Alice At Heart (23 page)

I felt his startled reaction, then gave him my agonized pleasure.
I won’t betray my sisters
.

You’re mine. I’m yours. Don’t betray us.

The image of my fingertips over his face came to me. In the air just above his skin, I traced his jaw, touched the scar on his cheek, floated my forefinger lightly above his lips. He shut his eyes, groaned again, and our sorrowful desire merged us.

I halted my hand, trembling.
It’s no use. Leave me be, and I’ll leave you be, too.

I wish it were that simple.

Then I have to touch you. I have to try.

For Gods sake. Please.

I cried.

I am ashamed,
so shaken of what I’ve done with Griffin and to Griffin—who is a threat to my new family and new life—that I lie here at Sainte’s Point, still crying.

He whispers inside me,
I’m only sorry for your tears
.

Leave me alone with them,
is all I can manage.

And he kisses me goodbye.

Mysteries made worried songs
in Lilith’s mind, unspooling old fears and sorrows, old mistakes, bitterness, regret, the deepest loves and losses. She felt immeasurably sunken by concern over Alice and Griffin as she wrote in her journal.
Forces have been set in motion. Strong currents are merging
.

Alice asked her in private, “Were you out at the
Calm Meridian
with me? Was Mara? Was Pearl?”

“No, none of us,” Lilith answered. “Why?”

But Alice only shook her head.

Lilith went down to the beaches and stood gazing out beyond the surf, singing.

Are you out there?

Tell me what to do to save my family.

Your family, Melasine.

19

At the risk of insulting those Water People who believe Landers cannot possibly share our legacy, I must point out that if the sea is the mother of us all, then we must all be, at heart, both Water People and Land People.

—Lilith

Honor, kindness, and revenge. And I will always take revenge
, Mara thought grimly, as she exited a private car driven by one of the Tanglewoods, then made her way down a cobblestoned alley behind a street of Savannah’s most exquisite historic mansions. Moving with stealth and confidence, she fitted a stolen key into the lock of an elaborate courtyard gate and let herself inside C. A. Randolph’s private garden.

She had never claimed to be anything other than her family’s enforcer. She stood in C.A.’s garden and began to sing to him softly, her voice perfect and haunting. He walked into the garden.

Mara posed as deliberately as a geisha beneath the flowering dogwoods and old jasmine vines of a house so fine General Sherman had commandeered it for himself and his favorite colonels during the occupation of the Civil War. The house stood in the midst of the city’s historic residential district, on a boulevard hooded by oaks and washed in the murmurs of fountains.

C.A. had never been able to put aside the whisper of water, and Mara’s effect flooded his veins now. He hid a tremor behind clenched fists. “All these years,” he said, “I’ve pictured you standing here, and I’ve pictured myself telling you to get the hell out. How did you get a key?”

“I have keys to most of these old homes. I’m a welcome guest in certain circles.”

“A pickpocket. Sad.”

“You made me swear to stay away from you. I always have. But you never said a thing about leaving your
house
alone. I’ve slipped into your home on many occasions. Studied your books, your belongings, the things you use to mollify the emptiness in your life. I’ve lain naked on your bed sheets, and I think you know it. Haven’t you made love to your lady friends with my perfume in your senses? Oh, those must have been glorious nights for the poor, ordinary creatures.”

His silence and the look on his face confirmed every word she said. His expression turned to stone. “I can’t imagine why you’ve gone to the trouble of watching me since I’m one of many you’ve used and deserted.”

“I do have a certain curiosity about you—and a certain admiration for your refusal to settle for the ordinary, after me. I find it fascinating that you’ve never married.”

“Is your own life so full of happiness that you have the gall to pity mine? You fell in love with me, and you never counted on that. You wouldn’t lower yourself to admit it. So you ran. Ran to New York—and married some web-footed bastard you never loved.”

“How dare you. How dare you.” She raised a trembling hand to her throat.

