Cast a Pale Shadow

chapter Thirteen

Even the weather conspired to make up for the early cold Easter that year. The cold snap in the middle of March faded to a brief, bitter memory now. With Easter lost to cold and rain, spring was at last poised to attack in earnest. Clumps of daffodils nodded their agreement with the plan, and a warm, steady rain over the weekend had wakened the fields of grass for the battle for the green.

But Trissa was blind to all this. She had lost the strand of hope she held so briefly and sank into silence for the short drive to the park. Nicholas tried to call her attention to a star magnolia ready to burst into flower but her head came up too slowly to see it. She cast her eyes down again and studied her hands clenched in her lap. She did not even look up to count the brash pink flamingos that mobbed one corner of the giant iron birdcage marking the boundary of the zoo.

Nicholas drove the winding roads in the park without apparent destination. Despite the many times he'd driven through, he'd never mastered the layout of Forest Park, but instead relied on getting where he was going by luck and chance. Trissa's navigation skills were better, but she was too absorbed in her thoughts to help.

The weather had drawn walkers and bikers. Horses and their riders dotted the bridal path winding between bright, yellow slashes of forsythia, and golfers were hurrying through their last holes before the waning twilight failed them.

"Spring is taking over, Trissa. It can get the best of you if you let it," he said with futile enthusiasm.

"No, I don't think so," was her absent reply.

The car swooped round the circle at the amphitheater of the open air Municipal Opera complex. Swans sent ripples of gold in the sunset-tinted lake across from its entrance. In honor of the holiday, someone had looped pastel streamers through the lacy grillwork of the Victorian band shell in the middle of the lake. They fluttered gaily in the slight breeze. Trissa didn't notice.

Silently, Nicholas cursed her father and turned up the drive toward the Art Museum. In the pavilion that crowned the terraced hill near the zoo, picnickers basked in the glory of the patchwork quilt of red bud, pear, and crabapple blossoms stretched out below them in the glow of sunset as they had every spring since the 1904 World's Fair. Trissa didn't see them.

Every site they had explored with cameras and laughter on other excursions melted in the long, sharp shadows of the melting sun. Trissa didn't care.

"Are you getting hungry?" he asked.

"If you are."

Nicholas pulled through the small, stone gates at the rear garden of the Jewel Box and parked. She looked up at the Art Deco style conservatory, startled, as if waking from a sleep. "I'm sure it's closed. It's after five."

"I thought we'd eat by the floral clock."

"If you want to," she said, slipping the strap of her purse on her shoulder, and opening the door to get out.

The clock was at the far end of the rose garden. The rose bushes still wore the mounded mulch of winter but tiny green leaves poked through here and there. Trissa walked quickly through the garden, with arms folded and head down, and Nicholas abandoned the picnic gear to catch up with her. He put his arm around her shoulder and she let him.

Their pace seemed more a march than a lover's stroll. At its end, the pansies and grape hyacinth that formed the face and numbers of the clock still winked in the swiftly lowering sun. Below the clock, spelled out in flowers were the words "Hours and flowers soon fade away." Trissa raised her head to the sky and blinked back tears.

"Hey, I thought you said pansies always made you smile."

"Not today. Not here." Nicholas felt her shiver against him. "The army took my brother Lonny from me. A different war. He was in Viet Nam."

Nicholas looked down at the stone and bronze marker at the base of the clock, a war memorial to honor fallen heroes and realized his stupid mistake.

"I'm sorry, Trissa, I didn't know." His hapless efforts to cheer her were only making matters worse. Still, he refused to give up. "It's getting chilly. Let's get someplace warmer."

Obediently, without spirit, she walked along beside him, back to the car. He turned her to face him and lifted her chin with one finger. "You be the lookout. If you see anybody coming, whistle like a whippoorwill. Let me hear you."

"A lookout? What are you going to do?"

He pressed two fingers lightly across her mouth. "Do not question orders. Let me hear you whistle."

She wet her lips and puckered up, a fine strong whistle.

"Good! Once more so I can attune my hearing to it."

This time when her lips formed that tempting, moist circle, he kissed them quickly. "Excellent! Keep a sharp eye!" He hurried off toward the conservatory, searching his pockets as he went.

"Nicholas?"

"Shhh, don't use real names. Try Uncle Pete," came his stage whisper over his shoulder. He followed the shadow of the building until he reached the pink granite steps of its entrance. There the corner of the greenhouse blocked him from her view.

"What are you doing?"

"Quiet. Watch. Whistle."

Before she had time to think of abandoning her post, he reappeared out of the shadows. "Success!" he grinned. "Grab something and follow me." He opened the trunk and took out the picnic basket. Next to it were her rescued record player and the extra blanket from their bed. He lifted the record player, and she got the blanket and pushed the trunk shut. Into the shadows again, he crept with her close behind.

