness of expression that his father used to give her when he knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful.

  “Jamie looked sad today,” he said. “He smiled every time Uncle Pat or Auntie Kate looked at him, but all the rest of the time, he was sad. I asked him why an’ he said he wasn’t sad at all, only had a headache, but I don’t think that was true. Jamie doesn’t lie, but I think he did today, Mama.”

  Which explained, she thought grimly, a tête-à-tête she’d observed her son having with Jamie.

  “Sometimes big people do get sad, but then a few days later they are happy again.”

  “Ye’ve been sad for more than three days, Mama.” Conor had worked out what ‘few’ meant some time ago, and was a stickler for accuracy.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, wishing her son wasn’t always such a perspicacious child.

  “Ye’ve been sad for a long time—all the time since Daddy’s gone.”

  Sometimes her son seemed to see her more clearly than even she saw herself. She had been sad for a long time but she had hoped, vainly it now seemed, that she wasn’t quite so transparent to her son.

  “I miss your
daddy, Conor, just as you do. I will miss him all my life but that doesn’t mean I’m not happy most of the time.” The last bit was a lie, but she was happy in parts these days, oddly enough.

  She smoothed his hair back from his face and kissed his forehead.

  “Mama, you can come sleep with me, if you want to.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart, I might just do that.” The thought of curling up next to his warmth, restless as he was at times, sounded infinitely wonderful. She held him and he gave her one of his big hugs which was entirely comforting.

  She left Conor reading to himself and trod down the stairs slowly, feeling a little like a child about to confess to something which it knows will get it in a heap of trouble.

  Noah had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. His cufflinks glinted on the table where he had placed them, and hot, freshly-made tea scented the air. He sat relaxed, reading from a volume of Neruda. More specifically, a volume of his love poems, ones replete in sensuality and unfulfilled longing. Many were very erotic, leaving as they did much of the interpretation and imagining up to the reader. It had been on the shelf by the hearth.

  He looked up as she came off the last stair, his expression impassive, blue eyes like rain-dark slate.

  “Do you like him—his poems, I mean?” She asked, knowing the onus was on her to speak first.

  “Aye,” he said, “I know my Neruda, too. I know the poem Mr. Kirkpatrick referred to an’ God knows I understand the infinite ache.” He didn’t look down at the book but merely spoke the words like they had been long housed in his memory. His voice was soft, but it had intent and she could feel each word as he spoke it, as though every vowel touched her skin.

  …My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!

  Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows…

  “Some say the poem is about his country, Chile, and not an actual woman,” she said nervously, wanting nothing more than to avoid the gaze of those relentless blue eyes on the heels of the poet’s charged words.

  “That might well be, but I am not talkin’ about a country, Pamela. I am talkin’ about you.”

  “Noah—” she began but he cut her off.

  “I understand that all too well, maybe most men do who have wanted a woman it seemed they could not have—the eternal thirst, the infinite ache. Mr. Kirkpatrick was right. I do want more than what ye might think.”

  That answered her question of just how much he’d heard—a great deal apparently. She swallowed, wishing he was angry and primed for an argument, rather than this sad, vulnerable man who had just handed her his heart.

  “I’m sorry that you overheard what you did, Noah, but you offered me marriage as an arrangement. We agreed it wasn’t a love match, but that we could build it on our own terms. I don’t see how that has changed.”

  “I didn’t say it had, only that it’s not quite as cold-blooded on my side as ye might wish.”

  “It’s not cold-blooded on my side, either,” she said defensively.

  “I never said it was, Pamela. In fact, I believe it’s likely to be anythin’ but. Only that I do have feelins’ that ye’re clearly not comfortable with.”

  “I know that, Noah.”

  He was silent for a long moment and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet but carried an edge of steel in it.

  “Pamela, I know ye had some sort of relationship with Jamie all durin’ yer marriage with Casey, but I am a different kind of man, an’ I can’t countenance that sort of thing.”

  “He is the father of one of my children.”

  “And he can see ye in that capacity, but I can’t abide anything beyond that.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about that,” she said. The truth was, beyond being parents of this child together, she did not think she could see Jamie anymore. Her heart had told her as much today in no uncertain terms.

  He stood and crossed the room to where she was and she quelled the desire to step back from him. He put his hands on her shoulders—strong hands that could hurt her badly should he ever so choose.

  “I’m a jealous man; ye might as well know that goin’ in.” He said the words lightly, but they sent a shiver through her body nevertheless. It was both admission of fact and she thought, a warning. “I take the notion of marriage very seriously. I hope that you will too.”

  “I do,” she said, because it was true. She knew once she left this house, once she made her vows to Noah, her life would change irrevocably and there would be no going back down the road, no returning to the world she had known. She might well become someone different herself over time, but if it kept her children safe, she felt it was a small price to pay. With the loss of Casey she had changed forever anyway and there was a small hollow in the center of her soul that would never again be filled. What mattered now was raising her children in a home where she did not have to worry about leaving them orphaned every single day. And she was fond of this man; he was her friend and he had proven true in that regard. It was not his fault that he wanted more from her than she might ever be able to give. With luck, she might one day make him believe he had what he desired.

