Moonlight Masquerade (9 page)

His nose was perfectly centered, neither too
long nor too short, not overly narrow nor too widely flared, and
balanced beautifully above a full mouth that had a vulnerability
about it that drew her against her will. Even though his jaw was
cleanly square it was not a forbidding jaw, but rather endearingly
innocent and, again, vulnerable.

His was the face of a man who had known
great joy—and great pain.

Christine looked once more at the silken
hood that shadowed most of the left side of his face, seeing the
locks of black hair that had tumbled forward onto his forehead. She
felt an almost overwhelming urge to take him in her arms, as she
would a frightened child, while yet another part of her wildly,
wantonly wanted to feel his mouth on hers, to see her face
reflected in his sad, gentle eyes.

She reached out a hand to him, almost
without knowing what she was doing, what she would do, when
something startling happened. Something frightening.

Within the space of a heartbeat the face
before her changed. The jaw hardened, the lips thinned, and the
light disappeared from his eyes as if they had been candles
suddenly snuffed. His expression was now as cold and unyielding as
that of a marble statue, remote, and stripped of emotion.

He had looked so young to her. Now he looked
at her through the eyes of age.

Christine shook her head, slowly,
disbelievingly. “Why?” she asked him, bereft. “Why?”

Vincent didn’t have to ask the meaning of
her question. He knew that it was much more than idle curiosity
that had prompted it. He could see the hurt, the disillusionment,
that clouded her innocent eyes.

“I have my reasons,” he said tersely. “Only
be glad that, even if I have succeeded in burying everything else,
I have searched myself to dredge up some forgotten sense of
decency, of morality. You had better leave me now, Christine,
before I force them back into hiding and take what I want.”

“You can’t frighten me,” Christine said,
even as she privately acknowledged that she was frightened down to
her toes. Her gaze didn’t waver from his face. “I saw your true
self before you had time to hide it behind that mask of cold
indifference. You would never hurt me. You are much too busy
hurting yourself.”

“Ah, now the impertinent, audacious child
shows herself,” Vincent commented, raising his right hand to draw
the hood more closely around the left side of his face. “And are
you lying again now, as you did when you said you could play
chess?”

Christine rejoiced silently, for a hint of
softness had crept, unbidden, back into the long green eyes. “I
never lied to you. You asked me if I should like to play chess with
you. I answered yes, as I would very much like to play chess with
you. You never asked if I knew the game.”

Vincent rose, his great height making him
seem to tower above her seated form. He turned his back to the
fireplace, and Christine thought she had at last succeeded in
allowing her foolish mouth to lose her any chance of remaining in
the room.

But she was wrong. In a moment he was back,
placing a heavy chess board on the small table that stood between
the two chairs. “If you will look to your right, my dear Miss
Impertinence, you will see a small wooden chest I’ve had Lazarus
unearth from some place or another. The chess pieces are inside,
awaiting your pleasure. Do you at least know how they are arranged
on the board?”

“You—you’re willing to teach me?” If it had
been somehow possible for Christine to propel herself out of the
chair and into a series of dizzying, arching, backward flips—like
the ones performed by an acrobat she had applauded at the local
fair—she would have done it now, for she was that happy.

His smile lit up her world. “I should like
to teach you many things, Christine. But we will start with chess.
You may be the white queen. I, as it naturally follows, shall take
the black.”

“Was it ever in any doubt?” she quipped
happily, sorting out the pieces, at last feeling free to relax the
hold on her tongue without fear of reprisal—or dismissal. “Oh, what
a beautiful set this is, Vincent. Just look at these two adorable
horses!”

“Knights,” Vincent corrected, clearly amused
by her untutored appreciation of a hand-carved chess set that had
cost him over five hundred pounds. “They are knights, Christine,
valiant protectors of your king and queen. I beg you to pay them a
little respect.”

Christine dutifully saluted the chess
pieces, giggled delightedly, lightheartedly, and then smartly
placed them where she was bid. “Sir Algernon Balderfield, our
closest neighbor at Manderley, is a knight,” she added
thoughtfully, “and he looks nothing like these horses. As a matter
of fact, now that I think on it, Vincent, he rather more resembles
a cow—a very old, very fat cow, with a terrible case of the
gout.”

Vincent’s hand covered hers as he helped her
place the white queen on the correct spot. “Then Sir Algernon is
not to be one of your knights, Christine, for you must have only
the best, the bravest, the most loyal about you. Your knights must
be willing to die for you—and at least one most probably will, one
way or another—before this game between us is completed.”

She could barely hear him above the buzzing
in her ears. She felt dizzy, just slightly off center, her hand
burning beneath his as a tight bud of warmth slowly uncurled in her
stomach.

She stared down at his hand, seeing the hand
of a sensitive artist, a valiant protector; the gentle hand of a
loving father—or the knowing hand of a tender lover. She remembered
the way those long fingers had stroked the bedpost in her chamber,
tracing the carving almost absently, yet reverently, riveting her
attention.

As if under a spell not of her own making,
and without a moment’s thought as to what she was doing or why she
was doing it, Christine slid her hand free, only to clasp his and
bring it, palm upward, to cup her left cheek. Slowly, gazing into
the shadows that hid all save the question in his eyes, she turned
her head and pressed her mouth into his palm.

