Silk and Shadows(138)

He had thought Charles Weldon had sent him to hell, but he was wrong. Hell was not pain; it was not even hatred. Hell was to have known love, then to lose it.

The thought made him smile bitterly. He had not lost love; he had thrown it away, which was infinitely worse.

He did not need Sara to survive. But without her, he did not much care whether he did or not.

Her note had said I wish one of us were different. May God keep you and grant you peace. Love, Sara. His wife had loved him fully, with tenderness, passion, and acceptance. The only peace he had ever known had been with her.

He had not missed love and peace when they were only words. But having experienced both, how could he live without them?

For the first time he wondered if he should, or could, abandon the mission that had been the center of his life. What could he do to bring Sara back to him?

It would be easy enough to get Mrs. Kent's evil virgin house closed; it was almost time for that anyhow. Nor would it be difficult to save the railway and its unlucky investors.

Those things were simple. The heart of the problem was Weldon. Peregrine had sworn to kill the brute with his own hands, but if he was to win Sara back, he would have to forgo that pleasure.

Weldon versus Sara. Death versus life. To a disinterested person, it might sound like an easy choice, but it was not. The thought of retribution was all that had sustained young Michael Connery when Charles Weldon was flaying the flesh from his back. To block out Weldon's violations, Michael had imagined a thousand slow, excruciating ways to loll his tormentor.

Over the years, the dream of vengeance had sustained Peregrine through every kind of danger. Deserts that baked the marrow from the bones, hunger and disease, savage attacks, and thirst so tormenting it was madness. No matter how dark his situation, he had never despaired, for he knew he could not die before he had fulfilled his mission.

He had come to realize that, while he could kill a man in hot blood, he was not capable of deliberate, cold-blooded torture, not even of Weldon. At least, he could not perform physical torture.

Thus had been born the idea of mental torture, of stripping away everything Weldon valued. It was a more sophisticated revenge than the bloody dreams of young Michael Connery, and it had been deeply satisfying to plan how to ruin Weldon's life before the final reckoning.

Only now, when his mission was half-completed, could he see the limitations of vengeance.

With a shuddering breath, he lifted his head from his hands and sat back on his heels. Scooping up another handful of earth, he crumbled it in his fist, then let the dry soil drift through his fingers. Vengeance was like dust in the wind, ultimately worthless, for the past could never be changed.

Admittedly there had been great pleasure in his campaign against Weldon. He had enjoyed taking away Sara, and the barony, and his enemy's fortune, and he had certainly delighted in Weldon's confusion and rage.

But nothing that Weldon suffered in the present would save the child Michael from the savagery he had endured, and Peregrine would never be able to hurt Weldon as much as he himself had been hurt. Now that he looked at his mission a new way, he saw that vengeance could never be fully satisfying.

Even Weldon's death would not heal the wounds of the past. Scars of the body would be with him until he died, and the only balm that might heal his spirit was Sara's love.

Wearily he stood and brushed the dust from his fingers. He still craved the feel of his enemy's blood on his hands. Would it be possible to kill Weldon without Sara learning that her husband was responsible? No, he would never be able to deceive the woman who had seen so much of his soul. Nor would it would be possible for them to build a future on a lie.

With stark regret he accepted that the pleasure of killing Weldon would come at too high a price if it meant losing Sara. He must put Weldon's fate in the uncertain hands of the law.

He could no more change what he had done since coming to England than he could change the months in Tripoli that had shattered his life. But he could change the present and the future, and perhaps Sara would give him credit for the positive things he had done. Granted, he had injured strangers as Sara had charged, but he had also helped some people as a consequence of his mission. Jenny Miller and Sara herself had benefited.

As he swung up on his horse, he prayed that his actions would persuade Sara to give him another chance. Otherwise the future stretched bleak and barren before him.

* * *

Back at Sulgrave, Peregrine immediately sought out Benjamin Slade, who was working in the room he had turned into an office. Without preliminaries, he said, "Benjamin, I want you to collect all the evidence we have on Charles Weldon and prepare to present it to a magistrate."

Startled, Slade pushed his chair back from his desk. "You are actually going to trust the law to punish him?"