Chapter 15 Jahleel—Marble and Resolves Crumble
JAHLEEL—MARBLE AND RESOLVES CRUMBLE
Knees buckling, heading toward a watery grave, I tangle in Katherine’s arms.
“I’ve got you,” she says. “Hold on to me.”
It’s not like I have a choice—face in her bosom or drown.
Her embrace tightens. “Let’s get you from the tub. Now we move together.”
Together? As in one? Like at the dacha on our wedding trip. The best moments of my life were in these arms holding me like she’d never let go.
Then she did.
“Step out.”
One leg obeys her. Then the other follows suit. Water sloshes everywhere. I’m free of the tub and death by drowning, but Katherine has always been lethal.
Wet and naked, I shiver. The floor beneath my feet feels like ice.
“You’re not holding me tightly enough.” Her voice is stern. “You will slip and fall.”
But if I die now, does that mean I spend eternity with Katherine draped about me?
My head curls over her shoulder. It’s too risky to straighten. I bury my countenance in her mobcap and escaping dark tresses.
“Jahleel? Am I losing you? Are you slipping?”
“Why do you smell of strawberries? Not tar or ash or coal?”
“The change in temperature, it’s made you witless. Just lean on me, I have you.”
I want to hold on but this figment, sweet Katia, will go away. I’m too weak to survive the barbs of her hating me again. “I’m getting you all wet. Set me down. Get Steele. Thanks for the bath.”
“Water will dry. There’s only one you, and we all need you recovered. Now move with me. You have a demanding mistress.”
Ordered to submit, I seize her, gripping her tightly around the waist.
Her breath hitches. “Good Jasha.”
The passion in her voice meshing with the endearment awakens more dead flesh. Katherine the magician has a towel about my back. She’s got one arm holding me, the other drying me. “You mentioned lotion. I’m not going to die for at least another hour.”
“Well, that’s good.” Her voice croons in my ear like cooing doves. The way her eyes darken speaks to fantasies and memories, races my pulse. “Jasha, let me take you to bed.”
Maybe this is death.
Maybe I’ve repented and done enough good? Surely, I’ve earned lotion and the woman I loved and lost catering to me?
“Jahleel, you’re hesitating. How can you think when you’re shivering? The bed has fresh linen. Just like you wish. Let me help you there.”
Fool that I am, I allow her, because she always had me thoughtless, since the first moment we spoke. Shivering, stupid, and dependent, I yield and lean on her, trusting her with more of my weight.
“One step at a time,” she says. “We can do this.”
I can’t answer with chattering teeth. I listen to her hum Beethoven’s Contredanse No. 12, WoO 14, the tune played at the Winter Palace orchestra where we first danced.
“You’re doing fine, Jahleel. Not much further.”
The distance from the bathing tub to my bed seems miles long, but something about this moment—her song, her caress, the strawberry scented hair, the lavender on her hands—makes me wish the distance were infinity.
Then my leg bumps into the mattress. The journey, the moment, is over. “Let go,” I say with a pitiful voice. “Get Steele for me. And thank you.”
“No,” she says. “Not done. Not done with you at all.” She strips away the wet towel and lays me out on the bed. The space between us allows her eyes to drift.
My gaze goes to the ceiling. I’d like to think I’m a peacock, a proud one, but right now I’m nothing more than a sick, limp fool. “The lotion? Can handle this myself. Get—”
“Nonsense.” She hikes up her uniform and crawls atop me, then pulls sheets about me. “I’m here to serve. But this is not what I planned.”
“’Twas a plan? Terrible plan, but f-f-f-f-f-fresh linen. Rooose-m-m-mary. Love.” I clap my chattering teeth together before I say more stupid things, like missing the way she touches me.
“You have a chill.” Katherine works lotion down my arms. “You’re shivering. Let me warm you.”
She buries us in sheets and blankets, then rubs my arms, my legs, and everything in between.
Katherine stretches over me further, pinning me to the bed. Something that she’s heated in her hands covers my shoulder. “No catching a chill … won’t let that happen.”
Fingers glide over my skin. Tension I didn’t know I have relents.
