“Yes, I was very pleased that Mistress Esmé was so receptive to the idea.”
“I’m sure she was.”
At his cynical tone, Isabelle slowed and looked at him. “Why do you say it that way?”
“Isabelle, my sweet, I never left word that you should be turned away from the castillo.”
Now she stopped walking completely. “You didn’t? But then why would they tell me to leave?” She had a niggling feeling she knew the answer.
“You know why. Because Esmé does not want us to be together. I can guess that she told the gatekeeper to send you away. She is keeping you busy and me distracted.”
“Then you are entertaining privately?” Isabelle did not want to sound coy, but it was such a gentle way to ask if he was having sex with someone else.
“Every night,” he said with rueful nod. “Esmé has a long and deep connection with the concierge at the hotel. The woman on the desk is her cousin and the man is her grandson. They are always on the lookout for guests who suit my taste.”
Isabelle tried not to show her disgust.
He laughed. “Your striving for sainthood is as amusing as it is obvious. Make up your mind, Isabelle. You can be a saint or a woman. Not both.”
“Then you do not understand faith or God at all.”
“Oh, it will be a joy to have you educate me.”
“Yes, it will.” Isabelle had never once heard him use the word “joy.” It was the smallest, tiniest step in the right direction.
“Come tonight, Isabelle.”
“Yes, I will.”
Sebastian watched her leave. Her joie de vivre was endearing. Her honesty amazing and amusing. He was not in a hurry to have sex with her. The dance they were sharing was so much less predictable than what happened in bed.
By the time he visited all the villagers, the noon bell rang for the midday meal, as he was walking through the castle gate. While he had no need for food, he did like the afternoon rest that was a part of island life. He would sleep a little and then head to the beach for his time with the children.
While he dozed, Joubay came to him, sitting beside him on the huge rock that was the shadiest spot on the west-facing beach. They did not look at each other, but watched a sailboat approach, both of them afraid, both of them pretending they were not.
“So Esmé is up to her old tricks,” Joubay began.
Sebastian had not heard his voice in two hundred years but recognized the gravelly sound that came from too much tobacco.
“Doing her best to keep Isabelle Reynaud away from me.” Sebastian threw a rock into the water gently slapping the outcropping beneath their feet. “Does the healer actually think the girl is a threat to the curse?”
“Yes, I do believe so.”
“There could never be another as pure of heart, as generous, as compliant as Angelique was.” He felt the breeze stiffen and the fear became dread. “My love for her caused her death and I deserve every year of this curse. It is not all bad, you know.”
“Nonsense. You cannot lie to me. Sex is an endless seeking for what is lost. You know as well as I do that sex alone is not the answer.”
“Don’t preach to me. You have not been celibate for two hundred years.”
“For more of it than you think. The difference between us is that I knew it was not the answer.” Joubay raised his head as the breeze became a wind and the first of the clouds crept up from the west. “And I had faith that I could find redemption. I have, and I am at rest at last. Need I remind you that Isabelle was the key?”
“I am not going to watch this again, Joubay.” The sky was darkening. Sebastian could feel the rain in the air.
“Then wake up and stop torturing yourself.” Joubay had to shout now as the wind whipped around them. “Sebastian, give the woman what she gives to you and see what happens. It cannot hurt more than you are hurting now.”
Sebastian woke up to the sound of something crashing to the floor and the muffled curse of a servant. Standing up, he shook off the last of the dream and readied himself for an afternoon with the only true innocents on the island.
Eight
The children always refreshed Sebastian in body and spirit. Their teacher was a truly gifted woman, and they had learned from the first that sharing was its own reward. The one little blind girl never lacked for someone to help her down the walkways or to read her the arithmetic problems.
By the time dusk settled on the castillo, he had rinsed off the salt and sand and dressed, ready for his next guest. Sitting in the chair near the fireplace with the smallest of fires, totally unnecessary but very comforting, Sebastian thought about what Joubay had said in his dream. Or it could be that some of the children’s innocence touched his heart. Before he could decide, he heard Isabelle’s voice and walked to the door and out onto the passage that overlooked the inner bailey.
“I will come to you when you need me. I will free you from all your fear. All you must do is accept me and believe that I am always near.”
He felt wet on his hand and brushed another tear from his face. As she finished the song, the words that touched him echoed through his head. “I will free you from all your fear. All you must do is accept me.”
No one had ever named it “fear” before. Sebastian realized that he had not even thought of it that way until the moment the words were out of Isabelle’s mouth.
Fear. He was afraid, afraid of a hundred things.
Afraid that if he loved again, he would die. Not that death frightened him, but it would mean that there was so much that he would never have a chance to do.
He would like a chance to give back to more than his island home. To see the world denied him for so long. To meet men and women like his villagers. People who thought more of others than of themselves.
Fear hounded him. Fear that he did not know how to love. Love was as imperfect as the lover. His way of loving had cost Angelique her life. Was the fear of losing another lover what had kept him from finding someone in two hundred years? He’d never been able to decide if that was part of the curse or his own failing.
The biggest fear of all was that Isabelle would die if he even tried to love again. He put his head in his hand and let the tears fall. Fear weakened him so completely that Sebastian put his head in his hands and cried like a child.
Isabelle left the castillo, annoyed that the master had not shown himself when she had finished her song. He took time to encourage everyone else in the world, everyone but her.
She searched out the spot she called her own, a small grove of very old palms that had the feel of a holy place. She sat on one of the stumps and wished for someone to talk to.
The palms clacked in the light evening breeze. Isabelle did not think that was a divine message. No more than the surf or the sound of the night was. But it did inspire her to sit in silence, and lift her heart in prayer, to be part of nature as nature was part of her. She tried to convince herself that she was not lonely.
An amazingly bright shooting star lit the sky and Isabelle laughed. “Yes, I know I have only to speak from my heart and I am heard. I know some hymn that teaches that truth. But at this particular moment I would like someone to talk with.”
“You could talk to me, Isabelle.” Sebastian emerged from the shadows and sat across from her on the trunk of a palm tree that had fallen in some storm ages ago.
“Where were you tonight?” she asked with an edge to her voice.
“You sang ‘Be Still and Know I Am Here.’ Doesn’t that apply to you too?”
“Yes,” she said, which showed how good she was at preaching but not at living what she preached. “It’s one thing to say the words and another to live them.”
“It took me a while to deal with my fear.”
“What fear?”