Camille (17 page)

He nodded. “I’m trying to decide where to
begin.” His other hand came up and sandwiched mine between his.
“Camille, you know that I love you as I would a daughter.”

“Of course. Emily, as well.”

“Yes, Emily too.” He reached up and pulled
the collar away from his neck as though it had grown too tight. His
forehead shined with small beads of sweat. “Cami, what I’m about to
tell you, I pray that it will not change our relationship too
drastically.”

“John, you’ve been nothing but good to me.
You cannot possibly have anything to say that would change the way
I feel about you.”

He squeezed my hand and lowered his face. For
a moment I thought he might sob. He let go of my fingers, stood
abruptly, and walked to the window. “Do you remember when you and
Emily were nine and you’d eaten some strawberries? Emily became
very ill.”

“Of course, how could I forget? Father was so
worried he called the doctor. And you came too as I recall. It was
the first time we’d seen you in two years.”

“There was a reason your father broke his
silence and summoned me to come. The doctor needed to know some
family history. He wanted to know if I’d had the same reaction to
strawberries.” Dr. Bennett wiped his fingers along the dust on the
window ledge then rubbed them together. He looked at me. “As a boy,
I’d eaten strawberries and had become violently ill with a
rash.”

My mind raced with confusion. “I don’t
understand. Why are you talking about rashes and strawberries? What
does all this have to do with the journal?”

He returned to his chair. “Emily’s reaction
to the berries was not a coincidence. It was inherited. I am
Emily’s father.”

I sat stunned until the ridiculousness of his
statement set in and I laughed. “Very amusing, John, but Emily and
I came from the same womb. I daresay she was the bossy one even
then, which would explain why I was so much smaller at birth.”

His face remained solid and grim. “It does
not happen often,” he continued. “But I assure you, it is possible.
Twins such as Emily and you developed from two distinctly different
eggs. You and your sister share very few of the same attributes.
Surely, you’ve noticed this.”

“John, this is beyond absurd,” I protested,
but my mind searched for the reasons he would have to conjure up
such nonsense.

“Your father saw such an alarming difference
between you girls, his suspicions grew.” He reached up and touched
his beard. “Beneath this facial hair, I’ve hidden dimples that I’ve
always considered to feminine for a man’s face. You know Emily has
some too. Neither of your parents had them. She inherited them from
me.” His words came out quickly now as if he thought their impact
would be less brutal if they flowed freely.

My body shrank back against the chair.
Memories darted through my head and suddenly came together as
pieces of a giant puzzle, the explosive end to a friendship, the
tension on my father’s face when John spoke French with my mother,
the endless differences between twin sisters. “You and my mother…”
I could not finish. I expected tears to come, but my eyes were dry.
“How could you?”

“I cannot make excuses for my actions except
to say that there was a time early in your parent’s marriage,
before you were born, when your mother was unhappy. She turned to
me for solace.”

I stared at the man in front of me. “I don’t
even know who you are.” I stood but my body felt like lead. My legs
collapsed, and I fell back onto the chair. Dr. Bennett stared down
at his lap.

“And Emily has known this all along?” I
asked.

He shook his head but still didn’t look up at
me.

“Damn it, John, at least have the courage to
face me!”

His eyes lifted and now, and I saw it. They
were Emily’s blue eyes. “Your father and I had agreed not to tell
either of you… ever. It didn’t seem necessary.” He looked at the
journal. “But he had written it all down. And in his crazed state,
he’d forgotten and given the journal to your sister to guard. Or
maybe he had wanted her to know after all. We’ll never know his
motives. When Emily began to withdraw from us and from regular
society, I figured the journal must have held the secret. She came
to me to tell me she knew everything.”

Now rage at their deceit gave me the strength
to stand, but as I raced by, he reached out and grabbed hold of my
arm. “There is more, Camille.”

My feet faltered. I fell forward, but he
steadied me. A whimper flew from my mouth. “What else could there
be, John? Was my real father the Marquis de Sade? What other sordid
details do you wish to impart about my ridiculously fictional
life?”

