Liz Fielding - Wedded in a Whirlwind

‘So I have. While you, poor sap, are stuck with me. Useless at taking orders and with a trust threshold hovering on zero.’ With that she stilled. ‘I could have got us both killed back there.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. We react in the way we’re programmed to.’

‘And you’re programmed to be the hero.’ She laid her hand against his chest. ‘Thank you for holding on.’ Then, as if embarrassed by her own gratitude, she said, ‘So? What next, fearless leader? We’re not out of the woods yet.’

He caught her hand before she could move and lay back, taking her with him. Closing his eyes. ‘We rest. Try and get some sleep.’

‘Sleep?’

‘What’s up, princess? Missing your silk sheets and goose down pillows?’

‘Silk sheets? Please…’ But she shivered.

‘You’re cold?’

‘Not cold, although it is colder up here. There’s more air, too. Do you think there’s a way out?’

‘Part of the roof has gone. Look, you can see a few stars.’

‘Oh…’ Then, eagerly, ‘Can’t we press on?’

‘We need to recover a little before we attempt another climb,’ he said. He needed to recover. ‘And when the eagle collapsed it took part of the floor at this level with it. It seems solid enough here, but…’

‘We could take more pictures.’

‘If we wait, we’ll have daylight,’ He said. ‘There’s no point in taking any risks.’

‘I’m not sure about that. It’s easier to be brave when you can’t see the danger.’

‘Trust me.’

‘You keep saying that.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess it makes sense,’ she said, but not with any real enthusiasm and who could blame her? ‘It’s just this place. It gives me the creeps.’

‘Afraid of the dark?’ He released her hand. ‘Come on, cooch up,’ he said, holding out his arm so that she could curl up against him, ‘and I’ll tell you a bedtime story.’ She ignored the offered comfort, keeping her distance. He went ahead with the story, anyway. Telling her about the people who’d built the temple. The way they’d lived. What they had worshipped.

He thought she’d be happier if she knew that they didn’t go into for bloody sacrifice. That their ‘fire’ was not a thing to fear. How, when the moon was full, they’d built a fire on the altar at the heart of their temple, then heaped the huge night-scented lilies that bloomed in the forest on to the embers so that the eagle could catch the sweet smoke that was carried up the shaft and fly with it in his wings as a gift to the moon.

‘How can you know all that?’ she asked in wonder.

‘They carved pictures into the walls, drew their ceremonies in pictograms. And laboratories have analysed the ashes we found under centuries of compacted leaf litter.’

‘But that’s really beautiful, Jago. Why didn’t the guide tell us all this?’

‘Because the guide doesn’t know. I haven’t published any of my findings.’

‘But what about-’

‘Enough.’ He didn’t want to think about Fliss. He was angry with her, angry with Felipe, but most of all he was angry with himself. This was his fault. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, so intent to keeping the world he’d uncovered for himself…‘It’s your turn,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you’re running away from.’

‘WHO said I was running away?’ she demanded.

‘“Time out”?’ Jago offered, quoting her own words back at her. ‘That’s a euphemism if ever I heard one. Not checking your messages? Not sending postcards home?’

She drew in a long slow breath and for a moment he thought she was going to tell him to get lost. That it was none of his business. But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything at all for a long time and when, finally, she did break the silence, it was with just one word.

‘Myself.’

‘What?’

He’d been imagining a job fiasco, a family row, a messy love affair. Maybe all three.

‘All my life I’ve been running away from this horrible creature that no one could love.’

It was, Jago thought, one of those ‘sod it’ moments.

Like that time when he was a kid and had poked a stick into a hollow tree and disturbed a wasps’ nest. It was something you really, really wished you hadn’t done, but there was no escaping the consequences.

‘No one?’ he asked.

Her shoulders shifted imperceptibly. Except that everything was magnified by the darkness.

‘Ivo, my brother, did his best to take care of me. In return I came close to dragging him to the brink with me. Something I seem to be making a habit of.’ There was a pause, this time no more than a heartbeat. ‘Although on that occasion I was in mental, rather than physical, freefall.’

‘You had a breakdown?’

‘That’s what they called it. The doctors persuaded him to section me. Confine me under the Mental Health Act for my own safety.’

And suddenly he wasn’t thinking sod it. He was only thinking how hard it must be for her to say that to a stranger. Actually, how hard it would be to say that to someone she knew well.

