A Candle in the Dark (24 page)

She nodded, and he noticed how tired she looked. There were circles marring the peachy skin beneath her eyes, her hair escaped her braid to blow across her face and curl in thin strands over her shoulders. The collar of her dress was unbuttoned, and her skin looked dull, streaked with dirt and blood.

“You’ve been here the whole time?” he asked.

“I couldn’t very well stay in the village alone,” she explained unemotionally. “And one of us had to stay with you. Jiméne—Jiméne was here too.”

“Until I hit him.”

“Even after you hit him.” She smiled, and the soft warmth of it spiraled through him, easing the sharp edge of thirst until Cain had enough strength to smile back.

“So now he’s left you alone with the beast.”

She hesitated, started to say something and then changed her mind. “Do you remember much of it?”

“Some.” He shrugged. The movement sent pain shooting into his skull. “Not six days’ worth. I imagine it was bad.” He put a hand to his temples. The rope around his wrist pulled painfully, and Cain looked down at it, seeing the rubbed raw skin and the blood marking the rags someone had tied around the rope for comfort. “Christ.”

She had the grace to look chagrined. “Something had to be done.”

“Apparently you thought so,” he said, anger rising through his headache. “Too bad it didn’t work quite the way you wanted it to.”

“You’ve stopped drinking.”

“The hell I have.”

“Jiméne says—”

“Fuck Jiméne.”

“So you won’t try,” she said in that cold, cultured tone. “Destroy yourself, then.”

Her words crushed his anger; Cain suddenly felt hatefully, uncontrollably ashamed.
Destroy yourself, then
. But it wasn’t as easy as that. He had no will to stop. Not anymore. He no longer knew how to control the need that even now held him captive. He wanted a drink—the words were capitalized in his mind—bold and undeniable. Inescapable.

He groaned, burying his face in his hands and wishing this was all a bad dream.

Time to make a choice
. The sentence came full blown in his mind and he wanted to push it away, wanted so badly not to have to decide he could almost taste it. To stop drinking meant to fight, meant he had to find something in himself he liked enough to want to fight for. But there was nothing. Nothing…

“
Amigo
!” Castañeras’s voice was so cheerful Cain wished he had a gun. “You are awake!”

He lifted his face from his hands and looked up. “
Buenos dins, hijo de la perra
.”

Jiméne flushed. He dropped the bag he was carrying beside Ana. “I was afraid you would not take this well.”

“Take it well?” Cain held out his wrists. “I can’t imagine why you thought I wouldn’t. Why not just kill me? It’d be quicker.”

“But then you would not be alive,
si
?” Jiméne smiled. “I have brought food.”

The thought made Cain’s stomach flip. He leaned his head against the tree. “I can’t remember the last time I ate something.”

“Yesterday,” Ana informed him, searching through the bag. “Or at least you tried to.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“It does not matter. You will eat.” Jiméne said. “As I had to when I was ill. Pork stew and iguana pie—they are lifesavers,
sí
?”

Cain’s stomach rose to his throat.

Ana glanced at him. “Be kind, Jiméne. He looks green.”

“
I
was green when you gave it to me. The grease,
amigo
, it will be good for—”

Cain heaved, twisting to the side and vomiting up the liquid in his stomach. His hands shook, he was too weak to even hold himself up as he choked and sputtered. But his stomach lurched even after there was nothing left inside of it.

Ana was at his side in an instant, smoothing his hair out of his face, supporting him. He recognized the feel of her hands on his brow, and even through his sickness, the memory came wavering back, thin and cloudy, but there nonetheless. Ana, touching his face with her cool hands, making the all-too-vivid dreams flee for a few moments. Ana, singing mindless, calming lullabies.

The memory surprised him. He had not imagined she had such compassion, or even that she cared enough about him to help. Had she done it through the entire six days? Or just once?

It didn’t matter suddenly; he didn’t care whether she’d held him for a minute or an hour. All that mattered was that she
had
held him, that for a little while, anyway, she had cared about him.

Destroy yourself, then
. He heard again the cool anger of her words, and for the first time recognized them for what they were. Concern. Not contempt. Concern.