“The journal may help Strider. There are some
notes, some theories yet untested, which your father describes in
detail. But it holds more than scientific notations. He wrote
everything in it as if he wrote his own memoirs.”

I tried to shake loose from his grasp. “I
don’t want to hear more.”

“I’ve begun this and now, you must hear it
all.”

I wrenched free and stumbled sideways,
slamming my knee on the coal scuttle. “Damn it,” I cursed and
kicked it, injuring my toes and sending a black spray of residue
over the rug.

I hobbled to the door.

“Your father was not accidentally
contaminated.”

I stopped in the doorway without looking
back. Momentarily, I wondered where Strider had gone to. Had he
heard Dr. Bennett’s confession? Then John’s latest declaration
popped back into my pounding head.

“It’s all in his journal. It’s the other
reason Emily kept the journal from you, from us.” I heard the creak
of the chair, and I knew he stood behind me now. “I’ve left it for
you to read.”

He skirted past me, but I didn’t move. After
a long moment, I looked back over my shoulder. The book lay open,
its pages fluttering lightly with the energy produced by the
hearth. The fire looked suddenly inviting. I could toss the entire
thing into the flames to be rid of its scarring entries for good.
But I knew it held possible hope for Strider, so it stayed there in
the center of the table until I willed myself across the floor and
into the chair, where once seated, I lifted it onto my lap and
read. A blue ribbon held a place in the pages. I opened to the
page. My father’s all too familiar script stared back at me.

A soul disintegrated by betrayal combined
with an insatiable curiosity has brought me to this lamentable end.
Science with a thoughtful purpose now driven by hatred and desire
for power. My two sweet loves own my heart completely, but do not
fill the void left behind. A chasm which began my unraveling, a
chasm never repaired. The strength, the rage I witnessed from the
beast I hunted held mystical appeal. I wanted it. I needed it. I
took it. And as its blood coursed through my veins and
invincibility filled my thoughts, the same question plagued my
mind. Who would look after the angels with their glowing pink
complexions and lyrical giggles? Destroying him would leave no one.
Only one scenario remained. Bennett would have to live, and my own
death must be by his hands.

The words played through my mind over and
over sounding worse with each repetition. It had been intentional.
No accidental contamination but a plan devised in the mind of a
broken man. The walls of the marmalade room seemed to thicken with
a suffocating heat, and I struggled to take a decent breath. My
skin was icy, yet my body temperature seemed to rise. I jumped up
quickly, upturning the table. The journal slapped the floor,
creasing the corners of several pages as it landed.

The hallway and entry were a blur as I raced
out. My palms stung from smacking the front door open as I flew
down the steps and headed for any place that wsan’t home. The air
chilled the sweat on my skin, and oxygen finally flowed freely into
my lungs. I ran until a pulse beat in my ears, and my heels stung
from blisters.

Under a copse of half naked trees, I found a
bench. I sat there completely still and long enough for birds,
convinced I was a heat bearing statue, to huddle around me. In my
mind, I catalogued the day’s revelations in an orderly fashion
finding them easier to deal with neatly arranged. The man I
depended on and trusted more than anyone in the world, the man I
had undying respect for had had an illicit affair with my mother. A
mother, who I’d adored so much I’d held tightly onto a rag doll
she’d made long after it was appropriate for me to carry a doll,
had betrayed her wedding vows and broken my father’s heart. A
sister, who I considered the second half of my soul, even after she
abandoned me, was only my half sister. And a father, who I thought
the bravest, smartest and most wonderful man to walk the Earth, had
purposely contaminated his own blood with that of a murderous
beast’s, just to experience the power of being a werewolf. The list
repeated itself in my mind several times. What started as a nearly
silent giggle erupted into full laughter. My feathered visitors
fluttered away to a new resting spot.

The bout of laughter subsided and
surprisingly, I felt better. But not well enough to return home and
face Dr. Bennett. I sensed someone standing behind me and knew it
was Strider before I turned around. Seeing him standing there, tall
and broad shouldered beneath the shadows of the tree branches, I
had an incredible urge to throw myself into his arms. But I stayed
on the bench.

“How did you find me?” I asked then realized
it was a pointless question. His senses, no doubt, grew keener each
day.

