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She nodded. "Oh, I am most sure of that. But I believe I must seek my own good, also. Too."
Ian didn't know what to do or say, how to enforce a rule that any normal adult would simply accept. Everyone followed his orders.
Except Selena.
"Fine," he said at last, "you may not go out alone."
She pondered this.
He found himself leaning forward, waiting.
"No. I cannot make this promise."
"No? Why not?"
She gave him a quick smile and raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Sometimes the moon calls to me."
"What do you mean?"
"Have you ever seen it? Moonlight on the beach? It is glorious. The waves are silver and black and blue and alive. Sometimes I open the window at night and smell the salty air and I am ... powerlust not to follow the
moon."
He saw the wonder in her eyes, heard it in the throaty catch of her voice, and he was lost. He could not be the one to take wonderland from bis innocent Alice. All he could do was be beside her, watch her, protect her.
She'd won.
He sighed. "Well, you've had a big night. Time to get back to bed."
She gave him a bright smile. "It was a grand adventure. Thank you for rescue me from the killing wildcat"
He fought a smile. "You're welcome."
Grinning, she jumped to her feet and headed for the door. As she reached for the brass handle, she stopped and turned around. "I am attaining a party tomorrow with Maeve. You would like to join us?"
"Party?"
"Tea and biscuits. It shall be at three o'clock in my secret place in the forest."
He couldn't deny her. "Fine, Selena. I'll be there."
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She gave him another dazzling smile and skipped from the room, leaving the door wide open behind her.
He listened to the quiet patter of her bare feet on the wooden stairs and smiled. Then he laughed softly.
Damned if little miss innocent didn't have an iron will.
Ian stood at the edge of the forest, listening. Muted strains of conversation floated through the emerald thicket. Every now and again, a woman laughed.
He felt like a fool for standing here, motionless, and yet he couldn't quite force himself to take another step. Tea with his mother. What a nightmare this could be. Steeling himself, he forged ahead, following the twisting, leaf- and needle-strewn path through the tall, moss-furred trees. Finally he veered to the right and stepped over the fallen logs and mushrooms and ferns to reach Selena's hideout. What he saw stopped him dead again. Selena and Maeve were seated at a small, oval table. A bright patchwork quilt covered the table and draped to the dirty ground, puddling in folds of vibrant color. Several of his father's hunting trophies sat clustered on rocks and stumps between the two women. An eerily wide-eyed white owl leaned against a badger, his face frozen in a vicious snarl, his waxen paws poised in midair. Several stuffed peacocks huddled on a flat slab of granite, their blinkless glass eyes focused on the lopsided cake in the center of the table. Red apples and cut flowers were scattered around the purple cake. Purple.
Selena smiled at Ian and clapped her hands. "He came, Maeve. Look, it is Ian."
Maeve's head turned slowly toward him. She gave him a blank look that made his stomach tighten. Then, wordlessly, she turned back to the stuffed coyote in her lap and pretended to feed him cake. Ian groaned. Oh, Jesus . . .
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Selena patted the stump next to her. "I saved you a seat. Come." Reluctantly he sat down beside her.
Selena made a great show of pouring him a cup of tea and cutting him a slice of cake.
He balanced the tiny, delicate china cup on his knees and stared at the cold amber liquid.
Maeve waved a hand in the air. "Oh, put it anywhere. My husband loves bread pudding."
Selena looked up. 'Truly? I do not believe I have had bread pudding. Perhaps we shall try it sun. Soon."
Ian rolled his eyes and took a sip of the weak, tasteless brew. "You shouldn't indulge her sick fantasies, you know."
Maeve's smile faded. She closed her mouth abruptly and hugged the animal to her chest, rocking it frantically.
Selena turned to him. "Whatever do you mean?"
"You're encouraging her to be mad. She should be alone in her room when she's like this."
"She would be in her room too much."
"So she would."
Selena stared at him. Slowly she put her cup down, but she didn't look away.
Ian shifted uncomfortably. "What are you looking at?"
"You made her stop smiling."
He snorted. "I often have that effect."