"Where are we going?"

"Eternal Spring," he whispered.

When they rounded the front of the building, Trissa saw that one of the doors was propped open with a rock. "Nicholas, you broke in!"

He put his finger to his lips. "Hush, didn't I tell you to use my alias? Damn, looks like this may be my last caper. I broke my burglar's tool." He held out his palm to show her the broken tip of his old Boy Scout pocketknife. He ushered her through the door and entered after her. Kicking the rock away, he shut the door.

Peace and darkness and the soothing tranquility of softly flowing water enveloped them. It took a few moments for their eyes to gather the available light in the stonewalled vestibule. Trissa's were owl-like with shock, and her mouth formed a perfect circle as she looked around her and back at him.

Nicholas put down the record player and offered her his arm. "Shall we dine among the lilies, milady?" Arm in arm he led her through the portal into the green glow beyond.

Nearly three stories above them, arc lamps suspended from the arch supports cast their dim light down. From the outside at night the glass walls and the verdigris of Jewel Box's framework gleamed with gemlike luster from peridot green at its heights deepening to emerald. The daytime roar of the waterfall and fountains was hushed to a soothing patter as water dribbled down a stone grotto on the back wall into a little stream that meandered the floor to a cedar mill where it was drawn up then splashed down the troughs to the floor again.

The Jewel Box was a favorite place for bridal parties to come to use its seasonal backdrops for wedding pictures and receptions. Nicholas and Trissa had been here in the sparkle of daylight and taken photographs of each other posed against the waterfall, the old mill, on the stone bridge, and up the winding iron stairway to the balcony.

But this night held a special enchantment, like walking on the floor of a rain forest where the only light that penetrated was the luminous emerald reflection like sunlight on leaves. Hundreds of Easter lilies, like tiny trumpet moons, beamed a ghostly white along the pathways.

Nicholas set down the basket, took the blanket from her and tossed it across the ticket desk. He caught her around the waist and drew her close.

"We can't stay. We--" was all she managed before her silenced her protest with a kiss.

"We're the captives of spring now. She'll never let us go," he said against her lips, his promise and vow. The full moon Roger had promised showed its face through the green glass panes, casting eerie shadows in the leaves. They ambled the winding stone paths among the ferns, fichus trees, and trailing philodendron. The lilies smiled their approval when they paused to kiss again by the old mill, the rock bridge, and the grotto.

When they circled back to where they had begun, they took up their basket, blanket, and the record player and carried them to a wide spot in the brick path near the waterfall. Nicholas spread the blanket on the ground and Trissa opened the basket and lay the dinner before them. He placed the candle stubs like soldiers along the rock rim of the grotto and lit them. They both groaned at the size of the feast and sat down to nibble at their sandwiches and pinch tiny morsels from the corners of the giant wedges of chocolate cake Ruth had wrapped for them.

"My stomach is so fluttery, I can hardly swallow."

"Are you sick?"

"No, it's not that." She looked up at him, her eyes veiled in a haze of fear. "I'm scared, Nicholas. I'm scared to have so much and know I'll lose it. I'm scared the price is too high for all of this, and I'm scared of how I'll have to pay."

"There is no paying for it. You won't go back to him. Or think of running away. Promise me, Trissa. Promise."

"I can't. I love you too much. He said -- my father swore he'd hurt you. I won't go back. But if I ran away, he'd have no reason. You'd be safer if I were far away."

The stem of his wine glass snapped in Nicholas' hands, a shard of it piercing his wrist. A bright dot of blood sprang from the wound and trickled down his arm. She gasped and reached for him to press it with her napkin and stop the bleeding. He kissed the top of her head as she bent over it.

"He can't hurt me, Trissa. And I won't let him hurt you. He's done with destroying your life. He lost you and I have you and I will never let you go." He pushed aside the broken glass and gathered her to his lap. "I need your promise to trust me in this. I have to have it."

"I don't know. Leaving is such a simple thing. My bags are packed. Georgia Pulasky would help me. She said she would. I still have her card." Silent tears brimmed from her eyes, and he held her close and soothed her. "It will hurt. And I'll be lonely. I'd miss Augusta and Roger. And the others. Even Hattie. But I would survive. The worst. The worst of all is that you would not be there."

"I can't lose you, Trissa. Don't leave. Promise me. I love you."

"Then make love to me." His thoughtful silence brought a wistful smile to her lips and she scooted from his lap to get her purse. "Look what I brought." She reached in and withdrew the scallop shell he had given her after their first dinner out together. "Do you think it still holds its secret, potent powers?"

