Chapter 5 Jahleel—Devil of My Dreams
JAHLEEL—DEVIL OF MY DREAMS
Light flickers about my face. Sunlight? Candles? Flame?
The ticking of a pocket watch vibrates. My ear alerts me to shuffling along the thick rya covering the floor near my bed.
I bat my lids, which feel heavy, like a jade chess piece. My will to open them recedes.
A voice calls to me.
Is it Katherine again?
“Let’s go back to St. Petersburg. I miss it. Maybe we go before the weather turns bad.”
Linen sheets rustle.
Is it too much to voice an apology?
My Lydia? I hear her.
Flesh of my flesh. Bone of my bone. Nothing that is mine shall be taken from me again.
“Katherine, if you’ve come to take her, let it be over my dead body. You kept me from her life enough.”
The ghostly figure keeps away. I let her be. What is mine, truly mine, stays.
I shift, and the shadow does, too. Am I a pawn on a chessboard? When I try to run, attempt to fill my lungs without pain, my opponent counters. I hear “Check.” Katherine kept me in check. She keeps me in pain.
My chest depresses. It feels as if a rib will pierce my skin.
Can’t break free from this sickness or the notion of our perfect love. Can’t die a fool.
“Papa Duke. He moved. He’s waking.”
Lydia’s little voice reaches my ear. My little darling, my dorogaya is here. She called me Papa, Papa Duke. My eyes leak. My child, my Lidochka, are you happy to be my daughter? Reach for me.
My arm won’t lift to her. My mother must take care of my girl. Let her see … “St. Petersburg.”
But Mamen’ka, don’t frighten my child. The princess frightens me sometimes. Her strict adherence to protocol deserves a militaristic salute, but my arm won’t move. It feels bound in ropes.
Boots pound.
Is that Scarlett? My friend, do you still wear your father’s boots? Mr. Wilcox, I met him once, the day Katherine married lousy Tavis Palmers.
Can’t believe my good friend betrayed me. He knew how I felt but fed her lies that she refused to release.
Why won’t she believe in me? And how does a dead man still have her in his thoughts?
Something shifts.
Warm tea drips down my throat. Scarlett’s remedies. She’s another wonderfully scary female.
At least she’s not reading more of Pride and Prejudice. Scarlett doesn’t appreciate Darcy. He seems perfectly reasonable in his thinking. Elizabeth is scandal-prone, and the gossiping family is beneath him. Why does acknowledging the truth make him the d’yavol?
For Darcy’s honesty, Elizabeth marked him as a scoundrel. Scandal is not just horrible for women, but for anyone it befalls.
Could that be why Katherine hates me? Does she think I do not hold her family in esteem? My choice in St. Petersburg was correct. My enemies would have made her Wilcox family a target. Watch how the wolves surround her now that the truth is out.
I have to get up to protect them, the family I found at Tavis’s deathbed. They are mine.
“Your Grace.” That definitely is Scarlett’s voice. “My sisters are coming. Katherine will want to see you. Will you see her?”
Movement.
My heart beats faster. I recognize the footfalls as much as I feel the pain crushing my diaphragm, stealing my breath.
Dread, true dread, fills what little space is left in my chest.
The villain bows to me. “Jahleel, old boy? Ready to die?”
Dressed in the same sheet I wrapped his dead body, my former best friend, Katherine’s deceased husband, stands beside me. If Tavis Palmers is here, I must be dead or very close to it.
He claps. The thudding echoes. “Have you figured out everything? I wager you have.”
“Why don’t you have a saintly robe?”
Tavis shrugs. “I died in poverty. That’s a crime. I deserve sackcloth but got stuck with this. You could’ve helped me out one last time. A decent robe for eternity.”
The man responsible for my heartache, my lost years of happiness, gawks at me. He grabs my arm. “This way, Your Grace.”
Tavis begins escorting me to hell.