THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART TWENTY-FIVE:

For the next several weeks they spent hours every day working on his book. Often they paused and laughed with one another as they worked out some detail of phrase or sentence to make it ring true. They'd break for coffee or to take Wadsworth out for a romp. As Marshall's arm healed, Eden began driving him into the small hospital for physical therapy.

She'd had to call Connie, of course, to give some better explanation of why she was staying so long at the inn.

"A literature professor...at Duquesne?"

"Umm hmm," Eden had smiled into the phone.

"You go all the way up there and meet somebody from...here?"

"Looks that way."

"You sound happy."

"I am happy, Connie. Possibly the happiest I've ever been."

"More than with Miles?"

"This is very different from being with Miles, Con. It's hard to compare. Really hard. But, yes, more than with Miles."

"Are you ever coming back?"

"Oh, yes. I just don't know when. Well, I do know sort of when. When Marshall comes back. I'll come back then."

"Sounds like you've got it bad, Eden."

"Not bad, Con. What I've got is good, all good. Wait till you meet him. You'll see what I mean."

"What about the blindness, though? Isn't that kind of hard to deal with?"

"Not like you might think, Con. He's so much more than that. You'll see."

They had talked for an hour.

"I'm going to have to credit you as co-author, you know," he said, leaning over, resting his chin atop her head as she sat at his desk proofreading the page they'd just finished. It was late in the evening of what had been a cold day in mid-December. That morning he'd finally said good-bye to his sling for good. The shoulder had been a long time in healing and the freedom of having the use of both hands back was wonderful.

Being blind, it had been especially difficult as he'd explained to Eden. A blind person with only
one hand is very like a blindfolded sighted person. He told her he could carry a full cup of coffee fine in one hand, but if you gave him a book to carry in the other and he needed to cross the room alone,  he would simply bumble into everything. "I need one hand free," he'd said, "because I see with that hand. With my left arm in the sling, every time I'd pick up anything, there I was...blindfolded."  She'd never thought how it was for a blind person to do something like carry a large box with both hands. There was no free hand to see with. 

His hands were on her shoulders and moved lightly, touching either side of her neck. Her skin tingled at the presence of his fingers and she had to stop typing, just sitting still in the desk

chair as his left hand moved to the front of her throat. Every day since he'd first traced along her fingers there in the parlor she'd wondered what it would be like...if....

His hand slid delicately over her collarbone and continued down. She gasped and closed her eyes. Oh, God...oh, God...oh, God...was all her mind seemed capable of thinking.  His lips found her earlobe and even the ability to think that much was gone.

"Eden," he whispered into her ear.

"Yes," she said, though he'd not verbally asked a question.

He offered her his hand, leading her to his bed. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms, but the doctor had said he shouldn't lift much for the next 2 or 3 weeks at least. But he was free now, free to lie beside her, with her, as he'd been aching to do. As fervently as he wanted her, his motions were very slow as he unbuttoned her blouse, moving his lips down each newly-bared part of her flesh. He took his time, exploring her as though she were some jeweled crown and

his fingers must touch, must know every gem, every curve of gold, every fold of velvet. He loved her reverently but so thoroughly she wasn't sure toward the end if she were going to survive it.

The responses her body had made to his, the sensations that coursed through her, electrifying,

almost exploding her entire nervous system, left her nearly limp. And when they finally lay together, legs entwined, his arms wrapped around her, she knew she'd never felt so a part of another human being, so absolutely overlapped in her being with his. Some ancient longing in her was utterly...satisfied.

From then on her room was merely where she kept her clothes. She slept every night in his bed. Three days later she realized how foolish it was to keep paying for two rooms, and her clothes joined his, Bellefonte manor appeared atop his dresser.

"That's what I mean," he said. "Would Morgan concentrate quite so much on the sound of distant gunfire or is that something I would do?"

She was at his desk, as usual, and had been typing his words for about an hour. Marshall seemed restless this evening and paced back and forth across the middle of the room behind her.

"I don't think he would," Eden commented. "I think he'd be paying more attention to the tracks
he sees in the dust."

Marshall sneezed loudly, then cleared his throat.

"You ok?" she asked.

"Feeling a bit clogged," he admitted. "Think a cold's trying to settle in for a visit."

"Let's take an orange juice break," she suggested.

"I don't know," he replied rather wearily.

