Patience (42 page)

Matthew dropped his hand and looked at her, his eyes dark with anger. “This is shit.”

Another tear fell.

His lip curled. “Why have you kept this?”

Why?
“As a reminder.”

“Of what? That you had a cold son of a bitch for a teacher? Because that’s the only truth that I can take from this letter.”

“Is it?”

“Listen to me, Patience. The pursuit of art and the pursuit of love are eternally bound. One who denies love will never be a great artist. One who rejects love will never be a great person. One who repudiates love, repudiates God. And as for marriage and the creation of children, I know of no greater pursuits.”

Patience trembled, both at his words and the fact that
he
was saying them. “Is that what you believe, Matthew?”

“That’s what I know, Patience.” He leaned close. “The question is, why don’t you know it?”

Patience lowered her gaze. “I want to know it. It’s just that . . .” She shook her head.

“What?” Matthew lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Patience, if it wasn’t love this Goutard saw in your eyes, what was it?”

“I don’t know. Pain, perhaps. And the ridiculous hope that he might soothe it.” She shrugged and smiled, which was strange because her tears fell at the same time.

Matthew’s frown deepened. “What pain?”

“I don’t know, Matthew. Just pain. I mean, sometimes there’s just pain, isn’t there?” Closing her eyes, she sighed and rested her head against her arm for a moment. Then she returned her gaze to him. “I was fifteen and impressionable. He gave me attention—but not the superficial sort that other men did. In fact, he only really looked at me when I played. And when I did play, he barely looked at anything else. So I played and played. And I came to confuse his attention for caring.” Patience paused. “I was foolish.”

“You were young and—alone?”

“Alone.” Patience repeated the word. She’d felt alone for a very long time. She thought of her last conversation with Passion. At the time of Henri, Passion had just begun to be courted by her first husband, Thomas Reddington. It was then that Patience had realized that her sister would soon be leaving—leaving to make a life of her own. It was then that she, herself, had begun to look outside her family. A part of her had longed to be courted, too. So after the painful failure of Henri, and after many sleepless nights, she’d decided to search for love—a real love—all her own.

She looked at Matthew.

He looked at her.

“Know what I know, Patience.” He held up the letter. “And renounce this man’s lies.”

Patience stared at the paper. She wanted to.

Matthew got up and walked to the hearth. He lifted the letter and then dropped it in the fire.

Patience watched it burn. The center blackened, then the ends curled and flamed. In only a short time, it was ash and dust. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure why because she felt nothing but a vague satisfaction at its destruction.

Matthew came back and sat before her. “It’s gone.”

“Yes.” Patience nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

The fire crackled in the silence.

Matthew’s gentle gaze moved over her. “So, here we are again. You, me, and your cello.”

Patience looked at her instrument and then down at herself. She’d almost forgotten she was naked.

“I am with you, Patience. The past is gone, but I am with you.”

She stared into Matthew’s beautiful, dovelike eyes.

“I will always be with you,” he said softly.

Always?
Was there really such a place as always? Patience’s tears spilled over. “You shouldn’t make such promises,” she whispered.

“You shouldn’t question what I know,” Matthew returned. “Now, touch your instrument, Patience.”

No.
Her tears kept falling. She shook her head. “Why can’t you just leave it alone, Matthew?”

His frown deepened. “Because I can’t. I can’t leave it alone any more than I can leave you alone.” His head tilted. “
Alone
isn’t good for you, Patience. You’ve had too much of
alone
.”

Patience’s tears fell. Her heart was hurting so badly. “Stop it,” she gasped.

“I won’t stop it.” His eyes bore into hers. “Touch it.”

“I can’t.” She choked on the words. Her body trembled uncontrollably.

“You can.” His voice was hard. “Touch it, Patience.”

“I can’t!” she cried, her heart cracking. “I can’t!”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I won’t!” she shouted at him, heaving her cello away from her.

He grabbed her wrist. “Why, Patience?” His eyes held the fire of the heavens. “Why?”

She tried to pull away.

“The truth, Patience.” His hand was a vise. “Look at the truth! Just because you refuse to look at it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

With a choked sob, she twisted her wrist frantically.

“Look at it, Patience! Look at it, or I will make you!”

“I won’t!” she screamed.

And then he pulled her down and she was falling—falling over his lap. She fought and flailed, but he was too strong. His arm cinched around her waist, pinning her. Then his hand came down upon her bottom like a crack of thunder. She cried out and her body stiffened as the pain shot through her, fiercer than any she’d felt before. Another strike fell and another, each one as strong as the one that preceded it. Yet the pain grew exponentially, and she couldn’t escape it. She cried and jerked against Matthew’s body, but he kept on—spanking her and spanking her. And as she wept and writhed, it seemed that the pain he laid on from without reached inside her, touching and releasing a pain from within. A pain that was old, deep, and bleeding. A pain that was too terrible to look at.

She wailed and squeezed her eyes shut, but there was nowhere for her to go, and nowhere for her to hide. For the pain was spreading and Matthew kept on, his unrelenting hand landing upon her flesh over and over, and again and again, breaking down the last of her barriers—the last of her resistance.

And then it happened.

The final door over her heart split and broke, and there was nothing but a swirling eddy of pain before her—and Matthew beneath her, holding and supporting her. Sobbing, she collapsed over his lap. His arm loosened from around her waist. His hands stroked up her back. His lips touched her spine.

