Acts of Love (36 page)

They both knew the answer. He had been switching on lamps when she took off her riding cap and abruptly turned away. She knew how she looked: thin, gray, pinched. Like a wet mouse.

Luke turned her within his arms. “It doesn't matter. Don't you understand? I love you. What does the way you look have to do with that?”

Jessica met his eyes. She saw no revulsion in them, no pretense, no uncertainty. Just the tenderness she had seen earlier. And love. Within her, something let go. As if a dam had burst, warmth flowed through her and she put her arms around Luke, her body shaping itself to his. Pliant, suddenly free, she met him with a passion equal to his, one she had thought she would never know again.

But in fact she had never known this passion. What she felt for Luke was new to her, all-encompassing. She opened to him, and to the self she had tried to banish, with an intensity that made her draw back, her eyes wide.

“It's all right,” Luke murmured. “I can handle it if you can.”

She broke into laughter. “I'll try.”

“It takes practice. Years and years—”

She kissed him. If they talked about the future, they would ruin everything.

“Jessica,” Luke said, “if you don't want—”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Yes. I do.”

A quick breath escaped him and she knew he had feared that once again she would shut him out. Not now, she thought. Not today. Arms around each other, they went to her bedroom. Without her cane, her leg dragged, and for a brief moment, she tried to hold back. No man had seen her since the accident; no one had shared her bed. But Luke was helping her walk, and she wanted him—
Oh, I want him, I love him, whatever happens afterward, I want this now, please let it be all right, let him love me without second thoughts
—and so she stayed within his arm, letting him partially support her until they stood beside her bed.

Fog pressed against the windows, making the room seem like a cave as they undressed each other, letting their wet clothes fall to the floor. Jessica shivered; her skin was damp and cold. She pulled back the quilt as Luke turned on the lamp, and when they lay on the soft blanket he pulled the quilt over them. They lay quietly in each other's arms as Jessica's shivering subsided, and as they grew warm, their bodies began to shift, curve meeting curve, bone nestling within bone like the pieces of a puzzle coming perfectly into place. Everything happened so smoothly—Luke's mouth on her breast, her hand moving over his body in a long, searching caress, his body lying on hers, hers opening to receive him—that they flowed into each other as if they had become sound, weaving together into one pure note.

Jessica's body came to life. It had been both prison and prisoner for so long that the sudden rush of warmth and arousal burst the bonds she had forged and she felt her spirit soar. It was the exhilaration of freedom, of gathering in instead of pushing away, and for the first time in years she knew that what she was feeling was joy: something else, like love, that she had thought would never be hers again. And so she let everything go, the fears and angers of the past years, the tight control with which she had squelched her longings, the inward-turning, self-enclosed life of the recluse. She let it all go. For this moment, with this man, she was open to everything. And when she looked down, at her body beneath his, it was beautiful.

“My God, you are magnificent,” Luke murmured, moving inside her, feeling her draw him deeper and make him more completely a part of her. At first he had been afraid to hold her too tightly; her bones seemed so fragile, her body so thin and pale. But he discovered how strong she was, and how intense her passion, and in the midst of his love and delight in her, his relief that she had let herself come to him, and his first stirrings of hope for the future, he felt a great pity at the depth of her need. She had gone through too many solitary months, and her fears had seemed to ensure that they always would be that way. But they won't, Luke vowed. She will never be lonely again. And then her arms came around his shoulders as her hips rose powerfully to meet him, and his thoughts scattered before her wondrous sensuality: a radiance that made every feeling so vivid, every response so intense, it was as if everything were new, as if they were discovering lovemaking, and all that it could be, for the first time.

They lay together through that long, gray afternoon, Hope curled guardian-like in the doorway, the lamplight encircling the bed in gold. They made love with their mouths and their hands, in frenzied bursts of passion that left them stunned and breathless, and in languid movements that brought them slowly to a pitch they prolonged until they could not wait another moment, and came together in a rush of joy and exultation that was reflected in the wonder in their eyes. Their bodies wrapped around each other like vines that curve and twine together in sunlight and showers until they merge into one. They lost track of time and space; they were so close they breathed together, and whatever each desired the other understood so instinctively that it seemed this had always been theirs.

