Cast a Pale Shadow(25)

"Oh," she sighed her disappointment. Now, without the test of the last sip, she would never know. Unless -- His crinkly smile dazzled her very nearly as much as the twinkle of the candle fire and wine. Perhaps another kiss...She closed her eyes and wished for one.

Nicholas abruptly cleared his throat and pushed his chair back. "It's time you were put to bed," he said gruffly as he took her hand and tugged her to her feet.

Her cloud dipped and whirled a bit, and he put an arm around her waist to steady her. She opened her eyes and let the spinning stop. His hair was a curly halo glinting with candlelight. "Oh, but I feel so... so... I can't explain it. It's like magic almost, isn't it?"

"No, not magic. Just the wine."

She sighed again. "Ah, well, that's what I thought. Too bad." She nestled her head against his shoulder and took a few tentative steps with him toward the backstairs. "I should say good night to all of them. They were so kind to me."

"They'll understand."

A lighthearted giggle bubbled out of her. It was as if the stairs they mounted led to some rarefied atmosphere that increased her giddiness. "Oh, right. Appearances. I forgot."

"Shh, shh, shh," he cautioned softly in her ear.

The second floor of heaven seemed to be all blue and silver with stars shining from its ceiling and the polished floors she tried not to scuffle along. But, really, the air up here seemed so high and fine that she had great difficulty walking at all. "I feel kind of wobbly," she said just as Nicholas' grip tightened around her waist and he lifted her off her feet, "Another threshold to cross?" she laughed.

"Yes," he said. "Unfortunately, it's locked, and my hands are a bit occupied at the moment."

"Do you have your keys?"

"In my pocket."

"This one?" she asked and tilted dizzily to reach in and find them.

"Careful. Edmonds will kill me if I drop you on your head."

"I won't like it much either," she giggled. "Turn." As he did so, she frowned at the numerous keys on the ring. "Do you collect them?"

"It's the long, skinny one."

"Looks like a dungeon key? Should I watch out for bats and booby traps?" It took her three tries to successfully aim the key at its target and insert it. "Abracadabra, please and thank you." She turned the knob and the door creaked open.

Nicholas flicked the light switch with his elbow. "Ah, very nice, Mr. Brewer! Neat as a pin. But you will have to discharge your French maid now that you have a wife to look after you. No more hanky-panky with the household help, I'm afraid," she teased him.

"I'm the only household help around here," he muttered grumpily and carried her to the sleeping alcove. His bed was curtained from the rest of the room and was a cozy little nest of crisp, white linens and a blue and green tartan throw. It practically reached up and swallowed her in its cuddling comfort.

"In that case," she yawned, "I may have to reconsider the hanky-panky part."

"Hmph," he grumbled. "Let me take off your shoes." He sat at the end of the bed with her feet in his lap, slipping the black suede pumps from them one by one, then gently rubbing them to warmth. She arched and flexed them contentedly under his tender ministrations. His touch stirred warm tingling all up and down her spine that pooled in the very core of her.

But Nicholas stopped abruptly, shook his head and ordered her, "Now, go to sleep."

Exhaustion and the wine overtook her, and she remembered nothing more except the snugly toastiness of the wool throw he tucked around her and the fleeting kiss, as misty and delicate as angel wings, that touched upon her lips. "Mmmmm," she murmured, nodding into the pillow, "Maybe it was the kiss all along."



*****



Nicholas waited, watching, until her breathing deepened rhythmically and he was sure she slept. He tugged the bed curtain closed just enough to shade her eyes but still allow him a clear view while he worked. He needed an activity to ease his ruffled composure and calm his agitated mind. The rigid neatness of his room gave a facade of orderliness to his inner turmoil. He had to do something to forget her innocent teasing, and the memory of holding her so close for so long. It was too soon and there'd been too much wine for both of them. And it was all his fault.