“You didn’t love him,” C.A. repeated. “And he knew it. That’s why he was always trying to prove himself. You didn’t want him to buy his own small plane and learn to fly, but he did it anyway. Flying—the one thing that frightens you—that’s what he did, to impress you. And when the two of you had children, as soon as they were old enough he took them up, too, because he—”

“Do not speak of my children! Do not! I would never stoop to torment you with such private and dear—”

“I
grieved
for your children.” C.A. put a fist over his heart. “When the plane went down with your husband and children, I
hurt
as if they were my
own
children, Mara.”

She swayed, struggling to maintain the facades that protected her. “Lilith told me you wanted to help. But it’s not my way to accept—”

“So you secluded yourself at the island and wanted no one to care about you. And you’ve gotten worse every year since.”

“We Bonavendiers grieve for our losses in the water, alone. I have my own brand of honor.” Her voice broke. “And kindness.”

“Then what do you want from me now?” He kept the courtyard’s centerpiece between them. It was an anchor from a long-lost Randolph ship, one the Bonavendiers had been accused of sinking. Tendrils of spring grapevine had begun to wrap their delicate fingers around the iron, as if the earth, not the water, claimed all Randolph vessels.

Mara became so somber he felt alarmed. “I want your promise that you’ll tell Griffin the truth when he asks you about Porter and Undiline.”

“I don’t want my godson ruined the way Porter was.”

“You know what happens when a Bonavendier is determined to find something in the water. Alice will help him dredge up the
truth
, C.A. And when that happens, you had better be there with us, for Griffin’s sake, because that is where he will be
ruined
—by the ugly truth. And you’ll have to admit what you know about his father and mother.”

Slowly, C.A. walked to a teakwood bench weathered oyster gray. He sat down with a bowed head. “God help us all,” he said.

Mara hesitated, breaking down inside, telling herself to go, now that she’d made her point. But she moved helplessly toward C.A., trembling, sat down just as slowly beside him, and fought an urge not to touch his hand. Controlling him was her second nature. Her first, unfortunately, was loving him.
I’m going to take him to bed tonight. He’ll never turn away from me then.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered sincerely, and then laid a warm, stroking hand on his. “Maybe this time God will care.”

Soon, we will learn
whether our kind can survive into new centuries
, Lilith wrote in her journal. Everything they were, everything Bonavendiers had fashioned of themselves on Sainte’s Point, defying the accepted course of nature, hung in the balance between facts and faith.

Pearl went to Bellemeade with Barret, nervously frittering at management of their shops to distract her worries. The sales clerks adored Pearl and listened politely to her suggestions. Even the most ordinary people sensed her sweet songs and were lured into the Bonavendier enterprises. Pearl was very good for business, and she needed something to keep from wringing her hands over the growing drama of their lives.

Mara had not returned from Savannah, where Lilith knew she was manipulating C.A. Randolph’s assistance against all of Lilith’s counsel. Only Alice and Griffin would determine the outcome of this old heartache. In a matter so fundamental, peace would come from the wellspring of Alice’s and Griffin’s souls, or not at all.

“Yes, my dear Judith Beth?” Lilith said, without turning from her writing desk.

“Lady Lilith, hurry. You have a visitor. Oh, my. Oh, my.” The Tanglewood sister fluttered her hands. Her blond hair looked electrified, and her plump face was flushed deep pink with excitement. “It’s
him
, Lady Lilith.”

Lilith frowned and left the room at a quick walk, striding down the main hallway and out of the mansion. Immediately, she saw the large white sailboat slipping into the cove’s docks. A crew of several lithe men, all dressed in white, altered the tall sails and threw heavy ropes around the dock’s pilings. She gathered her dignity and walked down the path with her head up and her hands swinging calmly by her sides. A simple white top moved smoothly on her breasts, and a long, pale skirt whispered about her jeweled feet. She lifted a hand to a long onyx comb at the crown of her head, and her silver hair tumbled down her back.

Suddenly, she stopped.

A tall, olive-skinned man dressed in dark trousers and a flowing white shirt stood on the bow of the yacht. His thick silver hair flowed to his shoulders. He stood with his hands by his sides, his dark eyes never leaving her.

