Cast a Pale Shadow(26)

Without a word he threw back her covers and helped her to her feet. They flew across the room, barely touching the floor. He held her hair back from her face as she retched miserably into the toilet. When she finished, he rinsed a cloth in cool water and gently mopped her face.

"I'm so embarrassed."

"No need to be. I shouldn't have let you drink so much. Are you all right? Should I take you back to the hospital?" His face revealed his apprehension.

That he seemed worried rather than disgusted puzzled her. A vague memory of the warning signs Dr. Edmonds had told them could signal complications from her concussion surfaced through the fog of the wine and her chagrin. "But this is just the wine, I'm sure. Don't look so worried. I'll live, I promise."

Nicholas frowned and felt her forehead with the back of his hand. "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Trissa, but from the looks of you, you've broken that promise hours ago."

She grimaced at her ghost white reflection in the mirror, the bruises standing out dark and mean against her pale skin, and knew what he meant. "Really, I'm okay. I've been drunk before. I remember what it feels like. And it's exactly like this," she admitted sheepishly.

"You drink?"

Was it judgment or doubt she saw in his eyes? "No... I mean... once. When I was ten."

"Ten?"

"I just wanted to know what it felt like. My father -- You see, I had to find out what made him do it, why he liked it so much."

"And did you?"

"No, I told you, I got sick."

His lips were a grim, straight line, his fisted hands shoved in his pockets. For a moment, she wondered if he meant to melt her with his scowl, then he blinked, shook his head and turned away from her toward the sink where he rinsed and wrung the washcloth in water so hot it reddened his hands.

"Why are you angry at me? I was only ten. I didn't know any better."

"Not you, Trissa. I'm not angry at you. I'm very tired, that's all."

Their eyes met for a second in his reflection, but this time it was she who looked away. She needed time away from him. His intensity still frightened her a bit. She needed time to think. "Maybe, if I took a nice, hot bath... Could I?"

"Of course." He left and quickly returned with a bundle of towels and her pajamas. On top of the pile was the bag of toiletries he had bought her. "Uh, this door has a lock. If you'd feel safer..."

"I trust you, Nicholas. I do," she said, as much to convince herself as him.

He shrugged and nodded, then left, pulling the door closed behind him. She stared at the lock, her fingers reaching toward it as if they had a will of their own. There were so many nights she'd locked herself safe from harm in her closet. She dropped her hand to her side and turned toward the tub.



*****



Nicholas straightened the bed covers and turned down the sheets for her, then looked around the room dismayed to see that there was nothing left to fuss or fidget with. While she slept, he'd followed the polishing of her shoes by emptying a desk drawer for her to use, dust mopping the floor, restacking his magazine rack, and preparing his coffee pot to plug in the next morning.

The slow trickle of the water in the tub told him he had a lot of time yet. The combination of the mammoth, old tub and the fitful pressure of the ancient water pipes made bathing a protracted affair. He really was very tired. He'd been awake for all but a few hours of the past twenty-four, sleeping just long enough to dream in the chair at the hospital last night and the front seat of his car this afternoon. It would be the sofa for him tonight, but the thought of its sagging springs and lumpy horsehair stuffing made the bed all the more inviting. If he could lie down for just a moment, until he heard her draining the tub, he might be able to store the memory of its comfort in his bones to make the rest of the night go easier. He stretched across the foot of the bed and promptly fell fast asleep.



*****



Trissa found a comfort of her own, luxuriating in the deep, steamy water. All her plans for thinking through her new life floated away from her like so many soap bubbles. She watched vacantly as the Ivory Soap cruised in lazy circles over the surface and remembered her silly, wine-inspired illusions of heaven.

They might not be so silly after all. It hadn't been the wine that had put the first notion of Nicholas as her guardian angel in her head. He'd snatched her from death and brought her to this new life where she did not have to lock doors to feel safe. And where she had a whole new kind of family to welcome and look out for her.

