The Heart is Slow to Learn

Chapter Four

There was no time to think, and certainly no time to dwell on the enormity of what she would do before the night was over.  Servants rushed in and out of the chambers with jugs of hot water that India delicately scented for Christine's bath.  Two maids chatted and giggled as they took out seams and sewed new ones on the dress that Christine would be wearing.

 "It's madness," one of the maids glanced over, knowing Christine would be soaking behind a screen.  "She must have known some strong magic to make the Vicomte hurry so.  He must not be as stuffy as I had thought."  She looked up just as Christine emerged, wrapped in towels, her skin and hair dripping.

          "By the fire," India ordered, armed with a brush.  Knowing that the trembling had nothing to do with a chill, India began to soothe Christine as she dried her hair.  "A woman's wedding is one of her most precious memories.  Years from now when you look back, what seems now like a dream will be very clear."

          "Should I be afraid?"

          India reached over Christine's shoulder to take her hand.  "I almost think that the more you love, the sharper the fear."

          Christine gave a weak laugh.  "Then I must love him more than I knew."

          "I could not wish for a better bride for my brother than you, Christine.  You will have a good life together."

          They left her hair loose so that it streamed like silken night down her back.  The bodice of the gown was snug, skimming over her breasts, leaving them to rise softly above as a resting place for a rope of pearls.  There was a glimmer of pearls on the skirt where it flared over hoops and petticoats.  At the waist was a sash gathered up with a clutch of the palest pink wild roses.  With her heart hammering, Christine stepped into the family's chapel.

          He was waiting for her.  In the wavering light of candles, she walked toward him.  She had always thought he was at his most elegant in black, but she had never seen Raoul look more handsome.  Silver buttons glinted, adding richness to the severe cut of his coat. 

          She didn't see the other wedding guests, or the pews filled with the lords and ladies had managed to arrive in time for the wedding.  She only saw Raoul.

          When he touched her hand, it stopped trembling.  Together they stood in front of a priest and pledged their vows.

          The clock struck midnight.

          India had decided that a wedding, however hurried, should be a celebration.  Within minutes of becoming Countess de Chagny, Christine found herself being led to the picture gallery of the mansion.

          The long, wide room was already filled with music.  Christine was kissed and congratulated by strangers, envied by the ladies, studied by the men.  Her head was reeling as she was handed her first glass of champagne.  She sipped it and felt the bubbles burst upon her tongue.

          Exercising his right, Philippe claimed her for a dance.  "You make a lovely bride, Countess de Chagny."

          Countess de Chagny.

          "I will be the first to admit that when Raoul told me of his desire to marry you that I was against it.  But now - I see that I was wrong.  The love between you can only grow with time.  For that Madame, you have only my fondest wishes."

          Raoul claimed her when the dance had ended, fended off complaints by others who would have partnered the new bride.

          "You are enjoying yourself, my love?"

          "Yes."  Ridiculous to be shy, she thought, but she felt herself color as she smiled up at him.  He looked different with the austere evening coat and flash of jewels.  Not at all, like the man who had once threatened to toss her over his shoulder and dump her into the ocean.  "It's a beautiful room."

          "You see the portraits?" he asked, leading her gently by the elbow for a closer look.  "There are eighty-nine de Chagny's in all."

          She knew the family history, she thought irritably, but tried to show interest.  "Yes, this is the first of your line after the King granted him, his title.  He was both a soldier and a well-loved man."

          "I should have known that India would have filled your head with tales of our ancestors."  He leaned closer to her ear, "but what do you know of military strategy?"

          "Military strategy?"

          "Ah, so there are a few things I still can teach you."  Before she could answer, he pulled her through a doorway.  She had only time for a muffled squeal before he swept her into his arms and began to race along a corridor."

          "What are you doing?  You've gone mad."

          "I'm escaping."

          As the music faded behind them, he slowed his pace.  "And I went mad from the moment you walked into the chapel.  Let everyone drink and dance.  I'm taking my wife to bed."

          He mounted a staircase, not even bothering to nod at a servant who, wide-eyed, bowed himself out of the way.  With Christine still in his arms, he kicked the door to his bedroom open, and then kicked it closed behind them.  Without ceremony, he dropped Christine on the bed.

          She tried to look indignant.  "Is this a way to treat your new bride, m'lord?"

          "I haven't even begun."  Turning he shot the bolt on the door.

          "I might have wanted another dance or two," she said, smoothing her palm over the bed.

          He gave her a cheeky grin.  "There's dancing, my love.  And then there is dancing."