  His hand moved to her neck, the touch soft but the desire clear even there in the brush of his skin against her own. She felt tired suddenly, and put her own hand up to his, wanting to halt him before he took it further. She wanted to go upstairs and drift off to sleep alone. She understood that they were at a very fragile juncture right now, as if they stood on a fault line and one wrong step would plunge them both into dark waters.

  She reached up and kissed him, softly. His response was tentative, slow and with a restraint so tangible that it told her just what it was he was holding back and that if he ever truly unleashed it, it might well drown them both. He broke the kiss first, leaning his forehead against her own, his breath slightly unsteady.

  She leaned back and looked at him. “Noah, we’ll manage. It’s only our business in the end. It’s not for anyone else to say what we are to one another.”

  He nodded, the blue eyes dark with an emotion that made her put her head to his shoulder so that she wouldn’t have to see it anymore. And then she let him hold her for a while because he needed to and because she had been tired and sad for such a long time, and needed to be held by a man who loved her.

  Chapter Eighty

  Loose Ends

  ELSPETH HURRIED HOME from the post office through a sleeting rain, breathless anticipation causing her blood to run swiftly through her veins. Once home, she put the kettle on to boil and set out her good china pot and one good teacup. Every time she got a report from the private detective she went through the same ritual. Good china and good tea—the latter a Darjeeling she’d purchased from one of the fancy stores on Royal Avenue. She would sit down when the tea was ready and open the envelope carefully and peruse its contents down to the smallest detail. It was like delaying before opening the cover of a long awaited book, or a letter from a lover—something to be relished slowly.

  She set the tea to steep and then slit the flap of the envelope. She would let the contents sit until her tea was ready.

  It was probably time for one of her letters to the woman. She knew just the right bible verse—there were such a wonderful number of them pertaining to loose women—and a message, along with a lovely red scrap of silk she found which would look a great deal like blood. She wasn’t above cutting her fingers and actually writing in real blood, either. She had done that the first time and also the last. She wished just once she could be there in the woman’s house and see her face as she read one of Elspeth’s letters. It gave her a delicious little shiver even thinking about it. She still had a bit of the woman’s hair left, enough to maybe make another doll. She wanted one for her own collection. She had taken the first one and put it in the woman’s pocket to give her a fright. She took the hair and red silk out of the barrack box and placed them on the table along with expensive stationary and an envelope while she waited for the
tea to finish steeping.

  A few minutes later the timer went off with a dainty chime and she poured the tea into the beautiful translucent cup. Mr. Subha, who ran the teashop, had talked her into buying it, stating that a real lady should only drink tea from beautiful china. He swore it enhanced the taste. She had thought it was just heathen nonsense designed to part her from her money, but he had been right, the tea really did taste better when drunk from a pretty cup.

  She sniffed appreciatively at the hot liquid, warming the tip of her cold nose in the steam. Mr. Subha had told her his people believed that Shiva, whose home was high in the mountains, blew a cool wind through the plants each morning and night to give Darjeeling its special flavor. That was heathen nonsense too, no doubt, but Elspeth liked the idea of a god’s breath giving flavor to her tea here in rainy Belfast. She sat down and took a small sip of the tea, letting the taste warm the length of her tongue. Then she took out the contents of the envelope. Hiring the detective had been her birthday present to herself. Her mother had left behind a tidy sum when she died, enough so that Elspeth could afford to splurge occasionally on small gifts for herself. This was by far her most expensive indulgence and it had been worth every penny.

  There was a small clutch of pictures along with his bi-weekly report. She read the report first, which was the usual reiteration of the woman’s daily schedule. His summation was that he did not think Elspeth’s fears about her husband were well founded as he had never seen the man whom she’d shown him the picture of with this woman. She then looked through the pictures. Two of the woman’s house, an idyllic looking farmhouse tucked away at the end of a country lane. One of her driving past him, as the picture was blurred and she was little more than a ghostly-white face looking out the car window. Another of her with her children hopping along rocks near a stream, and then one with her looking almost directly into the camera. He must have used a telephoto lens for that one. She felt a twinge of annoyance, frankly the private detective seemed a little too enamored of taking pictures of this woman. She had only wanted to have a few photos of her so that she could use them to make another doll. She’d told the detective that she thought her husband was cheating on her with this woman. She was pretty but what of it? Why did a nicely arranged set of features count for so much in this world? Even Lucien (she had taken to using his Christian name in her head, even if she’d never dared to use it to his face) was weak in this regard. He had made it clear to her that he was helpless to resist the woman’s all too obvious allurements. Men seemed ridiculously susceptible to a pretty woman.