Guardian's Hope (16 page)

“Pretty much. It’s hard to keep a secret in
this House.”

Chapter 15

Hope stared at the sugar bowl that sat across
the table. Concentrating all her will on the little yellow pot, she
raised her hand and pointed her fingers at it. The bowl began to
shudder, its lid shivering in its seat. She took a deep breath to
steady her shaking fingers and moved her hand slightly to the left.
The bowl moved at the direction of her hand. Again she moved her
hand, this time to the right. The bowl and its lid flew off the
table in two separate directions to crash against the cabinets to
either side of the room. The two pieces shattered into six.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Hope covered her face
with her hands.

“Stop being sorry and help me pick up the
pieces.” Grace was already on her knees. “After the hurricane of
plastic containers, I thought something heavier might work better.
Guess I was wrong.” She ginned at Hope now gathering pieces of lid.
“At least it was empty.”

“And now useless,” Hope sighed, “I’m
hopeless. I’ll never get it and I don’t know why you two
bother.”

Manon shook her head. “You are not hopeless.
You have never been hopeless. You have more control now than you
did a few weeks ago. You are simply not mature enough. It will
come.”

Hope rose and brushed at the skirt of her
dress. “I’ve been ‘mature’ for quite a while now. Some might even
call it matronly. Where I come from, ‘old maid’ is the term they
use when they think I can’t hear them.”

“Stop it,” Manon snapped. She rapped the
tabletop with her open palm. “I will here no more of this. It has
become tiresome. Your face is beautiful. Your body…” Manon stood
and ran her hands down her sides from her breasts to her hips, “…is
much the same as mine and no one has ever called this
matronly.”

Hope had to agree. You wouldn’t say Manon was
tall. Statuesque was the more appropriate word. Voluptuous came to
mind long before large. Matronly? When Grace first explained that
Daughters of Man were blessed with longevity and mating, the
Paenitentian form of marriage, multiplied that blessing, Hope was
thinking in decades. She was stunned to learn that Grace was
talking about centuries. Three of them in Manon’s case. The older
woman should have personified matronly in the extreme. She
didn’t.

With her snow white hair still soft and
shining, her skin unblemished and wrinkle free, and her elegant
bearing and body, Manon was the antithesis of matronly.

“If men don’t see you as sexually alluring,
it is because you do not see yourself as such. There is no sin in
knowing yourself to be beautiful. All women are beautiful, each in
her own way. It is something we should cherish. We were made to
please men as they were made to please us. It has been so since our
creation.” Manon softened her tone. “People have said cruel things
to you through their own selfish motives or perhaps their own
ignorance. These things are not true and you must believe them no
longer. Now, go and get the broom and dustpan to clean up the rest
of this mess. We have done enough for today. We will work again
tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hope said quietly. It was
easier for Manon to say the words than for Hope to believe them,
but she would try.

When she’d left the room, Grace whispered, “I
thought you were going to tell her about her virginity getting in
the way of her power.”

“She is not ready to hear it.”

“I didn’t want to hear it either. Didn’t seem
to stop you from telling me.”

“Not wanting to hear it and not being ready
to are two different things,” laughed Manon and then she
winked.

*****

Supper was over, the kitchen was put to
rights and everyone seemed to have disappeared. Otto and Manon had
left soon after the table was cleared. Grace and Canaan had
retreated to their room for some ‘alone time’ as Grace had put it.
The rest of the men had disappeared on some mysterious mission in
the new addition to the House.

Hope was left alone and she hoped it wasn’t
because of her behavior at supper. Nico hadn’t come down for dinner
again and she was upset that no one seemed to care. She’d fiddled
and paced and muttered for over an hour before deciding to do
something about it.

She felt the last of the sugar dissolve as
she stirred the milk in the pan and watched the dark swirls of
chocolate powder turn the milk to creamy brown. The kettle boiled
and she poured the steaming water into the pot to warm it before
she refilled it with hot chocolate. Beside the pot, two china mugs
sat ready on the tray next to a large glass plate holding two roast
beef sandwiches and six of Grace’s sugar cookies. The cat watched
her every move from its perch on a stool. She now knew its name was
Buffy and she was convinced it was the same cat she’d seen at
Lenny’s. But how that could be? The cat only seemed to travel
between this place and Manon’s and never went missing.