Mental illness was the last taboo.

‘You both survived,’ he said, mentally freewheeling while he tried to come up with something appropriate. ‘At least I assume your brother did, since you’ve just been godmother to his sprog. And, for that matter, so did you.’

‘Yes, he survived-he’s incredibly strong-but it hurt him, having to do that.’

And then, as if suddenly aware of what she was doing, how she was exposing herself, she tried to break free, stand up, distance herself from him.

‘Don’t!’ He warned, sitting up too quickly in his attempt to stop her. His head swam. His shoulder protested. ‘Don’t move! The last thing I need is for you to fall back down into that damn hole.’ Then, because he knew it would get her when kindness wouldn’t, ‘I’d only have to climb all the way back down and pick up the pieces.’

‘I told you-’

‘I know. You fall, I’m to leave you to rot. Sorry, I couldn’t do that any more than your brother could.’

For a moment she remained where she was, halfway between sitting and standing, but they both knew it was just pride keeping her on her feet and, after a moment, she sank back down beside him.

‘You remembered,’ she said.

‘You make one hell of an impression.’

‘Do I?’ She managed a single snort of amusement. ‘Well, I’ve had years of practice. I started young, honing my skills on nannies. I caused riots at kindergarten-’

‘Riots? Dare I ask?’

‘I don’t know. How do you feel about toads? Spiders? Ants?’

‘I can take them or leave them,’ he said. ‘Ants?’

‘Those great big wood ants.’

‘What a monster you were.’

‘I did my best,’ she assured him. ‘I actually managed to get expelled from three prep schools before I discovered that was a waste of time since, if your family has enough money, the right contacts, there is always another school. That there’s always some secretary to lumber with the task…’

‘You didn’t like school?’

‘I loved it,’ she said. ‘Getting thrown out is what’s known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.’

In other words, he thought, crying out for attention from the people who should have been there for her. And, making the point that whatever happened he would be there for her, he put his arm around her, wincing under cover of darkness as he eased himself back against the wall, pulling her up against his shoulder.

‘Are you okay, Jago?’

She might not be able to see him wince, but she must have heard the catch in his breath.

‘Fine,’ he lied. Then, because he needed a distraction, ‘Ivo?’ It wasn’t exactly a common name. ‘Your brother’s name is Ivo Grenville?’

‘Ivan George Grenville, to be precise.’ She sighed. ‘Financial genius. Philanthropist. Adviser to world statesmen. No doubt you’ve heard of him. Most people have.’

‘Actually I was thinking about a boy with the same name who was a year below me at school. Could he be your brother? His parents never came to take him out. Not even to prize-giving the year he won-’

‘Not even the year he won the Headmaster’s Prize,’ she said. ‘Yes. That would be Ivo.’

‘Clever bugger. My parents were taking me out somewhere for a decent feed and I felt so sorry for him I was going to ask him if he wanted to come along.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I wasn’t criticising you, Jago. It’s just that I know my brother. He never let anyone get that close. Not even me. Not until he met Belle. He’s different now.’

‘Well, good. I’m sorry I let him put me off.’

He’d meant to keep an eye out for him, but there had been so many other things to fill the days and even a single year’s age gap seemed like a lifetime at that age.

‘Don’t blame yourself. Ivo’s way of dealing with our parents’ rejection was to put up a wall of glass. No interaction, no risk of getting hurt. Mine, on the other hand, was to create havoc in an attempt to force them to notice me.’

‘That I can believe. What did you do once you’d run out of the livestock option? Kick the headmistress?’

‘Are you ever going to let me forget that?’

‘Never,’ he said, and the idea of teasing her about that for the next fifty years gave him an oddly warm feeling. Stupid. In fifty hours from now they would have gone on their separate ways, never to see one another again. Instead, he concentrated on what really mattered. ‘Tell me about your parents. Why did they reject you both?’

‘Oh, that’s much too strong a word for it. Rejection would have involved serious effort and they saved all their energy for amusing themselves.’

‘So why bother-to have children?’

‘Producing offspring, an heir and a spare, even if the spare turned out to be annoyingly female, was expected of them. The Grenville name, the future of the estate had to be taken care of.’

‘Of course. Stupid of me,’ he said sarcastically.