Chapter 5 #2
“Beatrix,” he said, starting to breathe faster just to reassure himself that he could get the oxygen he needed, “what’s wrong? What is it?”
She looked up, and this time her eyes were wide with panic. She scrabbled at the back of her dress. Trying to loosen it, trying and failing.
He dashed around the table and got the buttons undone somehow, his fingers shaking as he did it. “The corset too?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
So he kept going, untying it enough to loosen it a good deal. She slumped against him, sucking air into her lungs in shaky gasps. He held her, catching his own breath, until his anxiety for her began to fade into the recognition that she was in his arms while partially unclothed.
“Sit,” he urged, leading her to a chair. He escaped to the kitchen, filling a glass of water for her while grasping for composure.
“How did you know I couldn’t catch my breath?” she asked, voice raw, when he returned. “Could you feel it?”
“Yes.” He shuddered, the moment he nearly died rushing back at him.
She put a hand on his arm, the touch there and gone. “I’m sorry. It must have been a terrible reminder.”
“Beatrix—that was a panic attack, wasn’t it. Like the one in the dream.”
“Yes.”
“Is this your first one dayside?”
She sighed. “No, they started about two weeks ago.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to be done about them.” She shook her head as he made a protesting noise. “No, it’s true. I checked your Brown’s Lexicon, and there’s no remedy.”
“Nothing magical, perhaps, but what about a therapist?”
She shot him a speaking look. “‘Why am I having panic attacks, doctor? Well, you see, the government tried to assassinate my sister, and I’m afraid they’re going to eventually succeed.’ I’d be institutionalized.”
He frowned, but he couldn’t think of an argument to counter that.
She got to her feet, holding the bodice of her dress to keep it from sagging. Blood zipped through his body, singing past his ears, as if he hadn’t seen every inch of her in their twined dreams. But that wasn’t real. This was.
She bit her lip. “Could you … ?”
He retied her corset, trying not to think about her skin, separated from him by just a thin slip. He worked on the buttons of her dress, swallowing the irrational urge to reverse course and pull her clothes off.
Had he ever, dayside, been this close to her? He could feel the rise and fall of her chest under his hands. An electric jolt shot through him as he brushed strands of hair from her neck to keep them from getting caught in her buttons, followed by another jolt as he heard her breath catch.
“Peter,” she said, a strangled quality to her voice, “you must let me finish this brew on my own.”
“What?” He faltered, then slipped the final button into place. “I can’t leave you like this.”
She turned. “I don’t …” She stopped, lips parted, eyes dilating. They looked at each other, his heart kicking up to a truly alarming rate. He had never wanted her more, and the one dizzying thought he could manage was that half this overpowering feeling was hers.
“Oh, God,” he said, not sure he could pull himself back from the cliff edge he was on.
“Please,” she whispered, exactly like that dreamside moment when he first took her to bed, and over the edge he went.
For a few glorious seconds, he kissed her and she kissed him back, and nothing crossed his mind besides yes and more and now.
Then he suddenly remembered that the lust spilling over to him from her wasn’t hers at all.
And her “please”—to the extent that she hadn’t already lost her mind when she said it—was undoubtedly her attempt to get him to do what she’d just asked of him.
Leave.
He leapt back, gasping, dismay and thwarted desire making him shake. “Fuck,” he said, unable to keep the word from bursting out. “Beatrix, I—I’m—”
“Quick, go!” she said, grabbing the chair behind her and hanging on to it as if for dear life.
He didn’t stay to apologize. He just did as she said.
She leaned on the table, trying to calm down. Could their Vows be getting stronger? Asking him to leave was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Even now, her will to stay in this room was only slightly more powerful than her desire to rush after him and take him to bed.
Perhaps she honestly wanted him. Perhaps the Vows had nothing to do with it.
Perhaps the Vows were even now wrapped around her brainstem, whispering that idea. Submit. Submit.
She picked up her knife, breathed in and out until her hands stopped shaking, and made herself finish the brew, exhaustion creeping up on her by degrees. She called through the closed lab door so the man who inspired every possible feeling in her knew where she was going, and fled his house.