Selena frowned. "That is not something to be proud
of."
"I didn't say I was proud of it. I said I often have that effect on my mother. It's the simple truth."
She bit down on her lower lip. "I do not think it is so simple."
He set the teacup down with a clatter. "I guess I should leave. I'm spoiling the party."
"How would it hurt you to pretend?"
He looked down at her, struck once again by the in-
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nocence in her gaze. She didn't understand him, didn't understand the world, or the history of pain that coiled around him and his mother. All she knew was that he had a choice-he could hurt his mother, or he could not hurt his mother. And she couldn't imagine why he would choose the former.
It made him feel small and petty and ugly, the innocence in her eyes. She worshipped him, had from the moment she'd first seen him, and now he was proving to her how unworthy he was of that honor.
Part of him was glad, relieved to be rid of the burden of her expectations. But part of him was unaccountably saddened. As if a great opportunity were slipping through his fingers, right now as he sat at this tiny table in the middle of the forest, an opportunity he'd never imagined, never dared to hope for. And all he had to do was reach out and take hold of it....
"What do you want from me, Selena?"
"I want you to stay."
So simple an answer. Black and white. Good or bad. Stay or leave. There was no gray for Selena, no acceptable level of rudeness, no tolerable pain. There was only right and wrong.
He wished to hell he could find that innocence within himself again, that long-lost moral core.
"Just say yes," she whispered, encouraging him with a smile.
So easy . . .
With an awkward smile, he scooted closer into the table. His knees hit the wooden rim and raided the china.
Maeve's head snapped up. "It is Ian." She looked around. "Nurse, his teeth are coming in. Soothe him."
"I shall get him, Maeve," Selena answered.
Maeve frowned, worked her lower lip nervously with her teeth, gripped the animal to her chest. "He cries when I touch him." Tears glazed her eyes. "Why does he cry?"
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Selena gazed across the table at her. "Maybe he does not know it is you."
Maeve swiped at an invisible fly. "The bathwater is too hot. Bring the wine."
Ian closed his eyes and sagged forward, resting his elbows on the wobbly table.
Maeve jumped to her feet with a scream. Yanking up her skirt, she cast a quick backward glance, then surged toward Ian, reaching for him. Her gnarled fingers curled around his wrist and tugged hard. "I can't find my baby." She looked up at him through glassy, hazel green eyes. "Help me find my baby."
Images slammed through Ian's head. My baby. Oh, God, my baby. Herbert will want to see his son. The words catapulted into his brain, cycling through in an endless litany. Then came the images, the amorphous transference of thought. Panic. Fear. Desperation.
His mother's emotions swirled around him, sucked him in. He could feel her anxiety; it caused his own heartbeat to speed up.
And then suddenly, through the red mist of frustration, he saw her. His mother, sitting at the cockeyed table in the middle of the forest. Deep, deep within the barking l
ayers of dementia, she was there, watching him, hearing him, needing him.
The revelation stunned him. He'd never thought she was even marginally conscious of reality when she was in this state, but now he saw the truth. She was in there somewhere, fighting off the whispering voices of her imagination, the myriad fictional images that besieged her. She was there, small and frightened and alone. "Mother?"
She blinked up at him. For a split second, he thought that she would see him, speak to him. Hope brought him to his feet beside her.
She swiped at another nonexistent fly and shook her head as if to clear it. "The rain is ruining the rhubarb."
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He released his breath slowly and waited for the inevitable sense of disgust to settle in.
Amazingly, it didn't come. For once, all he felt when he looked at his mother was compassion.
Maeve wrenched away from him and hurried back to her seat at the table.
Ian stood there, still too stunned to move.
Selena rose beside him, touching his arm gently. "She will be herself again soon. Would you like some tea?"
Ian almost laughed. Slowly he turned and looked down at Selena. She stood beside him, tall and proud and beautiful, her hair in wild disarray around her face. Smiling. Always smiling.
He knew suddenly, as surely as he'd ever known anything in his life, that he could fall in love with this woman. Not the woman he'd created or saved or imagined, but this woman, with her quixotic smile and exuberant nature. This woman who in two days had turned his world upside down.
