The door to his study slammed open. "Good G.o.d, Ian," Johann barked. "What in the h.e.l.l?" He raced over to the broken lamp and wrenched off his coat, using it to stomp out the flames.

Ian tried to focus on Johann, but the younger man was blurry, swaying. A semihysterical laugh slipped from Ian's mouth. "Drink, Johann?"

Johann yanked up his coat and turned to Ian. Charred bits of fabric fluttered to the pale carpet, smoke wafted up from the sleeves.

Ian laughed again. "Ah, look, a smoking jacket."

Johann rolled his eyes. "You're soused."

Ian waved him over. Anything was better than the loneliness, the sickening thoughts that sped unrelentingly through his mind. "Drink with me, Johann."

228.

Johann poured himself a stiff drink and took a seat opposite Ian's desk. He dropped his burnt coat in a heap at his feet. "You don't look so good."

"I feel worse."

Johann frowned sharply. "My G.o.d, a human response. What is the world coming to?"

Ian rested an elbow on the hard wooden arm of his chair and rubbed his eyes, sighing softly. "What in the h.e.l.l is wrong with me?"

Johann's face softened, a smile caressed his thin lips. "You don't know?"

"All I know is that I've finally gone over the edge. One word from Selena, a word, and my mind .. .

snapped. I can't get it out of my brain."

Johann leaned forward. "What did she say?"

"Slept. As in, maybe she slept with a man before her injury."

"Holy mother of G.o.d." Johann slowly sank back into his chair. "She's so innocent.... I never considered that she could be married. What are you going to do?"

There was the question again, the one he couldn't outrun. "I'm going to kill anyone who comes for her."

Johann got slowly to his feet. "No wonder you've been locked up here for days."

It felt so good to talk about it with someone, to be less alone. "I'm afraid to see her, Johann. An honorable man would stay away."

Johann took a long sip before responding. "It was my understanding that you reveled in your dishonor."

Ian released a steady breath. "You said she would change me, and she has. I know I'm a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but I don't think I can change it. If I see her, I'll take her to my bed, and if I do that, I'll kill any man who comes for her."

"Frankly, that's the most sensible thing I've ever heard you say. So what's the problem? You're rich. The rich can murder anyone and get away with it."

229.

He looked at Johann. "What if she has children, Johann?"

Johann's smile faded. "I don't know what to tell you."

He stared at Johann, wishing suddenly that the scotch could warm him. "Tell me this, then," he said softly.

'Tell me how to have a normal life."

"You ask me?" Johann raised his hands in the air. "There is no normal life."

Ian leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his dirty, disheveled hair. "I want to sleep, Johann. I want dreams instead of nightmares. I want ..."

"Selena."

Ian squeezed his eyes shut, and knew it was a mistake the instant he did. She came full force into his mind, taunting, teasing, reminding. I feel love for you, Ian. I believe in you. Kiss me again. What if I am not a virgin? What if- His eyes popped open. Despair coursed through him, made him ache for another drink. "What would you have done to keep Marie?" The question slipped out on a drunken slide, intimate and tinged in desperation. Ian tried not to look up, tried to keep his gaze focused on the desk, impersonal, cold.

The silence stretched out. Ian heard the soft, rhymthic pulse of Johann's breathing, and his control snapped. He looked up, staring at Johann through bloodshot eyes. "Answer me," he whispered, needing something from Johann in that minute that he couldn't fathom, didn't want to explore. Absolution, understanding; he didn't know what, but it made him feel weak and pathetic.

Slowly Johann lowered himself to his seat. His voice, when at last it came, was soft and uncertain. "I would have done anything."

Ian's tension released in a rush. He sagged forward, buried his face in his hands. He wanted to take comfort in Johann's words, to believe that he was normal in his reaction, but he wasn't yet so delusional.

Ian had never

230.

done anything halfway in his life; there was no moderation in his soul. He had always been full speed, obsessive about everything. When he was a doctor, he was only that, nothing else. When he decided not to be a doctor, he hid away in the darkness, being nothing, subst.i.tuting nothing. He'd lived either in the full light or in the full darkness, nowhere in between.

"I won't let her go," Ian said softly, not particularly to Johann. He simply said it, meant it.

