Selena looked up. 'Truly? I do not believe I have had bread pudding. Perhaps we shall try it sun. Soon."

Ian rolled his eyes and took a sip of the weak, tasteless brew. "You shouldn't indulge her sick fantasies, you know."

Maeve's smile faded. She closed her mouth abruptly and hugged the animal to her chest, rocking it frantically.

Selena turned to him. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You're encouraging her to be mad. She should be alone in her room when she's like this."

"She would be in her room too much."

"So she would."

Selena stared at him. Slowly she put her cup down, but she didn't look away.

Ian shifted uncomfortably. "What are you looking at?"

"You made her stop smiling."

He snorted. "I often have that effect."

Selena frowned. "That is not something to be proud of."

"I didn't say I was proud of it. I said I often have that effect on my mother. It's the simple truth."

She bit down on her lower lip. "I do not think it is so simple."

He set the teacup down with a clatter. "I guess I should leave. I'm spoiling the party."

"How would it hurt you to pretend?"

He looked down at her, struck once again by the in

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nocence in her gaze. She didn't understand him, didn't understand the world, or the history of pain that coiled around him and his mother. All she knew was that he had a choice-he could hurt his mother, or he could not hurt his mother. And she couldn't imagine why he would choose the former.

It made him feel small and petty and ugly, the innocence in her eyes. She worshipped him, had from the moment she'd first seen him, and now he was proving to her how unworthy he was of that honor.

Part of him was glad, relieved to be rid of the burden of her expectations. But part of him was unaccountably saddened. As if a great opportunity were slipping through his fingers, right now as he sat at this tiny table in the middle of the forest, an opportunity he'd never imagined, never dared to hope for.

And all he had to do was reach out and take hold of it....

"What do you want from me, Selena?"

"I want you to stay."

So simple an answer. Black and white. Good or bad. Stay or leave. There was no gray for Selena, no acceptable level of rudeness, no tolerable pain. There was only right and wrong.

He wished to h.e.l.l he could find that innocence within himself again, that long-lost moral core.

"Just say yes," she whispered, encouraging him with a smile.

So easy . . .

With an awkward smile, he scooted closer into the table. His knees. .h.i.t the wooden rim and raided the china.

Maeve's head snapped up. "It is Ian." She looked around. "Nurse, his teeth are coming in. Soothe him."

"I shall get him, Maeve," Selena answered.

Maeve frowned, worked her lower lip nervously with her teeth, gripped the animal to her chest. "He cries when I touch him." Tears glazed her eyes. "Why does he cry?"

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Selena gazed across the table at her. "Maybe he does not know it is you."

Maeve swiped at an invisible fly. "The bathwater is too hot. Bring the wine."

Ian closed his eyes and sagged forward, resting his elbows on the wobbly table.

Maeve jumped to her feet with a scream. Yanking up her skirt, she cast a quick backward glance, then surged toward Ian, reaching for him. Her gnarled fingers curled around his wrist and tugged hard. "I can't find my baby." She looked up at him through gla.s.sy, hazel green eyes. "Help me find my baby."

Images slammed through Ian's head. My baby. Oh, G.o.d, my baby. Herbert will want to see his son. The words catapulted into his brain, cycling through in an endless litany. Then came the images, the amorphous transference of thought. Panic. Fear. Desperation.

His mother's emotions swirled around him, sucked him in. He could feel her anxiety; it caused his own heartbeat to speed up.

And then suddenly, through the red mist of frustration, he saw her. His mother, sitting at the c.o.c.keyed table in the middle of the forest. Deep, deep within the barking layers of dementia, she was there, watching him, hearing him, needing him.

The revelation stunned him. He'd never thought she was even marginally conscious of reality when she was in this state, but now he saw the truth. She was in there somewhere, fighting off the whispering voices of her imagination, the myriad fictional images that besieged her. She was there, small and frightened and alone. "Mother?"

She blinked up at him. For a split second, he thought that she would see him, speak to him. Hope brought him to his feet beside her.

She swiped at another nonexistent fly and shook her head as if to clear it. "The rain is ruining the rhubarb."

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He released his breath slowly and waited for the inevitable sense of disgust to settle in.

Amazingly, it didn't come. For once, all he felt when he looked at his mother was compa.s.sion.

Maeve wrenched away from him and hurried back to her seat at the table.

Ian stood there, still too stunned to move.

Selena rose beside him, touching his arm gently. "She will be herself again soon. Would you like some tea?"

Ian almost laughed. Slowly he turned and looked down at Selena. She stood beside him, tall and proud and beautiful, her hair in wild disarray around her face. Smiling. Always smiling.

He knew suddenly, as surely as he'd ever known anything in his life, that he could fall in love with this woman. Not the woman he'd created or saved or imagined, but this woman, with her quixotic smile and exuberant nature. This woman who in two days had turned his world upside down.