“
Christine.
”

On his lips her name was a question, a plea,
a benediction. A single tear rolled down her cheek to moisten his
hand just before he pulled it away, drawing it toward him into the
darkness. Slowly, his eyes tortured and raw with pain, he touched
his tongue to the tear, taking the salty taste of her into his
mouth as her breath caught and held in her throat.

The chess pieces, still for the most part
scattered about the board like soldiers belonging to fallen armies,
were forgotten as Vincent and Christine spoke to each other without
words. Slowly, unable to bear the look in his eyes, Christine
allowed her eyes to close, willing him to make the next move,
whether it be to advance or retreat.

“You told me to return in one hour, your
lordship.” Lazarus’s voice snapped through the air like a whip,
breaking the invisible cord that had bound them together. “It’s
nearly twelve, sir.” As if to prove his point for him, the mantel
clock began chiming out the hour, each clear, bell-like sound
driving invisible slivers of pain into Christine’s heart.

She raised her eyes in time to see Vincent
open his mouth, obviously prepared to tear a verbal strip off his
diligent servant’s hide. His quick anger thrilled her, telling her
that he had been as devastated by the last few minutes as she had
been.

“Thank you, Lazarus,” she said quickly,
politely, already rising to her feet before Vincent could speak.
“Tomorrow night, my lord Hawkhurst?” she asked, looking down on
him, hoping her voice sounded calm.

He was quiet for so long that she began to
fear he would refuse to see her again. When he did answer, his
response sent her hopes plummeting. “I would consider it an honor
if you and your aunt would join me for dinner, Miss Denham.”

Clearly, he did not trust himself to be
alone with her. The fact that he had invited Aunt Nellis and
herself to share his dinner table was only a sop he had offered,
probably out of pity. “As you wish it, my lord,” she said stiffly,
turning away from the sight of the hooded head and the hidden eyes
that refused to look into hers.

What a fool she had been, giving in to
impulse like a village girl intent on ridding herself of her virtue
as soon as possible. She should go down on her knees and thank him
for saving her from herself.

She was almost to the door, her chin held
high, blinking back tears, when his voice—those deep, velvet tones
that were as beautiful as his face— reached across the room to
caress her. “And then, later, we shall continue our lessons,
Christine, as we did tonight. If
you
wish it.”

Christine nearly stumbled, relief making her
weak. He had felt it too! This wild, unexplained, unlooked-for
attraction. This silent communion. He too was fighting his better
self, and losing as handily, and as happily, as she was.

“I wish it, Vincent,” she said softly,
knowing he heard her, and then allowed Lazarus to usher her back
upstairs to her chamber—and her dreams.

How had it happened? How had he
allowed
it to happen, even encouraged it to happen? What had
he been thinking of, what maggot of perversity had he gotten into
his head that had convinced him he could use Christine Denham for
his own personal exorcism, as his own private chess piece, to move
about the board as he chose?

She was so young, so innocent, so totally
trusting. Like Arabella. No, he corrected, shaking his head. Not
like Arabella. Arabella was beautiful, but weak. This girl was
strong, for all her slightness, for all her youth. She was strong,
and brave, and very, very vulnerable. Christine might bend, but she
would not break.

“And she won’t give up,” he added aloud,
staring into the dying fire, oblivious to the chill descending on
the room. “Not Christine. She’ll continue to invade my life, my
dreams, battering at the walls I’ve built, finding every weakness,
every loose brick, until they all come tumbling down around both
our heads. Damn it!”

He fairly leapt out of his chair to go over
to the window and throw back the drape. The snow lay heavy on the
ground, a thick crust of ice holding it in place even where it had
drifted against the window frame. It would be a week or more before
he could safely send Christine from his house, longer if it snowed
again.

How would he ever keep his hands off her for
that interminable amount of time? How could he ever let her go when
that time was over?

His hands
. Vincent looked down at his
left hand, hanging uselessly at his side, and shook his head. He
was overreacting, his solitary life having dulled his wits. He’d
had two hands to hold Arabella and she had slipped away from him.
Did he really think he could hope to hold Christine to him—or away
from him—with only one?

A real, physical ache invaded his chest as
he realized that he might never know what it was like to hold
Christine to him with both hands. Yes, he had been experiencing
quite a lot of pain these last six months, pain the doctor had once
told him to pray for, as it would signal that some of the injured
nerves and muscles had at last decided to come back to life,
weaving their way along twisted paths to reform connections that
had been so savagely ripped apart.

But some pain, some disturbing tingling, was
not enough. There was no strength, no ability to take life into his
hand and crush it, or cradle it. Returning to his chair, he reached
over and picked up the white queen, turning the figure this way and
that, looking for the flaw. There was always a flaw, if you looked
closely enough. At last he saw it, a faint discoloration in the
wood just at the base, barely noticeable, but there just the
same.

He lifted his hand, about to fling the
imperfect figure into the dying fire, but then his arm stilled, for
this chess piece represented Christine, his white queen, his
possible salvation.

Lifting his left hand into his lap, he laid
the piece across his palm, pressing the wood into his skin until he
could feel its sharp edges summoning the pain it was so important
he feel.

Slowly, reverently, he used his right hand
to curl his numb fingers gently around his queen.