SECRET OF THE WOLF Page 18
"I understand. The next time I feel the need to divest myself of my clothing, I will most certainly go straight to you."
Her fair skin caught fire. "We'll continue this conversation later. I shall be going into town for part of the day tomorrow, and have arrangements to make."
He caught her arm as she turned to go. "I have a question for you, Johanna."
She tilted her face to his, and his body tightened with desire.
"When I was in my trance… did I kiss you?"
The flush spread from her neckline to her forehead. It was all he needed to know. He bent just enough to fit his mouth to hers, and kissed her again. Lightly, a mere brush of the lips was all he dared to attempt. The shock that coursed through him was as powerful as anything he'd felt while buried deep in the aroused body of a woman in the throes of her passion.
Any woman but Johanna.
She didn't strike him, or stumble away. Her eyes lost their bright hue, leaving her cheeks with the only color in her face. Her lips parted and closed again without uttering a sound. If not for the heightened richness of her scent and the audible speeding of her heart, she might have seemed unmoved.
When he let her go she simply turned and walked back toward the house, her skirts trailing unheeded in the fecund earth.
Chapter 13
The thick limb of the old, blasted oak split in two at the first blow of Quentin's axe. It was only one of many such branches he planned to reduce to firewood this morning; no telling how long the pieces of the felled tree had lain at the side of the house, awaiting someone able and willing to make them useful.
Winter was far away, but Quentin had a clear choice of vigorous physical labor or going in search of a bottle.
He swung the axe again. The morning was hot, and his bare skin ran with sweat. May and Oscar had watched for a while, well out of the way of flying chips of wood, and then had gone off to the woods. Lewis was avoiding him, as expected, along with Irene. Mrs. Daugherty and a hired girl from town were busy with washing. And Johanna…
Johanna was gone to town. On business, she said. Something about meeting another doctor. Quentin felt her absence like a physical ache.
His entire body ached with wanting her.
A chunk of wood the size of a man's thigh flew a good several yards and landed with a thud. Quentin let the axe slide from his grip and wiped his hands on his trousers.
Careful. He might find chopping up a tree satisfying given the scarcity of more pleasurable exercise, but not at the risk of doing real damage to the landscape or its denizens. He retrieved the axe, clamped his teeth together, and lifted it for another attack. He drove the head so deep in the wood that it stuck. He snorted in disgust.
"The tree's already dead, friend."
Quentin left the axe where it was and turned on his heel. Either Harper had approached with the silence of a loup-garou, or Quentin had gone deaf to the world. He thought the latter much more likely.
Harper raised his hands. "Sorry. Shouldn't have snuck up on you like that."
"No harm done," Quentin said, concealing his surprise. It wasn't that he and Harper hadn't talked, but this was the first time the man had sought him out.
And Harper was beginning to carry the look of a healthy man—healthy in body and spirit. His eyes were no longer sunk so deeply in his face; the etched lines between his brows and at the sides of his mouth had flattened. There was even a hint of greater fullness under his cheekbones, a little more flesh over his ribs.
That was how much good a few hypnotic treatments with Johanna had done him.
But it was the expression in Harper's eyes that had changed the most. They hadn't entirely lost their haunted look, but they were clear and sane. No more retreating into a world of his own. He was of this world now, and planned to remain in it.
He had more backbone than Quentin did.
Company was not what Quentin had in mind, but now that Harper was here he felt the tension drain from his muscles. Any distraction from thoughts of Johanna was welcome.
He sat down on the largest branch and stretched his legs. Harper joined him, turning his face up to the sun.
The quiet between them was comfortable, almost comforting. Quentin hadn't expected it. Harper had witnessed his spontaneous trance yesterday, and all that it entailed. It wasn't his business to withhold judgment, as Johanna did, and yet he seemed perfectly at ease.
Perhaps nothing so bad had happened after all. But if Johanna had failed to tell Quentin the whole truth about yesterday's incident, Harper might be persuaded to fill in the blanks.
"Thank you," he said. "For what you did yesterday."
Harper shrugged. "Just helping a comrade in need."
"Even though we didn't fight for the same country, or in the same war?"
The other man's gaze had an uncanny directness. "You sure about that?"
He was equally direct in his speech. Quentin bit back the impulse to ask him what he meant.
"I seem to remember," Quentin said, "you saying something about the enemy being gone, and the war over. I gather that I needed the reminder."
Harper didn't answer straight away. He stretched out his own legs—long enough to match Quentin's—and cracked his knuckles. Each movement he made was that of a man who felt joy in the simplest actions.
A simple man, Harper. Except that he claimed to see visions.
"You needed to be reminded, then," Harper said at last.
"Because the enemy isn't gone," Quentin said. "The war isn't over." He smiled bitterly. "Are you here about yesterday, Harper? Do you have something to tell me?" His mind raced with dire possibilities, matching the tempo of his heartbeat. "Did I do something to frighten Johanna?"
"Doc?" Harper chuckled, as if he found the notion of Johanna afraid inconceivable. "No. Not in the way you mean."
Quentin released his breath. "What did I do, Harper?"
