Heartsong

by Melinda Cross

  'This is lovely,' Madeline commented as they were seated at a corner table near the fireplace.

  'Then it's a perfect background for you.'

  It was one of those reflexive compliments people seemed to deliver on cue, and Madeline found herself taking little pleasure from it. 'You always say exactly the right thing, David,' she sighed, shaking her head at him. 'Flattery is your specialty, isn't it?'

  He cocked his head, the picture of innocent puzzlement. 'Flattery offends you?'

  'No,' she smiled gently. 'Of course not. It's just that I get the feeling you've said the same words before, hundreds of times. You said yourself you were the friendly part of the partnership. It's part of your job, isn't it? Smoothing all the feathers Elias ruffles?'

  He was so still that she wondered for a moment if he was even breathing. His dark eyes never wavered from hers. 'Yes,' he answered finally. 'It is part of my job, and that's the rub, isn't it?' His lips curved in a rueful smile, and he signalled for the wine steward. 'No one ever knows when I really mean it.'

  Six hours later, well after two in the morning, David's forefinger was pressed crookedly against lips that seemed permanently fixed in a foolish smile. 'Shh,' he hissed dramatically. 'Mus'n' wake the dragon.'

  Madeline shook her head in amused exasperation, staggering under the weight of his arm across her shoulders as they stumbled from the car to the house. 'The dragon sleeps in the studio,' she explained for the tenth time, nearly tripping on the raised bricks of the front path.

  David, a self-proclaimed disciple of moderate social drinking, had consumed an unbelievable amount of alcohol over the course of the evening. It had started harmlessly enough with a shared half-bottle of wine, but as time wore on he began to drink recklessly, with the dogged determination of a man intentionally bound for inebriation.

  And you certainly achieved that, she thought, propping his seemingly boneless form against the wall to the right of the door as she dug in her purse for the house-key. By the time she found it, he was sliding inexorably downwards, and she jumped to catch him under the arms and pull him upright again.

  In a disastrously uncoordinated gesture, he tried to fling his arm over her shoulder again, but succeeded only in dislodging her hair from its pins and popping the single button that fastened her dress at the neck. The bodice flap flipped down, and, even though it exposed only her neck, it made her feel vulnerable somehow.

  'Oh, terrific,' she muttered as stray strands of blonde hair tumbled from their perch to dangle haphazardly over her face and shoulders. It was the final touch, she was sure, to a state of total dishevelment, but at this point all she cared about was getting them both inside and to bed.

  She pushed the door open with one foot, grunted with the effort of literally hauling him inside and repeating the same process all over again. Prop him up against the wall, steady him, flip the entrance light switch, then move quickly to close and lock the door behind them…

  He'd slid all the way down to the floor this time, and sat with his legs sprawled, his chin on his chest, the foolish smile still in place, even in sleep.

  'Oh, David,' she sighed, shaking her head, wondering how on earth she could possibly get him up again.

  She turned to put her handbag and shawl on the hall table, then gasped to see Elias leaning silently against the living-room doorway. She took a quick step backwards, her heart thumping with alarm at the start he'd given her.

  He just stood there, saying nothing, green eyes empty, his face expressionless. There were deep valleys tracking through his hair, as if he'd run his hands back through it over and over again; a few wilful strands dangled over his forehead like black cuts. He looked down at where David was slumped against the wall, happily oblivious; then back up at her ruined hair and displaced dress.

  She touched her hair self-consciously, then the front of her dress. 'David's had a little too much to drink,' she explained hesitantly.

  'I can see that.'

  She waited for him to say something else, and when the silence became awkward she turned slowly and went to crouch at David's side, smoothing the dark curls back from his forehead. 'Well?' she said over her shoulder, pretending nonchalance. 'Are you going to help me get him upstairs?'

  She heard him push away from the wall, walk over to stand next to her; then she saw strong, broad hands reach down. She stood up and moved out of the way, watching as Elias hefted David's dead weight to his chest. He looked down at his friend's head lolling on his shoulder then looked up again and met her eyes. 'Your room or the guest room?' he asked.

  'No jokes, please,' she sighed, closing her eyes. 'I'm too tired.'

  'What made you think I was joking?'

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, trying to read his expression so she could decide whether to be insulted or not, but his face remained blank. Finally she simply turned away and walked upstairs to the room next to hers.

  She flipped on the wall switch, turned back the covers on the bed, then stood aside as Elias laid David down, removed his shoes, jacket and tie, then covered him with surprising gentleness. It was almost like watching a parent tuck a child in for the night.

  Finally he stepped back from the bed and straightened, nearly colliding with her. They were shocked to find themselves suddenly so close, and their eyes met briefly, then jerked downwards, afraid to look too long at what they had seen in each other's glance.

  Madeline held her breath as her gaze fastened on his right hand, hanging less than an inch from her left, so close that if she moved only slightly their fingers might brush. She lifted her eyes long enough to see that he was watching their hands too, then looked down again expectantly, as if their fingers were actors on a stage, and their next movements would be somehow profound.