He drew back, frightened of her and himself and everything that this moment held. Things like this didn't happen in life; at least, if they did, they didn't happen to men like Ian. Good things happened to good people, and Ian was far, far from good.

"I am now to make apple and flower necklaces," she said. "You would like to help?"

He glanced down at the apples on the table and smiled.

Jesus, apple necklaces. It was a whole new world.

He nodded. "If you want me to."

"Oh, Ian," she said with a throaty laugh. "I always want you to stay with me. I feel love for you."

Ian almost crumpled at the simple, oddly worded sentence. It was the first time anyone had ever claimed to love him.

Chapter Sixteen.

Ian stood at his bedroom window, watching the commotion below like Zeus tracking the goings on of mortals. He wrenched the window upward. It squeaked and whined, reminding him that it had been a long time since he'd opened it.

Below him, they were having a party.

Johann and Lara were the leaders, strolling arm in arm down the gravel path. Dotty darted from sheltering tree to sheltering tree, gesturing wildly. Maeve cartwheeled past them. The high, clear sound of her laughter floated upward. The queen strode forward, waving at invisible subjects.

Selena somersaulted across the lawn, skirts flapping, then she shot to her feet and clapped, twirling and twirling until she fell in a laughing heap to the gra.s.s. The apple and tulip necklace hung at a c.o.c.keyed angle around her throat. A single petal fluttered to the gra.s.s, a brilliant white spot on the emerald green carpet.

Selena said something he couldn't quite make out, and then everyone lined up along the porch and began somersaulting across the lawn. The sun gazed lovingly down on them, glinting off their shining hair and multicolored clothing. The joyous sound of their laughter rang in the warm, sea-scented air.

Ian tried to manufacture a familiar feeling of disgust; after all, it was such an exceptional display of lunacy.

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But surprisingly, he felt no such contempt. A smile, slow and tentative, crept across his face.

Which was more insane-tumbling across the gra.s.s on a beautiful spring day, or hiding in a lonely, darkened room, feeling an unnecessary sense of isolation?

All at once, Selena looked up at him. Across the distance, their eyes locked. He saw in her gaze all the welcome he could ever want. She waved him down. Then Johann started walking toward the beach and the little party followed him.

He knew instantly that he, too, would follow. He could try to do otherwise, could pretend indifference and force himself to remain alone, but he wasn't so dishonest. He wanted to be with her.

He stepped back from the window and eased it shut. Images of yesterday flashed through his mind, warming him, cajoling him.

Amazingly, Johann had been right. In an instant, a heartbeat, Selena had offered Ian a choice, and with nothing more potent, more life-altering, than a smile.

I feel love for you, Ian.

The words circled through his mind again. All through the long, lonely night in his solitary bed, he'd heard them. Over and over and over, gaining momentum, promising a magic he'd never dreamed of. A future he'd long ago given up on.

He grabbed a shirt from the chair and shrugged into it. With the eagerness of a kid, he hurried down the steps and outside, emerging into the bright sunlight.

Warmth splashed his cheeks. He raced across the lawn and plunged into the cold darkness of the woods, following the sound of laughter.

They were down on the beach in a scattered array. The sea was at low tide, a foamy hem along the gray and black stone. Sunlight glittered on the still bay, gave the water the appearance of polished steel.

Johann was sprawled out on a blue blanket, his arms wishboned behind his head. Lara was crouched over a 197.

tide pool, her bucket placed precariously on a barnacle-roughened rock. Maeve was staring out to sea, her hand tented across her eyes. No doubt she was waiting for her husband to come home again.

"Ah, the prodigal son returneth," Johann drawled, rising languidly to his elbows. He brushed the straggly hair from his eyes with a fluid stroke. Very slowly, he smiled. "Good to see you, Ian."

"Ian?" Selena swiveled around and looked at him. The second their eyes met, she gave him a devastatingly bright smile. "You are here."

The sound of her voice, hushed and seductive and intimate, washed through him, warmer than the sunlight.

"We were to have a picnic," Selena said, waving toward the basket. "You shall join us?"

Ian felt himself start to smile. "I'd love to."

Hours later, only Selena and Ian were left at the beach. The meal had long ago been eaten and cleaned up, the last remnants taken away.

They lay side by side on the blue blanket, gazing up at the clear, blue sky. Books were scattered around them.

"Tell me another story," Selena said in a drowsy voice.

Ian smiled. She was surprisingly adept at understanding concepts and ideas, and she brought an exhilarat-ingly fresh viewpoint to the telling of any story. He'd read parts of the Bible to her, some Greek mythology, and several fairy tales by the Grimm brothers. The romantic poets were her favorites, and always she wanted more.

"There is the story of Pandora-this parallels in some ways the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. Pandora was the first human woman made by the G.o.ds. The story is that Jupiter made her to punish Prometheus for stealing fire from Heaven."

"The first woman was made to punish man?"

J98.