Heartsong

by Melinda Cross

  Madeline sat in stunned silence, seeing the shadow of Elias in Becky's profile for the first time. Her mind stumbled through all the things that had happened at Rosewood, trying to make sense of them.

  'So that's the story,' Becky was saying, 'although I can't imagine what difference it makes.'

  Madeline stared straight ahead, barely blinking, her hands limp in her lap. 'All this time, she murmured, her voice barely audible over the noise of the engine. 'All this time I thought you were lovers.'

  Becky's face froze. 'What?' she whispered.

  Madeline nodded woodenly. 'The way he talked about you, the way you acted when you were together…so many little things…it was obvious there was a special relationship between you, and I just thought it was…'

  'Oh, my God,' Becky groaned.

  'And you hated me,' Madeline added under her breath. 'The more I loved Elias, the more you hated me…'

  Becky's hair flew as she spun her head to look at her. 'You love Elias?' she whispered.

  Madeline nodded, her lower lip quivering.

  Becky stared at the road for a long moment, her head shaking almost imperceptibly. 'Madeline,' she finally said without looking at her, 'I hated you because I thought you didn't love him. He called me the night he met you, told me to hurry over to the house and clean the bedroom, because he was bringing home the woman he wanted to marry; the woman who'd given him back his music…'

  Madeline caught her breath and stared at her. 'He never told me that. He never said a thing…'

  Becky made a face. 'Of course he didn't. You were his pianist, just like his wife…it was all too much like what happened the first time, and that terrified him.'

  Madeline remembered that first day in the studio, when Elias had been so desperate to keep emotional involvement from interfering with the music…

  'But he couldn't help himself,' Becky went on. 'It was impossible for him to think of you as just a friend…as you know very well from what happened last night.'

  Madeline's head flew sideways to look at her. 'You know what happened last night?'

  Becky's expression tightened. 'Only what he told me—that he finally gave in to what he'd felt from the beginning; that he finally risked everything…and this morning you threw it all back in his face.'

  'I thought he loved you,' Madeline whispered. 'I thought it had all been a terrible mistake...' Her words faded as she faced front and stared through the windscreen, realising that the mistakes had started long before last night, long before she and Elias had even met each other.

  She smiled sadly, thinking that the baggage they'd both carried into this relationship had nearly destroyed it. Just because no one had ever loved her, she thought no one ever could; and just because Elias had been betrayed once, he thought love itself had betrayed him—that his impulse to love could never be trusted again. They had been so busy following the lessons of the past, listening to the warnings of memory, that they had almost lost their chance for the future.

  So many mistakes, she mused, watching the ribbon of tar slip beneath the car; so many misunderstandings, right from the beginning, and it had all happened because they'd ignored what the music was telling them; they'd forgotten that music was nothing more than a song that comes from the heart.

  Suddenly Madeline straightened in the seat, eyes fastened to the road ahead, every muscle in her body tensed. 'Hurry, Becky,' she whispered. 'I have to see Elias. I have to get home.'

  Becky smiled a little, then pressed harder on the accelerator and gave her full attention to the road.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After Becky had dropped her off, Madeline stood for a moment in the front garden looking at the house—at the brilliant white of the newly painted shutters, the neatly tended shrubbery around the front door—the changes she'd made to tell the world that she had been there. She smiled at the lily of the valley she'd uncovered yesterday, bobbing now in the cool shade beneath the shrubs, as if ringing their little white bells in welcome. Behind her the dark bellies of low-scudding clouds kissed the horizon in their distant race eastward, while overhead only a thin layer of white remained to obscure the sun.

  'Elias?' she called out as she entered the house. She closed the door behind her and stood in the quiet foyer, listening to the echo of her own voice. The silence should have been empty, yet to Madeline it seemed full of promise. There was the steady, distant tick of the clock in the kitchen; the murmuring hum of the refrigerator—all the sounds of a house not abandoned, but simply waiting to welcome its owners home.

  On her way back to the kitchen the hem of her black jersey dress brushed the wooden floor like a caress. Head high, an almost ethereal smile gracing her lips, she trailed one hand along the wall as she passed, taking possession. Mine, she thought, cherishing the word, the concept of belonging. This house can be mine; Elias can be mine; everything I've ever wanted can be mine—all I have to do is reach out and take it.

  She hesitated at the kitchen door, wondering if home and love and family had always been within her reach. She had never protested her fate; never felt worthy enough of love to ask for it openly; maybe that was part of the reason family after family had sent that cold little girl away—because she'd never let them see all the love in her heart.

  She felt the weight of the past lift suddenly and simply drift away. Her feet barely touched the floor as she walked to the kitchen window and looked outside.

  Elias was out there, kneeling in her rose garden, still dressed in the tuxedo he'd worn to the city. She saw his bent head through the glass as he worked at the base of a plant, his black hair quivering with the motion of his hands.

  As she went outside to join him, she didn't feel like a woman merely walking towards the man she loved; she felt like a warm, frothy wave being pulled inexorably from the black sea towards the bright shore of its destiny.

