“I agree.” Esmé handed her a large bandage and Isabelle completed the work and the boy trotted off with a smile and a piece of some sweet that Esmé gave him for “not crying like an infant.”
Isabelle cleaned up the work area and did her best to estimate where everything went when not in use.
Esmé circled the room with her arms behind her back, which tested Isabelle’s pride to the limit. “Very good, Isabelle. You may stay for the rest of the day and then I will decide.”
“No, Mistress Healer,” Isabelle spoke firmly but with respect and thanked her years of experience. “You must decide now. I know that I am good at this work. You have the advantage of years more experience with the illnesses here, but I can give the islanders protection against illnesses that you know nothing about. We are evenly matched and could complement each other. I am willing. It is up to you.”
“All right.” The healer shrugged her shoulders, which made Isabelle feel that she had given an ultimatum where none was necessary, which meant that the healer still had the upper hand. The islanders’ health is why you are here. Isabelle pushed the prideful vanity out of her head.
Esmé might drink too much, be vain and greedy, but she was true to her word. By midafternoon they had treated another simple wound and talked to two pregnant women, girls really. They obviously had children young here.
By the time Esmé showed Isabelle to her cottage, “with two hours to rest before you sing,” they had established a cordial working relationship. Despite that, Isabelle doubted they would ever be friends.
It had been a very mundane afternoon. Her calling here might be to help the villagers, but Isabelle did not think they needed her medical expertise. They had excellent care in the Mistress Healer, and her ability as a midwife was impressive.
Isabelle hoped she would feel more useful when she began the inoculation program, though the chance of the children being exposed to measles and mumps was amazingly limited. According to Esmé, you could leave the island, but once a person did, he never came back. And any visitors who came from the hotel came in the evening and never saw anyone but the master and a few of the servants who lived at the castillo. Exposure to illness was limited but, remembering the boy’s bare feet, tetanus inoculations were essential.
Her cottage looked like the others, with the same palm-woven door and roof. Inside she found one large room with a very primitive bathroom and no way to cook anything. The room was loaded with boxes that she recognized as supplies she had sent from New Orleans.
In a little space, bumped out from the side of the cottage, was a sleeping alcove surrounded on three sides by walls. Small openings circled the room where the wall met the ceiling, a clever way to welcome a breeze and light and still maintain privacy.
The bed was freshly made. There was a curtain that could be pulled across the space during the day so the room looked more like a living room or a work space than a bedroom, or could be used at night for privacy.
As always, work had energized her all day, but as soon as she saw the bed, exhaustion enveloped her.
She would have fallen on the sheets fully clothed, if Esmé had not insisted she undress and put on the night-gown that hung on the hook nearest the bed. Isabelle complied, too tired to be embarrassed by her ridiculous bra and thong.
She was aware of Esmé putting her clothes on the hooks but was asleep before the healer left the cottage. Her sleep was spared nightmares, though the dream she did have, of Dushayne watching her bathe, left her feeling restless. It wasn’t hard to guess why.
“Mistress Nurse, the master wants you.”
She heard the voice and in her dream, it became very clear that the master wanted her. He pulled her from the water, laid her on the chaise lounge and began to dry her with one of the lengths of linen. His touch on her breasts, her stomach and between her legs made her writhe in her sleep, both frustrated and eager for more.
“Mistress Nurse.” The voice was closer and more urgent. “You must sing.”
Isabelle opened her eyes and saw Cortez’s worried eyes.
“You were moaning. Are you sick?”
“No, no. Just very tired.” Isabelle closed her eyes. It was not a lie. She wasn’t sick and she was tired.
“Yes, mistress. It’s late. I will be outside while you dress.”
Isabelle hurried into her clothes, determined never to call Sebastian Dushayne “master.” It was a demeaning, demoralizing title. It reminded her of everything awful about the way a man treated women and servants, as if he was superior by his very masculinity. It was an antiquated, outdated concept, everywhere but here in Sebastian Dushayne’s corner of the world.
She pushed open the palm door and fell into step beside Cortez. No matter what Sebastian Dushayne was called, she had promised Father Joubay that she would sing for him.
By the time she reached the street, her annoyance at the demands of Sebastian Dushayne had died. By the time she reached the door to the castillo, nerves made her legs shaky. By the time she reached the center of the castle courtyard, she prayed for help and inspiration.
Both came in the song she began to sing. The courtyard amplified her words, making her sound like a diva on a stage, and she relaxed enough to enjoy herself and think about the words as she sang them. “Be not afraid, I go before you always. Come follow me and I will give you life.”
As the words of the familiar hymn floated upward, Isabelle turned around and around, singing to the empty doors and windows that overlooked the courtyard, and then looked up to the heavens. The thin slice of a new moon lit its corner of the western sky and some planet sent a bold light out into the universe.
Isabelle loved the night sky and smiled as she came to the last of the hymn. That was when she saw Sebastian Dushayne, shadowed in one of the upper windows, lit from behind so that she could not read his expression. She tilted her head slightly, waiting for a comment. He did not move, but once again his body spoke for him. He looked wounded, as though her presence was more than he could bear.
Her heart sped to double time as the truth struck her.
Sebastian Dushayne is why I am here.
The realization came to her so suddenly and with such certainty, Isabelle had no doubt that this was a cosmic truth and not her ego.
It was this man who needed her, not the villagers. His dark presence was as powerful as the storm that had changed her life.
The curse. The dark shadow around him reminded Isabelle that she had completely forgotten to ask about it. Ask who, a boy or a healer who did not like her? Or Sebastian Dushayne.
As she thought his name, he left the window and disappeared into the darkness behind him.
Yes, he would just as soon keep the curse, whatever it was, a secret. Who knew how long she would have stared at the closed window if a voice had not distracted her?
“Dinner is ready. Mistress Esmé says you must eat.”
Isabelle’s stomach rumbled and she knew Esmé was right. She raised her eyes to the empty window, gave a deep bow and left, wondering if Father Joubay had known why Sebastian Dushayne needed her and had died before he could tell her.
Sebastian stepped back into the room, and slumped against the wall. The pain in his heart would have made him fear an apoplexy if it was possible for him to suffer from something so human. He closed his eyes and a kaleidoscope of pictures tumbled out of his mind as if his memory had been unlocked for the first time in two hundred years.
Sebastian saw his wife, his anger, her stubbornness, his insistence and the storm that took her life as she did her best to obey him and come home.
Those dreams, even daydreams, were nothing new. But the pain that came with them was as tortured as anything a sadistic man could devise. Rage, guilt, heartache drove him to his knees even as he remembered how much he had loved Angelique, how much he could not stand for them to be apart, how he wanted her sleeping beside him every night.