THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SIXTY-SIX:

She should leave, really she should. This was not right, this listening to someone else's private conversation. But it was about her, wasn't it, and he was talking to her angel. She'd found herself liking his voice there in the dining room, though he'd actually not said all that much. Now, here

in the dark garden, he spoke at some length, spoke things she'd never heard anyone say before, especially not about her. People always tended to keep her packed in cotton wool, always watched both their manners and their speech in her presence. But this Mr. Kent...what was his given name? She couldn't remember. This Mr. Kent was speaking so entirely openly, so...vulnerably.  How could she turn away from his words? 

She took another step closer, a small twig from the crape myrtle snapping under her slipper.  She stopped, transfixed, mortified.

Morgan, too, stopped what he was saying. "Is my coat ready?" he asked, presuming the elderly black servant had tracked him down.

There was no reply. "Is someone there?" he called, slightly louder.

Susannah pressed her lips together. How often she had asked those same three words. In the night, Mr. Kent was not far removed from the state in which she lived.  She tried backing up a step or two, caught her heel, and a short, surprised, "Oh!" escaped her.

Before she could step again, he was there. She heard his long strides quickly covering the short distance on the brick walkway and then his presence arrived, hardly two feet in front of her.

"Susa...Miss Wellington!" he breathed, utterly shocked. "I...I...."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kent. I did not know you were there when I came into the garden for a breath of air. I...I...did not mean to...to intrude on your privacy. I...."

"No," he hastened to say. "This is your garden. It is I who am the intruder. My coat...in the kitchen...my coat is being rinsed and I...I...came down the path because it was cooler. I did not think...I mean...I did not know...."

He was flustered, completely and utterly flustered, and the fact of it set her at ease. "The wine?

My gown was barely dampened at all. Your coat...?"

"I fear my coat received the main portion of the goblet's contents."

"Thank you," she barely whispered.

"For spilling my wine?"

"Yes," she replied, her head tipped down and slightly turned away. "For spilling your wine."

So, she knew. How could she possibly know? The moon suddenly sailed from behind a bank of clouds. She was so close. He wished she would lift her head, lift it so he might see silvered light pooling on her brow, her cheeks.

She had no way of knowing the change of lighting there in the night, but without knowing, she slowly raised her chin, her face pulled upwards rather magnetically by the nearness of his presence.  She heard a small gasp of sharply inhaled breath from him, but had no idea why.

"Sus...," he began, but said no more. He would betray himself, he knew, if he spoke. Her name

was there in his mouth, hovering closely over his tongue, had been there since he'd said it earlier this day. It wanted to be pronounced, it wanted to find its life in the space of air between their
two faces.  His very fingers began to ache with the need to touch her. 

And so the silence lay between them instead of her unspoken name.  A breeze, making its way around the corner of the house, blew loose a long strand of her hair, then as quickly as it had

come, was gone. The waving lock of gold, now silvered under the moon's attention, settled
in a curve down her neck, over her collarbone.  His eyes followed it as though it were some pathway leading....  No. He must stop himself, must not think such things in her presence while

she stood there before him, radiating a purity he had never before encountered. He did not
think it was her blindness alone that made this so. No, there was something innate in her that would have been this way no matter her circumstance.  The fact of blindness only served, prism-like, to focus it, to make the colors of it clearly evident.  He wondered then how it had come about, her blindness, and how long ago? 

"I should go," she said.

"Yes."  But neither moved.

The last thing he wanted was that she should go.  It was, he knew, inappropriate beyond all words for him to be with her like this, not only alone, but alone at night.  And yet the thought of her going was nearly unbearable.  What could he do, what say, to prolong this moment however briefly? 

"I have met your angel," he ventured.

How well she was aware of this.  But she gave no indication that she was.  "Marietta."

"Marietta?"

"Her name."  She smiled.  "I thought she must have a name."

"Marietta," he repeated softly. 

In all her life she'd never heard the word spoken so.  His voice touched some response in her and she trembled slightly.  He had gifted her and was completely unaware.  She knew that she would never even think the name again and not hear within her the syllables of it in his wonderfully
deep tone. 

"I should go," she said again, knowing the truth of it, but the words coming with  slow reluctance.

"Yes," he, too, said again as in the very moment his mind searched for some small thing to prevent it. "You...you...grow figs here?"

He bit his lip. Could he have said anything more inane?  Good Lord!  Was he twelve again?

"Yes, we do," she replied,  seeming not to notice his wild grasping for conversation. "Nearly every home in Williamsburg has at least one fig tree."

"You...you were born here?" he tried.

"I was. I have lived here all my life."  She paused.  "Is this your first visit to America, Mr. Kent?"

He wanted to say, "My name is Morgan, Susannah."  He wanted to say, "This required formality

is killing me, Susannah." But he said, "Yes, my first."

"At dinner I heard you say you did not know how long your visit might last."

