The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (13 page)

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He softly chuckled. “I am too.”

What could we do? Runaway together, making me the shame of my family . . . my sister might never be able to marry if I did something like that. And Mathew? I could never hurt Mathew. Could Jacque and I keep our love secret? Torturous and too much a risk. Again, if we were caught, my sister would have no future, and I knew I couldn’t do that to Mathew, betray him. I knew my love for Jacque was betrayal enough. The choices were clear for us: we could hurt others or ourselves.

Jacque said into my ear, “I’ve never met a truly honest man. All men lie, except for Mathew. He talked about you minutes after our introduction, and I thought him some lovesick boy. But I grew to admire him and respect him—his passion for justice and you.”

I pulled away enough to look at Jacque. His eyes lost that glow and were misted with moisture.

“My own brother despised me, but I loved him anyway. He was older than me—illegitimate. My father raped his mother, my father’s chambermaid. Ah, nobility. It is grand,
non
?”

I blinked. His voice sounded like metal cutting metal.

He looked away, his frown growing. “I would never do such a thing; I never raped. I could not stomach the dungeons. I hated even the branding and the cutting off of fingers for silly, petty crimes. When I became marquis, I no longer permitted torture. Strange too, the crimes ceased. My father would never have believed it, if he had survived.” He turned to me, pride growing in a small smile. “I have a small senate and a democracy in my lands. You would love it. Mathew loved it when I told him how I came from nobility but had become elected to rule my people. My people
chose
me.”

“Why did you not tell me any of this?”

He shook his head and looked down at our touching hips. “I was already in love with you, and I was afraid you would think less of me because I was born of nobility.”

“Silly man, I would love you if you were a pauper or a king. Of course, oddly enough, I think I’d be more comfortable if you were a pauper, but . . .”

He laughed and sniffed his nose then sighed. “You love me? I can hardly believe it. I am elated
and
in more pain than before.”

“I do love you,” I whispered as I tugged on his black satin ribbon that was already hanging in a loose knot at the back of his head. His black wavy hair danced into my hands. “I love you. I love you.”

He kissed me again. Within seconds the earth was shaking, but then Jacque pulled himself away from me. “I must halt. For once in my life, I worry that I will not be able to stop if I let you kiss me more.”

I nodded, but still let his hair tickle the palms of my hands.

He hooked a finger under my chin. “I was trying to tell you about my brother, so you would know why I would rather live with this pain than hurt Mathew. Mathew is loyal and true. And my brother, Gérald, was not . . . I don’t blame him for hating me or my father. And he did hate me.

“Long ago, I was betrothed to another, Josephine. I had been engaged to her since I was but three years of age. The night before we were to wed, my brother raped her. I think he was planning on killing her, if her own maid had not stopped him.

“Her brothers and father were there, and by the time I had awakened and raced to the hall, I saw just in time, one of her brothers run Gérald through with his sword. My father, for his first and last act of love toward my brother, tried to defend Gérald, but was run through too. Josephine stopped her brothers from killing me too. I have not told another of my brother and father in so long.” He paused, holding his breath for a beat, more than likely holding his painful memories as well. He finally exhaled and continued. “Josephine gave me my life, and I in turn gave her whatever she wanted. I don’t think she ever wanted to be married, especially to me. I was young and liked fast horses and gave too much money to artists, poets, and philosophers. She was pious and pure. She wanted to become a nun. She was so happy living in the convent; she took care of orphans. She said she always wanted to be a mother, and being a nun she became a mother to hundreds. Such a happy woman, despite all that happened to her. She could have buried herself in the convent, but instead she lived, lived so happy, in love with all those little children.”

I hated that I was jealous of this sweet, kind woman, but I was. “Josephine? She’s still raising orphans in France?”

“
Non
, no, she died long ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Now I felt ridiculous about my green, covetous tint.

“The point is, through all that, I learned how to cherish people who are good and kind. I thought, before I knew that you loved me in return, that it was better to wound myself than Mathew. So, I would leave, and Mathew would never know of my betrayal. I am enraged with myself for loving you as well.”

I smiled as more tears threatened to fall from my eyes. “There is nothing for us to do with our love. If I left Concord, I would ruin my sister’s future, and injure Mathew as well. If we did anything at all, we would only be hurting others.” I laughed as the tears spilled down my face. Jacque quickly swept them away. “I had no idea that love could be this malicious.”

Jacque nodded and let his own tears fall, and I caressed them away with my hands. Somehow the weight of the conversation was too great, and we fell on our sides, lying beside each other, staring into each other’s eyes, smiling and crying.

“Utterly, with all my heart I love you,” he whispered.

“For the rest of my days, I know I will love you.”

He smiled as he played with a strand of my hair that curled around his fingers, while another tear escaped one of his eyes and traveled over his long perfect nose. “May I cut a curl of your hair? To remember you by?”

It was that request that was my undoing. I moaned in my crying. He clutched at me, pulling me closer. “I think it best if I leave, don’t you, hmm? I cannot hide my love for you now.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck as I tried to stop my soft wailings. My face pressed against his neck and shoulder, and I pulled at him to be even closer. I lifted my leg, letting it slide up one of his, and he startled and tried to push me away. I hefted my head from him and laughed as I retrieved the
sgain dhubh
, a Scottish small, sharp dirk within my boot.

“You thought me trying to seduce you?”

He smiled and nodded as I lent him the dagger. “
Oui
, I thought . . . your leg . . .
mon Dieu
. And you were just handing me a knife.”