“Someone needs to check on Nico,” she
explained to the cat.

Buffy cocked her head, listening. Her ears
twitched and she started to purr.

“With all the concern the members of this
House show for each other, it doesn’t seem right that no one cares
for Nico. Dov and Col say they’ve done their part by partnering
with him on patrol. They say he was surly both nights, which I find
hard to believe, and if someone wants to go up there and talk to
him, that was fine by them, but they aren’t volunteering. Canaan
shrugged it off and Nardo actually laughed. Broadbent smiles like a
Cheshire cat and cryptically quotes Dante’s ‘Without hope we live
in desire’, which tells me nothing and Manon and Grace obviously
feel it isn’t their place.”

Hope tested the milk with her pinkie, eased
the burn by sucking on it and removed the pan from the heat. After
emptying the pot of its water, she poured the steaming milk. When
the cat stood and meowed, she guiltily poured it a saucer of milk
from the jug before she returned it to the refrigerator. The cat
ignored the milk and meowed again.

Hope shrugged. “Then I don’t know what you
want,” she said and continued her complaint. The cat sat. “Uncle
Otto, who I’ve grown to like more and more each time I talk to him,
is the only one who seems concerned, yet he refuses to help.” She’d
forgotten napkins.

“He’s suffering,” Uncle Otto had said when
they were alone together in the kitchen. “I’ve seen it before,
experienced it myself. But if he won’t talk about the why of it,
there’s nothing any of us can do.”

“Someone has to try,” she’d pleaded.

Uncle Otto smiled gently. “Why don’t
you?”

“Me? I don’t know him. I’m not qualified to
help anyone. I don’t know anything about my own world never mind
yours.”

“Maybe that’s to your advantage. You don’t
see him the way the Paenitentia do. You see the man.” Otto gave a
little chuckle. “And the man sees you.”

“Sees me how, Uncle Otto? Give me some help
here. If I wanted riddles, I’d go see the Professor.”

“Oh come now, my girl, you’re not blind. His
eyes follow you when he thinks no one notices. He smiles when you
speak and frowns when Broadbent makes you laugh. And why do you
think he prowls the parlor at noon? He’s hoping you’ll stop by for
another visit.”

Hope felt the flush rise to the roots of her
hair. “Does everyone know?” Her color rose higher when Uncle Otto
raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“It was accidental. I couldn’t sleep. He was
kind to me. We talked. Nothing happened.” But she’d wished, oh how
she’d wished… She shook her head. “This is nonsense. The twins have
taken great joy in explaining Nico’s reputation. Even Nardo’s made
sly comments.” She’d waved her hand to indicate her body. “I know
what I look like, Uncle Otto, and I’m not what a man like Nico
looks at twice. He’s been nice to me, that’s all. Like the rest of
you.”

Otto laughed outright at that. “If I looked
at you the way Nico does, Manon would have my head as well as the
rest of my heart. You need to stand in front of a mirror and take a
good look at yourself, Hope. You’re enough to make any man look
twice. Nico likes what he sees, but in you, I think he sees
more.”

“My point exactly. I’m more all over.”

“If that’s what you believe, nothing I say
will change your mind, but it doesn’t change what you should do. If
Nico has shown you care and kindness, can you do any less for
him?”

Hope straightened her dress; a scoop neck
affair Manon insisted wasn’t cut too low, and picked up the
tray.

“Wish me luck,” she said to the cat.

Buffy closed her eyes and purred
contentedly.

Hope climbed the stairs and walked the length
of the hall to the door at the end. She knocked softly and waited,
knocked harder and waited again. She’d almost lost her nerve when
she remembered the twins saying there was a second door at the top
of the stairs that opened into Nico’s rooms. By the time she
reached the top, the plate and mugs were chattering on the tray.
She used her toe to tap softly at the base of the door.