  She stopped next to him and looked down at the empty green eyes looking up. 'You're a little overdressed for this kind of work,' she said.

  'We're going to have to get you some gardening clothes.'

  His black brows twitched in a puzzled frown, and Madeline felt an aching flood of tenderness wash over her.

  He glanced down at the soil-encrusted knees of the black trousers and shrugged indifferently. When he looked up at her again, he flinched slightly, and she wondered if the change within her was clearly visible on her face. For just an instant the protective curtain lifted from his eyes, and Madeline glimpsed hope, longing, pain—the reflection of all her own old emotions—and then the curtain crashed down and his face grew cold.

  'I won't have much use for gardening clothes. I don't intend to stay at Rosewood.'

  It was such a strange sensation, to smile at words that would have sent her spirits plummeting just a short time ago. It didn't matter if they left Rosewood, because now she knew that the home she'd longed for wasn't a place—even a place she loved as much as this one.

  'All right,' she said quietly. 'If you want us to go somewhere else, we will.'

  He looked up at her, his face expressionless. 'What are you talking about? You should know better than anyone we can't work together any more. It's just too…hard.'

  'Why?' she asked, trying to keep her voice light. Inside her head she was screaming at him to say it, to just say it out loud, once and for all; that if Becky was right and he'd really loved her all this time, why couldn't he just say it?

  'You know perfectly well why,' he mumbled at the ground.

  'Tell me. I want to hear you say it out loud,' she insisted, her voice trembling. Her hands were clenched at her sides and her whole body was leaning forward, her future hanging on his response.

  'Dammit!' He flung a handful of soil down at the ground and jumped to his feet. 'You want to hear it out loud? All right! Because I can't keep that damn agreement! I can't go on pretending that all I feel for you is friendship…' Suddenly he closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged. 'Love keeps getting in the way,' he said quietly. 'I already told y
ou all this—that morning David was at the house, remember?'

  Madeline's face reflected an instant of pain. She remembered that morning; remembered Elias telling her that emotions had interfered with their working relationship from the beginning—but she'd thought he'd been talking about her emotions, not his.

  'You love me,' she murmured, awestruck by the sound of the words.

  His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating smile and he looked off to one side. 'That's been pretty obvious right from the start, hasn't it?' he asked drily. 'And it was more than you bargained for. That was pretty obvious, too. So now it's all out in the open; the pretending is over. Are you satisfied now?' He spun his head to glare at her, then winced to see her smiling at his pain. 'I think you should go pack your things, Maddie,' he said tonelessly, looking away again. 'I'll drive you home.'

  There was a brief moment of stabbing uncertainty, of faltering courage, as Madeline remembered all the other times in her life people had told her she had to leave…

  She closed her eyes briefly, then clenched her jaw with determination. Not this time. 'I am home,' she said quietly, and he turned his head slowly to look at her. His face—that strong, beautiful, beloved face—slipped in and out of focus as her eyes filled with tears. 'I knew I was home the first time I saw your face,' she added in a whisper. 'I just didn't think you wanted me.'

  His mouth sagged open and the words came out in a whispered gasp. 'You didn't think I wanted you?'

  Her lips quivered as she nodded and blinked, watching his eyes darken with the look of one afraid to embrace joy, for fear it would be snatched away. It was a look she knew well— she'd seen it in the mirror a thousand times. There were so many things she had to tell him, so many things that needed explaining, but now was not the time.

  She smiled at him through her tears, marvelling at how very much alike they had always been—both so wounded by rejection that they had learned to fear love itself; both so blinded by that fear that they couldn't see love in the other one's eyes.

  'Maddie?' he whispered once, his eyes searching her face, then shining with the green of spring's promise after a lifetime of winter. 'You love me,' he murmured, his voice as filled with wonder as hers had been when she'd said the very same words. 'My God, you love me…'

  Suddenly he grabbed her by the shoulders, his eyes narrowed, his voice a low rasp. 'Say it,' he demanded. 'Tell me you love me, Madeline. Say it aloud.'

  Her lips moved, struggling to find the shape of the words she'd never said, but before she could speak his mouth was busy on her face, his hands were threading into her hair and she could barely catch her breath at all, let alone speak.

  'Say it!' he hissed close to her ear, and she felt the words she had never spoken in her life fly from her mouth as he jerked her against him.

  It didn't even feel strange, telling Elias she loved him. After all, she'd been telling him that ever since they met, the only way she knew how, whenever she played his music.

  She didn't question the power of the force that brought them both to their knees; she never felt the damp soil cushion her head or the thorny caress of a rose bush against her hand as she reached out to pull love against her—she knew only that together she and Elias were celebrating life, embracing it as surely as they embraced each other.

  Once, for just a moment, her eyes fluttered open. Above her Elias's face was framed by the tattered veil of clouds that had finally been shredded by the wind. Through the white lace, the light and the warmth that was life itself shone down, and, next to where Elias and Madeline lay, the first rosebud lifted its face for the kiss of the sun.