"Reckon she'll talk about that in her own time." Harper searched his pockets for something that wasn't there. "I don't remember very much of what I said. Must have talked about what happened during the War. Don't want to think of that yet. Not just yet." He shivered. "Doc says it'll come back to me when I'm ready. I reckon it's the same with you."
So Harper wouldn't discuss it as Quentin had hoped, not without further prompting. Still, his casual manner laid to rest Quentin's most immediate fears.
"Do you remember anything about the past few years, while you've been with the Schells?" he asked.
"Not much. Didn't want to come out. Not until…" He shot Quentin a keen look. "Why're you here, Mr. Forster?"
"We hardly need stand on formality." He offered his hand. "Quentin."
"You know my name." Harper gripped his hand with strong, thin fingers. "I don't remember when you first showed up, either."
Quentin rested his palms on the rough, peeling bark of the oak. "I… stumbled across the Haven two weeks ago."
"Seems longer."
"It feels longer." As if he'd known the people of the Haven forever. Wanted Johanna forever.
Harper closed his eyes. "My family sent me to the docs years ago. Guess I was too hard for them to care for, after I went back to Indiana. I know I was crazy. I owe whatever I've got now to Doc Schell."
Quentin shifted on the branch. He didn't want Harper's personal confidences. The man bared his heart for all the world to see.
As he'd bared his to Johanna.
"She is a remarkable woman," Quentin said stiffly.
"Is that what you think?" Harper nudged at the dirt with the toe of his boot. "I reckoned you had a slightly different opinion."
Quentin jumped up and paced away. "I don't understand you."
"You understand." Harper leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head. "You're pining after that woman, and she feels the same. It's just that neither one of you'll admit it."
Quentin clenched his fists. Was it that obvious, then? Or was Harper the only one sane, experienced, and observant enough to notice?
"Guess I must have talked about that when I was hypnotized," Harper said. "Seeing things, and all. Don't blame you for doubting." He scratched his beard. "It's something I can't help. Every time I touch a thing that people have touched—well, it happens. It's just that for a long time I wasn't letting anything through."
Had Quentin been an ordinary man, he might have scoffed at Harper's words. Who, after all, believed in visions spawned from merely touching an object?
Who believed in werewolves?
"I reckon you need proof," Harper said.
"You have nothing to prove to me."
"No. It's always our own selves we have to prove to." Harper stood up and reached for the handle of the axe that stood almost perpendicular to the stout oak branch in which it was embedded.
"You've been working with this axe," he said. He tugged at the handle, but it wouldn't be moved. "You didn't work long, but you put a lot into it. Enough for me to see."
The short hairs stood up on the back of Quentin's neck. "See what, Harper?"
"A little of you." He frowned. "Isn't easy to explain. Sometimes… I can feel something about a person from a thing they just touched. If they only used it a brief while, it doesn't linger. If it's a thing people have had for a long time, that's what makes the difference. Sometimes I see what a body's been doing, or where he's been in the past. Or I see what's going to happen to him." His prominent Adam's apple bobbed. "Right now, I can see what you intended to do—chop this tree to bits because you wanted to stop thinking about other things."
"Very good," Quentin said with heavy sarcasm.
"You think you can stop wanting the lady if you tucker yourself out. But you aren't going to finish what you started."
"Perhaps because I'm sitting here instead of working."
"I'm just telling you what I see. And what I don't see."
"Is that why you're here, then? To predict my future?"
Harper clasped his fingers together until his knuckles stood out from the flesh. "I wasn't able to help my friends when I saw what was coming for them. Maybe this time…" He sought Quentin's gaze, his own earnest and grave. "I see that you have many trials ahead. Someone is following you—someone you know. He'll hurt you if he can. You may find what you seek, but your fate depends on the decisions you make."
Quentin laughed. "Isn't that true of every man's fate?"
"No." Harper looked up at the bulk of Mount St. Helena rising to the east. "Or if it is, I can't always see it."
"That's fortunate, or you'd be very unpopular among your fellow men."
Pain flashed in Harper's eyes. "I found that out early on. That's why I never talked too much. People don't want to know. I didn't want to know, either."
Quentin felt something disagreeably like shame. Who was he to mock this man? Harper had his own tribulations, and he thought he was trying to help. He exposed himself out of a sense of friendship. He thought Quentin was worth the effort.
True friends had been a rare commodity in Quentin's life, through no one's fault but his own. He'd either driven them away or run from them, every one. Quentin Forster, the ever-popular, who made people laugh or gasp or shake their heads, but never left them bored.
And he always left.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Some secrets are best left unshared."
"And some have to be." Harper looked back at him. "You've been running a long time, my friend. Pretty soon you'll have to stop running and face what's after you. There's no other way."
"You received all this from an axe handle?"
"No." Harper dangled his hands between his knees. "No."
Quentin took the handle of the axe in both hands and jerked it free. "Thank you for your advice. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll continue my work—"
Harper stood up. "You've come to the right place, Quentin. This is where you make a stand, and fight."
Quentin swung around, and Harper stepped away from his bared teeth. "Will Johanna come to harm by helping me? Will she?"
"Is that what you're most afraid of, or is it the way you feel about her?"
