Healing the Wounds (8 page)

Henry turned the page with a soft hum. The elegant script continued, page after page, but those pages, at least, held titles with words like
chicken
and
beef
and
pastry
.

“Victor’s mother gave me a copy of the family recipes when I married him. The collected wisdom of her kitchen and her mother’s kitchen and so on back down the line.” Emma took the wineglass Jay held out to her and inhaled the bouquet. “I don’t suppose I’ll have a daughter to pass the wisdom to, but you’ve a family to feed these days, Henry. Surely you can find some use in it.”

“You wrote out a fresh copy for my own kitchen, Em?” He caressed the edge of the pages. “A thoughtful and tremendous gift.”

Her gut twisted. Henry’s gentle tone belonged to her and Jay, for their gifts. Disliking someone who made Henry happy was irrational at best and shameful at worst.

“They’re all in there, Henry. Including that spicy beef dish you loved for Saturday supper and the sweet
pirozhki
for Sunday breakfast.”

Irrationality ripped through the room and took the floor under her feet with it. Emma’s wedding ring might not mean she still mourned her husband or even that their marriage had been monogamous. Santa had a wife, yet he’d been playing at the club. And Henry had Jay, but now he had her, too. But he’d said he and Emma weren’t lovers.

“Thank you, Emma.” Henry closed the book with care. He dropped his arm into its former place, curling Alice into his side.

She rested her hand below his breastbone.
Mine.

“I do enjoy the opportunity to instruct my dear ones in the kitchen, though some of them have terrible thieving manners.”

Distributing the remaining wineglasses, Jay boasted an unrepentant smirk. “I’m chief taster. It’s an important job.”

Emma laughed. “William used to insist he fulfilled the same function in my kitchen until I shooed him out.”

Henry raised his glass in a toast. “To hearth and home, and all those who gather therein. Where’er they roam, may they find their way back again.”

Glasses touched. Smiles passed around. The wine was cool and dry going down, with a sharp citrus aftertaste.

Emma surveyed the room, making a show of peeking at everything in sight. “In all the years we’ve known each other, and all the time you’ve spent in my kitchen, do you realize this is the first time I’ve gotten a look at yours?”

Her brain was developing whiplash. Categorizing Henry and Emma’s history necessitated revision with every conversational turn.

“It’s that secretive quality of yours that kept all the girls and boys so intrigued before you settled down.”

His kitchen wasn’t a secret. He’d invited her into it from day one.

Her. Not Emma.

“And here I’d labored under the mistaken impression that my skills held their interest.” Henry hung his head in mocking mourning. “All they sought was a glimpse of my kitchen.”

“I want a glimpse of more than a kitchen,” Jay faux-whispered.

Alice giggled. “Because you know Henry’s skills are excellent in every room.”

“Ah, my lovely chorus of defenders to the rescue.” Henry’s eyes gleamed dark and intense. “I’m pleased to be more to you both than a full stomach. Though that, too, is important.” He gestured toward the dining room. “Jay, if you’ll seat our guest, please, and then come assist me at the stove.”

Jay offered his arm to Emma and waggled his eyebrows. “Soup’s on. I haven’t tasted it yet today, but the chef is excellent. May I show you to your seat?”

She laughed, polite but genuine. “By all means. I can’t recall the last time I had such a handsome escort.”

Henry led Alice to the table and lowered her into her regular seat. Adjusting the back of her chair, he brushed his mouth against her ear. “I do so love to see you sitting here, dearest. Such a pleasant temptation.”

Heat rushed to her cheeks and less-visible places. She’d been sitting right here in August when he’d spoken his first command to her. An order to stand. If she hadn’t listened then, no way would she be here now. Did he think of that life-changing moment as often as she did?

Emma smiled as she unfolded her napkin. “I finally had the opportunity to drop by the gallery this week and see the fruit of Henry’s skills in the studio. One of those rooms in which he excels, wouldn’t you say, Alice?”

She accepted the conversational diversion, holding up her end while Henry ladled soup and Jay carried bowls. Maybe the ability to pick a route through a potential verbal minefield wasn’t strictly a dominant skill. Henry masterfully directed conversation without seeming to, but Emma wasn’t bad herself.