He sat down next to me and motioned back with
his head. “I overheard a group of pigeons talking about an odd
little sprite in trousers taking up space on their bench.”

I smiled. “Fine friends they are. One minute
they are hovering around me to keep warm, next they are speaking
badly about me behind my back. Obviously birds are another species
not to be trusted.”

“Aye. Trust. It’s something I gave up on long
ago. Although lately, a bit of it is coming back.”

“Really? Tell me how that’s done. I don’t see
mine returning anytime soon.”

He picked up my hand which felt numb from
cold but instantly heated beneath his fingers. He pressed my palm
to his lips for a moment before tucking my cold hand beneath his
arm for warmth. “Tis a simple remedy really. Find the right person
to trust.”

A blush warmed my face. He trusted me. There
was no guarantee that this would all work out well for him, but he
trusted me. And I could do nothing for Strider without Dr. Bennett.
Besides, my options were limited. I had no place to go except the
place I’d called home for the past five years.

“Prim and proper rules of society were more
than absent in my house growing up. It seems they were abhorred and
broken at every turn. I knew my parents were extraordinarily
different than most, but never had I expected this.” The calmness I
felt was not from denial as I first thought, but rather from
acceptance.

Strider pulled a chunk of bread from his coat
pocket and tossed some crumbs near our feet. We were instantly
surrounded by birds. “My father believed he was the picture of
gentility and good breeding, but in truth he was a gin-soaked
blighter. My mother was like a preening peacock when others were
around, all smiles, beauty and charm, but underneath she was a
heartless, selfish ogre.”

“But my mother . . .and John. I don’t
understand how he could have betrayed my father.”

“Perhaps he loved your mother more.”

“But why would Emily not have told me? Why
would she keep this to herself?”

“For the reason you are sitting here now. She
knew it would hurt you. Or, perhaps, she thought you would feel
differently about her if you knew.”

I turned my face and looked up at him. A hint
of a smile curled the side of his mouth as he watched the birds at
his feet. “You have an explanation for everything.” I slouched
against the hard back of the bench. “Still, I shan’t be able to
trust anyone ever again. Except possibly you,” I added quietly.

Strider laughed. “Me? You should never trust
a scurrilous bloke like me.”

“That’s bloody grand, then I have no one.” I
jumped off the bench and walked away.

“Wait, Camille,” Strider called from behind
me. Suddenly his fingers were around my arm and he spun me around
to face him. His brown eyes stared at my face and then his gaze
lowered to my lips. “You can trust me,” he said softly and lowered
his face to kiss me.

It did not last long, but it did not
disappoint. I was glad he held on to me because I was sure that the
solid ground beneath my feet had moved. We’d caught the attention
of people passing by. Their wide-eyed stares made us both
laugh.

Strider glanced down at my attire. “I suppose
I should have waited to kiss you when you weren’t dressed in
trousers.”

I shook my head. “I think your timing could
not have been more perfect.”

Cold rain fell for two days washing coal
smoke from the air and leaving behind a clammy, uninviting
atmosphere. Dr. Bennett and I spoke only when necessary, and
Strider seemed restless. The experiments were not going well. This
I knew not from words but from the lines in Dr. Bennett’s forehead,
which grew more pronounced each day.

A dreary mood hung over the room as we sat
silently round the fire. “Will you be visiting your sister when the
rain lifts?” Dr. Bennett’s question shattered the quiet.

“You mean my half sister, don’t you?” My
posture straightened. “I don’t know when I’ll have time to go to
Bethlem in the near future.”

Dr. Bennett didn’t reply to my curt words but
returned to his book with an expression that could not be described
as anything but anguish. My gaze shot across the room to the settee
where Strider passed the time folding sheets of newspaper into
boats. How different his life would have been if his brother had
returned and he’d gone on to a life at sea. How different my life
would be if he’d gone to sea instead of the streets. Dr. Bennett
and I would be sitting here in our orange room, sipping tepid tea
and browsing books waiting for our next hunt. The blasted journal
would still be locked in Emily’s nightstand. And my heart would not
be totally lost to Nathaniel Strider.