Chapter Twenty-Four
Elias stumbled sightlessly out into the bright morning.
That interview was worse, far worse than he’d ever imagined such a conversation could be.
He’d wronged her and wronged himself. But even so, he thought such a misstep might be forgiven if she agreed to be his wife.
She loved him, he was sure of it. She’d said she did, that she was finding reasons to do so. At any rate, they got on more than companionably, and, after last night, he thought her “reasons to love” had become a heartfelt whole.
His mistake. His naive, stupid mistake. It seemed women could be roused to physical passions without love and commitment as much as men were.
He found himself in front of the wood pile that stood a dozen yards from the house. He levered the axe from the chopping block, feeling the weight of it in his hand. He forced his violent turmoil into action.
The first lump of wood sliced easily in two with a single strike.
He was a fool.
At the second strike, a sliver of wood flashed away to one side.
A stupid, sentimental, romantic fool. He wanted more than fleeting gratification. Without boasting, he’d had more than his fair share of propositions – and without a need to present money up front. And he had accepted none of them because that wasn’t what he wanted.
He wanted a woman who would be his heart’s desire, whom he could love and cherish for a lifetime, and would love him equally in return. Until he met Laura, no other woman had caught his interest, and he’d refused to dally with anyone he could not offer his heart and soul to.
More fool him.
By the fourth and fifth blow of the axe, Elias had found his rhythm and he emptied all his energy into it.
His heart cried out with the unfairness of it all. He had given Laura everything he had last night – even his body – and now she had thrown everything back into his face.
Perhaps it was nothing less than he deserved.
Sophia had warned him, all those years ago, that the likes of Laura were not for him, and he hadn’t listened. In his arrogance, he thought Laura’s heart could be won, and he set out on a quest to do just that – just like the knights of old.
What a harsh reminder that he was no heroic figure.
The equilibrium for his soul, the refuge he had always found in the scriptures, had abandoned him now. His self-image was broken like the glass of a shattered mirror.
He stripped off his shirt and worked like fury until he puffed and sweated with exertion, pushing himself harder until no thoughts were possible.
He wanted his body to hurt as much as his heart.
*
Laura stood at the corner of the villa and watched Elias wield the axe like a manic demon. He had stripped to the waist and sweat poured down his bare, sun-browned back. His arms glistened in the heat and yet he didn’t slow down, didn’t stop, even as his blows cut through into the block below.
She felt the weight of Benjamin in her arms shift as the child turned his head to watch Elias.
“Pa… pa…” he said, stretching out his chubby little arms toward him.
There have been none before last night!
The words rang in her ears louder than the blows of the axe.
There had been no woman before her? Not even one? Laura swallowed hard and turned away to walk into the garden. Benjamin shifted his head to watch Elias from over her shoulder.
She had never given any thought to the possibility a man might wait for marriage as was expected of women of her station, that a man might place any value on the act beyond it being something they wanted, and to indulge if they wished.
She had taken from Elias something he held in high value – a hope, a dream, an expectation. She had taken that choice away from him just as much as Selim Omar had taken it from her.
But she had only wanted to feel desire and be desired. Just for one night. She’d gone about it all the wrong way – and now she had lost the man who was everything she should ever want.
Laura sighed bitterly. Samuel was right. She didn’t belong here.
The sound of her frenzied axe man was now barely audible over the sound of the wind in the trees that surrounded the edge of the villa grounds and the sounds of birds flitting about in the cultivated gardens.
Benjamin had grabbed hold of the wooden bead necklace she wore around her neck, a Christmas gift from Morwena and Jonathan. Laura exaggerated a choking sound, and the baby chortled but still hung on and tried to pull the beads into his mouth.
She rounded the azalea bush to her studio. She plucked one the white flowers absently and singlehandedly secured it in one of her hair pins. The morning was sunny and clear; the view from the French doors took in the ravine and toward Palermo below and the sea beyond.
Laura lay Benjamin stomach down on a blanket on the studio floor while she looked for one of his teething rattles. She was sure she had one of them in here, but a quick search revealed nothing.
Perhaps she was mistaken.
She pulled off her necklace and dangled it a little away from him. He rocked on his elbows and knees, and tried to reach for it.
Starting over anew as Samuel urged in his letters would mean forgetting Benjamin existed. Little Ben… she knew she’d said she didn’t want him, would regret having him, but now he was here, she loved him as much as she was able to love anyone.
She was a mother; she was his mother, regardless of who his father was. She watched him propel himself forward and snatch the beads with a cry of triumph. He shook his trophy violently.
Perhaps it didn’t have to be forever. Perhaps she could go back to England for just for a little time, just until she could stitch her torn life back together. She could consult the family solicitor to set up a trust for Benjamin and work out a way to repay Elias for everything he had done for them both.
He may hate her now, but she owed him that much at least.