Johann frowned. "But if she's married-"

"Enough." Ian barked the word, so loud his own voice rang in his ears. He couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't live this way. Once, maybe it had been fine, he'd been content to wallow in self-pity and hide away from the world. Once, the alcohol had been enough. Now nothing was left to him, nothing but Selena. She'd brought him out of his paralysis, shoved him into the full light of day, and he couldn't go back. Wouldn't go back.

He grabbed the crystal decanter and poured himself another drink, tossing it back without tasting it. "Get Edith and Fergus and everyone up here. Now."

Johann studied him. "What are you up to, Ian?"

He threw his empty gla.s.s at the fireplace, watching it shatter against the green marble. "I'm going to lock this place up tighter than a nun's drawers. No one will come in or go out. I'll send word to all of the towns I visited, telling them that the mysterious amnesiac has been claimed. I'll stay with Selena night and day, be beside her. No one will ever find her."

It was a long moment before Johann spoke. "You're describing a prison."

Ian gave him a steely look, wishing suddenly that he hadn't spoken to Johann at all. "Think of it as a sanctuary."

"Ian-"

"Don't," he said sharply, too sharply. He saw the concern in Johann's eyes and felt a flash of conscience.

231.

He shouldn't do this. It was wrong. Dishonorable. The words shot through his mind like needles, trying to find purchase, seeking some remnant of the rational man he'd once been.

But there was nothing left in him except a driving, burning obsession to keep her beside him, to stay in the light. He couldn't just sit and wait for the end.

To whom it may concern ... my wife ...

"No," he screamed, surprised to hear the sound of his own voice. He couldn't give in so easily.

"Ian, you're-"

"Mad," he said with a shrill laugh. "Yes, I am. But no one will take her from me, Johann. No one."

He heard the words for what they were.

A gauntlet thrown down to G.o.d.

Selena didn't understand what was happening. Last night Ian had been a stranger to her, frightening and distant. He stood in the center of the parlor, his eyes cold and narrowed, pacing the small room like a caged tiger, crashing into the walls, reeling with every step. He'd issued order after order in a voice she didn't recognize, slurred and ugly. No one was to leave the property for any reason. The doors were to be locked and kept locked. Only Ian would answer the door, only Ian would speak to strangers. No mail would leave the asylum, not even Lara's letters to her parents, and no mail would be received.

Fergus had been sent on a mysterious mission; he'd left in the dark and not yet returned.

In an instant, everything at Lethe House had changed. The change had something to do with Selena, it was somehow her fault, but she couldn't understand what she'd done so wrong.

She'd tried to ask Ian, but he wouldn't look at her, wouldn't touch her. When their gazes happened to cross, he would look away quickly, but not before she noticed the pain in his eyes or the shaking in his hands.

He was out of control and it frightened her.

232 He talked about her all the time. Every sentence he uttered carried her name, only there was no softness in his tone, no love in his voice. When she took a step, or reached for the door, or looked out her window, he was there, screaming at her to get back, to get inside. It was as if the night in the garden were a dream, a twisted vision of intimacy created by her battered mind. The glorious world beyond the doors was suddenly closed to her, closed to all of them. Maeve and Lara and Andrew had immediately gone back to wearing gray, to whispering among themselves with downcast eyes and hushed, hurried voices. Selena moved to her window, all that was left to her of the world, and stared out. Another night was falling, creeping along the horizon in lengthening shadows. She had not been out all day. She felt restless and fidgety, bruised by her confinement. She didn't know what she had done to incur Ian's wrath, but she knew that she couldn't live this way. Perhaps he could survive in the dark, like some low, marshy forest plant, dwelling forever in the shadow of the ferns and the trees, but she could not. She was like the flowers that bloomed in the wide-open s.p.a.ces, the daffodils that splashed in a yellow cascade down the gra.s.sy hillsides. She needed the sunlight on her face. It wasn't enough to breathe the air in this house, she needed to feel it fluttering against her skirts, needed to soak in its salty scent. Straightening her spine, she plucked up her long skirt and went to her door, opening it slowly. It creaked and whined in the unnatural silence. Her heart sped up, antic.i.p.ation brought a smile to her lips. She crept down the shadowy hallway, past the closed door to Maeve's chamber, past the stairway that led to Ian's room. Down each creaking step, pausing, then moving slowly downward. At the wide, open foyer, she stopped, breath held, listening. 233 A low, droning murmur of conversation wafted from the parlor. Ian and Johann were arguing again. It was now or never. She wrenched open the front door and barreled outside, forcing herself not to laugh as she sped along the gravel path and through the nighttime forest. The beach welcomed her in a thousand little ways. Wispy purple clouds crawled across the twilight sky, casting a myriad of shifting, dancing shapes on the undulating sea. Tiny stones rattled in the breeze. The air smelled of seawater and pine and life. She hugged herself and twirled around, reveling in the freedom, then she walked to the edge of the cliff, staring down at the swirling, turbulent white-tipped waves below. The sea breathed and pulsed, drew back, then hurled itself against the black rock ledge. Spray splashed her face. All around her, flowers shivered in the cold night air, tossing their multicolored faces in the breeze. A low hedge of phlox crept out from the shadow of the forest, as if seeking the magnificent view for itself. "Selena!" Ian's angry voice broke through the silence. She stiffened and-slowly turned around. He stood at the edge of the forest, half-dressed. Black breeches hugged his long legs, and a white lawn shirt hung at an awkward angle over his naked chest. "What in the h.e.l.l are you doing?" There was a cold evenness to his voice that chilled her to the bone. "I needed to be outside." He surged toward her, his booted feet striding across the uneven layer of gray rock. When he reached her, he grabbed her by the upper arm and yanked her away from the ledge. Holding her in an iron, unforgiving grip, he half dragged her through the forest and back toward the house. At the lawn, he paused for a second, and she wrenched 234.

