Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (53 page)

“I know. I know,” she sobbed. “I know you cannot. You are kind to me, and we are married, and yet I cannot have… you. Not that I want you. Not that I do not. It is ironic. It is just… I am alone.”

“That need not always be the way of it,” I said softly, and came to sit beside her on the bed. “I wandered lost and alone for years before I found Gaston, but I did find him; and someday you will surely find someone, or he will find you; and then we will do what we can to see that you can be with him. Until then, you will have our daughter to love and be loved by, and you will have our friendship.”

I moved to take her hand and she scooted further away.

“Do not seek to comfort me: it makes it worse,” she said quietly. “I do not know if I can bear ten years of loneliness – not without rum.”

I had surely not borne it without wine. I sighed. “You might surprise yourself.”

She snorted. “I might kill myself.”

“What would you have me do to make it better?” I asked. “Other than supply you with rum?”

“I do not know,” she sighed.

“Let us at least work towards bringing Jamaica here,” I said. “And I am sorry we made you wait so long. It was not solely because we are thoughtless cads. We have problems of our own, and I do not say that to give excuse or evoke your sympathy.”

“His madness?” she asked with a frown.

I nodded. “It strikes in peculiar ways at times, and he needs to be alone with me to sort through it.”

She nodded. “I am sorry. I will try to remember that the next time I am feeling… sorry for myself.”

I truly wished I could comfort her. “Thank you. And I promise we will try and remember others are relying on us. We have already chided ourselves on the matter and still… We are used to seeing to ourselves and no one else.”

She smiled sadly. “I have never had to care for anyone. That is why I am afraid I will do poorly by the baby.”

“It takes time to learn,” I said. “It took many months before we became used to seeing to one another and not ourselves alone. I think it is harder for those of us who have been poorly cared for. We do not have fine examples to emulate. I know what I do not wish to ever do to a child, but I know so little of the things I should do as a father.”

“I understand,” she said, and sighed and stood: my worries were still etched upon her face. “Let us go.”

Rachel was thankfully pleased to see us and said our arrival was well-timed, as both Elizabeth and Jamaica were hungry. She soon had me shooed out to her husband’s office while they dealt with the children.

Theodore was thankfully alone, and I supposed that was due to the weather and not the lateness of the day.

“I have something for you,” he said proudly, and pointed to a document sitting at the edge of his desk. “I found a model for it in one of my books.”

I went to peruse the paper, and found it to be my formal renunciation: all couched in the language of the law, and made to sound so very proper that no one might ever guess the hardship, blood, and tears that gave rise to its intent.

“Thank you,” I sighed. “It is quite lovely.”

He regarded me speculatively. “Is it still what you wish to do?”

“Aye, aye,” I assured him. “It is just so very… proper. I suppose there is a part of me – a very foolish part of me – that would have those receiving this to know the why of it.”

He shook his head regretfully. “That has little bearing on the law.”

I smiled. “I suppose it does not.”

“And it would just serve to embarrass your father and make him even angrier than this will alone,” he added kindly. “This, they can at least speculate about.”

“I know.”

“I will arrange a meeting with the governor after the rain stops.”

He set the document aside, and lowered his voice to ask with feigned nonchalance. “So, were you able to see to that other matter?”

I grinned. “We met with that individual – who appears quite well if you are curious – and found an arrangement could not be made to our liking.”

He leaned forward with great curiosity and whispered. “Why?”

I leaned forward as well, so that my whisper did not have far to traverse the teak. “She was not conducive to my remaining with him throughout. And though I am sure she could have instructed any man quite adequately, that was not the true cause of our concern, and so Gaston plied her for information on women’s ailments and their treatment and we left her with a goodly sum of coin for her trouble.”

He appeared both relieved and thoughtful, and then concerned again. “May I ask what the true cause of your concern was?”

I sighed, not knowing what I should say and feeling I had already spoken too much in the name of allaying his fears regarding his recommendation. “Gaston has discovered that he harbors quite… mixed feelings regarding women. He does not wish to suffer a bout of madness in their presence, and thus wishes for me to remain with him and insure that does not happen or guide him from trouble if it does.”