The cold air on the walk to Mrs. Clark’s apartment was a relief. By the time she knocked on the door, she’d pressed everything (lust, self-reproach, panic) into a tiny knot, and her lungs worked normally again.
Anna Clark opened the door, looking impossibly small for seven. Her blond pigtails stuck out at odd angles, as if she’d put them in herself.
“Hello.” Beatrix tried to smile. “I have a package for your mother.”
Anna stood up straighter, her anxious little face brightening. “Is it the medicine?”
“Yes. May I—”
“Oh, please come in!” Anna grabbed her arm and dragged her to the bedroom, where Mrs. Clark lay with her two younger children cuddled up on either side of her. “Mommy, Mommy! It’s here! She brought it!”
“Miss Harper,” Mrs. Clark said, the exhaustion in her voice putting Beatrix’s into proper perspective. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”
Mrs. Clark was a sight to make the heart constrict. She looked washed out, except for the smudges under her eyes, and wispy curls stuck to her damp forehead. Beatrix found a spare pillow, propped her up and said, “Let’s get a dose into you this instant.”
“It’s going to be OK now,” Anna said as her mother swallowed a spoonful of iron supplement. “This will make you much better.”
She turned to Beatrix, face pinched with anxiety again. “Right?”
“Right,” Beatrix said, voice cracking. The memory of herself in Anna’s place, her own mother dying, was almost too much to take. They had to get Mrs. Clark safely through this pregnancy.
Mrs. Clark closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “Anna, could you play with your brothers in the living room for a few minutes? I’d like to talk to Miss Harper.”
Anna wrangled her recalcitrant siblings—the toddler twisting and arguing in her arms—and closed the door behind them.
“She must be such a help, your Anna,” Beatrix said.
Mrs. Clark smiled, and she no longer looked quite so ill. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Oh—I have instructions for you,” Beatrix said, taking the piece of paper from her pocket. “Four times a day, preferably on an empty stomach, but with food if it causes you any distress. Omnimancer Blackwell said you should notice improvement in a day or two.”
Actually, he didn’t; the brewing guide did. But it sounded more authoritative this way.
Mrs. Clark’s smile twisted into a wry quirk, slight but undeniable. “Did he say how long it would take until I feel human again?”
That surprised Beatrix into a laugh. “Not specifically, no.”
“This will be such a relief.” She shifted on her pillow. “I’ve been feeling worse and worse and just thinking, ‘Well, what did you expect, expecting?’”
Beatrix winced. “Is it really that bad even when you don’t have anemia?”
“You have no idea.”
“Well, that’s true. Everyone says such vague things if they say anything at all.”
“Like ‘beautiful’ and ‘miraculous.’” Mrs. Clark arched her eyebrows. “Funny how no one mentions ‘horribly uncomfortable’ and ‘exhausted.’ It must have slipped their minds.”
Beatrix had suspected Mrs. Clark possessed a sense of humor, but they’d never talked long enough for her to tell. She grinned. “Maybe they figure they went through it, and they don’t see why the rest of us should get away scot free.”
“You have.” Mrs. Clark reached out with a trembling hand and patted her on the arm. “Smart woman.”
“Still—you have Anna, Tommy and Evan to show for it.”
Their mother nodded but said nothing. Beatrix belatedly remembered that Mrs. Clark had told her once—in the only real conversation they’d had before today—that she’d planned on having just one child.
Beatrix leaned in. “What can I do for you? Bring dinner? Clean? Arrange for help with the boys when Anna’s in school?”
Mrs. Clark flushed. “No. But thank you, Miss Harper.”
Too proud to accept help. If they’d been friends, it would have been different.
But it wasn’t too late for that, was it?
“Please call me Beatrix,” she said.
“Oh.” Mrs. Clark’s smile returned. “All right. If you call me Sue.”
As Beatrix rose to go, Mrs. Clark—Sue—caught her hand. “Please tell Omnimancer Blackwell how grateful I am. If he hadn’t insisted … Well, please tell him.”
Beatrix swallowed, all her conflicting feelings for him swirling like a tornado.
“I will,” she said.