Echoes in the Dark

“Kerri, for God’s sake, stop this. You’re not a cow.” He laughed suddenly at the ridiculous comparison to her graceful body, and at the sound, she raised her eyes to focus on his, to launch another round of vitriolic bitterness, but the look of tenderness on the spare planes of his face arrested the impulse. “You are so beautiful it’s all I can do not to make love to you in public,” he whispered. “All night I’ve wanted to run my hands over you, to touch our son. To hold your breasts. So full. God, so sensitive...”

He stopped, the impact of those memories blocking his throat. He couldn’t believe she didn’t know how he felt. How could she not know after all this time?

“Why don’t you know how I feel?” he asked, pain darkening the timbre of his voice. “I don’t know what else to do. Nothing I do or say seems to be enough. Tell me what you want from me, Kerri. What do I have to do to convince you?”

For the first time she heard despair in the voice that always before had been gently patient, tenderly amused at her tantrums, loving, caressing. With her fears, she was destroying what they had, and she knew it.

She looked up to reassure him, to tell him how much she loved him, adored him, thought she couldn’t live if she lost him.

Perhaps the answering tenderness in her eyes made him think that it was over, a display of fireworks like all the other scenes, bright and intense, but fleeting when confronted with his concern. Perhaps he regretted letting her see what these emotional outbursts did to his control. Whatever the impulse that produced his next words, it was a mistake.

“And a tent?” he repeated, smiling at her. “Believe me, my darling, if that’s a tent, it is the most beautiful, and probably the most expensive, one in the world. Not that it wasn’t worth every franc. You look—”

“You bastard,” she hissed at him, suddenly and unreasonably furious again. “You told me to buy something special for tonight. I didn’t want to come. They all hate me, and it doesn’t matter what I put on. I’m still going to look like a cow. And then you tell me I’m too extravagant.”

“I don’t give a damn what the dress cost. I don’t care what you spend, and you know it.”

She could hear anger beginning to thread through the rich darkness of his voice, the accent thickening as it did when he became emotional. As it always did when he made love to her.

“This is insane,” he said, bitterly. “Everything I say you pounce on. You wait for me to say something you can use against me. There’s no way I can win,” he finished, turning away from her to look out the windshield.

“And God knows you have to win,” she mocked, another familiar battleground. “God knows your whole damn life revolves around winning. All the little games. You have to be the best. You always have to win. Well, you certainly won the prize this time. And you’re stuck with it. Is that what’s wrong? You’ve begun regretting this particular trophy, haven’t you?”

“Only at times like these,” he said quietly, a contrast to her fury, and he didn’t look at her.

It was what she had dreaded. And expected. Finally he’d said it. She didn’t acknowledge how long it had taken her to goad him into it. Another self-fulfilling prophecy.

She slewed the Mercedes out of the parking place, leaving a trail of smoking black, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The car fishtailed in response, and as she corrected the movement, she felt him reach across to find and buckle her seat belt. It took him several attempts, but he was successful, despite her fist beating ineffectually against his hands.

He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. He trusted her driving. He had taught her how to drive on these mountain roads himself. Repeating the lesson, instructing, demanding, until he was sure enough of her competence to present her with the car that was now speeding toward the first series of hairpin turns that led away from the palace terraces.

She touched the brake, anticipating, as he had instructed her. She felt the difference in the response, the sponginess of the pedal, but then the car was into the curve, and she concentrated on guiding it smoothly through the series of switchbacks. As soon as she reached a relatively straight stretch of road, she touched the brake again, more strongly this time, recognizing that the speed of the car was approaching a level beyond her competence.

He would have been able to handle the rocketing vehicle, smoothly and nonchalantly, she thought bitterly. Nothing ever challenged his sure control, his hard certainty. She had never seen him at a loss. Years of privilege, blue blood and too much money insulated him from the fears people like herself faced every day.

In the midst of that familiar litany came the realization that the brake was having no effect on the downward plunge of the Mercedes. There had been no perceptible slowing in spite of the fact that she was practically standing on the pedal.

“Julien,” she said, and the panic in her voice made him open his eyes, pulled him from the contemplation of how he had mishandled tonight, from the regret he felt over the pain he had caused her.

“Julien!” This time she screamed, begging for his competence against the rush of the wind, and as her eyes sought his face, she lost control of the car. The right front tire touched off the pavement and the steering wheel jerked from her hands. It spiraled against the frantic reach of his fingers, but by then it was too late.

The Mercedes plunged off the sheer drop of the curve and almost to the bend below, its downward hurtle stopped only as it caught between two of the trees that lined the twisting mountain roads. Caught and held. She was strapped inside by the seat belt that he had fastened only moments before, but the wrenching deceleration threw him from the convertible to the road below.

* * *

HE NEVER KNEW how long he was unconscious. He awoke to the smell of gasoline and absolute silence. He wiped ineffectually at the blood obscuring his vision, and then his only thought was to find her.