“Oh Lord,” Theodore sighed and sat back in his chair with a sympathetic gaze. “What will you do?”

“I believe we have the matter in hand,” I sighed. “Another candidate for… Well, we now have another…” I was at a loss for the word to describe the services Agnes was offering.

“Should I ask?” he asked archly.

I sighed. “Agnes: which does and does not change the nature of our relationship with the girl, but perhaps you should be apprised of it.”

His eyebrows climbed quite high toward his receding hairline.

“It was her suggestion – do not ask how it was arrived at: I will be puzzling it for days – but through happenstance, she learned we might have such a need and she possessed several reasons of her own for wishing to engage in the… activity.” I said ruefully. “I did not wish to use her so, and I will be loathe to have any learn of it and think we have taken advantage of her.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I would never assume either of you to have forced yourself upon the girl in any fashion.”

“I should hope not,” I said with a touch of rancor.

He feigned wincing from my tone and smiled. “I have no judgment on the matter as long as it meets with the satisfaction of all the parties involved.”

I sighed. “Well… it has so far.”

I recalled Gaston’s tears and – the rest of our charges and responsibilities be damned – I truly needed to discuss the matter with my matelot as soon as I returned home.

“So tomorrow, then?” I asked.

Theodore nodded. “If there is no rain. I never relish traveling to Spanish Town in the mud.”

“I never relish traveling anywhere in mud,” I said.

We went to the back room so I could collect Vivian and found her quite engaged in nursing. I was somewhat dismayed: as much as I enjoyed Theodore’s company, I did not wish to stand around in his house this day.

“Might I leave you here for a time?” I asked Vivian.

Though she tensed at the suggestion, such that it disturbed the baby from her business, Vivian did not blanch, and her nod, though tight, was indeed a nod. I looked to Rachel.

“She is welcome to stay as long as she wants,” Rachel said graciously. “The children will nap and we can have chocolate and talk.”

I turned back to Vivian and found her now quite pale. She managed a thin smile for her hostess, though, and I was proud of her.

Then she glared up at me. “Do not forget I am here.”

I bowed.

She rolled her eyes.

I hurried home, only to find the stable empty. There was no one to be seen in the rain-soaked atrium or yard. All was dim, yet not dark enough to require lanterns, and all seemed dark and forlorn. I gazed along the line of closed doors upon the balcony and wondered which one I should knock on to find my matelot. The house had swallowed him, or rather the denizens of those rooms had. Fear and melancholy struck such that they nearly drove the breath from my lungs. I stood wet and gasping, wondering at myself and this sudden onslaught of madness.

Gaston found me some interminable time later: frozen to the center of my soul and huddled beneath our blanket in the straw with the puppies and three dogs, who could do little to warm me. We shared one glance and I was pulled tightly into his embrace and held until I stopped shaking.

“What has happened?” he hissed with worry, when I had found the composure to stop clutching at him.

“I am sorry,” I whispered. “I am sorry. It is only me. I… slipped… for but a moment. I returned and could not find you. I could not even look.

I was gripped… I felt lost… loss. That I had lost you. It was foolishness…

madness, really. I will be well.”

“You will not lose me,” he murmured.

“I know. I do. Truly. I just…” I sighed as I puzzled through my feelings and our metaphors. “My Horse… must be concerned.”

He pulled me to my feet and then to the hammock and stripped my wet clothes away.

“If it is to rain like this, we need another blanket,” I said, as he wrapped our naked bodies together in our single expanse of warm wool.

He snorted in my ear, and then his mouth was upon me, cajoling and sweet, and best of all, warm, until at last the cold gripping me began to abate. My cock remained ominously still, and thus I was able to note with amusement that his had risen yet again. I did not argue that he need not prove his love to me, or for me. My Horse wished for the assurance; and I knew, in a distant manner, that I should not deny it. It was as if I watched our lovemaking unfold from the vantage of a high tower, and judged it a good thing to witness but not an activity I need actually engage in. And that vantage gave me the curious and ironic presence of mind to wonder why I was not concerned that I felt so very far away.

