Chapter 21 #2
Damien felt the familiar siren song of anger.
The reaction to being challenged that he had become accustomed to.
A reaction he had learned from his father.
Felt the pull of it and resisted. The anger stretched its taloned limbs, extended its dragon wings, then went back to sleep.
Damien smiled, showing teeth, leaning forward so that his lips almost brushed her cheek as he whispered.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered.
Maria shuddered. She closed her eyes, biting her lower lip. Damien turned his face to look at her, studying her reaction, aroused by her pleasure.
“I… I do not know,” she stammered, still with eyes closed.
“How am I to trust you if I know you do not trust me?” Damien whispered, letting his lips ghost against her cheek.
It produced a quiver that ran through her from head to toe and emerged as a tremor in her voice, a wail quickly stifled. A moan swiftly muffled behind clenched teeth. Her forehead creased, eyes tightened.
“Lead me along your secret path. I will rely upon you to be my eyes,” Maria said in a voice husky with passion.
Damien’s breath caught. He remembered well their encounter in the water, Maria blindfolded and trusting, and his loins stirred.
“Tempting,” he said. “But do you think that wise?”
“Why would it not be, husband?”
“Suppose that I wish to lead you into a trap,” he said heatedly. “Or suppose that I take advantage of your trusting, vulnerable state.”
“Ah, you seek to test my fortitude,” she said, smiling.
Despite himself, he leaned back, wanting to see her face fully. Her eyes remained tightly closed, but her face was lifted, lips pressed together, firm and determined. He could not believe it.
Such courage. Such boldness. She should have been a general; no commander born could outwit her on the field of battle.
“Very well. Put your hand upon my shoulder. I will trust that you remain blind while I turn my back on you. And you will trust that I am not leading you to another pit trap. Perhaps seeking to rid myself of a troublesome wife.”
It felt like a dark joke, perhaps too dark. But Damien wanted rid of the doubts that had festered within him since Maria had fallen into his life. Wanted resolution to the questions that had plagued him.
And what of the weakness that comes from trust, from complete trust? How is that to be resolved? But that is academic. The curse is a present danger. Trust or no trust.
“Or perhaps, this is all part of my plan to rid myself of a troublesome husband,” Maria said. “Maybe I wish to distract you, so you wander into a trap yourself.”
“And how do you imagine that would happen?” he asked. “When I am so familiar with my own woods?”
“I will be exceedingly distracting,” she quipped. “Any man might make a mistake, my husband.”
The face of the man in the mirror leered at him from the undergrowth as he turned from Maria, her hand resting on his left shoulder.
He dismissed the face, stepping along the path and into the trees.
His left shoulder became the focus of his senses.
Her fingers shifted against the fabric of his coat, as though savoring the feel of his muscle, of his body.
“If you lose your nerve, you have only to tell me,” Damien said slyly.
“If you are hoping I will admit defeat so that you may hide you have lost your own nerve, you are quite mistaken yourself,” Maria said. “I am still quite willing to continue our adventure.”
Maria’s steps behind him were firm and deliberate. She did not hesitate or vacillate. He gave her direction, and she followed, blindly. Damien guided her around a wire snare, scaled to catch a booted foot rather than a furry one. Her skirts brushed its hungry loop.
“You have no notion of how close you just came to danger,” Damien purred.
“Then, it is fortunate you are here,” Maria said. “Unless of course, you are the danger.”
Damien chuckled. “Oh, I am.”
But he was beginning to wonder if Maria might be dangerous, too. Just not in the same way he was.
He skirted the edges of a concealed pit, which he knew contained the tines of rusted pitchforks. Dirt crumbled from the edge as her foot disturbed the earth, but she did not open her eyes, did not falter.
Damien reached up to her hand, letting his fingers rest on hers as they wove through deeper undergrowth.
Her hand turned, and his fingers played across her palm.
Her other hand found his hip, settling for a moment there.
They walked deeper into sylvan shade and the rich, moist air of woodland twilight.
The sounds of the woods surrounded them. The bark of foxes, the cooing of pigeons and the ever-present wash of branches stirred by a canopy breeze unfelt at the ground level. He instructed her to step over a stream that would have drenched her to the knee, which needed to be leaped.