He drew back, frightened of her and himself and everything that this moment held. Things like this didn't happen in life; at least, if they did, they didn't happen to men like Ian. Good things happened to good people, and Ian was far, far from good.
"I am now to make apple and flower necklaces," she said. "You would like to help?"
He glanced down at the apples on the table and smiled.
Jesus, apple necklaces. It was a whole new world.
He nodded. "If you want me to."
"Oh, Ian," she said with a throaty laugh. "I always want you to stay with me. I feel love for you."
Ian almost crumpled at the simple, oddly worded sentence. It was the first time anyone had ever claimed to love him.
Chapter Sixteen
Ian stood at his bedroom window, watching the commotion below like Zeus tracking the goings on of mortals. He wrenched the window upward. It squeaked and whined, reminding him that it had been a long time since he'd opened it.
Below him, they were having a party.
Johann and Lara were the leaders, strolling arm in arm down the gravel path. Dotty darted from sheltering tree to sheltering tree, gesturing wildly. Maeve cartwheeled past them. The high, clear sound of her laughter floated upward. The queen strode forward, waving at invisible subjects.
Selena somersaulted across the lawn, skirts flapping, then she shot to her feet and clapped, twirling and twirling until she fell in a laughing heap to the grass. The apple and tulip necklace hung at a cockeyed angle around her throat. A single petal fluttered to the grass, a brilliant white spot on the emerald green carpet.
Selena said something he couldn't quite make out, and then everyone lined up along the porch and began somersaulting across the lawn. The sun gazed lovingly down on them, glinting off their shining hair and multicolored clothing. The joyous sound of their laughter rang in the warm, sea-scented air.
Ian tried to manufacture a familiar feeling of disgust; after all, it was such an exceptional display of lunacy.
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But surprisingly, he felt no such contempt. A smile, slow and tentative, crept across his face.
Which was more insane-tumbling across the grass on a beautiful spring day, or hiding in a lonely, darkened room, feeling an unnecessary sense of isolation?
All at once, Selena looked up at him. Across the distance, their eyes locked. He saw in her gaze all the welcome he could ever want. She waved him down. Then Johann started walking toward the beach and the little party followed him.
He knew instantly that he, too, would follow. He could try to do otherwise, could pretend indifference and force himself to remain alone, but he wasn't so dishonest. He wanted to be with her.
He stepped back from the window and eased it shut. Images of yesterday flashed through his mind, warming him, cajoling him.
Amazingly, Johann had been right. In an instant, a heartbeat, Selena had offered Ian a choice, and with nothing more potent, more life-altering, than a smile.
I feel love for you, Ian.
The words circled through his mind again. All through the long, lonely night in his solitary bed, he'd heard them. Over and over and over, gaining momentum, promising a magic he'd never dreamed of. A future he'd long ago given up on.
He grabbed a shirt from the chair and shrugged into it. With the eagerness of a kid, he hurried down the steps and outside, emerging into the bright sunlight.
Warmth splashed his cheeks. He raced across the lawn and plunged into the cold darkness of the woods, following the sound of laughter.
They were down on the beach in a scattered array. The sea was at low tide, a foamy hem along the gray and black stone. Sunlight glittered on the still bay, gave the water the appearance of polished steel.
Johann was sprawled out on a blue blanket, his arms wishboned behind his head. Lara was crouched over a
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tide pool, her bucket placed precariously on a barnacle-roughened rock. Maeve was staring out to sea, her hand tented across her eyes. No doubt she was waiting for her husband to come home again.
"Ah, the prodigal son returneth," Johann drawled, rising languidly to his elbows. He brushed the straggly hair from his eyes with a fluid stroke. Very slowly, he smiled. "Good to see you, Ian."
"Ian?" Selena swiveled around and looked at him. The second their eyes met, she gave him a devastatingly bright smile. "You are here."
The sound of her voice, hushed and seductive and intimate, washed through him, warmer than the sunlight.
"We were to have a picnic," Selena said, waving toward the basket. "You shall join us?"
Ian felt himself start to smile. "I'd love to."