“I am not well,” I breathed, as he discovered my inert member.

He began to pull away: I stopped him. He continued for a short time, and then pulled out abruptly, only to return to hold me with every other part of his body that could.

“I am warmer now,” I said. “I felt frozen before.” I kept turning about my thoughts – disconnected and jumbled things – seeking some design they might form. “My Horse seems happier now. I still feel oddly distant: as if I am not in my body.”

He squirmed over me so that we lay face to face: his held compassion and love. “That is often how I feel when my Horse takes the bit.”“Truly? As if you watch events but do not feel them?”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“It is odd. I always envision the madness gripping either of us as a potent thing. A thing that envelops all senses and bears us down or drags us off.”

“Sometimes it drags you off and then you watch it,” he said with a thoughtful frown.

“As if our Horse throws us from its back and we must catch it again. You have always likened it to hanging on to a rampaging animal, though.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it is.”

I sighed. “It makes me feel the fool for all my pretensions of control…

Of viewing it as a thing of light and the cave and…”

He hushed me with a kiss. “It is all metaphors and it is none, Will.

You know that; you are merely lost in it now.”

I did. I sighed and nuzzled his neck; and he held me; and I listened to the rain, and his heartbeat.

“Your sister is feeling contractions of her belly on occasion,” he said quietly. “She has not begun to labor yet, but she might be quite close.

She has sent for the midwife, and I would attend that meeting.” He sighed heavily. “I would know more of women.”

I nodded. I understood what he said. “Have you seen Agnes since?”

“Non,” he said quickly, and then he did not speak but I could hear unsaid words.

With the clarity born of my distant perspective, I said, “I do not feel that that in specific has troubled me.” I raised my head enough to meet his worried gaze. “How did you find it?”

He frowned and looked away with, thankfully, what appeared to be more thought than guilt. “I wish to experience it again without my head being so full of… memories. When it came time to actually lie with her, all I could think of was my sister, and how this or that element was different or the same.”

“You cried,” I prompted gently.

He nodded. “I cannot give a single reason for it. I seemed to be flooded with emotions from that night: many different emotions I cannot truly name. It was as if they were released to wash over me like a wave, and I felt tumbled beneath them. I do not know if that will happen again. I am relieved it happened there with you and with one such as Agnes.”

“As am I,” I said softly.

He shook his head the way a dog or duck shakes off water. “My cock enjoyed it well enough. It was squishy.”

We smiled in memory of Pete’s name for that part of a woman’s anatomy: the squishy hole.

He sobered quickly. “She is very thin and not… When I envision a woman, I see more rounded features. But… I found her pleasing.” He met my gaze with guilt. “In ways I do not find you,” he sighed. “It is different.”

I smiled. “If you found Agnes and me pleasing to the eye, or even your cock, in the same manner, I would be concerned for one or the other of us.”

He gave another fleeting smile before frowning again. “Pleasing her seems to be much as it is with you, other than her not being enamored with my entry.”

“That could change,” I said with a shrug. “Even though she does not favor men, she might come to find pleasure in your presence there.

Though women are larger and… squishier, it does not mean they need not become inured to it.”

“I will not do it again if it will spook your Horse as it has,” he said earnestly.

I thought on it with curiosity. “I cannot say if it will or not. We cannot know if it will unless you do it again.” I was feeling more myself, or rather more within myself, and I was able to look upon a single thought and feel great conviction towards it. “I will stipulate one thing. I would not have you touch her again unless I am present.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

I was able to recall why we wished for that, anyway. “Did you feel any urge to harm her?”

“Non, none. She is Agnes. My Horse has ever viewed her as… safe.

She is not alarming or threatening.” He frowned. “I did not like watching you touch her at first, and your kissing her was… not appreciated, but that was because it was you and I felt jealousy. Later, when I instructed you to have her pleasure you… that was my Horse wishing to see you pleased; and since I was involved in the activity, I was not jealous. I do not feel you harbor any feelings toward her other than fondness, or her you.”