  His forefinger twitched slightly, almost touched hers, and she caught her breath, waiting, watching, surprised to see her own fingers lift slightly towards his in an automatic response. Suddenly it seemed that their hands were separate entities, playing out a drama that neither could control, and when his fingertips brushed hers, perhaps accidentally, the impact was enormous.

  Madeline caught her breath in a faint, yet audible gasp, and out of the corner of her eye saw his chest hitch abruptly towards hers. A furtive glance upwards showed the tightness around his mouth and eyes, the furrows of confusion on his brow as he watched, apparently helpless to control what his hand was doing.

  Now his fingers were climbing over the top of her hand, tracing the hollows between the tendons, circling her wrist with a feather-light pressure that made it strangely hard for her to breathe. Her lips parted, both in wonder and in an attempt to draw in more air, as she stared down, her eyes wide and fixed, fascinated.

  When his hand moved up to the soft swell of her forearm and pressed against it, the intent was unmistakably erotic, and they both looked up and their eyes met. His were two spots of green fire in the dim light of the room, and hers felt hot and liquid. When her tongue moved automatically to moisten her lower lip, Elias frowned hard and made a soft noise deep in his throat. In the next instant he pulled in an enormous breath through his teeth and his chest swelled and brushed against the breasts rising to meet it, and Madeline almost cried out.

  Suddenly David snuffled softly in his sleep and they both jumped backwards away from one another. Elias turned his back quickly and let his head sag on to his shoulders. 'Damn you,' she heard him exhale hoarsely.

  She reached out to touch him, her brows tipped in puzzlement, but, just before her hand reached his back, he said, 'Get out of here,' and she froze, her hand hanging foolishly in midair.

  When she didn't move, he turned and grabbed her hand and almost dragged her into the hall, then gave her a shove that sent her stumbling towards her room. She looked back at him with an expression of complete bewilderment.

  He was staring at her, and a trick of the light made it look as though the green colour were spilling from his eyes down the hall towards her. 'What on earth made you think I'd be
willing to finish what another man started?' he asked coldly. 'Maybe next time you'll have enough sense to choose a man who won't pass out before he can perform.'

  Madeline's face went suddenly still, blanching beneath the faint colour the sun had given her. 'I can't believe you said that,' she whispered, and then she turned quickly, went into her room, and closed and bolted the door behind her. She didn't know how long she'd been leaning against it, staring blindly into the dark room, when she felt the vibration of his knuckles rapping against the wood.

  'Madeline.' The door muffled his low whisper. 'Madeline, please. We have to talk. Let me in.'

  Let me in indeed, she smiled bitterly. That's been the problem from the beginning. I let someone in, and I shouldn't have. I let myself feel again, and I shouldn't have.

  'Maddie? Maddie! Let me in!'

  Without making a sound, her lips formed the ludicrous words of the nursery rhyme—'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin'—and then she buried her face in her hands.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was mid-morning by the time the rumble of muted thunder finally woke Madeline. She lay quietly for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, her mind blank. Finally she sighed, rolled out of bed, padded to the window, and peered out at the gloom of the season's first rainstorm. Everything looked wet and bleak; even the rose garden was mired in mud, and somehow that seemed appropriate.

  Slowly, dispiritedly, she began to dress, her emotions so numbed that she didn't even dread facing Elias after last night. What did it really matter if he thought she'd intended to go to bed with David, or even if he thought she was callous enough to accept another man as a substitute at the last minute? That only made her a whore, and, at the moment, being thought of as a whore seemed a whole lot better than being pitied for what she really was: a lonely woman who had grasped desperately at the straws of fantasy, entranced by the delusion that she and Elias were two parts of the same whole, that they were both helpless against the force that drew them together—but that had only been the pathetic imagining of an unloved child who had never quite grown up.

  She frowned, concentrating hard on the memories of those scattered moments when she'd felt the electricity between them—when you thought you felt the electricity between you, she amended. You wanted that mystical, spiritual bond to exist so badly that you made it up, but it was never there for him. He wanted you here because you were the one person who played his music the way he wanted it to sound. And then you complicated things by wanting more, forcing him to reject you again and again, until the situation became so awkward that even the music went bad. She smiled sadly, because the music was the only thing he'd ever wanted from her, and now she couldn't even give him that.

  She scowled and blinked rapidly to hold back the tears as she dressed. She pulled on snug black flannel leggings and a heavy grey sweater that hung to mid-thigh, then brushed out her hair, letting it fall where it would. The grey eyes in the mirror looked strangely lifeless now, and she turned away from them with barely a second glance.

  The house itself seemed subdued by the storm; as gloomy and dark as her mood as she made her way downstairs, then towards diffused golden light coming from the kitchen. She reached out to touch things absently as she walked: the antique table in the hall with its empty vase, waiting for the flowers of spring, the gleaming wood of the door-frame that led into the kitchen—little things; things she hadn't known existed just a week ago, but things she would remember for the rest of her life.

  Her heart seemed to twist in on itself when she saw Elias sitting at the kitchen table.

