Mirror of My Soul (Nature of Desire 4)

Dearest Marguerite:

You’ve taught me a great deal about stillness. About the many things that can drift into your mind and heart when you shut down the barricades created by noise. Unexpected gifts of insight, revelation and wisdom.

I wanted to teach you about love. Thinking it would be an easy lesson, because you already know the basics. You’re right, it’s a miracle. There are those who desperately seek it like a drug, an answer to problems, an aching need they cannot describe. But you taught me that love is found in stillness. It is the space between objects. It’s the star you can’t see if you look directly at it in the night sky, but if you look away, look forward, you see it in your peripheral vision, beside you, watching over you. If you lie down on the earth it’s there, beneath you, cradling you.

You learned to create a stillness, a peace within yourself, doing it with a very select filter.

Together we found that love heals, it laughs, it cries, it feels. It is where truth begins and ends. It cannot be described or contained and it changes every moment. It has more faces and forms than we can count. Let me in, Marguerite. For once and for all, remove any and all filters between us.

Let me in to share it with you, experience it with you. In this lifetime and however many after we’re granted.

God is beyond our description, so we describe our ways of worshipping God instead. So it is with my love for you. I think of you sipping from a teacup, your pale blue eyes changing their expression every moment. I think of your tears on my neck, your trembling body in my arms. I think of you teaching me about tea, the importance of the rituals. Of you teaching a teenager how to be a woman. I think of your fury, like a storm goddess, taking you over the edge of that building, your hands reaching for that child as though she represented all that must be saved from the heartless evil in men’s hearts. You’re my angel, my tormentor, my woman, my love. I no longer draw breath without a part of you in the act. As I have said before, I will always be there for you, but now I want to take a chance and beg you to love me back, beautiful Mistress.

To always be there for me as well. For I know you can take care of my heart like no other.

Your Master and slave both.

Tyler

She folded it back up, held it against her heart, her eyes closed, head bowed over it.

Then a small smile crossed her face and she turned, looking toward Brendan.

“I’m ready. ”

She took his arm, felt the grip of his hand stay sure and steady over hers as he escorted her through the gardens, Gen and Chloe just ahead of them.

As they stepped into the arbor that would take them out of the garden, she could see down the slight incline to the wide expanse of lawn. Two hundred people in a wide crescent of white wooden folding chairs were arranged before a platform with a trellis.

Their altar, all of it decorated with flowers and framed by the spreading branches of the two live oaks. Her gaze sought the figure of her groom, but a movement to her left caught her attention.

There were two people waiting for her at this exit from the gardens and Brendan had turned her to be sure she saw them.

Natalie carried a basket of flower petals. She was dressed in lavender silk and gauze, a lovely wide-brimmed hat on her small head. Shyly, she stood before her mother, who was dressed in pale green with tasteful amethyst jewelry, both of them looking like the promise of spring.

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Natalie looked up at Marguerite, her brown eyes round. “You’re so beautiful, Miss M. Mister Tyler said you needed a flower girl. ”

He had given her perfection. Every gift she could ever want that was within a man’s power to give. Marguerite turned away, her hand going to her mouth as she saw Natalie’s mother step out from behind the child. Brendan touched her bare nape.

“Mistress?”

Just a murmured word and she nodded, acknowledging him, but the sobs had started and she couldn’t stop them, not even in respect of the painstaking time that Gen had put into her makeup. Fortunately it had been lightly applied since Gen had pronounced, “Good Lord, you have eyelashes as thick and pretty as a baby’s. ” She felt other hands then. Raising her head, she saw Tina touching her shoulder and Natalie now in front of her, holding on to a small handful of her dress. Chloe and Gen stood back a respectful step but their eyes were already brimming.

“God, where’s the photographer?” Chloe muttered, looking around, but Gen stayed her with a hand.

“Some moments you don’t forget,” she murmured.

“Oh, Marguerite. ” Tina wrapped her arms around her and Marguerite slipped her arms around her in return, feeling this new joy in reaching out. Touching, caring, letting pain go in the form of tears to wash it away and bring happiness, contentment. Natalie’s little arms wrapped around her legs and she reached down with her other arm, held her close. Cupping that precious head, the little skull she covered as they hit the side of the building.

“Please don’t cry on this wonderful day. I can’t bear knowing I gave you one moment of guilt or unhappiness. I was so awful to you, so awful. ” Tina raised her face and made a noise of protest as Marguerite shook her head, still unable to talk through her tears. “No, don’t you dare deny it. I help run a domestic abuse shelter, for God’s sake… And yet, when I saw her there that day, I couldn’t stop myself from blaming you and I knew— knew—what it is to run from someone. The damage they can wreak when all you’re trying to do is care for those around you. ”

“It doesn’t matter. Just…thank you. You’ve made this day so much more wonderful and I didn’t think it could get any more wonderful. ” Marguerite at last let her go and turned to find Brendan there with a handkerchief, which he carefully applied to her eyes for her, being her mirror. With a smile, he even dabbed at her running nose.

“You’re very handsome,” Natalie stated, studying him. “Miss M, you should marry both Mr. Tyler and him. ”

Brendan chuckled and pocketed his handkerchief as Marguerite found a smile for the child. She discovered it wasn’t so hard. In fact, it felt like the sun coming out after a cleansing rain. “But maybe he’s waiting for you to grow up so he can marry you. ”