Blinded by her tears and deafened by her cries, Patience let her legs slide to the floor. But she held on to Matthew, for he was her rock in the storm of her emotions. Grasping his thigh, she curled into the vee of his legs and wept into his lap. He bent around her, protecting her with his body and his touch, from the full fury of her pain.

Then his voice came softly by her ear and his words reached past her cries. “Tell me, Patience. Tell me, what ails your heart?” His hand smoothed back her hair. “Why won’t you touch the instrument you profess to love?”

My instrument.
Anger and loathing whirled from the storm of Patience’s pain and floated before her, clear and distinct.

She lifted her head and, looking over the top of Matthew’s thigh, glared at her cello through her tears. It lay facedown, where she’d thrown it. And the more she stared at it, the angrier she grew.

“Why can’t you touch it like a lover, Patience?” Matthew asked low.

“Because
you’re
my lover,” she cried, her voice thick with tears. “Not that thing!” She spat the word, and her anger ignited into something bigger.

Matthew bent closer to her. “You don’t love it at all, do you, Patience?”

“No!” A violent fire flared in her.

“Do you hate it? Is that why you won’t touch it, or let it touch you?”

“Yes, I hate it!” Patience’s fingers curled into the fabric of Matthew’s trouser leg. “I hate it!” She sprang to her feet, and leaping to her cello grabbed it by the fingerboard. With a cry of rage, she swung it over her head and dashed it to the floor. It groaned as its ribs cracked. Over and over she swung it, venting the wrath and resentment of years upon the instrument of her emptiness. Slivers of wood and loose strings flew everywhere. And as she expelled gasping cries, she threw down the fingerboard and stomped upon the splintered remains, grinding the heel of her boot into the scroll and pegs. She stomped and kicked, and cried and whirled, slowing only as the fire inside her began to burn itself out. And when the last spark died, she stood there, her breast heaving, the remnants of her cello all around her.

She didn’t move as the realization of what she’d done sunk in.

Had she really done it?

She looked at the broken shards and twisted strings. Shocked, she began to tremble. She looked at Matthew. He stood near his chair, unmoving, his features drawn into tense lines, his dark eyes fixed upon her.

Her tears welled and spilled over. “Look what I’ve done.” She dropped to her knees as fear whirled out of the storm. “Now I have no place to hide. Where will I go if you leave me?” Shaking, she bent and gathered some of the broken pieces of her cello to her.

But it was useless.

Sitting back on her heels, she covered her face with her hands and cried.

“Patience.” Matthew drew her hands from her face. He was sitting right before her, one leg folded beneath him and the other bent against his chest. The gold in his hair gleamed in the sunlight. “I will never leave you. You and I are forever.”

His words made her eyes sting even more. Her tears fell. “What if there is no earthly forever, Matthew? What if forever only exists in heaven and fairy tales?” She drew a shuddering breath. “What if
our
forever, isn’t really forever?”

Matthew’s dark eyes caressed her. “Love is eternal, Patience.”

Her heart quaked, and sorrow loomed. “I know,” she mewled. “But so is loss. And, for me, the two are never far apart.” She touched one of the splinters of her cello. “That’s why I need an empty place—an eye in the storm.”

“No. You
don’t
need it. That’s why you broke it.”

She looked at him through her tears.

“You can’t live in the eye of a storm, Patience. There’s nothing there. It’s calm and empty, but it’s not life. Life is in the whirlwind.” His gaze was so earnest. “Love and happiness are in the whirlwind.”

“And sorrow.”

“Yes, sorrow, too.” He cupped her face in his hand. “And tears.” His thumb brushed her wet cheek. “But there’s no sorrow that can’t be borne, Patience, so long as we’re not alone.”

The word and all that it meant—pain, sorrow, fear, anger, resentment, and, finally, emptiness—reverberated through her memories. It echoed backward in time to the defining moment that had been its beginning, and from which every other loneliness had been born—her mother’s death.

The moment appeared in her mind like an image viewed through a stereoscope, three-dimensional and real. She looked at it for the first time in twelve years. Pain ricocheted through her. Grasping Matthew’s hand, she pressed her face into it as a high mewling sound came from somewhere deep inside her. His arm came around her. He pulled her into his lap, and his lips touched her brow. And then as her memory began to move, she pressed against him and told him everything in gasping whispers and choked sobs.

“The night my mother died we were all there—Father, Passion, Prim, and I. We’d been there all day, for she’d been growing weaker over the hours and we knew she’d soon be going. She was so pale and fragile, and we didn’t know if we would hear her speak again. But then, at about nine o’clock, she opened her eyes. She smiled at us, and then she looked at me. And with what seemed like a monumental effort, she said, ‘Play for me, pigeon.’ So I ran. I ran to get my cello. I ran so fast because I was afraid she might die while I was getting it. But when I returned, her eyes were still open and she was just as when I’d left. So I sat and I played Handel’s
Sarabande
. It was her favorite. And I played and played, and I kept looking at her to see if it pleased her, but her eyes never moved or blinked. I played till the end. And it wasn’t until then that I realized—when my father closed her eyelids—that I hadn’t run fast enough.” She turned her face into Matthew’s neck. “My father collapsed over my mother. Prim turned into Passion’s arms, and started calling, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ And I didn’t know what to do, or who to go to, because there were no arms left—no embrace for me. There was nothing for me. So I just stood there.” She looked up at Matthew through tears of anguish and remorse. “If only I’d had my cello there already. A few notes, or a couple of bars—that would have been enough to escort her to heaven. She wanted that. She asked me for that.”