“It doesn't seem possible,” Luke said at some time in the afternoon. He was resting on one elbow, caressing Jessica's face. “I've been looking for you all my life and you were always there, so close to Constance, and because of that, close to me. Why didn't she tell me about you? About your letters?”

“You haven't asked that, all week,” Jessica murmured dreamily. She was languorous and content; there was nothing more she wanted than this moment, this afternoon, this man.

“I wondered about it, but I suppose I thought it was one more of her minor eccentricities. But it doesn't really make sense. Does it to you?”

“She thought it made sense.”

Luke's hand stopped moving. “You know why she didn't tell me?”

“We talked about it one time when I was in Italy.” She looked up at him. “Don't frown, Luke. It makes you look like a medieval monk.”

“You can think of me as a monk, after this afternoon?”

She laughed, a long, happy laugh. “No, how could I? Well, then, it makes you look like a Renaissance conspirator.”

“Much better; it's nicely colorful. Why didn't Constance talk to me about you?”

“Because she wanted us to be together. Married.”

Luke gazed at her. “If you wanted that for two people, you'd talk about them to each other.”

“Not if you'd already tried to keep your grandson from marrying one woman and he'd told you that you weren't an expert in marriage and didn't know anything about the facts.”

He frowned, then quickly smoothed it away. “You know too much about me.”

“Look who's talking.”

“Well. That's true. But, my God, Constance and I had that talk a long time ago.”

“Yes, but it seems there were other times, and each time you told her, not too politely, that you'd find your own women. And do you remember the time, after your divorce, when Constance said you'd been angry at her for years for not marrying and giving you a father? That made you angry, too. After all that, she was sure that if she pushed me as a candidate for marriage you wouldn't even consider it. You'd tell her again that she wasn't the one to give advice, that you'd do your own searching.”

Luke was silent. “She was probably right,” he said at last. “I didn't shut her out as often as I did other people, but once in a while I did turn on her and tell her to leave me alone. Once, maybe more than once, she called me rigid. Others called me cold. You called me that, after we met at one of your opening night parties. And you were right.”

“Have you changed?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“How?”

“Partly your letters. They made me see myself through your eyes. And Constance's illness, her move to Italy. I began to realize that she'd die someday—it's amazing how we ignore that fact until it hits us between the eyes—and I'd be alone. There was no one I loved besides her.” He was silent. “But she should have talked to me about you, if she really wanted us to be together. You're sure she really wanted that?”

“Would you bring me the box of her letters?”

Luke went to the living room and brought back the inlaid box. Jessica sat up, reaching for a silk robe beside the bed and pulled it around her shoulders against the chill in the room. She took the box and walked her fingers across the tops of the folded letters crammed inside. The box, identical inside and out to the one in his library at home, gave Luke a sudden feeling of dislocation, as if he were in both places at once. And with that, he knew with brutal certainty how incompatible Lopez and New York were, and that Jessica would not easily consent to come back with him. “Jessica, I want to talk about—”

“Here,” she said. She opened a letter and handed it to Luke.

Jessica, my dear, this will be short because I have so little energy. I've thought of dictating my letters to you, and that may come, but not yet. I like to think I can fend off those dramatic changes that all point to death. Luke left a little while ago; we had a lovely visit. He's lonely and, much of the time, angry as well, but I can't guide him to happiness, or even presume that I know which path would lead him there. I think he would be happy with you, and you with him, but I will not propel him toward you with one of those infuriating shoves mothers in Victorian novels always give their sons and daughters. I'm leaving it to you, dear Jessica. Please find a way to him; give my dream a chance. If it works, the two of you will drink a toast to my memory and my foresight. If not, you'll have lost no more than the time it takes to dine together a few times. Oh, my dearest Jessica, you've been my child and my dearest friend for so long; I sit in my library at night and picture you and Luke, hand in hand, and it gives me great joy. I'm not at all ready to die— damnation, I want to see the two of you together!—but this is one role I cannot manipulate. I have not destroyed your letters as you once asked me to do because I'm sure that Luke—my wonderful inquisitive Luke—will read them and then perhaps he will be the one to find you. Dear, dear Jessica, take care of yourself and ensnare my grandson. He needs you. And I think you need him. And I will send you, from very far away, my blessings. I love you. Constance.