The thought was startling. Frantically Cain twisted in her arms, jerking around so he could look into her face, and what he saw there both terrified and exhilirated him. It
was
caring, and concern, but…

But he had wanted badly to see concern in other people’s eyes before, had fooled himself into thinking other people cared. Never before had he wanted it as badly as he did in that moment. He didn’t trust himself any longer to know what he saw, so when she reached again to push the hair back from his face, he grabbed her wrist.

His hand was shaking. She could have escaped his grip easily, but she didn’t. She looked at him. Slowly, warily, but she
did
look at him, and Cain’s heart jumped in his chest.

“Duchess,” he said roughly. “Duchess, do you care what happens to me?”

She didn’t smile, didn’t move. But she didn’t pull away, either. “Call me Ana,” she said gently.

It was barely eight o’clock the next morning when Jiméne came back from the hotel, five recalcitrant mules in tow. With them was the animals’ taciturn master, Jose. The muleteer’s only greeting to Ana had been the twitching of his heavy mustache, and then he and Jiméne left again for supplies, leaving her alone with a sick, shaking D’Alessandro.

Ana glanced at her partner. He was tugging at the pile of newly purchased saddlebags, sweating profusely, looking distressingly pale. Guilt washed over her, and Ana’s throat tightened.

Before she knew it, she was walking across the grass toward him. He didn’t look up until she was barely a few feet away, and then he straightened, bracing his hand on a nearby tree to keep from falling. His shirt was loose, and it hung open, revealing his chest. The dark curls covering his skin didn’t hide the accentuated ridges of his ribs, and his broad, high cheekbones highlighted the gauntness of his face. He was much too thin.

She bit her lip and moved forward. “Are you all right?”

“That seems to be the question of the day,” he answered in that deep baritone, still husky from all the screaming he’d done in his delirium. “Yeah, I’m all right.” He moved away from the tree and rubbed the back of his neck. The sleeves of his shirt fell back, revealing the raw, red welts around his wrists.

Shame dropped into her stomach. “I—I wish we hadn’t had to do that.”

He followed her gaze. “Ana, let’s not talk about it now,” he said. She heard the struggle in his voice, a hungry pain that pierced through her. His hands began to tremble, and he dropped them again. “I don’t want to think about it. I—I can’t think about it.”

“You seem much better this morning.”

He laughed shortly, bitterly. “Do I? I don’t feel any better. To tell you the truth, if Jiméne hadn’t been walking beside me on the way into town earlier, I’d have dodged into one of those taverns without a second thought.” He paused and looked away from her as if seeing something else entirely. “Do you know how many empty bottles are lying in the road from here to the village? Two hundred and six.” He exhaled slowly. “Two hundred and six.”

“You could control it if you wanted to.” Her voice sounded cold, and she winced.

D’Alessandro looked at her. “You sound like a friend of mine.”

“A friend? Is his name John? Or Rafael?”

It was a casual question, a way to take the uncomfortable vulnerability from his eyes. But he jerked as if she’d slapped him. His mouth tightened, his eyes blazed. “Where did you hear those names?” he demanded.

“You said them in your fever.” Ana frowned. “Why? Who are they?”

“No one.”

His distress made her curious. Something was bothering him, something important, and suddenly she wanted badly enough to know what it was that she forgot he might ask a question in return. She stepped closer. “Obviously they were men who tormented you.”

He stepped away. “It’s none of your business.”

“You sound like me now.” She tried to inject a lighter tone in her voice, to tease him, and he stared at her as if she’d just reminded him of something important.

“That’s a good idea, Duchess,” he said slowly. His mouth curved in a mocking smile. “Tit for tat. You tell me a secret and I’ll tell you one of mine.”

Ana stiffened. This was not what she’d intended. Her mouth felt dry. “I don’t—”

“I didn’t think so,” he said, an edge of satisfaction in his voice. He turned, lifting the saddlebags with effort, and started to walk away.

She stared at his retreating back, feeling foolish and angry. Her heart raced in her chest, the hot flush of embarrassment crept up her throat. He had turned the tables so neatly, had thrown her own reticence back in her face, making it look strangely like selfishness.