Years of dinner parties or small talk at the club would teach subtlety. Henry and Emma shared a knack for it. Not a skill she possessed. Directness, that was more her style. Jay’s too.

They kept to safe topics, agreeing that Henry’s agent, though a cheerful fellow, drooped with a cadaver’s gauntness.

“The nerves, I expect,” Emma said. “I’ve never met that man when he was standing still.”

“He did seem high-strung when I met him. Jay fidgets a lot—I mean, a lot.”

Bringing the last of the soup bowls, Jay stuck his tongue out.

“But Henry keeps him well-fed.” She resisted the urge to return Jay’s gesture. Better not to open the floodgates and spill the less-cute juvenile shit clogging her head in front of the intimidating woman across the table. “Enough to put meat and muscle on his bones. Otherwise he’d be a dancing skeleton.”

“Dibs! I’m calling it now, so nobody else can be a dancing skeleton for Halloween.” Jay’s enthusiasm caused laughs all around. “Henry, you heard me call it, right?”

“I did. We’ll investigate the possibilities of body paint at a later date.” Henry set his hand on the back of his chair.

Jay slid into his seat at the foot of the table.

Emma swiveled, one perfectly manicured eyebrow rising. “You don’t have a server? I would have thought—” She glanced at the floor beside Henry’s chair. At Alice. Settled on Jay and shook her head in a single slow motion.

Jay had already brought the soup to the table. Full-service waitstaff.

“No, no pillows this evening, Em.”

Her glance again went to the floor beside Henry’s chair as he sat.

Holy shit. Emma expected someone to kneel at Henry’s side instead of participating at dinner. A cold night in January. Henry’s voice snapping commands. The hollow feeling in her stomach, the chill in her chest. The unpleasant distance between herself and Henry. To be loved and rewarded for her submission was one thing. To sit ignored like a slave unless the master needed something was another thing entirely. Not a game she wanted to play.

Henry picked up his soupspoon.

With the quiet
clink
of the metal against the ceramic bowl, Emma drew her chin up and focused an unwavering stare at Henry.

Her intensity matched Jay in his best waiting pose.

“Grateful though I am for Victor’s training in the formalities, I don’t run my household in the same fashion.” Henry steered the spoon in a slow curve through his soup. “As he balanced his needs with yours, so I balance mine with Jay’s and Alice’s.”

“No, of course.” Emma nodded, more to herself than to Henry. “Of course you would.”

The talk turned to inconsequential chatter, Henry smoothly encouraging Jay to share stories of the week’s most amusing deliveries. He settled down as Henry guided him, Emma asked polite questions, and Alice chimed in on occasion. The charming comedian. Untroubled by the deeper currents. Definitely not thinking about Emma’s marriage or what her submission had involved. Things Alice couldn’t stop thinking about.

Jay even remembered to tip his bowl properly away to spoon up the last of his cream soup. Henry laid his own spoon down as he surveyed the table. “Salads are in order, it seems.”

Jay stood, picking up his soup bowl. Emma half stood.

Shit. No point in standing when she’d already been out-subbed by both of them. Whatever the mindset needed for a submissive, she didn’t have it. The instinctive desire to serve. Fuck. Henry would’ve done better to pick this other woman, the one who spoke art fluently and offered her service with smooth elegance.

“Just Jay to clear, thank you.” Henry gestured to his left. “Emma, please, sit. You’re our guest tonight.”

“Of course.” Emma retook her seat. Her hand went to the choker at her throat. “My apologies, Henry.”

Silence fell over the noise of Jay bustling about with the dishes, swapping soup bowls for salad plates. Henry excused himself to put the main dish, a baked seafood ravioli tossed with fresh vegetables, served in separate ramekins, in the oven to heat while they enjoyed their salads.

Alice chased down a stubborn piece of lettuce with her fork and stabbed. “Your necklace is beautiful.” Three rows of pearls circled Emma’s neck, little silk knots between them. “Was it a gift?”

“Oh, yes.” The depth of Emma’s smile dazzled, a brilliance more than simple politeness, and her eyes shone. “Victor gave it to me many, many years ago.”

“A wedding present?” Expensive, for sure, with vertical bars of platinum evenly spaced after every five pearls.