“Is the lotion soothing?” She shifts. Her serious pout fades as she rubs my throat with a concoction with hints of coconut, maybe berries. “Still cold?”
My thoughts require clarity to answer. Got none. I merely nod. I’m putty. Clean putty. Putty with a smile. I’ll wear lotion and Katherine for eternity.
“Are you feeling better, Your Grace?”
Oh I’m feeling stuff. “Yeah.”
My half-dead body awakens as her hands salve comfort to my chest, then my abdomen. Then … Katherine awoke my appetite. I’ve always hungered for her touch and her lovely feet—bare, large and lovely, with a bold arch—lodged against my calves, driving my passions to greater and greater rewards.
I grin like a witless soul. Guess I’ll take a thirst for her to my grave. “Why?” After everything—the abandonment, the lies, the fraud—how can I want … “You?”
Her face tilts closer. “Why me? ’Cause I was or am your wife. And you deserved better. But keep talking, Jahleel. That way, I know you’re not in shock.”
Her admitting to me that she’s in the wrong and I want to believe her is shocking. My teeth chatter. “Katia …”
“What are you saying?” She touches me and draws my breath away.
All imagined. This can’t be. “Fever dream. Nothing’s true. Never this good to me.”
Her head lifts from my chest. Hurt black eyes capture mine. “That isn’t true. We were once good together, very good. And I care.” Her hands are on me again—poking, sliding, accurately hitting the areas that need her.
“I think your fever has fled.”
No it hasn’t. It shifted to my soul.
Her fingers glide up my arms, even swipe over my face. The lotion smells delicious. She would be delicious. “See. I’m here, Jahleel. I’m real.”
The woman I loved, grew to hate, embraces me—my nudity, my shame, my pitiful desire to be loved as a man deserves.
“Stay with me, Jasha.” Katherine clings to me like she’s the only thing keeping my soul from heaven or hell.
“Coconut, berries, rosemary … clean sheets. Best dream in a long time.”
Her fingers dance along my jaw. They land behind my ear. “Do you feel this? My thumb on your lobe?”
Oh, I feel a lot of things. More if her slippers were gone, and she’d keep climbing all over me.
“Let me try something, Jahleel.”
Waiting, hoping, I listen for a shoe to fall, for silk stockings to drop away. But she surprises me, running a bare, ringless finger over my lips. Back and forth, even slipping her pinkie inside my mouth. “Did you feel that?”
If I say yes, does that mean she stops?
“Jahleel?”
With a thumb to my nose, she checks for breath. I see relief spill, her cheeks wetting when she catches my breath on her fingertip.
“Respond, Jasha.”
“How? Kissing you? Begging to be loved as I transition to eternity?”
“I … I meant …”
I raise a weak palm to her chin. “No fretting. I’m again in control.”
“Then talk to me,” she says. “Tell me how to fix—”
“A year ago, I begged. A month ago, I forwent my pride, and we held each other and mourned our son Andrew. I would’ve forgiven anything. Now, at death’s door, I’m not so sure.”
“Then don’t beg. Just accept me.” She descends. Our lips meet.
Soft and plump, I respond. I think I do.
She tastes salty like tears, not sweet. These sensations in my body must be the wild-lettuce tea. Except this time, I don’t mind the fantasy. Seduce me, rusalka. Take my life, making love with you. “I want this.”
The intimacy deepens, but Katia breaks our kiss. “Jahleel, forgive me. I want to be your mistress, but I mustn’t overstep. You could barely speak a few moments ago. Tell me clearly what you wish.”
I grasp a lock of her hair and twist it between my fingers. “Yes, a half-dead man can’t willingly succumb to a passionate invitation.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually I haven’t a clue. You hate me, you defraud me, you lie to my face and yet you kiss me like all those actions were the lie.”
“I wanted to hate you. I needed to justify everything I’d done. I shouldn’t have left you in St. Petersburg. When we returned to London—”
“We?” I force out the question.
“My guardians and Tavis. They told me awful things, but I chose to believe them. When I saw how the papers crucified you because you are Russian and part Blackamoor, I knew newspapermen would make me a spectacle. My skin is too dark to be your public wife.”
