“I don’t know how I could have hurt you just now, Rowan,” he said. “I really don’t. I just don’t.”
“Michael, no …”
“No, let me say it. I know what happened to you. I know what he did. I know. And I don’t know how I could have blamed you, been angry with you, hurt you like that, I don’t know!”
“Michael, I know,” she said. “Don’t. Don’t, or you’ll make me cry.”
“Rowan, I destroyed him,” he said. He had dropped his voice to a whisper the way so many people did when they spoke of death. “I destroyed him and it’s not enough! I … I …”
“No, don’t speak anymore. Forgive me, Michael, forgive me for your sake and my sake. Forgive me.” She leant forward and kissed him, took the breath out of him deliberately so it would remain wordless. And this time when he folded her into his arms, it was full of the old kindness, the old cherishing warmth, the great protective sweetness that made her feel safe, safe as it had when they’d first made love.
There must have been something more lovely than falling in his arms like this, more lovely than merely being close to him. But she couldn’t think what it was now-certainly not the violence of passion. That was there, obviously, to be enjoyed again and again, but this was the thing she’d never known with any other being on earth, this!
Finally he drew back, taking her two hands together and kissing them, and then flashing her that bright boyish smile again, precisely the one she thought sure she’d never receive again, ever. And then he winked and he said, his voice breaking:
“You really do still love me, baby.”
“Yes,” she said. “I learned how once, apparently, and it will have to be forever. Come with me, come outside, come out under the oak. I want to be near them for a while. I don’t know why. You and I, we are the only ones who know that they’re there together.”
They slipped down the back stairs, through the kitchen. The guard by the pool merely nodded to them. The yard was dark as they found the iron table. She flung herself at him, and he steadied her. Yes, for this little while and then you’ll hate me again, she thought.
Yes, you’ll despise me. She kissed his hair, his cheek, she rubbed her forehead back and forth across his sharp beard. She felt his soft responsive sighs, thick and heavy and from the chest.
You’ll despise me, she thought. But who else can go after the men who killed Aaron?
Five
THE PLANE LANDED in Edinburgh’s airport at 11:00 p.m. Ash was dozing with his face against the window. He saw the headlamps of the cars moving steadily towards him, both black, both German-sedans that would take him and his little entourage over the narrow roads to Donnelaith. It was no longer a trek one had to make on horseback. Ash was glad of it, not because he had not loved those journeys through the dangerous mountains, but because he wanted to reach the glen itself with no delay.
Modern life has made all impatient, he thought quietly. How many times in his long life had he set out for Donnelaith, determined to visit the place of his most tragic losses and reexamine his destiny again? Sometimes it had taken him years to make his way to England and then north to the Highlands. Other times it had been a matter of months.
Now it was something accomplished in a matter of hours. And he was glad of it. For the going there had never been the difficult or the cathartic part. Rather it was the visit itself.
He stood up now as this tentative young girl, Leslie, who had flown with him from America, brought his coat and a folded blanket and a pillow as well.
“Sleepy, my dearest?” he asked her, with gentle reproach. Servants in America baffled him. They did the strangest things. He would not have been surprised if she had changed into a nightgown.
“For
He smiled as he walked past her. What must it be like for her, he wondered. The nocturnal trips to far-flung places? Scotland must seem like any other place to which he had at times dragged her or his other attendants. No one could guess what this meant to him.
As he stepped out onto the metal stairway, the wind caught him by surprise. It was colder here even than it had been in London. Indeed, his journey had taken him from one circle of frost to another and then another. And with childish eagerness and shallow regret, he longed for the warmth of the London hotel. He thought of the gypsy sleeping so beautifully against the pillow, lean and dark-skinned, with a cruel mouth and jet black eyebrows and lashes that curled upwards like those of a child.
He covered his eyes with the back of his hand and hurried down the metal steps and into the car.
Why did children have such big eyelashes? Why did they lose them later on? Did they need this extra protection? And how was it with the Taltos? He could not remember anything that he had ever known, per se, to be childhood. Surely for the Taltos there was such a period.
“Lost knowledge …” Those words had been given to him so often; he could not remember a time when he didn’t know them.
This was an agony, really, this return, this refusal to move forward without a bitter consultation with his full soul.
Soul. You have no soul, or so they’ve told you.
Through the dim glass he watched young Leslie slip into the passenger seat in front of him. He was relieved that he had the rear compartment entirely to himself-that two cars had been found to carry him and his little entourage northward. It would have been unendurable now to sit close to a human, to hear human chatter, to smell a robust female human, so sweet and so young.
Scotland. Smell the forests; smell the sea in the wind.
The car moved away smoothly. An experienced driver. He was thankful. He could not have been tossed and pushed from side to side clear to Donnelaith. For a moment he saw the glaring reflection of the lights behind him, the bodyguards following as they always did.
A terrible premonition gripped him. Why put himself through this ordeal? Why go to Donnelaith? Why climb the mountain and visit these shrines of his past again? He closed his eyes and saw for a second the brilliant red hair of the little witch whom Yuri loved as foolishly as a boy. He saw her hard green eyes looking back at him out of the picture, mocking her little-girl hair with its bright colored ribbon. Yuri, you are a fool.
The car gained speed.
He could not see anything through the darkly tinted glass. Lamentable. Downright maddening. In the States, his own cars had untinted windows. Privacy had never been a concern to him. But to see the world in its natural colors, that was something he needed the way he needed air and water.
Ah, but maybe he would sleep a little, and without dreams.
A voice startled him-the young woman’s, coming from the overhead speaker.
“Mr. Ash, I’ve called the Inn; they’re prepared for our arrival. Do you want to stop for anything now?”
“No, I want only to get there, Leslie. Snuggle with the blanket and the pillow. It is a long way.”
He closed his eyes. But sleep didn’t come to him. This was one of those journeys when he would feel every minute, and every bump in the road.
So why not think of the gypsy again-his thin, dark face, the flash of his teeth against his lip, so white and perfect, the teeth of modern men. Rich gypsy, perhaps. Rich witch, that had come plain to him in the conversation. In his mind’s eye he reached for the button of her white blouse in the photograph. He pulled it open to see her breasts. He gave them pink nipples, and he touched the blue veins beneath the skin which had to be there. He sighed and let a low whistle come from his teeth and turned his head to the side.
The desire was so painful that he forced it back, let it go. Then he saw the gypsy again. He saw his long dark arm thrown up over the pillow. He smelled again the woods and the vale clinging to the gypsy. “Yuri,” he whispered in his fantasy, and he turned the young man over and bent to kiss his mouth.
This too was a fiery furnace. He sat up and forward and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