  He was dressed in black from neck to ankle in a heavy jogging suit, looking every bit as forbidding as the bleak landscape he stared at out of the window, and yet, to Madeline, every bit as promising, too. There was something else beneath the cold, distant facade he wore—she'd sensed it from the beginning—something warm and full of life and infinitely precious. He was like the rose garden in that way, and she wondered if she'd ever see either one of them bloom.

  His arms were braced on the table, his hands curled around a steaming mug of coffee. He turned his head sharply when she came in, and a black strand of his hair tumbled to hang over his forehead in a comma.

  'Good morning,' she said quietly, moving past the table to where the coffee-maker sat on the work-top. 'Where's Becky?' She felt his eyes on her as she fumbled with the pot.

  'It's Saturday. She doesn't come at weekends.'

  She risked a glance in his direction, saw that he'd returned his attention to the rivulets of rain running down the window glass, then filled a mug with strong black coffee and leaned back against the work-top.

  'I don't suppose David will be up for hours.'

  He nodded absently, and she noticed how tired he looked. There were faint smudges under his eyes, he hadn't shaved yet, and his black hair was tousled, as if he hadn't slept very well. She jumped visibly when he turned his head and caught her staring.

  'You look tired,' she said quickly, to cover her embarrassment.

  'So do you.'

  She shrugged and looked down at her coffee, wondering what to say. As it turned out, he spoke first. His voice was stiff and impassive, as if he were reciting a memorised speech.

  'I want to talk to you about last night, and about the music—the trouble I've been having composing. It's all connected, you know. I just didn't want to admit it.'

  Madeline clutched her mug desperately, staring down into it as if it held the secrets of the universe and she couldn't bring herself to look away. 'I know that,' she mumbled. 'You don't have to say anything. I'm the reason you haven't been able to write.'

  He was silent for so long that she finally risked glancing up at him, her lips pressed together in a white line, two spots of embarrassed colour flaming on her cheeks.

  His chin dropped into his hand as he turned his head, looking out through the window. It was my fault, not yours. I should have seen this coming that first night in your apartment. It was perfectly obvious then that…' he paused and frowned, hard '…that emotions were going to get in the way of any working relationship between us.'

  Madeline closed her eyes briefly, mortified by the memory of how quickly, how eagerly she had agreed to shut down her life and follow him. Even then she must have seemed like a lovesick fan desperate for attention from the object of her adoration.

  He pressed his lips together, watching her. 'It was pretending the emotion wasn't there that was causing all the problems, but last night the pretending stopped, didn't it?' He spread his hands and shrugged eloquently. 'I know it doesn't make any sense, but last night…having everything out in the open…it was like a dam bursting. I couldn't stop writing. I stayed up all night and finished the title song.'

  Madeline's face stilled as she struggled to keep it expressionless. Suddenly it didn't matter if all he wanted her for was her playing; it didn't matter if this were just another temporary place where she would leave part of her heart behind; all that mattered was today, and maybe tomorrow; making music together; being close to him for just a little longer.

  'We don't have to feel the same way about each other to make great music, Madeline. Even if the music is all we ever make together, it's more than most people accomplish in a lifetime.' His eyes were eloquent, deeply green, soft with an emotion she couldn't read.

  She swallowed hard, and it took all her courage to keep from bursting into tears. This is what they meant, she thought, when all the old poets talked about unrequited love. This is the agony of sacrificing everything—your life, your pride, the last of your self-esteem—just to be close to the one person you can't live without, even when you know the feeling will never be returned.

  They stared at each other in a palpable, quivering silence that seemed to swell by the minute, threatening to fill the room and smother them both, and then suddenly David came bustling into the kitchen, looking more like an innocent young boy out of church than a man who should have been suffering from an outrageous hangover. 'Go
od morning, good morning, you two!'

  Madeline tried for a brave smile and it only quivered a little.

  He grinned at her. 'I take it you carried me upstairs on your back last night?'

  She shook her head and nodded towards Elias.

  David bent from the waist in a mock bow. 'My thanks, old friend. And my apologies to you, angel.' He walked over and dropped to one knee in front of her, his expression comically contrite. 'I behaved abominably last night, and you have every right to be furious with me…although I'm not sure I could stand it if you were.' His dark eyes looked up, imploring forgiveness with a clownish glitter, but Madeline sensed an undercurrent of genuine remorse.

  'It's all right, David,' she said quietly, and he popped to his feet, beaming, making her feel foolish for ever thinking he might have been at all serious.

  'The truth is,' he confided to Elias over his shoulder, 'she got me drunk and tried to have her way with me. But I resisted, right to the end. You would have been proud.'

  Madeline shook her head, quietly exasperated, but Elias raised one dark brow and spoke very seriously indeed. 'The real truth is that, in all our years together, I've never seen you drunk before.' He hesitated, looking David right in the eye. 'Why last night?'

  David's grin froze momentarily, then he covered his hesitation with a nervous laugh and a self-deprecating shrug. 'There's a first time for everything, I guess.' He clapped his hands suddenly, making Madeline jump. 'Now, who wants positively the best omelette they've ever eaten in their life?' He crossed to the refrigerator in two long strides, then dived into the lighted depths to dig through its contents. 'Get some plates, angel, will you? We've all got business to discuss, and business always goes down better with good food.'