*
“Gina!” Laura bustled through the deserted house until she reached her bedroom where she started to search through every shelf and every drawer. “Serafina!”
A few moments later, the grey-haired housekeeper peered through the door with a quizzical look on her face.
“Have you seen my small box of paints? The ones I had when I came?”
“No, miss. The last time I saw them, they were in your studio.”
“And they were there only five nights ago. I distinctly remembered putting the box on the dresser next to the bottles of pigments. I can’t understand where they’ve gone. I’ve searched every inch of the studio. Will you help me look?”
Serafina started searching to her left, being as diligent as Laura herself was in a search to the right. Laura pulled out the drawers of her dressing table and removed each item in turn before putting it back. She did the same thing with the writing box and then even with the pot cupboard beside her bed.
Granted, she had not been the most attentive person, but she’d never been careless about things she owned and, yet, for the past two weeks, things had been constantly out of place. Objects would go missing for a day or two then reappear not quite where they were supposed to be. But this was the first time something had been missing for so long. Was it coincidence it started happening the very evening Elias left to go on a trading run on the Calliope?
“I have found it!”
Laura abandoned her search under the bed and joined Serafina in the adjoining nursery. The housekeeper held out the rosewood box, looking no less puzzled than she did before. Laura accepted it and thanked the woman profusely.
“Where on earth did you find it?”
“It was here on the shelf.” She pointed to the narrow bookcase that held cloths, pins and ointments used for changing Benjamin.
How could it have gotten there without her noticing? The only other person who slept in this room besides Benjamin was Gina.
Gina…
Laura thanked Serafina once more. The older woman accepted with a shrug of her shoulders and left the room to go back to her work.
It was Gina’s doing, Laura fumed. It had to be.
She thought she had seen how spiteful her sex could behave among her old circle in London until she’d witnessed the worst – as well as the best – in the female of the species among the inmates of Selim Omar’s harem. Well, here, Laura could at least put her foot down and intended to do so for as long as she remained.
She determined to have strong words with Gina and, if the girl did not stop touching and moving her belongings, she would ask Elias to dismiss her.
As though she had been conjured up, Gina waltzed into the room with Benjamin in her arms. The baby was tired and pounding on Gina’s shoulders. She placed the boy on his back, where he immediately started to express his exhaustion in hearty wails.
Laura placed the paint box back on the shelf and picked up a silver mounted coral teething rattle. Bending to Benjamin, she shook it to make the little bells jingle. After a few moments, his crying subsided to a few hiccoughs, and he reached for the object. His little fist clutched the head of the rattle and a pinky-orange lozenge of coral on a silver loop went immediately into the boy’s mouth.
With Benjamin now occupied, Laura turned to Gina with a critical eye. The girl looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. With Elias away, Gina was the same simple, amiable girl she had been when they first met on the cold, drizzly, winter’s day in the olive pressing shed.
Laura’s anger – and the courage that went with it – deserted her.
“I found my paint box on the shelf here.” Laura hated that her voice sounded apologetic.
Gina dutifully glanced at the shelf and at the paint box.
“I didn’t put it there,” said Laura. “Did you?”
“Oh, no. I never touch your belongings, Miss Laura.” The answer, and the expression that went with it, seemed sincere enough.
“Are you sure?”
“I pick things up to dust as Senora Serafina instructs me to do, but I always put them back in the same place.”
Laura wavered. Gina seemed so sincere – but the girl also had feelings for Elias. Jealousy was a powerful motivator. And there was no mistaking the hostility Gina directed toward Laura in the week before Elias went to sea – the week when he had been so disgusted with her that he preferred to spend his nights in the olive grove shed than be under the same roof as her.
Even so, there was no choice but to give the girl the benefit of the doubt.
“Does anyone else come into this room? Or the studio?”
“No, Miss Laura. I don’t go there – that’s your painting place.”
“I know you don’t, and I know the farmhands don’t either, but if there’s a stranger about…”
Gina frowned and it was not one of alarm – more like she thought Laura had lost her wits. “A stranger?”
“Yes, Gina, a stranger. Someone around the estate who doesn’t belong.”
“I don’t see anyone like that.”
“But you will tell me if you do? Or tell Mister Elias?”
“Of course! No bad man is going to take my baby away.”
My baby? Laura drew breath to set the girl straight when a frission of fear ran through her as the rest of what she’d said sank in.
She waited until after Gina left the room before giving in to the shiver. She looked at Benjamin. His eyes were closed, but the slow working of his jaw over the teething rattle showed he was still half-awake.
“No one is going to take Benjamin away,” Laura whispered to herself.
Later, after the noon meal, Laura retrieved the household keys from the cupboard in the kitchen and took them with her down to the studio. After she finished cleaning the paint from her brushes late that afternoon, she made sure she closed the windows and locked the door after her for the first time since arriving at Arcadia.