"Will she?"
"I don't see everything. I just know that you and the doc—" He sighed and shook his head. "I've told you all I can."
"You said someone was following me, someone I know. Who?"
Harper took another step back. "I have to rest now." His voice grew muffled, detached. "I'm tired."
"Harper—" Quentin reached out, but Harper was already walking back toward the house, stooped and weary. Quentin let him go.
"Your fate depends on the decisions you make," Harper had said. But it wasn't just Quentin's own fate at stake. Harper had told him little about himself he didn't already know. And as for the business about someone stalking him…
He thought about the many times he'd lost track of hours and events, and his frequent sense of wrongness following those times. Had he committed some reprehensible act that had won him enemies? If so, why hadn't he sensed pursuit? Loups-garous had too many advantages over humans, at the very least in the keenness of their senses. And he hadn't met another werewolf in all his journeying across America.
But he was running. Harper was right about that. The soldier had recognized a man running from himself.
The very thing that made him want to run from the Haven was the same element that kept him here, chained to this place by fragile dreams and desperate hunger.
Johanna.
"You're pining after that woman, and she feels the same. It's just that neither one of you'll admit it."
Hope had an insidious way of popping up in the most unexpected places. Deadly hope, that intensified desire to fever pitch.
Desire obliterated every other need, even the need for escape. The very idea of lying with Johanna was more than he could bear. It raised within him the rapacious predator that wasn't appeased with stolen kisses in vineyards, or a gentleman's restraint. It urged him, over and over, to let go. Take what he wanted.
Take Johanna.
She wants you.
He swore foully and slammed the axe into the branch.
Half of the branch spun into the air and flew like a cannon-ball to the edge of the woods. He could prove at least one of Harper's predictions false.
He raised the axe and brought it down on the branch with all his strength.
Johanna was already to the edge of Silverado Springs before she realized she'd driven the entire distance with no notion of how she'd made the trip.
She gave thanks to patient, reliable Daisy, who'd followed the path to town on her own. At the moment, the horse seemed to possess more intelligence than her owner.
The same scene kept repeating itself again and again in her mind, just as it had done all last night and this morning.
"When I was in my trance, did I kiss you, Johanna?"
She touched her lips. The kiss in the vineyard was nothing compared to the one he'd given her during his first hypnotic session, yet it had been all she could do to preserve her mask of indifference and walk away as if she remained unmoved.
Was he finally remembering that first kiss? Did he remember her uninhibited response?
She could only pray he did not. At least she'd given him no encouragement. And they would both have more vital concerns to explore in their next session.
If there was a next session.
She sat up straighter in the buggy's seat and patted the top of her hair. All pins were in place, and she wore her best dress—the only one really suitable for meeting a fellow physician. For the next few hours, she hoped to be thinking and speaking of nothing but professional matters.
Silverado Springs's main street was sleepy at this time of day, when luncheon was past and anyone who had no need to be working outside sought shelter from the heat. Even the usual loafers at the general store were absent. But as Johanna drove Daisy to the Silverado Springs Hotel, she passed a handful of townsfolk who looked at her ask
ance and walked quickly away.
Quentin had warned her. He'd warned her about many things, if she'd had the common sense to listen.
She arrived at the hotel and gave Daisy into the keeping of the stable boy, providing the lad with enough coins to see to her comfort. There was no mirror to check her appearance, so she satisfied herself with a few more minor adjustments to her coiffure and brushing off the narrow skirt of her dress.
The Silverado Springs Hotel was no longer the fashionable place it had been a decade ago, but it did enough business to maintain the gardens, grounds, and mineral baths that were its claim to fame. The lobby was empty save for a tourist couple discussing possible local excursions with the concierge.
Johanna scanned the lobby a second time and sat down to wait in one of the slightly worn chairs. She was early, and it wouldn't do to seem overeager. This Dr. Bolkonsky might prove to be a disappointment, after all.
She picked up a magazine and was idly perusing an advertisement for women's hats when she smelled the strong and woody scent of expensive cologne.
Her gaze moved up from the man's highly polished black boots with white spats, snug gray trousers, single-breasted blue coat over a gray silk waistcoat, immaculate shirt and cravat to the face above his starched stand collar. There she stopped, catching her breath.
He was beautiful. No other word would suit. And though her head had never been easily turned by masculine beauty—at least not until two weeks ago—she found herself hardly able to believe this man was real.
Golden hair spilled in waves to his shoulders, framing a face made to inspire angels to flights of song. His features were strong enough to be completely male, but delicately carved, refined with the aesthetic appeal of a true intellectual. His eyebrows were several shades darker than his hair, lending his expression greater definition; his nose held an aristocratic arch. The sensitive mouth curved up in a charming smile.
Charming, beautiful, perfect. Too perfect, she decided. A man without flaw must inevitably grow tiresome. Quentin's face—attractive but humanly imperfect—hovered in the back of her mind.
"Dr. Schell, I presume?" the man asked, banishing Quentin's image. He tipped his top hat and clicked his heels. "I am Dr. Feodor Bolkonsky, at your service. "Sehr erfreut, Sie kennenzulernen, Frau Doktor."