Veils of Silk(43)

Tomorrow, God willing, would be a better day.





Chapter 11





The next morning, Laura woke as soon as Ian moved. Opening her eyes, she found that the slanting rays of the early sun were filling the room with a honey-golden glow. The two of them lay face to face about a foot apart, her right hand interlaced with his left. To her relief, her husband's expression was composed. The demons had retreated back to the shadows.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said quietly. "I thought I'd come to terms with what I am now, but apparently that is something that must be done more than once."

"I'm afraid so," she said ruefully. "Though I know my stepfather is dead, a dozen times a day I find myself thinking 'I must tell Papa that' before I remember that he's gone. It hurts over and over—but a little less each time." Her fingers tightened on his. "You have also experienced a great loss, so it's hardly surprising that it continues to hurt."

"I sincerely hope that next time it hurts less," he said dryly. "There are better ways to spend a wedding night than holding together the shattered pieces of an old crock."

She gave a slow, teasing smile, glad that he could joke about what had happened. "You're not that old."

"But a crock?" He smiled with real amusement and propped his head up with one hand. "You're a saucy baggage."

There was powerful intimacy in sharing a bed, and it emboldened her. "And you," she said softly, "are a man who asks too much of himself. Uncle Pyotr said in his journal that you were born to be a hero—'the sort of man who can inspire other men, who can risk his life in battle with courage and flair.'

"But while you would have met death with valor, surviving an endless, pointless ordeal requires a different kind of strength. Perhaps you can't forgive yourself for not being as good at enduring as you were at risking your life."

Ian's expression became unreadable, but he did not pull away. "Did Pyotr say all that?"

"The gist of it. I'm extrapolating some."

"He was perceptive." Ian raised their joined hands and lightly kissed her knuckles. "If you can understand that and still look me in the face, I'm a very lucky man."

His words sparked an idea, and daringly she reached out to the cord that held his eye patch in place. "I really would like to look you in the face, Ian."

He became very still but didn't stop her. Laura didn't know quite what to expect, and what she found under the patch was something of an anticlimax: just a closed lid curving over a surface that was sunken a bit more than a normal eye.

"I'm rather disappointed," she said lightly. "I'd begun to think of the eye patch as Bluebeard's closet." She leaned forward and kissed him at the corner of the closed eye.

"Not Bluebeard's closet, but the mark of Cain," he said harshly.

When Laura looked at him with alarm, his expression smoothed over. "I'm just being melodramatic. That's Scottish national character, for those who believe in such things." Before she could question his comment, he sat up and propped some pillows behind his back. As he replaced the eye patch, he said, "What was your first father like? You've never spoken of him."

Disconcerted, Laura rolled onto her back and frowned at the canopy of the bed. Ian laid his hand on her wrist. "I'm sorry—it looks like this is a subject you would rather avoid."

"No, it's all right," she said softly. Though she had always avoided speaking of her Russian father because the memories were too painful, on this sunny first morning of marriage she found that some of the sting had gone away. "He was the very image of a dashing, romantic cavalry officer—tall and handsome and reckless. He seemed larger than life, though I suppose most fathers seem that way to small children.

"He had also something of his own father's melancholic temperament. When he was in a good mood, he was the fondest, most exciting father in the world. Other times he was moody and a little frightening, so I took care to stay out of his way." She thought a moment. "Strange. When my father died, he was about the age you are now. Much too young a man to die."

"No age is too young to die," Ian said. "What happened to him?"

Ignoring the question as if Ian hadn't spoken, Laura said, "I remember one winter when he took me riding in the country. He held me in front of his saddle and we flew over the snow, making wild jumps over ditches and fences. It was wonderful, like riding the north wind. I felt completely safe because I was with my father, but my mother was furious with him for risking my life, though she was just as reckless a rider herself. In fact, that's how she died—a fall when she tried to take a fence that any reasonable person would have refused."