A flood of shock and emotion lifted Lilith’s senses like a tide. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t imagine him here. Her stride slowed. Dazed, she picked out the last few steps to the edge of the dock as his crew lowered a gangway. Her visitor walked from the luxurious vessel onto the very boards of her own home. His face, lean and handsome, creviced with lines at the eyes and mouth, could still steal her breath. His full name, a lengthy and traditional Arabic one, was far too formal.

“Riyad,” she whispered.

He slid off soft leather slippers in the tradition of their kind and stood barefoot before her. “Lilith,” he answered in the voice of pharaohs.

The spring sun haloed him, reflecting off the water and casting his shadows across her face, then flashing its brilliance into her eyes. She sheltered her gaze. “The sunlight,” she protested and smoothed tears from her lower lids. “It has a voice of its own.”

He nodded, unable to say more himself. She held out her arm. He took it, and she escorted him up the path toward the house. Alice stepped onto the veranda. Lilith studied her expression, a look of bittersweet understanding. And Lilith realized the amazing truth.

My dear young sister, have you learned to sing for love? Did you call him here for me
?

Alice nodded.

I sang a song for my sister,
and the song was heard.

Now I feel the full impact of the sisters’ peculiar, cocooned lives, and my own. For every beauty there is a tragedy, for every superior talent, a loss of ordinary comfort. Maybe they’ve only designed a marvelous legend for themselves, weaving colorful family stories into a fabric of supernatural purpose and claiming special knowledge to right the wrongs of their world—though they never can, any more than the driest of land-lovers. If I want to be practical and cynical, I can reduce the sisters’ belief system to that. They are just oddly endowed women who have sugar-coated their troubled lives and usurped a queendom of illusions. Sad creatures, struggling to make sense of it all, like me. But I’ve sung now, and I’ve loved. And I realize how afraid I’ve been to send my voice into the world.

And how much I have changed.

“Where is Lilith’s and Riyad’s son buried?”
I asked Pearl that night.

“In Mother and Father’s crypt, alongside Mara’s two children. Their bodies lie in three small marble coffins with just their precious names etched on them.” Pearl looked at me wistfully. “There’s something you should know. Lilith named her baby son
Griffin
.”

I stared at Pearl. She nodded. “And years later, Undiline named
her
son Griffin, too, in honor of Lilith’s lost boy. Lilith was so pleased. Undiline asked Lilith, Mara, and me to be Griffin’s godmothers. We accepted with true joy.” Pearl pressed a hand to her heart. “So do you understand what Griffin means to us? He is, in so many respects, our only son.” She paused. “Just as you, darling Alice, are like a daughter.”

“Does Riyad know about his and Lilith’s child?” I asked Pearl wearily.

Pearl sighed. “He will soon. She’s telling him tonight.”

Lilith and Riyad stood
before the crypt in the moonlight. Her heart rose in her voice. She struggled to put the story of their son into spoken words. Riyad riveted his gaze to her face. Lilith moaned. Her legendary discipline deserted her. The truth poured in psychic waves of grief and regret. Riyad stepped back as if struck. He bent his head into his hands, then dropped to one knee before the crypt.

Lilith cried out as she sank down beside him. “I’ve never doubted that you would have loved our son.”

Riyad dragged his hands from his face and tilted his head back. He shut his eyes as if even the moonlight were too bright. “All these years I’ve sensed a secret between us, but I shut it from my mind. I tried not to imagine what it might be.” He shuttered and looked at her with tears on his face. His expression was tortured and tender. “Please, forgive me.”

Lilith hugged herself. “I’m the one who must ask for forgiveness. You had a right to know.”

He held out his hands. “Let us mourn together.”

She took his hands and bowed her head to his. They grieved for their lost son and lost love without sound, without pride, without artifice. Slowly, they slipped their arms around each other and clung tightly.

The tide made a low murmur in the distance. Out in the depths, the souls of all the knowing creatures listened and sighed with relief. Mercy was fluid. Sorrow ebbed and flowed.

Love returned with the moon.

I sat outside in the deep curve
of the tree limb in my dark garden. My heart twisted when I glimpsed Lilith and Riyad in the moonlight. They walked side by side, their hands tightly clasped, along the path out of the forest. They had made peace over the body of their son, the first Griffin.