"Oatmeal cookies," she tempted. "Martha was baking again this afternoon."

"Oh, all right," he chuckled, actually quite ready to stop thinking about Morgan Kent for a while.

It was a Wednesday and, again, they were the only guests at the inn. Midweek was always slow as far as other visitors showing up, and now that it was full winter, there wouldn't be many on the weekends, either.

Martha was glad to see them coming down the stairs.  "Would you...?" she began.

"We most definitely would," Eden laughed, "but can Marshall here have orange juice instead

of coffee? He seems to be getting a cold."

By bedtime he was coughing a lot and worried about Eden sleeping with him.

"You have very sexy germs," she protested. "They don't scare me." 

On Thursday they didn't work on the book. His cough was worse and it was just too hard to dictate passages. She bundled him into a wool blanket and settled him near the fireplace, reading aloud to him from a book of Browning verse she found on a bookshelf. Martha bustled

in and out with bowls of chicken soup and cups of hot tea.

"I should get a cold more often," he commented agreeably, then sneezed three times in a row.

After lunch, when Martha suggested a bit of a nap might do him some good, he found the thought of it appealing. He felt tired even though he hadn't really done much of anything all morning.

Harold shrugged on a heavy coat and went outside to bring in more firewood. Snow had fallen again in the night and a thin layer of ice had formed pretty far out into the lake. Martha was

in the kitchen planning dinner. She wouldn't have Marshall going out to some restaurant when he was sick, not when she could feed him perfectly well right where he was. She smiled as she opened her smudged old recipe book. The younger couple had become rather dear to her.

Eden was sitting on the couch writing a letter when the front door opened and Harold came back inside, his arms empty of logs, and two men in ski masks walking closely behind him.  Martha came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel as she so often did, and stopped, puzzled by the strange expression on her husband's face. "We have unexpected guests?" she asked, looking past him to what she could see of the men, then tensing at the sight of the masks.

"From Rockview," Harold said, his voice low, cautious.

Martha stiffened more. Rockview was the all-male state prison five miles out from Bellefonte.

"That's enough, old man," the larger of the two growled, giving Harold a shove between his shoulder blades that sent him staggering toward the dining room. "You, too," the man added, jerking his head to indicate Martha should follow her husband into the room.

The shorter, slimmer man had discovered Eden in the parlor. Wide-eyed and slightly trembling, she was dragged by her arm to the dining room.

"Anybody else here?"

"No," Eden and Martha said in unison. "It's off-season," Martha added. The two women exchanged a brief glance.

"You got a safe?" the big man asked. "We need cash, food."

"I could pack you something to eat," Martha offered.

"Never you mind that. You just sit yourself down in that there chair."

For the first time she noticed the smaller man was carrying a large roll of duct tape he'd gotten from the shed. Harold was standing perfectly straight, absolutely still, a knife pressed a bit too firmly into the middle of his back as the larger man's eyes flicked about the room, sizing everything up. While he kept the knife against Harold, the other man used the wide silver tape to strap both women firmly in their chairs. He seemed to know what he was doing and rather than merely taping their hands and feet together, taped each ankle individually to a chair leg and each wrist to the curving wood of the chair arms.

Eden closed her eyes. Marshall, she willed, you stay asleep, you hear me. Don't you wake up and come downstairs. Don't you do that! Let them take whatever they thought they needed and get the heck out of there before he came downstairs.

"Ok, mister," the man with the knife said. "Where's the cash?"

Harold blew out a long breath and led the man to his desk, indicating a locked drawer.

"Open it."

Harold unlocked it and stepped back. "Not much," he said. "Don't keep all that much around the house."

The man had grabbed a small metal box from the drawer and was quickly flipping through the bills, a scowl building as he did so. "There's got to be more!"

"Afraid not. Off-season like my wife said. Rest of it's in the bank in town. Not safe to keep it lying about, you know."

"Asshole!" the man snarled, striking Harold across the face. He forced Harold back to the dining room where he, too, was taped to a chair. "Might as well see what's in the kitchen.

You go. I'll stay here with them. Get stuff that don't need cooking."

They could hear clatter coming from the kitchen as the man opened drawers and cabinets, stuffing items into a pillowcase he'd gotten out of Martha's laundry basket. He'd just come out

of the kitchen munching on an oatmeal cookie when a door opened and closed upstairs and Marshall appeared at the top of the steps, calling down, "Eden, darling. I can't find the cough medicine. Did you move the bottle?"