Hours later, only Selena and Ian were left at the beach. The meal had long ago been eaten and cleaned up, the last remnants taken away.
They lay side by side on the blue blanket, gazing up at the clear, blue sky. Books were scattered around them.
"Tell me another story," Selena said in a drowsy voice.
Ian smiled. She was surprisingly adept at understanding concepts and ideas, and she brought an exhilarat-ingly fresh viewpoint to the telling of any story. He'd read parts of the Bible to her, some Greek mythology, and several fairy tales by the Grimm brothers. The romantic poets were her favorites, and always she wanted more.
"There is the story of Pandora-this parallels in some ways the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. Pandora was the first human woman made by the gods. The story is that Jupiter made her to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from Heaven."
"The first woman was made to punish man?"
J98
He knew she would pick up on that. "She was made in Heaven. Every god contributed something to make her perfect. Then she was sent to earth, and Epimetheus accepted her-though he was warned to beware of Jupiter bearing gifts. Epimetheus had in his home a very special jar which held all the ills of the world-"
"He should have thrown this jar away."
Ian stifled a smile. "Pandora was curious." Ian looked at Selena. "Curious is what makes a woman follow the sound of a wild animal into the middle of the night. Anyway, Pandora snuck down one night and opened the jar, releasing all the evil into the world. She closed the lid quickly, but not quickly enough. Only hope was left inside."
Selena rolled onto her stomach and pressed up to her elbows, peering down at Ian with a frown. "She released all the evils onto the world and gave them no hope?"
"That
's the myth."
She thought about that for a moment. "And they say I am damaged in the brain. I do not like this story."
"The other interpretation is that Pandora was sent in good faith by Jupiter, carrying a box in which each god had placed a blessing. Thoughtlessly she opened the box and all the blessings escaped. All except hope."
She smiled. "This is sensible. Who would put hope-it is so precious-in a box full of evil?" She nodded. "Yes, Pandora was made to help man, not to punish him."
He reached up, smoothed a tangled lock of hair from her eyes. At the touch, so simple, so like something he'd done to a million women in his life, she smiled brightly.
Little things, a touch, a smile, they meant so much to her.
She plopped back on her back. "Tell me another story."
He reached blindly for a book, and finding one,
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pulled it onto his stomach. It was the story of Tristram and Isolde. For nearly an hour, he read to her, as the sun made its slow, elegant slide into the sea. He spun the tragic tale of a man trapped by honor into marrying the wrong woman, and of his wife-& good woman- consumed by jealousy for the other woman.
When he was finished, he turned slightly and saw that Selena was crying. Silvery tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and trailed down her pale temples.
"That is very sad," she said in a throaty voice. "Why would Tristram's wife lie to him?"
"She was jealous of Tristram's great love for Queen Isolde, and her jealousy cost Tristram his life. He died believing that his love had deserted him in his time of need."
"Why did Tristram not marry the woman he loved?"
"He was an honorable man, and honor demanded such a sacrifice."
Selena wiped the tears from her eyes and gazed up at Ian. Her hair hung in wavy strands along her damp cheeks. "This honorable. You have spoken of it before. I do not understand."
"It is more for men than women."
She frowned. "That is a bird."
He laughed.
"I have mistaken again. Sorry. I meant absurd. Is it important to be honorable?"
He felt a rush of bitterness at the naive question. "You are asking the wrong man, Selena. I have never been honorable in my life."
"Define honorable."
"Quite simply, honorable means moral, living your life so as not to willfully hurt people. To keep promises that you have made and never lie."
"And you are not honorable?"
He snorted derisively. "No. In my life, I have been inordinately dishonorable. I've done things designed to
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hurt people, and keeping promises was never my strongest trait."
Her voice fell to a whisper. "Why do you tell me such things?"
He leaned closer to her, so close he could lose himself in the mysterious darkness of her eyes. "As a warning, Selena. I don't want you to idolize me."
She laughed unexpectedly. It was vaguely irritating how funny she found his statement. "I do not idolize you, Ian. I feel love for you. I believe there is a most profound difference."