“Well,” said Rand Morgan, “that’s true. Why don’t you take Merry?”
In the ensuing silence Merry heard Cat say tersely, “Why should he? He’s already got bait.”
Merry hardly caught the sense of Cat’s words because her every feeling arrowed to Devon. He didn’t want her to come with him. Rejection was there, clear as water, in Devon’s face. She had not thought to spend the day with him, she had never been fishing and never particularly desired to go, and yet, seeing that he didn’t want her with him cut her ill-protected heart like a steel spar. Against all force of will she must have been showing her hurt, because Devon’s expression changed quickly. Fondness or something like it washed into his vivid eyes and flooded, hot and pulpy, into her veins.
“Would you come with me, Merry?” Devon said slowly to her. “Who knows what the pair of us will be able to catch?”
It took a little while to talk Merry into an assent because his invitation had been reluctant and because she was certain it did her no good to indulge her need to be with him, but in the end the temptation was beyond her power to resist.
When she had run into the villa to fetch a bonnet andDevon had gone to the front entrance to wait for her, Morgan walked to Cat, who had been silent after his one comment. Annie slept on, but Cook, Saunders, and Raven watched incredulously as Morgan caught Cat’s jaw in the bite of one wide hand. Black eyes burned into pale-blue frost.
“Keep it under control, babe,” Morgan said softly. And left them.
A shocked silence ensued as the three tried to digest and interpret the extraordinary thing that had happened. Morgan, against all precedent of custom and courtesy, had disciplined Cat in public. Reviewing the preceding minutes in their minds, not one of them could understand why it had happened.
At last Raven hazarded, “Is it—is it Merry, Cat? Surely she’s safe with Devon. He’d put his whole hand in boiling rice water before he’d hurt her.”
Not answering, Cat stared at Raven as though he couldn’t see him. He turned, walking and then running lightly, in the direction Morgan had taken. Behind him Saunders stared at the half-strung mandolin lying deserted on the gray stone wall.
“I wonder,” he said, “if we’ll ever know whatthatwas about.”
Running slowly, Cat caught up with Morgan much farther down the slope, beside the villa vegetable plots where Morgan’s sable hair stood out against the brilliant light-green leaves of the young plantains. Cabbages and carrots bumped from the earth in squat lateral rows, and above them were small weedless tracts of parsley, sage, thyme, and the succulent jade shoots of ginger and arrowroot. Morgan, Cat saw, had stopped and was awaiting him beside a castor oil plant. So be it.
As Cat approached, Morgan gave him an extravagant smile and stretched an arm to the side, as though offering that space, that embrace, to Cat’s shoulders.
“Come with me, my dear,” he said. “I have an appointment in the village.”
Cat froze where he was.
“If I’d known we were going to have theatricals,” said the boy, “I would have brought my face paint.”
Morgan dropped his arm in an easy movement and let his smile take on an edge. “What are you so worried about? I’ve kept her alive this far, haven’t I?”
Livid with frustration, Cat snapped out, “You unseemly arrogant son of a whore—you’ve tried to kill her.I’vekept her alive.”
“Allow me to rephrase,” said Morgan evenly. “I should have said, I’ve provided to keep her alive.”
“Then why the devil won’t you let me do that? She’s too weak yet. If he puts his bastard in her—”
“Babe, you’ve already told him that. He knows.”
“He’ll forget. You’ve arranged things so he’ll forget. Merry doesn’t understand what she does to him.”
Morgan’s eyes glittered with laughter and shone, lusciously cloying like black cherries. “Doesn’t she? Then you ought to have explained it to her.”
“Am I her dry nurse?”
“Aren’t you? I thought you volunteered long ago. And I thought Devon was supposed to cure himself on her body. Didn’t you tell him that? Or does she fluctuate in and out of a state of being rapeable? Since none of you has the faintest idea what you want, then you are all going to get what I want you to have, which—”
“Is misery?”
“Which foryouis the opportunity to discover how it feels when you can’t protect something you love.”
Cat recoiled like an animal from a flame thrust. He stood, digesting the words by slow degrees, the delicately toned eyes filled with startled distaste. “Rand…” For the first timehe heard something akin to fear in his own voice. “Don’t use her to teach me pain. Anyone. But not her.”
“I can’t stop it now for your sake, child. There are many more involved than you.” The black cherry eyes had become much gentler. “You’re one of the lives in my world; but you’re not the center of it.”
It had come—the careful loving rebuff Cat had known would come one day. For years, on Morgan’s warning, Cat had been preparing himself for it, and now that it was here, Cat was surprised by his own readiness to receive it. He was well aware, in the long run, what Rand Morgan expected him to do.
