The Warlock's Daughter by Jennifer Blake

Author:Jennifer Blake [Jennifer Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Steel Magnolia Press
Published: 2011-11-03T13:00:00+00:00

Her voice, calm, reflective, picked up the lines.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone.

“Poe, of course,” she said. “And yes. Yes, that's the way it was.”

The tragedy of being different through no fault of her own was plain in her voice. Behind it, Renfrey suspected, were a hundred small slights, a thousand sneers and slurs. He wished that he could take them from her. He wished that he could change the circumstances of her life, could force open all the closed little minds around her and cause tolerance to be the accepted standard for daily existence.

It was impossible. “And now?” he asked, his voice rigorously impassive.

The cat, attuned to the undercurrents Renfrey would not permit to sound, came alert and stared at him. He reached to take the animal, to smooth its fur in reassurance then set it on the sidewalk. It followed them, lightly stepping, watching the shadows.

“And now,” Carita was saying in answer, “there are times when I enjoy who I am.” She paused, went on with the strained ache of yearning in her voice. “And there are others when I would give the world and all there is in it to be someone else, anyone else.”

He stopped. “I expect that will always be the way of it, and for that I have no remedy. But for the rest—”

“Yes?” Halting beside him, Carita looked up inquiringly into his face. His expression was serious, his eyes shaded with compassion. He moved not a muscle, yet there crept slowly in upon her a sense of encompassment, as if she were being gathered into a close embrace. The hold was warm, strong, yet without constriction. It offered consolation and, most of all, abiding understanding.

Tears rose inside her— the tears that spring up because of sympathy freely offered, help and comfort given without expectation of return. She had not known she needed those things, yet accepted them now with gratitude. A frisson of relaxation moved over her, and she shivered with it while she accepted his mental support, savored his nearness, the enfolding solace. Standing perfectly still, she yet eased more fully against him in her mind, resting her head upon the firm strength of his chest. He did not move, yet his arms closed around her.

It was total accord, passionless, generous, infinite. Until the warmth became a steady heat. Until the shivering drove deep. Until the closeness became a delicate blending of spirits, the instinctive merging of nerves and imaginations, responses and minds. Until the pleasure of it rippled through them and caught them, unprepared, with its splendor.

Carita almost retreated a step, but caught herself. That would do no good; she knew it now, as she had suspected from the moment she faced this man across the fire in the cemetery. As she had surmised when she accepted from him an unbroken vase which she knew had been shattered. As her aunt must have guessed.

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