The larger man's eyes narrowed. "You said no one else was here!" he hissed, then put his finger to his lips, motioning his comrade to come quietly on into the dining room as he himself stepped behind a door, knife poised.

Eden was frantic. Marshall had started down the steps. "He's blind," she said, trying to keep her voice low. "Just leave him alone. He's blind, for God's sake!"

The men watched Marshall descend the stairs, his hand gliding along the banister. He didn't look very blind to them.

"Eden?" Marshall called again. "Where've you got to, darling?"

"Answer him!" the man in the dining room whispered.

"I...I'm in here," she said, her voice rather unsteady.

"You all right?" Marshall asked, beginning to cross the entryway toward the dining room door, his fingers lightly touching the wall as he moved. He'd left Wadsworth in his room, having only intended to find out where the cough medicine was. Something sharp was suddenly pressed up
under his jawbone and he stopped, completely startled.

"Don't move, mister!" an unfamiliar voice rasped into his ear.

This was surreal. Did he really have a knife at his throat? What in God's name was going on? He was aware the man was shifting position, moving more toward his front. Where was Eden?

The man was intently studying Marshall's face. After a long moment he snorted and let out a harsh laugh. "By God we do have ourselves a genuine blind feller here," he called to the other man. He lowered his knife, moving again until the knife was in Marshall's back. "Dining
room," he ordered. "You know how to find that?"

Marshall nodded and started forward. His hands were at his sides now and as he moved he forgot about the umbrella stand, almost falling over it. Both men laughed. Marshall pressed his lips together in a tight line.

"You got enough food?" the man with Marshall asked the other.

"Should do. Be better, though, if we had more cash."

"You got a wallet, mister?" The big man patted Marshall's pockets but Marshall had just dressed after his nap and had gone to find the cough medicine before he'd put his wallet or

new cell phone in his pants.

"Shit! He's got nothing on him."

"Well, get him over to this here chair and let me tape him up anyways. We shouldn't hang around here too long, you know."

"I want to take the woman with us," the man near Marshall said suddenly. "Might need her

if the cops get too close. Might come in handy."

"Damn it! I didn't think we was going to do that. Just get us into more trouble, won't it?"

"You think we can get into more trouble than we're in, do you?"

Eden's heart had nearly stopped. Two escaped convicts were going to take her with them. Horrid thoughts began to run through her mind.

Marshall, still standing with the knife in his back, spoke up. "Wouldn't it make more sense to take me?"

"Marshall, no!" Eden cried.

He ignored her. "Think about it. I won't be able to see where you're going, where you stop. I'll never see your faces, won't be able to pick you out of a line up some day. It would be a lot smarter, if you need a hostage, to take me along."

"He's got a point," the smaller man said. "My cousin was blind and he couldn't do shit."

Marshall was almost holding his breath, waiting for their decision. He couldn't have them taking Eden. Nothing was more important at the moment than that they not take Eden with them. He was also trying not to cough loudly, keeping his mouth closed tightly, attempting to keep the sound more contained.

Bart, the man with the knife, wasn't so sure. The blind guy was large, well-built. He might be trouble. Calvin, the other man, spoke up again. "He can't see. He ain't going to know where we are, where we been. It does make sense, don't it?"

Bart fixed his eyes on Eden. "Keys?"

"Keys?" she repeated blankly.

"Yeah, keys. Car keys."

"My purse. On the coffee table in the room where I was."

Calvin ran in and returned shortly, a set of keys dangling from his finger, several bills and a credit card in his hand. "You ready now?" he asked.

"Damn it, I guess so." Bart eyed Marshall. "Looks like you've done gone and got yourself what you wanted, mister." He grabbed Marshall by the collar and spun him around. "See if you can find the door, blind man."

They left the dining room, Eden's eyes straining after Marshall. This couldn't be happening! This simply could not be happening. The last she heard was Bart ordering Marshall out onto

the porch and Calvin saying, "At least let him get his coat." Then the door slammed and they were gone. She listened to the silence then heard the sound of her car engine starting. She closed her eyes, feeling like she was going to be sick to her stomach. The sound of the car disappeared and everything was quiet again except for the ticking of the mantel clock and the beating of her own heart. Then there was something else. It was Wadsworth, scratching at the inside of Marshall's bedroom door.

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