After nights of listening to him scream, struggling with her guilt, she knew it
was
selfishness. She had always worked to keep her real self hidden, had avoided questions and turned the tables as well as D’Alessandro just had. “
What do you do for a living, sir?” “Do you have a sweetheart back home
?” The questions flew through her mind. She’d done it with Jiméne, with dozens of others. She had asked and never even listened to the answers. All she wanted was for them to know nothing about her.

What did she have as a result? Nothing. No friends, nothing. The same loneliness that assailed her the other night came back with a vengeance. With it came the memory of D’Alessandro calling for her, needing her…

After six days of holding him in her arms and comforting him, after six days of feeling needed, Ana couldn’t stand his contempt, and she knew that was what she’d see if she kept her distance.

The thought paralyzed her. This was her chance. Her chance to pay him back for everything, her chance to be a friend. This once, she thought, this once she could lower the wall a little bit. After all, friendship wasn’t the same thing as love, with its frightening vulnerability. And after being on the inside, even briefly, she didn’t want to go back to before. Couldn’t stand to go back.

Her voice tightened in desperation. “I—I had a cat once.”

He turned, grinning weakly. “Not good enough. I had a dog.”

What else could she say? There was nothing else, nothing that didn’t make her weak with fear. He watched her still, waiting, and before she knew it, Ana blurted, “My father was Russian. He was—he was a baron. My mother waited for him to come to us her whole life, and he never did.”

She froze, stunned at her admission, waiting for his answer, waiting for the words that would hurt her, that would curl around her and cut her apart.

The words didn’t come. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he smiled; a soft, slight smile filled more with self-deprecation than derision. “I’m Rafael,” he said. “Rafael is my name.”

“Your name? But—what do you mean, your name? Your name is Cain,” she blurted.

He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “That’s right,” he said softly. “Cain Rafael D’Alessandro.”

Ana stared at him, confused. “I don’t understand. Why were you screaming your own name? And who is John?”

“How did you become a whore?”

His response was so quick it unnerved her. Involuntarily Ana stepped back, trying to hide the uncontrollable panic his words sent rushing over her. It was no longer easy. She felt suddenly out of her realm. There were some things it was better if friends never knew.

She foundered for something, some little secret, something that wouldn’t matter if he knew, but there was nothing. Nothing she could think of that would leave her safe.

Frantically she tried to drink, needing more desperately than she wanted to show him how willing she was to be friends. But she was too afraid. She needed more time. Maybe there would never be enough time—

“Well?” He was standing there, watching her, and she refused to look at him, knowing she’d see that disappointment in his eyes. Sad disappointment—oh, God, she didn’t want to face it.

But she couldn’t give him what he wanted either. Ana lifted her chin and looked at the road—anywhere but at him. “That’s enough for now, D’Alessandro,” she said, wiping her hands on her skirt. Her voice shook, and she tried unsuccessfully to control it. “I’ve got better things to do than play confession.”

He didn’t say anything as she walked away, and it wasn’t until she was halfway to the road that Ana realized she was waiting for him to call her back.

He watched her walk away, as unable to take his eyes from her as he was to call out her name and stop her. Her hips swayed beneath the rose wool skirt, the material flapped around her legs, and her thick mahogany braid slapped between her shoulder blades. Everything about her was angry. Angry and disappointed, and he wondered why. Was it because he hadn’t told her who Rafael was? Or because he had?

The whole conversation left him feeling confused and unbalanced. He had expected her to walk away from him the moment he’d proposed they trade secrets. That she hadn’t was a surprise. What was more surprising was the fact that she’d revealed something about her life. Granted, it hadn’t been much, but it hinted at a pain that left him curious—and unprepared.

She had changed a little. Sometime in the last six days, something about her had eased, loosened,
something
. She was wary, yes, but she was also… receptive.

The idea was heady, intriguing. It caught him off guard, and because of it, he’d answered her question.
Who was Rafael
? Himself, yes, but there was so much more to it than that. So much more.

The thought brought faint memories that hovered like apparitions in his mind. His father screaming, his mother answering back with a screech of her own. “
Cain!” “Rafael!” “Cain!” “Rafael
!” And then, a stronger memory. John Matson’s soft, quiet voice. “
Call yourself whatever you want. The name doesn’t matter. It says nothing about who you are. The only thing that matters is your future here as a doctor
…” God, the thought of it made him sick inside.