I softly giggled as I watched his smiling face. He cut a strand of my hair and then carefully placed the curls into his breast pocket. He gave me my knife, which I put back into my boot. I looked up at him, noting how serious he had grown. His eyes were glowing that dark blue color, his nose flared as he looked down at my leg tossed on his hip. I saw how his hand trembled but slowly reached out for my knee. I assumed he would force my leg down, but instead he closed his fingers around my knee, then let his hand slowly climb up my leg. I stopped breathing when he glided past my mid-thigh. A breeze began to softly encompass us again, fluttering white wild petals around, and carefully Jacque slide one of his legs between my own.

Our lips met again. With his other hand he cradled the back of my head. Slowly, we rotated. I pulled on his shirt, his shoulders. We rolled with what gravity had given us, until I was lying on my back with his body almost completely on me. Oh, the weight of him on me was enough to burn through my body with ecstasy. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

“I love you,
chér
.” Then he kissed and bit down my neck. His hands caressed down my arms, finally finding both of my hands in his, interlacing his fingers between mine.

I arched my back, craving his lips and teeth, hungering his taut body on mine, the bliss—could this be real? “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

And like a dream, he was gone. I didn’t hear his feet fall on the forest’s floor. I didn’t catch sight of him retreating. Vanished, like a ghost, like a myth, he was no longer anywhere to be seen.

Had it all been a dream? A nightmare?

I clutched at my sides with a hoarse cry. A rock had gotten lodged in one of my fists, and I slammed that fist to the ground cursing love, nature, and anything else that I could think of. Finally, I opened my hand, noting how the rock had cut into my palm, then I saw the fine silver chain and the dark color of the gem smeared with my blood. I gasped. That rock was the exact color of Jacque’s eyes while he had timorously kissed me. I wiped at my tears and let the salty water wash away my red stains. Threading my head through, I strung the necklace ‘round my neck; the gem hung in the valley between my breasts, over my heart. Yes, over my heart.

It was at least a week before I felt fully aware of my surroundings again. I had been vaguely aware of the day Jonah introduced his new wife, Bethany. I thought she was so beautiful with her light brown skin and pale green blue eyes and long black curly hair, gleaming silver in the candlelight. She was a little younger than I, but not quite as young as Hannah. She didn’t utter a word when she arrived. She didn’t let out any noise for many days, in fact.

I’d been in a numb stupor since that day in the woods, that day that Jacque left, and since he’d left the rains never ceased. Perhaps the weather was sympathetic to my mood and poured liquid gray down from the iron clouds, as if to say, “
I know
.
It hurts
.”

I was playing the melancholy piece by Gregerio Allegri, “Miserere.” It was a piece I had been translating into pianoforte since I first heard it. Its intention was as a choral piece. But I never liked to hear my own voice, so for more than five years I had been working from my memory, trying to conduct my fingers to make the sounds of many voices in a solemn hymn for God to grant mercy.

I paused in my work, sniffing my nose, then jumped in my seat as I saw Mrs. Bethany Jones staring at me beside the pianoforte.

“He die on you?”

I blinked, not sure what Mrs. Jones was referring to. Her voice was deep and earthy and rang of her Virginian roots and shook me in its beauty almost as much as her finally talking.

“The music you make, it’s for a man you loved. He die on you?”

I opened my mouth, but . . . in a way he had died. He was gone from my life. Gone, just like a death. I was disturbed at my depression since Jacque’s leaving. After all, we both knew hurting ourselves was far better than the alternative. I should have been gladdened to have made my selfless decision, proud of myself for such a feat, but I felt more lost and resentful every day.

“I see it on you. You got a broken heart, girl. You the color of blue.”

I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

Mrs. Jones nodded too. “I knew it. You sad in your heart. My mama, she died when I was six years of age. I still miss her. That made my heart sad, still is when I think upon it.”

Mrs. Jones scrutinized me with her intense jade and sky blue eyes. She nodded again. “That man you got now, he’s a good one–that Mr. Adams. He could mend your heart, ifn’ ye let him.”

I held my breath as I thought about Mathew. The constant sting in my eyes grew, and I kept blinking to fight it away. I looked to the ceiling in the tiny lean-to library and music room my father had built to accommodate the pianoforte. Then, finally, with one tear falling I admitted, “I thought my heart would always be broken.”

Mrs. Jones shook her head. “Nah, it’ll scar you, sure, but you’ll mend. You made of tough stuff, right?”

I tilted my head. “I am a Massachusetts woman.” I smiled at my silly joke, while Mrs. Jones nodded and carefully watched me like one might study the town’s crazies.

And for the first time in several days, I laughed.

Just a few days later, while I was plowing in the drizzling rain, Hannah surprised me by pinching my arm in her fingers turned vise grip. Her blond hair was darkening with the moisture; her eyes were wide and fearful. That made me stop my labors, and the fact that there was no way I could snare free from her grasp. Once stopped, Bess turned her glossy black head, but sighed at the sight of my sister.

Hannah ripped off Father’s hat from my skull, let it cascade to the mud, which I almost objected to, but before I could my sister flung a worn butter-colored kitchen clothe over our heads. I hadn’t noticed the sound of the rain while I’d been plowing, but with the advent of the thin sheet over the top of our heads the soft thudding of the periodically larger drops of rain sounded like a far away Nangusett drum, one of the rhythms the Indians played for mourning. Not saying one word to me, Hannah gingerly retracted a folded correspondence from her light pink dress’s pocket. I noticed she wasn’t wearing shoes, and the bottom of her dress was soaked in brown mud. She detested being dirty. As I was about to finally ask about her odd behavior, she slowly extended a postal letter to me, as if she were passing to me the Ten Commandments, written by God himself on parchment.

Her voice wobbled as she spoke. “I’ve read it several times. You have to read it. Am I mistaken? Is he breaking off the engagement?”