She had too little experience to know any better, but he should have known. He should have been more conscious of her injuries and the way wine might affect her after the medication she had received. Having learned too well and at too high a price how alcohol worked on him, loosening his already tenuous hold on reality, he usually avoided more than a few cordial sips. But he had let happiness lull him into thinking himself normal. He had let himself relax as if insanity didn't wait to pounce at the least sign of weakness. He had let Maurice keep the wine flowing, and he had been negligent or worse not to notice.

Lighting his desk lamp and extinguishing the overhead fixture, he set to work clearing a drawer and one side of his closet for Trissa's things. Maurice and Jack had fetched them from the foyer and deposited them in his room. They didn't take up much space.

The sweater and skirt she slept in was the best she had. All the rest seemed tired and faded, survivors of many washings, lowered hems, and minor mending. A few pairs of jeans, tees, some khaki shorts, and a couple of old, white, men's dress shirts with frayed cuffs and collars, along with her underwear and night things made up most of her wardrobe. Pitiful enough for a girl her age.

Maybe her mother had held some back as she had the coats and shoes, he thought for a moment. But no, he decided, she probably never had them. This was all of it, what shabby, little there was. He could not imagine that mother of hers spending her time and money outfitting her daughter only to have the result be additional temptation for her scurrilous husband.

Dutifully reminding himself that the purpose for this busy work was the imposing of structure on the chaos of his emotions, he forced down his rising temper and continued with his task. The clothes were soon arrayed on hangers by category or folded in neat stacks in the drawer. He left out a pair of pajamas for her and lay them with a clean towel and washcloth on the bench at the foot of the bed.

He placed her schoolbooks on his desk and her ancient, battered record player on the dresser top. The record player's electrical cord was frayed and dangled from the broken pegs where it used to coil for storage. Another compartment when opened revealed a set of corroded batteries. Nicholas removed them and tossed them in the waste can. Tomorrow, he decided, he would have to ask Roger to check out the player and replace the cord and batteries if it were worth salvaging. If anybody could save it, Roger could.

Popping open the lid, he found a small cache of old forty-fives inside, representing, he supposed, the accumulated investment of many a week's allowance. It was a rather eclectic collection, more than odd for a girl of her age in these Beatles-crazy days. He wouldn't expect her to know, much less to own, the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Harry Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney, and Patsy Kline. He shuffled through them, smoothing out the yellowed paper sleeves, and arranging them in alphabetical order.

A rectangle of white obstructed the label of "Heartbreak Hotel." He reached in to push it out of the way and discovered it to be a photograph.

The snapshot was of a very young Trissa, skinny and pigtailed, an inner tube around her middle, two teeth missing in the front of her smile. Standing next to her was a good-looking man in swim trunks with a towel draped over his shoulder. Her father. Nicholas was certain of it. There was something in the way her face angled up at him as if her squint was caused by the glare of his presence and not the sun that struck them both in the face. He felt a bitter surge of resentment that her father's eyes adored only the camera. The man seemed oblivious of the child who stood so wistfully in his shadow.

Nicholas shoved the picture into his pocket, neatened the stack of records and propped them between an old shaving mug he used to hold combs, pencils, and nail files and the brass Indian head Janey had given him on his birthday.

He collected Trissa's suede pumps from her bedside, her scuffed loafers, navy leather flats, and pair of dilapidated sneakers from the grocery bag in which her mother had stuffed them all. In the circle of light from the desk lamp, he applied polish to the loafers and flats, then buffed them to a shine. With a shoe brush, he rubbed the flat spots out of the suede pumps until they almost looked new.

The shoes were soon in their place next to her sneakers and her slippers on the floor of his closet. There was a satisfying sense of permanency to see them all there in a row, and he removed his own shoes and placed them beside hers.



*****



Trissa choked back the wave of nausea that woke her and lurched upward, blinking in the dim but sudden light. She shuddered as the remnants of a dream slithered away from her, back under the rock from where it would arise to taunt her some other night. She was confused to feel the soft bed beneath her and not the hard floor of her closet cushioned with just her rumpled quilt. Not until she saw Nicholas at her bedside, his tired and injured face lined with worry, did she remember where she was. "Nicholas, I think I'm going to be sick."