“Our first anniversary.” Cheeks pinking, Emma lowered her eyelids in a slow blink. “I knew of his pursuits when I married him, but he refused to begin training me until after we were wed. He surprised me on our anniversary with a collaring ceremony.” She shook her head, her voice little more than a whisper. “Told me I was exquisite. That he was well pleased, beyond even his hopes for our joining. I feel his hand on me even now when I wear it.”

She’d felt an inkling of that herself. When she wore clothing Henry had chosen for her. Emma had spent decades with a reminder of her husband’s claim around her throat. No wonder if the sense memory of him lived in her skin.

Jay ate his salad, seemingly unaffected, but surely he had moments, too, when it took nothing at all to recall the warmth of Henry’s hand. The pressure of his lips. The sweet stroke of his tongue.

With the main course snug in the oven, Henry stood in utter stillness, watching them from the kitchen. No. Watching Emma, though he couldn’t have seen more than the back of her bowed head.

Lust for his knowledge, his insight, his history, bit Alice with fierce teeth. He saw more than the woman before him. An echo of who she’d been or the memory of his friend and mentor or something Alice couldn’t name and might never know.

His parting lips and shifting shoulders bespoke a sigh, though no sound emerged. He came to the table and took his seat. “Moonlight,” he murmured. “Victor once told me that was why he’d chosen the pearls.”

Emma looked up, one elegant eyebrow arched. “Moonlight?”

“I’d asked him about collaring. The personal significance and how he knew. He said his grandmother told him a story when he was very young. Poetic, though hardly scientific. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but…” Henry paused, head tilted. “When the full moon holds sway over the tides, its brilliance keeps the oysters from their beds. They open, and the pearls inside bathe in the luminescence. Forever on they glow with an inner light, a shard of the moon hidden within.”

He grimaced. “I was young and clumsy and entirely too ignorant of the nuances of love at the time. I asked if you were his moon, if he meant the pearls as a reminder that he had trapped bits and pieces of you and knotted them into a net to hold you fast.”

Fine, if Emma liked that sort of thing.
Not me.
Dishonest. She clamored for Henry’s ownership. Greedy desire and pride had shot through her at the club when Santa William said Henry considered them collared. But if Henry had that claim, she demanded an equal claim in return. Another failure to be submissive. She was racking them up tonight.

“Never before nor since did I ever see him so offended, so personally affronted.” Henry shook his head, his eyes distant and clouded. “And rightly so. He told me I’d gotten everything backward, and he would have to begin again with me, because for all my skills I lacked wisdom.”

Ridiculous. She’d never met a more insightful man. Who was this Victor guy to say otherwise?

“The moonlight, he informed me, could never represent you.” Henry leaned forward in his chair, elbows resting almost on the table, hands clasped in front of him. “You were his sun, Em. He filled himself with the light you shared with him. He gave you the pearls not as a show of his ownership and mastery over you, but as a reminder to himself of how thoroughly
he
was tangled in you. That each pearl carried a shard of his love for you, the reflected light he thanked God for each day. The gift you gave him.

“You
should
feel his hand on you when you wear it, Em. You’re carrying his love with you.”

Shuddering breaths drifted across the table.

Alice averted her gaze. Intruders, she and Jay. Eavesdropping on an intensely private moment. Henry wouldn’t have told the story if he didn’t believe Emma needed to hear it. And maybe because she needed to hear it, too.

Whatever the rules of their marriage, Emma had loved her husband deeply. She did still. The undercurrents between her and Henry belonged to something else. Nothing Alice could rigidly define, but if Henry had a sun, it wasn’t Emma.

“He—he never told me that. Not like that.” Emma cleared her throat. “Thank you, Henry.” Voice growing stronger, she became the poised perfectionist once more. “That was very kind of you.”

She transitioned to a question about the salad with little more than a breath between, as if she hadn’t learned something surprising about her husband’s view of their relationship. An understanding between them that allowed others, even ones so insightful as Henry, to view Victor as the one who shone brighter. But Emma’s husband, her dominant, knew better. Where the rest of the world, even his loving, submissive wife, saw him at the center of things, he saw only her.

As it should be
, Henry whispered in her mind. Alice shivered, drawing his eyes, and she shook her head. No, it was nothing. She was fine. Just analyzing. Evaluating.

Wondering how Emma could shrug off the emotion and so easily accept Henry’s decision to even talk about it now, in front of her, in front of Jay.