She’s olive, but not as deeply brown as my beautiful mother. “I’m proud of Mamen’ka’s coloring. It’s the clearest link to our Gannibal heritage.”
Tears spill onto my fingertips. “Jahleel, how do we fix everything? Please tell me. You always have a plan.”
Don’t care about fixing a thing. My attention remains focused on something I hadn’t felt in months: desire. Perhaps that gets fixed without heavy doses of laudanum.
Loosening the white ties to her apron, I toss it away. Then I push at cloth and expose her thighs. If that foot … if I could touch … “Get closer to me. We always fit together.”
“We do. We should forever. Let’s remarry. Or maybe we still are. This time we proclaim the union to the world.”
I kiss along her jaw. “We decided against that. I thought the new plan was for me to be entertained while I find you a husband?”
Her kisses land on my knuckles. Then she whispers, “That wasn’t a well thought out plan and now with all these feelings, I’m not so sure.”
The same feelings she discarded?
“Let me be a proper wife to you.”
Proper? Mattress. Thigh. Damp. Feet nakedly dangling against my shin.
Damp. Did I say that aloud?
“Please Jahleel. We could be good together, again. We—”
“And mother to Lydia? My daughter. The only seed of my loins that lives, lives with the sickness you ran from. Nyet.”
All the blood drains from her cheeks. “I … I forget myself. You haven’t agreed to allow me as your mistress. Though I am Lydia’s mother.”
Katherine kisses me again, but it’s not the same as before. The urges die because I doubt her sincerity. It’s all for the best. We might forgive each other, but I can’t give her what she truly craves: a guarantee of forever. My child can’t either.
“Jahleel. Tell me what you want me to do next. I’m doing too much talking or wishing aloud.”
Maybe I should wish out loud. “If I live past tonight, I will get a new husband for you and a new wife for me.”
Her hands still. Terror fills her eyes. “No. Why a new wife?”
“All those years, I didn’t know I had a daughter to protect. I need an heir to protect Lydia. A son who will become the Duke of Torrance and oversee his sister’s interest, especially as she fights this sickness.”
“You’ve not married all this time. And now you think a new wife is the solution because of Lydia? Your own barrister produced papers that say we’re still married.”
“So you want me to be a fool, an adulterer or a bigamist?”
“Jahleel? Please.”
“You truly want me to be a public jester and welcome you back? Remember, you left me and married Tavis. That would make me the bigger idiot, in private or in the ton.”
“Tavis is gone. You and I are still here. We could be all Lydia needs. You do still feel something for me?”
The moving, reflective speech I have in my head reduces to drivel when her legs wrap about mine. Memories of the dacha, barefoot delights. “Doesn’t matter. Never you, not with our bloodlines.”
The sad look on her face says she understands. We can’t produce a son to become the next Duke of Torrance. Though any child I have will carry the risk to future generations, with Katherine I’m guaranteed to have a babe with this sickness.
“Your barrister can figure out something to protect Lydia. And I and the princess, we can make sure.”
Her voice fades as she surely realizes that all contingencies have been considered. “Jasha, the strategist, think on this tomorrow or the next. Let me serve you and show you how well we can get along.”
She kisses my nose. “I’ll be entertaining.”
It’s all too late. I must finish this and kill off her hopes.
“Katia, I refuse to give you another reason to hate me or to force you into attending another sickly body, checking for breath, waiting to bury another Charles. You were right to leave me, but we should’ve divorced or had a church separation. ”
“That would’ve acknowledged Lydia to your enemies. They’d mock and destroy us both.”
“Guess I am too weak to ever be thought of as protector.” I suck in a long, final breath. “You and I were the wrong miracle. We each need someone new.”
I hold her as she weeps, then let go. “Please, no bitterness between us. No more. I ask one final time to get Steele. Have him dress me for eternity.”
Slippers still blessedly on, Katherine gets up wobbling like she’s drunk Scarlett’s tea.
“And Katia, make something great with Wilcox Coal. The debts are no more. A father’s legacy is important. I understand that now.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She wipes her face on her sleeve and heads toward the door.
Holding up her chin, she leaves my bedchamber. I honestly hope it’s not the last time she patters away from my bed.