Jessica was crying. “That was the last letter I ever had from her.” She touched the tears that were on Luke's cheeks. “I let her down, you know, and I can't forget that. She wrote to me, asking me to come to her. She said she missed me and thought I missed her—oh, and she was right!—and that we needed to be together. And she begged me to come. But I couldn't let her see what had happened to me, especially after all the letters I'd written  . . . all those fantasies.”

“She wouldn't have cared, any more than I do.”

“She would have worried about me. Fretted over what I would do. She would have wanted to call people, write letters,
push
people to be kind to me. I couldn't stand that.”

“But she was dying and wanted to be with you.”

“I know.” Her words were almost inaudible. “I should have gone. I kept thinking I might—someday. But then I read that she'd died and all I could think was that I should have been with her; I might even have been with her when she died. I can't stop thinking about that.”

“And you didn't come to ensnare me, either.”

She smiled faintly. “It was too late.”

Luke slipped the robe off her shoulders and took her into his arms and kissed her. Their mouths opened together, their tongues met, and somehow all the unsaid words that had haunted them—between Luke and Constance, between Constance and Jessica—were put to rest as they held each other and drew each other in. “As if she's watching us,” Luke murmured, “and finding a way to take credit for it.”

Jessica smiled. “But she'd be right. She left my letters for you and you did exactly what she thought you would do. Inquisitive Luke.”

“And a good thing.” He drew her down so that they lay side by side, looking at each other, and then desire engulfed them and they came together with a new fervor and longing, as if now they believed that this was meant to be and that all the lost years could be made up.

Luke's mouth was on Jessica's breast, his hand searching out the places in her body that turned molten beneath his fingers, and as her breath came faster she slid down to take him into her mouth. She heard his gasp of pleasure and delighted in that, in what she could do for him, and looked up to smile at him. In a little while he moved as if to come on top of her, but she shook her head. “My turn.” She lay on top of him, clasping him with her thighs and bringing him inside her, moving slowly, then faster, then very slowly, as their eyes met and held and they smiled together and she felt the sexual power that they gained from each other, and a new kind of exhilaration, that they had found this, too: the giving and exchanging of pleasure that came not from greed, but from love.

“I love you,” Luke said when they lay side by side again. Night had come, and the black windows reflected their illuminated bed. “You're everything I fell in love with, and so much more. Beyond imagining.”

Jessica shook her head. “You fell in love with a creature you imagined. You didn't know me from my letters.”

“I knew a voice and an intelligence. I was only missing the rest of you.”

She smiled. “Quite a bit. And even now . . .”

“I know. But we have years to fill in the gaps. A lifetime.”

Jessica grew very still. “You're talking about New York.”

“Not now,” he said quickly. “We have to talk about it—you know that—but not tonight. We've torn tonight out of time. Out of the clock, out of the calendar. It exists by itself, and nothing can touch it.”

“Oh, what a fairy tale,” Jessica said softly, but she did not try to contradict him.

Sometime later, she once again pulled on her silk robe, and Luke took his from his suitcase, and they went to the kitchen where, quietly, with a harmony gained from their week together, they made a dinner of fresh fish they had brought from Orcas, and potatoes and snow peas from Jessica's garden. They talked about Orcas as they ate. “I'd like to go back to climb Mount Constitution,” Luke said, to which Jessica made no reply, because she could never climb it and it was one more reminder of all the things they would never do together. Luke, cursing himself, changed the subject and they talked about Robert and Chris at the Inn at Swifts Bay, and Jessica recounted the few stories she knew about people on the island. They already had a store of shared experiences, the kind that could become the foundation of a life together, but Jessica knew that it was not a foundation they were building, but a collection of memories.