          She lifted a brow as she assessed him and wondered that he didn't hear how fast and loud her heart was beating.  "India thinks that you're a romantic.  I doubt she'll continue to think so when I tell her how you dropped me on the bed like a sack of meal."

          "Romance?"  He lighted the candles that stood next to the bed.  "Is that what you want, Christine?"

          She barely moved a shoulder. "It's what India told me about."

          With a little laugh, he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on a chair.  "A woman's entitled to romance on her wedding night."  He surprised her by kneeling on the bed and slipping off her shoes.  "I had no chance to tell you how beautiful you looked standing next to me in the candlelight of the chapel.  Or of how, when I saw you there, every dream I ever had came true."

          "I thought you looked like a prince," she murmured, then shivered when he ran his fingertips along the arch of her foot.

          "Tonight, I'm only a man in love with his wife."  He brushed his lips over her ankle.  The scent of her bath clung to it and spun seductively in his head.  "Bewitched by her."  Slowly he skimmed his mouth along her calf to trace the pulse at the back of her knee.  "Enslaved by her."

          "I was afraid."  She reached for him, gathering him close.  "From the moment I stepped inside the nave I was afraid."  Then she sighed as he ran kisses along the edges of her bodice, moistening and heating her skin.

          "Are you still?"  With sure fingers, he unfastened her gown, and then watched as it dropped silently to her waist.

          "No, I stopped being afraid when you picked me up and ran with me through the corridors."  She smiled, and her hands were as confident as his were as she pushed the shirt from his shoulders.  "That was when I knew you were my Raoul again."

          "I am always yours, Christine."  He lowered her to the bed and showed her how true his words were.

* * * *

It wasn't until the last guest had left, the final candles guttered, and the remainder of the wedding feast disposed of, that India could leave the hall.  She had found Erik, as she knew she would, outside by a pond.  He had finally taken to leaving his room in the early dawn hours before the mansion stirred.

          "Is it over?"

          India gathered her dew sodden skirts and stepped onto the wet bank.  "You could have been there, you know.  Or would it have pained you too much, dearest?"

          India's endearment lashed at Erik like a knife.  She had come barging into his life, overturning his peace, curing his face, and now tearing his heart apart.  He couldn't imagine what life would be without her.  He shrugged his shoulder, his feelings masked.

          "Why?  Christine was a . . . fantasy.  I fell in love with her voice -with a childish innocence that eventually would have driven me insane."

          Turning, Erik looked at India.  Her hair was tumbling in a wild cloud down her back, her satin dress molded to every curve.  He swallowed, fighting the urge to take her there on the damp ground.

          He told himself that this was just the ache of a man who had gone all of his life without knowing the comfort of a woman's body.  He had been forced to occasionally watch as the Dey took a young woman to his bed.  He knew the mechanics of the act, but even in his dark heart, he knew that there was more than sweating bodies.

          As India reached out to comfort him, her foot slipped on the sodden ground.  Her body was thrown next to his.  He felt the thrust of her breasts through the damp silk of her gown.  She looked at him, dark emotion in her eyes, her hair falling rich and golden upon her shoulders.

          Erik found himself falling, falling into an ocean without any bottom, his heart spread high and wide like the sails of the fast ships that had taken him away from Persia.

          He wished then that he had been the gentleman that Raoul had called him.  But he was not.  A gentleman would have turned her away, but he could not.  There was too much sweetness in her face, too much yearning in her eyes.  Her hair blew about his face and all Erik could think of was the sweet smell of lavender that filled his mouth, his lungs, his whole being.

          He knew then that he had to have her, that his honor could not save her, because it had gone far beyond heated thighs and rasping breath.

          Now it was a thing of rushing spirit, of deepest yearning dreams, the sort of hunger that could not be denied because it went past heated flesh to the very soul.

          "I'll hurt you, damn it.  I'll take you, my love, again and again, until you forget where you start and I begin.  Once there's a starting, there won't be an ending.  I warn you.  Not today, not tomorrow.  Maybe not ever."

          He had hoped to scare her away, but he might have known that he wouldn't succeed.  Her hands whispered over his arrogant mouth.  "I hope so, my love."

          "Fool."  There was anger in his voice as well as an infinite tenderness.  "You don't know a thing about me."

          "Except what counts.  That I love you."

          "I can give you nothing but pain, India.  Through my whole life, that's all I've ever done to those I love."

          Then her body blocked out the sun, the damp fog, and she kindled a joy that he had thought long dead.