She did so, head raised, eyes tight shut.
“I admire your resolve,” he said.
“Good. You should.”
Damien caught her on the other side. Her hands rested lightly on his chest, and his arms went around her. His body was rock solid as he absorbed her momentum without shifting his stance. For a moment, he held her, pressed against him. His senses found her among the deluge of nature.
He smelled her perfume and the soap she had used. He smelled the lavender with which her clothes had been stored. For a long, delicious moment, he abandoned his planned destination. He lowered his head to hers, holding his lips inches away, staring at her closed eyes.
“Where are we?” Maria asked.
“Close to a place I have not visited since I was a boy,” Damien said.
He surprised himself. He had not consciously intended to come to this place.
He had wanted only to walk the most dangerous path he could devise, skirting dangers which he would not let Maria fall into.
But wanting her to think that he might. As the walk had continued, the idea of the oak tree had come to him. The memory of it. It seemed fitting.
“And where is that?” Maria asked.
Damien didn’t answer for a long time. He was lost in an inspection of her face. In the cool shadows, it had become mysterious. She took on the aspect of a woodland nymph, a faerie creature from pagan worlds. The magic of her was palpable.
“Are you a witch?” he whispered, lips a hair’s breadth from hers.
He held himself apart from her for that precise distance. Wanted the pleasure of absolute self-control, the pleasure of anticipation which far exceeded what would be derived from the act itself.
Maria laughed wordlessly and lifted her chin, questing for his lips with hers. Damien held back, letting her quest be in vain. She sought and he denied, hearing the gasp in her breathing, hearing it in his own breath.
“Do you tease?” Maria asked.
“I asked first.”
“I asked before that.”
“You will find out when we get there,” Damien said abruptly.
“I see,” she said. “You realize that the more you try to keep me in suspense, the more I will expect when we arrive at this secret destination.”
He placed her hand back on his shoulder and turned his back, leading the dance anew.
Eventually, they came to the darkness cast by a gnarled and bitter oak.
Its branches were thick and its trunk twisted and corded.
Knots and growths stood out all over its surface like the rough stone of a medieval castle wall.
Its foliage was enough to absorb the sunlight from the air and leave behind only empty shadow.
Stepping beneath was like stepping into the night. Damien guided Maria over a mossy carpet of roots that made the ground treacherous, as though snakes had writhed there only to be frozen into stone.
Reaching the trunk, he paused and then lifted Maria onto his shoulder and began to climb. She clung to him but otherwise made no sound.
I have not climbed this twisted old man since I was a child, but I have not forgotten the method. It is like ascending a staircase. I could do it blindfolded.
Damien lost himself in the climb until he had reached a point halfway up, where a nexus was formed of thick limbs that had merged with each other over the years. At that point, he carefully put Maria down, sitting her with her back to the trunk.
“Open your eyes,” he said.
Maria did so. The look of sudden wonder was enough to make the entire enterprise worthwhile.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy in green-tinted chinks.
It was a sylvan wonderland of bark, moss and leaf.
The air was thick with the life of the tree, the sound of its whispered conversation with the woods around it.
She laughed, lifting her head to gaze up into the maze of smaller branches that continued to the crown.
“What is this?” Maria whispered.
Damien settled himself against the trunk, as thick and solid as a Roman column. The nest of limbs on which they sat felt as reliable as the earth. There was no sense that they sat twenty feet off the ground.
“An oak tree. Maybe the oldest on my land. It predates the house for certain. Possibly most of London, too. I used to look out of its branches in the winter and try to imagine what it had seen. Was the city built by the Saxons? The Romans? It always managed to put things into perspective. When my father was being particularly cruel, it reminded me that it would pass, that I would outlast him.”
“It gave you hope,” Maria said.
Damien nodded, resting his head against the trunk and closing his eyes.
“I wish I’d had a tree like at Sunspire. I had no hope except my friends.”
Damien’s head turned to her, and he snorted.
“What hope are other people? People are the problem.”
“For someone who chooses to isolate himself. I do not. This tree never has. It could not survive alone. It would not have reached its grand old age if it was alone,” Maria said.
“A philosopher. You astound me.”
“And you do not. You mock anything that strikes too close to your heart,” Maria said quickly.