free. Her breath came in great, wheezing gasps. "I misunderstand what you are doing." "Get in the house."

Nervously she wet her lips. He stood there, tall and incredibly handsome, his gold hair glinting in the half-light, his eyes an almost incandescent blue. She longed to be what he wanted, to do what he asked, but she couldn't give up the sun. Not the sun. "No."

He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, but not before she'd seen a flash of raw pain. "Get inside."

Her instinct was to go to him, take his hand and kneel before him, drawing him down into the warm gra.s.s beside her. To touch his cheek and gaze into his eyes and ask him what he was scared of, but she dared not get so close to him.

She had seen something in him in the past day that frightened her. A desperation, an anger that was too close to the surface. He was like a wild animal, prepared to do anything, hurt anything, to be free.

And he looked at her differently as well. It broke her heart the way he looked at her, reminded her of the days when he'd seen nothing but a patient. Now he saw nothing but a possession, something to keep at all costs. Once again, he wasn't seeing her.

He lunged toward her, grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her close. "I'm trying to keep you safe, you little idiot. Don't fight me."

She gazed up at him. "I cannot be you, Ian."

"What do you mean?"

"I will not live in darkness to be safe."

"It's the only way, Selena."

"Then let me go now."

A wild fury flashed through his eyes and he yanked her close again. So close, she could feel how he was shaking, smell the alcohol on his breath. "Never," he hissed. "You're mine."

Selena stared up at Ian; suddenly he was a man she'd never seen before.

235.

He didn't want to love her. He wanted to own her.

The realization brought a wrenching sense of sadness and loss. "Do you remember that poem you read to me, 'The Lady of Shallot'?"

A little of the wildness left his gaze, and for a heartbreaking moment, he was her Ian again, seeing her, listening to her. "Yes."

"She was locked in a room, alone. She had but one rule to live by: She could not look down to Camelot.

Then she saw Lancelot and she was powerl.u.s.t not to look at him." Selena pressed up onto her toes, brushed the stubborn curtain of hair from his eyes. "I would have to look."

It was a long time before he answered. They stood there, touching and yet not touching, their gazes locked. In the depth of his blue eyes, she saw his uncertainty and his fear, and it called out to her, made her understand for the first time that life was unfair, and that love could hurt.

Lord, how it could hurt.

His hands slid down the length of her arms, and she shivered at the intimacy of the touch. "It killed her to look at him," he said softly.

"Yes," Selena said simply, knowing he saw the truth in her eyes. She, too, would die to see the world.

Just once.

"Jesus, Selena ..." He looked away from her. His sharp, patrician profile looked to be hewn from granite, hard and unforgiving. But she saw the tremble in his jaw. Instinctively she reached out, pressed her cold hand to his warm, stubble-coated cheek.

She applied a gentle pressure, forced him to look down at her. "Do not be so afraid, Ian. I am not."

"You aren't afraid of anything."

"You are wrong. I am afraid of losing you. And I am afraid that you will look at me again as you have looked at me in the past few days."

"And how is that?"