The Warlock's Daughter (5 page)

Carita
gave a cry of pity. It had happened so fast; she could not think what to do. There were only seconds left in which to make the dog drop the cat.

Then
Renfrey
was there, striking the boxer a smart blow across the back with his cane. The dog's jaws opened as he yelped. The cat sprang free.
Renfrey
bent swiftly to scoop the feline up.

The boxer, recovering, snarled and sprang to snap. Glistening white teeth closed on
Renfrey's
wrist. The cat squirmed out of his grasp, clawing its way up to a shoulder where it perched with a baleful stare.

Grim-faced,
Carita
plunged forward to touch the dog with the tips of her fingers. The boxer shuddered at the familiar yet electrifyingly painful contact. Releasing his grip, he whined and dropped to his belly. With lowered ears and dragging tail, he rolled his eyes upward to her face. Finding no forgiveness there, he whimpered and lay still.

Carita
straightened, swung immediately toward
Renfrey
and reached for his wrist. “Let me see.”

She thought for an instant that he would refuse. Then he thrust out his hand with the palm uppermost and his wrist exposed below the bloodied cuff of his shirt. She reached to push the cloth higher while she cradled his hand in hers.

The dog's teeth had torn the skin, but the lacerations were not deep and no veins had been severed. She could feel a faint quivering in his fingers. The cause might be from pain or even shock, but she didn't think so.

She looked up, and her gaze was snared by the darkness of his eyes. Their surfaces were so still, held such patience, so much understanding, that she felt something shift, achingly, inside of her.

An impulse fluttered over her, gathered strength. It was so small a thing, yet a part of all that had passed unspoken between them. Before it could be banished by propriety or sanity, she acted.

Bending her head, she pressed her lips to his injured wrist. She closed her eyes while purpose guided her. An instant later, she smoothed her fingertips in benediction over his healed, unblemished skin, then let go of his hand.

“Thank you,” he said, the words a husky whisper.

“You believe me now?” It was asked with care, with exactitude and finality.

“What does it matter?” he said. “You will still be gone.”

“I prefer that you know it's not you I am denying.”

“You cherish my immortal spirit, but not my mortal flesh. Is that what you're saying?”

“Something of that sort.”
Her face was colorless.

“Then if we were mere disembodied vapor, we could make merry and passionate love until the cows wind their way homeward and trumpets play?”

“I suppose. Yes.”

His smile was wry. “You will forgive me, but it sounds as if something would be lacking.”

“Very likely.”

“But you have no means of being sure, never having sampled the alternative?” The tilt of his head was alert.

A flush rose to mantle her cheekbones. “You mean— No, I've never made love to a man.
Never.”

“Then how in infernal blazes,” he said with compressed heat, “do you know it's lethal for your partner?”

She made a gesture between anger and despair. “If
it's
evidence you want, go back and look at my mother's grave.”

“What does her death, as tragic as it may have been, have to do with me?”
 
He braced his hands on his hips, a gesture that almost dislodged the cat on his shoulder. “Do I look frail? Do I seem at all likely to die of loving or being loved?”

Her lips tightened. “You don't, no, but can you really want to put it to the test?”

“There are many things I desire,” he said without hesitation, “but none more than this: that you would come to me willingly and seek pleasure in my arms.”

Rising moisture glimmered in the darkness of her eyes. “I can't.”

“Why?” he said with strain cracking his voice. “I cannot imagine even your mother died of a single night of passion.”

Her eyes widened as her thoughts tumbled through her mind. Why had she never considered it? Because she thought of love in terms of forever, that was why. Yet, he was right. If forever was forbidden, what was wrong with one night, one chance,
one
brief plunge of the heart?

“Listen to me,
Carita
,
ma
chère
,” he went on, his voice dropping to a new, richer register. “Love doesn't come with safeguards,
nor
does living. There is always risk, always the chance that this moment, this night will be the last. It's a part of the mystery, something you accept and forget. You do it, because otherwise you shut yourself into a cramped and miserable prison of your own making. And that, you may discover one day, is only another death, the death of everything that makes you unique and valuable.”

“I'm not afraid for myself,” she answered steadily. “If it were only my own safety, I would take the risk and never look back.”

“Commendable,” he said, “but also unbearably righteous. You cannot decide the fate of another person; you have no right. We each have to find our own joy, our own manner and time of loving.
And dying.”

“Yes, but what of the consequences?” she began.

It was then that the shaft of light, dirty-yellow, sharp-edged, fell across the bars of the gate and onto the sidewalk. A querulous voice called out, “
Carita
? Is that you?”

It was her aunt.
Carita
drew breath to answer. Before she could make a sound,
Renfrey
reached to place a finger across her lips. Taking her arm, he drew her deeper into the shadows. She went with him, unresisting, though her muscles were stiff and she could remember no decision to move.

“
Carita
?
Did you hear me? Come in, girl, and lock the gate behind you.”