The brutal journey was agonizing in the darkness. He was never sure that he was crawling in the right direction, guided only by the smell and then by the soft crackling that he had thought at first was the metal of the car expanding against the forces that had left it a twisted ruin.

It was not until he was close enough to feel the heat that he knew he was wrong. What he had heard was the fire that had begun to lick around the shattered Mercedes.

He had been calling her name for a long time, willing her to answer him. Finally his long fingers found the handle of the door, and he used it and his desperation to pull himself up in spite of his shattered leg. As he reached for the seat, hands groping to find her in the pitiless blackness, the explosion rocked the night, throwing him to lie once more against the gravel of the road below.

This time he didn’t awaken even as careful hands loaded him into the ambulance. It would be a very long time before he was again aware of anything at all.

Chapter One

“I‘m sorry, but she’s extremely insistent. She has something she wants to show you, something she’s sure you’ll want to see.”

The secretary watched the ironic smile of his employer, but he knew better than to apologize. That was the unforgivable sin—to apologize for the references one made quite naturally, and so he hurried on with his story.

“We’ve all tried, but she’ll speak to no one but you. She says it’s personal. She’s clutching some sort of package wrapped in brown paper, and she won’t budge. Short of having her thrown out bodily, I don’t know what else to do.”

The man seated behind the massive desk could hear the frustration. His secretary didn’t deal well with unexpected interruptions to his schedule. He sometimes wondered who was really in charge here, but because he cared so little, he let his staff’s efficiency carry him effortlessly through the long days. There was no longer any challenge in running the businesses he had pulled from bankruptcy only three years ago. Everything in his life was too well-ordered, the wheels all turning smoothly, oiled by his efficient employees, his soft-spoken servants and, most of all, by his money. At least the old woman offered a break from the routine. That, of course, was why Charles was so annoyed.

“There’s nothing that can’t be put off the few minutes it will take to listen to whatever she has to say. Ask Rachelle to bring in a tea tray. And if it’s private, there’s no need for you to remain. Show her in when the tea arrives.”

“But—”

“That will be all, Charles. Thank you for attempting to handle this. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

He waited until the door had closed behind the retreating secretary. Only then did he remove his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose and then briefly massaging his temples. He could feel the beginnings of a headache. He hoped that Rachelle would include his afternoon coffee with the tea. He closed his eyes and rested his head on his hands, elbows propped against the gleaming mahogany desk.

When he heard the door, he opened his eyes and put the glasses back on, standing up to turn toward his visitor. Her hesitation was obvious, but Rachelle’s friendly voice urged her forward, and finally they advanced across the parquet floor, their footsteps echoing hollowly in the quiet elegance of the room. When Rachelle had seated her in the chair before his desk, he, too, sat down and waited. It was not until she had been provided with a cup of tea, his own coffee poured and placed, fragrantly steaming, on his desk, and the door closed behind Rachelle that he spoke.

“They tell me that you have something to show me,” he said softly, working to keep the amusement out of his voice.

She rustled the package in her lap, until, with trembling hands, she succeeded in freeing whatever it contained from the wrappings. As he waited for her to speak, the silence stretched too long between them. Finally her voice quavered into the sunlight of his expensive office.

“Then you don’t recognize it? The jeweler assured me it belonged to you. I tried to sell it, but he wouldn’t buy it. He said it belonged to the Duc d’Aumont and that you would perhaps pay me more than its value to recover it,” she suggested hesitantly. “He said it’s very old.”

“They didn’t tell you,” he said softly, and she sensed somehow that it was a question.

“I don’t understand. Tell me what?”

“If you are showing me something I’m expected to recognize, we’re both doomed to failure,” he said gently. “You see, I’m blind.” He could say it quite naturally now, after all these years. He could even smile to reassure her.

“Of course.” Her voice was relieved. His lack of response was not a lack of recognition. “I should have known from the glasses, but they didn’t tell me. It’s so bright in here, I didn’t think. I suppose I envied you their protection against the glare.”

He laughed easily and stood to adjust the shade behind him, dimming the painful brightness. There was no fumbling in his movements, so that she found herself watching those sure fingers in amazement.

“They won’t complain. They think that would remind me that I can’t see,” he said, smiling at her. He could hear the answering laughter from across the desk and, judging his movements carefully by that sound, he reached across its expanse and held his palm open before her. She laid the locket she had guarded these years against the outstretched hand, and the long, dark fingers closed around the delicate golden chain.

He sat down, carefully examining the object she had placed in his hand. As his fingers traced the shape of the entwined hearts and then the roughness of the faceted emeralds that outlined them, she could almost read his emotions by the play of the muscles in his jaw, by the involuntary tightening of his lips and the effort to swallow against the sudden constriction of his throat.

She wished she could see his eyes. She needed so desperately to know if he would be willing to pay what she intended to ask, but the dark glasses were a barrier she couldn’t penetrate.

“Where did you get this? My God, how did you—” he asked finally, his hands no longer deftly examining the locket, but one locked hard around it. She could see only a small fragment of the gleaming links between those clenched fingers.