          When she touched him, he was lost.  Erik fought for sanity, for strength to deny her, but found neither.  "India, are you sure?"  His voice was harsh as his fingers moved through her hair.

          "Yes, now.  There are back stairs that lead to my room." 

          And if the words were not enough, then the soft pressure of her body was.

          "It's wrong.  Wrong and I know it."  His fingers tightened, locked deep in her hair.

          "Maybe, my lord," she murmured, her hands achingly gentle on his face, "it's your knowing that's wrong."

* * * *

        The room was bright with sunlight, but Erik managed to pull the heavy curtains shut. When he turned, India's eyes were full of love.

          Her gown and stays slid free.  Beneath she wore on a chemise of finest cambric, now damp from the pond and nearly transparent.

          Erik feasted on the site of her, on the full sweep of soft shadows beneath candle light.  His throat constricted.  "So fine . . . so bloody beautiful."

          She smiled a little sadly.  "I'm too tall for fashion and my mouth is too wide.  I have no graces and I squint."  She spoke with utter candor.

          Erik would have laughed, could he have summoned up a single sound.  He would have bellowed with laughter for she was all he'd ever hungered for - all that any man could hunger for.

          "None of the graces?" he managed.

          "Not a single one," she said defiantly.

          "And surely not a squint?"

          "Just so."  She demonstrated.

          He thought to himself that it made her look enchanting, lending a lovely intensity to her fine, regular features.  But he did not tell her so.  He could not speak with any safety.

          "Now you'll not want me."

          It was all beyond his taking in, standing in the candlelight and talking calmly, as if she wasn't half-naked.

          "Besides, I smell."

          "I beg your pardon?"

          "I carried a bottle of perfume on my gown.  The bottle broke down at the pond."

          Lavender.  Oh, yes, he smelled them.  Like her, they were fresh and full and everything young.  They were spring come to the dark earth and joy to a hardened heart.  They would help him remember this moment forever.

          "Come closer and let me see."

          She moved through the candles glow, all whisper and heat, her shoulder extended.  "Will this do?"  Her voice was husky.

          Did it do any better, he would die of her!

          Erik nodded gravely.  Bending slightly, he inhaled while the tantalizing sweep of one breast, barely veiled beneath white cambric, lay inches from his fingers.

          So close, so sweet.

          He found lavender, and more - courage and honesty and fierce loyalty.  Lavender would mean that to him from now on, Erik thought.  "I can smell it now."

          She nodded gravely.  "And now you'll want none of me.  And why should you?  I'm considered a freak . . . and oddity among most people.  And now.  . . you can have your pick of fine, grand women without a squint and with every kind of grace."

          He swept her against him, his hands lost in her hair, his mouth raining hot kisses on her face.

          India gave a shaky laugh.  "I'm too tall."

          "Which means I can see your face when I do this."  He caught her lip gently between his teeth.

          She swallowed her hands on his shoulders.  "But my mouth -"

          "Is just perfect -"

          He filled himself with her, and his fingers were not quite steady as he slid her chemise from her shoulders, following the fine fabric with his mouth, kisses like a storm.

          Lavender filled his senses.  India filled him, heart and soul.  She had taken away his pain, and now he would take away her doubts.

          She sank down upon her bed.  "Come here."

          He did.  Wondering.

          She tugged away his cravat, shoved at his buttons, and freed his jacket, two buttons bursting in the process.

          Erik knew a fierce urge to give her all her heart desired, to sweep down every star and give them to her on a platter of beaten gold.

          But he had neither gold nor stars.  All he had was his touch and his joy of her.

          "You - are beautiful," she said, her voice low with wonder.  "I'm far too ordinary for you."  Her fingers touched his muscled arms, brushed the fine hair across his chest.

          "India," he said warningly, heat climbing.

          She traced the silver trail of an old scar, earned in his early days at the circus.  "You've been hurt too often," she said gravely.  Her lips covered the skin, bringing a pleasure more fierce than any pain Erik might have felt when a whip's lash had sliced through him.

          Her tongue was magic, blinding as she came, slowly upward.  And then she met his mouth.  Softly.  Eagerly.  Maddeningly fine.

          Too soon.  He had her body yet to taste.

          But she pulled him down against her, suddenly demanding, cambric falling aside and only golden skin before him.

          "Now," she whispered her eyes hesitant. Her thigh moved along his.  "Unless you've changed your mind?"

          He caught her, pulled her down atop him in a sprawl.  "Never," he said grimly.  He palmed her thigh and moved higher.  "Satin.  Sweet."  And wet, he saw, with sharp delight.