"We can find out." He took it from her and filled the shallow, white shell with wine and held it to her lips. She sipped from it, then pushed it toward him. He drank the rest then kissed her, like the seal on a wish, like the touch of a wand on a spell.

Without a word, she cleared dinner away, and he set up the record player on a stone bench. They finished at the same time, and when the music started, Nat King Cole's husky baritone sang. "Pretend you're happy when you're blue. It isn't very hard to do." Nicholas drew her to her feet and swept her into his arms to dance.

Their feet kept shuffling the steps long after the record ended. Nicholas dipped his head to kiss her and Trissa's fingers wavered over his shirt buttons. "You broke in this place and made us criminals, Nicholas. Now, it's my turn to break some rules."

Deftly, she slipped each button from its hole and nestled her head in the crisp, sandy hair on his chest. With a light, brushing caress, her hand moved over it like a whisper flickers a candle flame.

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips and kissed each fingertip, her palm, and her wrist. "Promise, Trissa. Promise."

"I promise."

Their next kiss weakened her knees, and Nicholas clutched her close and bore her down to the floor. All the boundaries broken, all the honor dismissed for some greater virtue, they lay upon the blanket that had once been the wall between them. The same pearl buttons Nicholas had fastened with such brisk efficiency submitted to his touch again.

He moved his lips down her throat until they burned through the lace edging of her bra. Even so muffled, she could not resist their pledge. His fingertips lightly caressed her nipples and she shivered in anticipation of feeling skin against skin, the wizard's kiss upon his eager apprentice.

Nicholas brushed her slip and panties down and away in a silken glide, the shiver of their passing warmed by the starry fire of his touch along her bared flesh. Somehow she controlled her trembling hands enough to slide Nicholas' shirt from his shoulders. But when Nicholas' body, too, was bare to her exploration, she could not bring herself up through the haze of desire that swept her to remember how or who had made it possible.

Her heart filled with the wonder of it in the flickering shadows of candlelight and moon glow, she touched and kissed his neck, his collarbone, the sinew of his arm, the curve of his ribs. There was a white, jagged ridge below his ribcage and another just above his right nipple. Scars. "Nicholas?"

"Old battles. Long forgotten." As if to make her forget as well, he moved his gentle fingers to caress her intimate places. And she forgot. Yes, she forgot. A whimper of longing escaped her as she felt him press tenderly, slowly within her.

"One rule is still in force, Trissa, sweet. Say stop and I will stop," his words drifted to her like mist.

"I won't say stop. Let it never stop," was her strained reply.

His smile darkened with passion. "Then this is the last apprentice kiss, my love. After this, you are the master." His lips came down hard and demanding and she felt the hot, swirl of his desire as he kissed her. He moved over her and she opened to him, like the deep-throated, moonlit lilies.

More than she had wanted anything in her life, she wanted this man to become hers, to take her up and possess her, to end her old life once and for all and begin her new. With each insistent stroke of his hand, the wanting in her grew. She trembled on the brink of something she ached to understand.

Then his hand was replaced with a greater power. "I'm coming inside you, Trissa. If I hurt you, I--"

"Oh, Nicholas. Don't say you're sorry. I need you. I want you. So much." She moved her hand to touch the leashed power of him, to guide him home.

But still, he held back. He controlled his tender, loving progress toward their union, moving with gentle, deliberate grace, entering her so slowly, so he would not hurt her -- when she yearned to have it done, to be his, to be reborn one with him.

With sudden, white-hot urgency, she pressed up toward him, and it was done. She caught her breath sharply with the searing pain and held it, a bubble of laughter gurgled deep in her throat.

"Trissa?"

"You are ever the photographer, Nicholas. 'Press gently,'" she said breathlessly, mocking his oft-repeated instructions to her about the shutter release. "'Never poke or jab.'"

He smiled his relief and kissed the beaded sweat from her brow, holding himself still within her. Then he touched his lips to hers urging them to part and drew her tongue, soft and sweet, into his mouth. With an innocent's sense of desire and destiny, she touched the tip to the roof of his mouth behind his teeth and slowly trailed it deep to the back then forward again in a languorous rhythm all of her body reached to simulate.

He let himself catch the rhythm she taught him, and they moved together with such agonizing grace that all pain, physical, emotional, spiritual, was forgotten, melted into the pattering water and the moonlight and the jewel-green shadows.

When the magic started, when the enchantment of touch and motion and heat sparked and ignited and shattered into crystal splinters, she clung to him with such passion and love and life that it burned away the knot of fear within him that she might ever again choose to escape life. They held each other fiercely in the rippling aftershocks and she whispered, "Keep me safe, Nicholas. Never let me go."

"Never," he promised. "Never."