'I'll stay with Little Sam. Why don't you go sit with Mr. Price. I know you want to.'
'You don't mind?'
'Not at all.'
'Thanks, Jeanne. 1 owe you one.'
Little Sam sat looking at the draped window, as if he could see through the drapes to the other side. There was a very strange look in his eyes.
Richard Hasseling was very conscious of Desiree's presence. Uncomfortably so. He had never seen any woman quite so beautiful as Desiree. And his feelings for her were becoming—well, unnerving. He had to keep constantly reminding himself he was a Baptist minister.
And a virgin.
When Desiree sat down next to him and put a soft hand on his thigh, Richard thought he was going to die. For sure, he couldn't risk getting up. He would stick out in front.
Father Le Moyne found Noah at his post at the rear of the house. 'Noah? Maintain your sentry duties and I'll talk. I want to tell you something.'
'Very well, Daniel.'
'I will not come out of this alive, Noah. No! Don't say anything. It is—well, I am prepared for it. I want you to know I have valued your friendship. And I am sorry that people thought that—well, you and I had some sort of sexual relationship. I know that hurt you as much as it hurt me. It is a strange and unfeeling society we live in where two men cannot have a close friendship without—well, certain people of low intelligence making something different out of that friendship.
'Noah, don't waste your life pining and moping away what time you have left you over a woman you haven't seen in thirty years.'
Noah smiled and looked back at the priest. 'Marta? My heavens, Daniel. I haven't thought of her in years. No, Daniel, Marta isn't the reason I never married. The years just seemed to march on past me, without my noticing their passage. I grew older, more set in my ways. Then one day I looked up and I was middle-aged. I—am eccentric, to say the least. It would take a woman of exceptional understanding to put up with me, Daniel. And to tell you the truth, 1 really haven't been looking that hard. No. I really haven't been looking at all.'
'You haven't had to look,' the priest said dryly. 'You've been filling your bed with those young would-be writers and artists of the female gender out at your workshops.'
Noah laughed softly. 'Indeed I have, old friend. I have some marvelously delicious memories, Daniel. And I have absolutely no intention of apologizing for any of them.'
The priest smiled. 'I should tell you to be ashamed of your behavior and to do penance, but you would probably tell me to stick it in my ear.'
'Not quite that crudely put, Daniel,' Noah said with a chuckle. 'But—close.'
Both men were silent for a moment. Noah said, 'Daniel, just for the sake of conversation, since we all might be looking at eternity any moment, how many people know you were adopted into the Le Moyne family as a young man?'
'I didn't know you knew, Noah.'
'I guessed. Tricked you, old friend.'
'Exactly, Daniel, how much do you know, or have guessed over the long years?'
'Let us just say, Daniel—or should I call you Yves?—that you are not of this world.'
The priest did not elect to answer verbally. Instead, he rose from his chair and walked to the man. He put his hand on Noah's shoulder. Noah would remember nothing of the encounter. He would not remember anything about his suspicions of Father Le Moyne being anything other than a small parish priest in Logandale, New York.
But Noah's life, from that moment on, would be drastically altered.
The priest removed his hand and offered it to Noah. The writer took it. He could not remember the priest leaving his chair.
'You've been a good friend, Noah. I have enjoyed it.'
'I, too, old friend.' '
Le Moyne lifted his eyes to the darkness of outside. 'Something moved out there, Noah.'
Noah jerked his head around and searched the ink of night. 'I see it, Daniel. Call Sam and Joe.'
Sam came on the run. 'Human, Noah?' he asked.
'Yes. I believe so.' He pointed. 'Right over there, Sam—see it?'
Sam could see the white form lying on the cold wet earth. 'I can't tell from this distance if it's male or female. But whatever, it's naked. I'm going after it.'
Before anyone could argue, Sam was running through the night. Joe was right behind him. The form on the cold ground was a woman. Sam rolled her over. He had seen her around the small town but did not know her name.
She opened her eyes. They were filled with horror and fright.
'Easy,' Sam told her. 'You're safe.'
'Susie Parish,' Joe said. 'Vernon's wife. Jesus, Susie. What happened?'
She laughed bitterly. 'You name it, Joe. If it's perverted and twisted, it was done to me.' She put her head on the grass and began weeping.