He wanted to say, "I have no idea how I could ever leave. Not now."  He said, "It will last as long as I need to be here."

Why was it she hoped he needed to be here a long, long time?

Mike, looking in the mirror, straightened his rust-colored tie. One corner of his mouth quirked up in an extremely wry grin. "We who are about to die, salute you," he intoned. The week since Christmas had passed slowly, dripping like cold molasses down the calendar of his days. He'd
gone about his work, had gotten a drunk 16-year old out of the mangled wreckage of a car, had stopped the bleeding when Simon Mackerel sliced a vein in his forearm, had transported a stroke victim to the hospital and released a toddler who'd gotten his head stuck in the rails of

his grandfather's old bedstead. Such was the rhythm of his life. He lived it basically for the benefit of others. He frowned at his reflection, awash in that moment in the awareness he had

no personal life, nothing he could call his own.

The phone rang and he sat on the small bed as he picked up the receiver. Ryan's voice was

there, asking if he wanted him to pick him up for the wedding.  "Nah," Mike said, "I'll get there under my own steam, I think.  Thanks, though."  He wanted to have his own vehicle there. That way he could leave when he wanted. Actually, he didn't want to go at all. But, as usual, he wasn't doing what he wanted.

He turned his head, eyeing the half-empty whiskey bottle on the bedside table. He could really use another stiff one. Help him get through this blasted thing he had to get through. His large hand reached out, curling around the bottle's neck, beginning to lift it off the table.

"No!" he snapped, talking to himself. "Dammit, man, you've got to have more courage than what's floating around in there." He set the bottle back down, eyeing it drearily. It had been

full last evening. It was how he'd gotten through the hours. "Stupid bastard," he growled, standing abruptly and grabbing his overcoat off a chair. "Stupid, stupid bastard!" 

"It's Mike!" Luke called out, opening the door of the inn a few minutes later. "Hi, Mike."

"Hi, yourself," Mike said, a big smile plastered on his face as he shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on the rack near the door. "Good to see you, Squirt. How's it going?"

"Come see the decorations, Mike," Luke urged. "Come and see!"

"All righty. Right behind you. Like your suit, by the way."

"You do? It's really ok?"

"It's really ok," Mike pronounced gravely. Luke was wearing the old suit Ryan had had as a boy. Martha found it in the attic, adjusted it here and there, and sent it off to the cleaners.

"It's chocolate and cream," Luke said, proudly indicating the tweed of his jacket.

His mother, passing by on her way to the kitchen, chimed in, "And you look good enough to

eat!"

Luke laughed. He was happy today. He hadn't seen all that much of Marshall all week but today would be different. Today he was Marshall's best man. Today he got to have the wedding rings in his pocket. Marshall had said he was important enough to do that. He positively glowed.

While everyone was buzzing about downstairs, completing final preparations, Marshall and Eden were still upstairs in their room. "It's ok we're not going on a honeymoon right away?"

he asked.

"I don't know what could be more honeymoon than what we've been living right here at the inn, darling," she replied. "And, besides, we're going to the Lake District in April.  That's sort of

our official honeymoon, isn't it?"

He didn't answer. "Come closer," he said.

She was in her wedding gown, had recently come out of the bathroom after putting on her make-up, and he had not yet gotten to gaze at her. Eden knew what he wanted. It was for this moment she had picked out this particular dress with all its interesting tactile features. "I don't know...." she whispered, her voice trailing off.

"What is it, darling?"

"I don't know if I'll make it to the wedding if you, um, gaze really well at me right now."  She was serious. The lightest touch from him was always her complete undoing.

He smiled. "If you don't make it, I won't be making it, either."

"That's what I'm afraid of," she gulped.

"I'll only gaze just a little, all right? But I truly do need to know before you come into the parlor."

"I know," she said softly, coming close to where he sat on the window seat in his rust-colored tweed, with its suede elbow patches and one shoulder patch. "You look splendid, you know."  She touched his cheek lightly.

"Just a little," he repeated. "But not after. After is different."

"Yes," she murmured. "After is different."

He reached out, placing a palm on either of her hips. She gasped sharply. "Oh, God!"

His head cocked, face intent, he slid them down the length of her legs, exploring briefly how the silk flared below her knees. His hands moved up to her waist, lightly touching the fit of the gown over her breasts, running along the deeply-draping neckline. She was trembling and couldn't stop. His hands paused and she thought she might die on the spot. "Just a little," she reminded, seriously considering abandoning the ceremony altogether.

He stood, his hands moving on, down her arms, his fingers tracing the edges of the long slits in the sleeves, then reaching in, finding her arms, moving back up to the covered buttons on her shoulders. He cupped her chin and ever so gently kissed her softly on her mouth. "Just a little," he whispered.

"I can't walk," she said. "I think I'm going to fall over."

He took her hand. "We'll go together."

"You promise?"

"Always," he breathed, moving toward the door.

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