If there were mysteries about him that she still could not unravel, that was the way of angels, wasn't it? Maybe after all the years of praying and wishing, someone finally got around to answering her. She didn't really believe that was true. She shouldn't. But oh, how she wished she could. It was such a little thing to ask, one small miracle.

Eventually, the water cooled and reluctantly she climbed from the tub to dress for bed. She discovered that the pajamas Nicholas had brought her were not her own. They were her brother Lonny's. She had snatched them from his drawer and slept with them under her pillow for a month after her brother died. Then she'd tucked them away among her own things and only saw them once in a while when she put away her laundry or went searching for a scarf.

They were flannel, printed with yellow, brown, and orange Indian symbols on a white background, piped in yellow at the cuffs and down the shirt front, garish and ugly, now that she studied them, but warm and serviceable and soft against her skin. There were tiny, white buttons that fastened on the wrong side, but that was the boys' way she remembered and wondered why it would be so. There was a drawstring that she could cinch snugly around her waist, and it only took a few folds up of the pants legs to keep herself from tripping over them.

Covered from neck to ankles to beyond her fingertips, she emerged from the bathroom. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light after the brightness of the bathroom. She did not see Nicholas.

"Nicholas?" she whispered. But there was no answer. She thought he must have stepped out. When she reached the bed and saw him there, sprawled across the bottom, she did not have the heart to wake him. She found a blanket on the sofa and covered him with it. He did not stir. There was plenty of room for her at the top of the bed. She was short and, used to the cramped space of her closet, she usually slept curled on her side. Softly, so she would not disturb him, she crept beneath the covers.

She sat for a moment watching him sleep and remembered a childhood prayer her grandmother had taught her. "Angel at my shoulder, Angel at my side, Angels all around me, keep me safe tonight." Her lips moved with the breath of a whisper. "Good night, my Angel Nicholas."





Chapter Ten





"Nicholas, yoohoo, Nicholas, honey." Trissa climbed out of a cozy dream and recognized Augusta's voice in the muffled whispering. "I brought you breakfast. If you're... uh... busy, I'll leave it out here."

Nicholas was no longer asleep across the foot of the bed where he had lain like a trusty guard dog all night, radiating enough heat to keep her feet toasty and grumbling occasionally in his sleep as if to warn off potential intruders. The trickle and splash of water in the bathroom sink told her where he was. The delicious aroma of brewing coffee permeated the air.

Trissa scooted out of the bed to answer Augusta at the door before she gave up and went away. She did not want her to get the wrong impression, for appearance' sake or otherwise. When she pulled open the door, Augusta seemed both surprised and amused to see her.

"I just love your peignoir, sweetie," she chuckled. "You'll have to show me the rest of your trousseau sometime. Is it all right to come in?"

"Yes, please do." Trissa looked down at Lonny's pajamas, wrinkled and drooping off one shoulder. One pants cuff had come unrolled and trailed under her foot, threatening to trip her at any moment. "I'm afraid there wasn't much time for a trousseau, Mrs. Blackburn."

"I thought we agreed on Augusta last night," she smiled as she entered and laid the breakfast tray on the coffee table. "That Nicholas of yours does seem to be one for living his life in a hurry. As if it might get away from him if he didn't watch out. But what a grand surprise you were for all of us."

"Thank you. You were all so kind. I didn't get a chance to thank you properly."

"Oh, honey, it was thanks enough to see you both so happy. Especially Nicholas. We all agreed we'd never seen him so pleased with himself." She fussed with the arrangement of items on her tray. "Um, I brought cinnamon rolls and Cream of Wheat and some juice. Everybody's in a hurry to get to work so we don't have elaborate breakfasts around here during the week. I know Nicholas has his own pot so I didn't bring coffee, but there's milk enough here for your cereal and a glass for you."

Nicholas poked his head out of the bathroom just then, a fringe of shaving foam around his face. "Trissa, did you say some -- Oh, Augusta, good morning."