The door was immediately flung open.

“Goddammit…”

She was so startled, she lost her balance and
it was only Nico’s left hand to her shoulder and right to the tray
that saved her and his supper from tumbling backward down the
stairs.

His initial curse was followed by another as
with one continuous movement he swept her into the room and took
the tray from her hands.

“Goddammit woman, you could have broken your
neck!” he barked. He turned away and ran his fingers through his
uncombed hair. His shoulders heaved before he turned back.

Hope was so shaken, she didn’t think before
she snapped back. “I think you meant
you
could have broken
my neck.”

“I meant what I said.”

“Then you’re wrong! I didn’t trip or stumble.
I was waiting patiently on the step when you ripped open the door
and lunged at me. You frightened me and why shouldn’t I be
frightened? You looked like you were ready to kill. I didn’t do
anything wrong. I was worried about you. I brought you some supper.
A ‘No Thank you’ would have done the job.” She stamped her foot for
emphasis.

A lamp fell over in the corner of the room.
The glass on the table beside the chair cracked, the amber liquid
seeping onto the wooden surface. She heard a series of thuds from
the room beyond.

“Now look what you’ve made me do.”

Nico ignored the damage and stared at her.
Her dark yellow dress clung tightly to her shoulders and arms,
molded to her breasts and waist and flowed freely over her hips to
fall just above her ankles. The flush of her anger colored the
exposed tops of her breasts as they heaved beneath the golden
fabric. A few auburn curls had escaped from the confines of the bun
she still rolled tightly to the base of her neck and her eyes
flashed with emerald fire. She was beautiful and all he wanted to
do was pull her to him and kiss her.

“You have a mighty funny way of showing it,”
she huffed. Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened. Her heart
beat faster and a smile lit up her insides.

“Well,” she said quietly, “This is
awkward.”

He saw her eyes light with that inner smile
and her breasts rise and fall with short, quick breaths. He
clenched his fists and held himself still, watching, unable to look
away, as a small, shy smile played at the corners of her mouth and
then her tongue darted out nervously to wet that lush lower lip and
all strength and resolve left him.

He took the step forward and wrapped his arms
around her, pulling her close and her lips tilted up to meet his
crushing down. The taste of her, the smell of her, like roses in
spring, overwhelmed the senses. His mouth couldn’t get enough of
hers and his tongue probed between her lips until she parted them.
Tentatively, she touched his tongue with her own and he felt her
sharp intake of breath. He paused, afraid he’d frightened her with
his ardor and then her arms were around him and their tongues were
dancing together. Minutes passed, maybe hours before he finally
broke the kiss and stepped back, his hands resting lightly on her
shoulders.

Her right hand went flat against the skin
above her left breast as if holding her heart in place. She was
staring at his chest and had a curious look on her face. Nico had a
moment’s panic. He’d moved too fast or had he disappointed her.

“Oh my,” she breathed, “That wasn’t at all
what I dreamed my first kiss would be like.”

His heart fell.

She looked up into his eyes and smiled. “This
was so much better. What is it Dov says? You rocked my boat?”

His heart was back in place and beating
strongly when he laughed. “You rocked my world,” he said both as a
correction and a statement of fact.

Hope laughed with him. “You certainly did,”
she agreed and lifted her lips to be kissed again.

*****

Dov ducked his head around the edge of the
door leading into the kitchen. When he spied Canaan and Grace
sharing a single glass of wine he grinned and straightened.

“Mommy, can we go to bed now?”

“Yes, dear,” Grace laughed.

Dov motioned behind him and the others came
trooping through.

“But,” Grace said before they could exit. She
raised a finger in warning. “If I hear one off color comment, one
snicker or snort, any sound at all that might disturb them,” she
paused for effect, “You will all come begging forgiveness on your
hands and knees before I ever cook a meal for you again.”

“Gee, Gracie,” Col grumbled, “You used to be
fun.”

“I mean it,” she said, but she was smiling.
“They will not know that we know and we will keep our speculations
to ourselves.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No problem.”

“Right-ho.”

They made their way silently to their
rooms.