Close to her ear,
Renfrey
whispered, “She is afraid of you. Did you know it?”

He was right;
Carita
could hear the wariness and the doubt that verged on distrust. How had she missed it before now?

She could also hear, however, the age and the anger of unwanted dependence. It was sad beyond imagining.

Now her aunt had discovered the dog. Her voice sharpened with anxiety even as it dropped to a croon. “What are you doing lying there like that, boy? What happened to my Bruno? Let me look at you.”

The fear and concern in that familiar voice was more than
Carita
could bear. She pulled away from
Renfrey
, stepped forward into the light. “Nothing is wrong with him, Aunt
Berthe
. He just had a scare, that's all.”

Her aunt straightened. “You did it, I know. How could you, when you're his favorite.”

It was a sore point between them, one of many. It wasn't surprising the dog preferred her,
Carita
knew, since she was the one who fed and walked him, but her aunt could never see that. She moved closer. Holding out the vase she carried, she said, “He was after a cemetery cat that followed us home.”

“Why didn't you just let him have it?
Poor Bruno.”
Her voice was crooning as she accepted the worthless porcelain and bent to pat the dog that crowded against her skirts. Then she stiffened, came upright. “Us, you said? Someone is with you?”

“This gentleman and myself.”
Carita
gestured toward where
Renfrey
stood watching.

The older woman's voice sharpened as she peered into the shadows. “Who is he?”

A flush rose to
Carita's
face at the suspicious undertone of her aunt's question. She barely glanced at
Renfrey
as he stepped to her side, into the light. “Only an acquaintance of my father's whom I happened to—”

Renfrey's
voice cut across her explanation.
“Someone who took it upon himself to escort your niece home.
It seemed she was in need of protection.”

“Indeed?” Aunt
Berthe's
head came up. She folded her arms across her thick waist, standing as tall as her squat figure allowed. Her small, pale eyes were cold. “And what else did you take?”

“Aunt
Berthe
!”

“I know his kind,” her aunt said in bitter condemnation. “Handsome womanizers ready to snatch an advantage; it's no great wonder to me he is acquainted with your father. You will have no more to do with him, do you hear me?”

“It was never my intention—”

“Young women do a lot of things they never intend. Go into the house. I will send this gentleman about his business.”

“No, really, Aunt
Berthe
,”
Carita
said. “He has been most kind and not at all—encroaching.” Her voice trailed away as she recalled, belatedly, his kiss.

“Just as I thought,” her aunt said with grim acceptance. “You will wind up like your mother—or worse, cause destruction that will haunt you all your days. I said go into the—”

“You prefer,”
Renfrey
said to the older woman, “that her days be haunted by regret? Are you quite sure you are protecting her? Or are you punishing her?”

“I'm trying to save her!” Aunt
Berthe
said.

“From what?
Love?
Life?
Knowledge of the wide world beyond your narrow little household?
Or perhaps the joy your sister found?”

A spasm of disgust, or perhaps pain, crossed the older woman's face. “You can know nothing of the matter, nothing at all! I would advise you to leave us while you still can.”

“But there you have the trouble,”
Renfrey
said with a faint smile. “It's too late; it was always too late. Some things, once begun, cannot be ended.”

“You mean—” Her aunt stopped. Then her gaze flitted over his features that, seen in the lamplight, were touched with the wildness of a hawk's, and over his frame with its power and careless elegance. Her eyes
blared
open with horror. She
retreated
a hasty step, and then swung on
Carita
. “Get into the house!
Now!”

“There is no need to be rude to someone who has been of service,”
Carita
said stiffly. “I will say good-night,
then
join you.”

“If you stay, you will be damned as surely as if you philandered with the devil. You must come with me, now, this minute.”

“Be reasonable,”
Carita
said with a trace of pleading. “I only ask for a moment.”

Her aunt swung away, marching in stiff-backed haste through the gate. Over her shoulder, she cried, “Come inside, or I wash my hands of you!”

Mulish anger made
Carita
lift her chin. “I will be there when I am ready.”

“Then don't bother to come at all!” her aunt shouted.

Facing forward, the older woman snapped her fingers at the dog,
then
sailed up the narrow walk. The boxer heaved himself up and trotted behind her. The door of the house closed behind them, shutting in the light.

Carita
was stunned. She had never felt her aunt loved her, but she had thought there was at least mild affection between them. To discover that it could be discarded so easily was a loss.

“Walk with me,”
Renfrey
said quietly at her side, as he had once before.

Carita
recalled the words but knew that this time they meant so much more.

She could go or stay. If she went inside at once and was sufficiently contrite, her aunt would relent. Surely, she would relent.

Staying, she could have peace and safety. She could accept the things she had discovered and use them to rearrange her life, to make her personal prison more bearable.

Going, she would gain the freedom to be her father's daughter. Yet she would also in some degree be consenting to the intimacy
Renfrey
had asked of her. She must decide how far she would go to attain her desires, how much of herself she could give and still live with the results.