          "But you -"

          "Hush."  Sliding to part her, pushing deeper.  Ignoring her startled breath, he remained intent on his goal.

          Which was her pleasure.

          "Erik -"

          No words.  Nothing but the joy he could show her.

          He showed her then, his hands carefully gentle against her.  She flowered in the heat of his care and love and opened her glorious eyes, shock warring with a final instant of fear.

          But he swept her beyond both, into a dark storm of feeling, in a place where memories stopped and all wounds were healed.  He felt her arch against him, a single word on her lips.

          And the word was his name.

          It coiled around his heart, held him speechless, made him feel a thousand times young.

            And truly the man she loved.

            As the morning passed into day, and then day into night, India gave herself over to his wild pleasure again and again.

            �Erik?�

            He pulled her against his chest.

            �Why ��

            �Hush.�

            �But you ��

            A husky laugh.  A lopsided grin that shattered her heart in the quiet candlelight.  �Sleep India, there will be time.  A century of nights like this to come.  I promise.�

            �But you didn�t ��

            He silenced her the only way he knew how � pressing his lips to hers, his body hard, his hands surer than ever.  And when her pleasure came again, she cried out his name in wonder.

            She slept at last, curled up against his chest.  Only her thin chemise � and an ironclad code of honor that made Eric Montserrat motionless, even when his mind screamed for him to take her, pounding and hard, until they both discovered the taste of forever blocked their bodies.

            But he didn�t.

            Though it was truly torture, he held her gently, unmoving.

            Because at that instant, it was the very best way he knew to protect her from himself.

            And as the moon slid toward another horizon, Erik twisted in the moonlight, haunted by a lifetime of too many memories.

             Erik was smiling when she opened her eyes, her body poured over his in a moonlight glow of breast and thigh.

             She touched his chest, wondering.  "That was - quite extraordinary."

             "There is more."

             Her head tilted, "And you could be persuaded to . . .show me?"

             A dark smile.  "Very likely.  With the right inducement."

            Her fingers flew across his chest and then lower.  His eyes closed when she found him, fire drumming in his blood.

            "Persuaded like this?"

            "Maybe faster than you like."

            A soft laugh.  Her hair like a veil across his chest.  Her kisses - heaven itself.

            He caught her in her flight downward.

            Her smile was a luscious invitation as she eased her legs around him, fitting herself to the awesome size of his need.

            He cursed.  "India -"

            Deeper.  Encasing him in satin.  Taking him to a paradise beyond his imagination.

            Erik twisted, and then studied the glory of her beneath him, her hair spread wild, eyes ablaze, a questioning smile on the beautiful mouth that she had assured him was too wide.

            She gasped and shoved hard against him.

            He met her instantly, sliding deeper through honeyed skin.  Heat leaped up to meet him,  Heat and blazing desire.

            "Wrap your legs around me," he ordered hoarsely.

            "Like this?"

            "Good, sweet God!"

            He showed her how right they were together, how much he loved her, sliding deep and finding the still, hot core of her.  Finding at the same time, the still, hot core of himself.

            There, love lay coiled, a love he'd never thought to find.

             She cried out, her back drawn tight like a bow, her nails to his chest.  He smiled, with his last shred of sanity enjoying her soft, choked cries of delight, the hot sweet tremors that proclaimed her cresting pleasure.

            Then Erik followed, cast up in the wave of light, swallowed and made whole just as she had been reshaped in the hot, still crucible of love.

           And as Erik fell, he swore he would never let her go.


           Sleepy minutes passed in candlelight and drifting shadow.

           "You sleep, my dearest, like an army on the march."

           A soft murmured sigh.  "And what would you know about armies on the march, my love?"

           "Too damn much."  He gently combed a curl back from her forehead.  "But I'm not offering a complaint, you understand, since all of your marching was over me."

           A flush.  An enchanting dimple.  "I am quite beyond redemption, I fear."

           "I have no thought of redeeming you."

           His hand found her breast.  Instant she was afire again, needy for the wondrous way that he made her feel.

           She smiled and inched closer.  Her thigh rose, coaxing until it found a most enchanting hardness.  "Perhaps I'm not as exhausted as I thought."

           Erik slid the length of her.  "Are you quite certain?"

           "In that case. . ."  He drove against her, filling her in one hard, perfect thrust, delight swirling through ever muscles as she crested against him anew.  "How very, very glad I am to hear it," he managed, just before he followed her down into a swirling ring of pleasure.

           Hands entwined, breaths soft, Erik and India finally slept.