Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

Ah, but she loved its tiny fingers. She loved its lace stockings and its silk petticoats, very old, very faded, apt to tear at her touch.

Ash stood very still, looking down at her, face rested, almost annoyingly handsome, streaked hair brushed to a luster, hands a little steeple beneath his lips. His suit was white silk today, very baggy, fashionable, probably Italian, she honestly didn't know. The shirt was black silk, and the tie white. Rather like a decorative rendition of a gangster, a tall, willowy man of mystery, with enormous gold cuff links, and preposterously beautiful black-and-white wing-tip shoes.

"What does the doll make you feel?" he asked innocently, as if he really wanted to know.

"It has virtue to it," she whispered, frightened of her voice being louder than his. She placed it in his hands.

"Virtue," he repeated. He turned the doll and looked at her, and made a few very quick and natural gestures of grooming her, moving her hair, adjusting the ruffles of her dress. And then he lifted her and tenderly kissed her and lowered her slowly, gazing down at her again. "Virtue," he said. He looked at Rowan. "But what does it make you feel?"

"Sad," she said, and turned away, placing her hand on the case beside her, looking at the German doll, infinitely more natural, sitting inside in a small wooden chair. MEIN LEIBLING, said the card. She was far less decorative and overdone. She was not the coquette of anyone's imagination, yet she was radiant, and as perfect as the Bru in her own way.

"Sad?" he asked.

"Sad for a kind of femininity that I've lost or never had. I don't regret it, but the feeling is sadness, sadness for something perhaps I dreamed about when I was young. I don't know."

And then, looking at him again, she said, "I can have no more children. And my children were monsters to me. And my children are buried together beneath a tree."

He nodded. His face was very eloquent of sympathy, so he said not a word.

There were other things she wanted to say--that she had not guessed there was such craft or beauty in the realm of dolls, that she had not guessed they could be so interesting to look at, or that they were so different, one from the other, that they had such a frank and simple charm.

But beneath these thoughts, running deep in the coldest place in her heart, she was thinking, Their beauty is sad beauty, and I don't know why, and so is yours.

She felt suddenly that if he were to kiss her now, if he were so inclined, she would yield very easily, that her love for Michael wouldn't stop her from yielding, and she hoped and prayed that there was no such thought in his mind.

Indeed, she wasn't going to allow time for it. She folded her arms and walked past him into a new and unexplored area, where the German dolls ruled. Here were laughing and pouting children, homely little girls in cotton frocks. But she didn't see the exhibits now. She couldn't stop thinking that he was just behind her, watching her. She could feel his observation, hear the faint sound of his breath.

Finally, she looked back. His eyes surprised her. They were too charged with emotion, too full of obvious conflict, and very little if any struggle to hide it from her.

If you do this, Rowan, she thought, you will lose Michael forever. And slowly she lowered her gaze and walked softly, slowly away.

"It's a magical place," she said over her shoulder. "But I'm so eager to talk to you, to hear your story, I could savor it more truly at another time."

"Yes, of course, and Michael's awake now, and Michael should be almost finished with breakfast. Why don't we go up? I am ready for the agony. I am ready for the strange pleasure of recounting it all."

She watched as he set the big French doll back in her glass cabinet. And once again his thin fingers made quick, busy gestures to groom her hair and her skirts. Then he pressed a kiss to his fingers and gave this to the doll. And he shut the glass and turned the small golden key, which he then put away.

"You are my friends," he said, turning to face Rowan. He reached past her and pressed the button for the tower. "I think I am coming to love you. A dangerous thing."

"I don't want it to be dangerous," she said. "I'm too deep under your spell to want our knowledge of each other to wound or disappoint. But tell me, as to the present state of things, do you love us both?"

"Oh yes," he said, "or I would beg you on bended knee to let me make love to you." His voice fell to a whisper. "I would follow you to the ends of the earth."

She turned away, stepping into the elevator, her face hot and her mind swimming for the moment. She saw one grand flash of the dolls in their finery before the doors slid shut.

"I'm sorry that I told you this," he whispered timidly. "It was a dishonest thing to do, to tell you and to deny it, it was wrong."

She nodded. "I forgive you," she whispered. "I'm too ... too flattered. Isn't that the right word?"

"No, 'intrigued' is the word you want," he said. "Or 'tantalized,' but you're not really flattered. And you love him so wholeheartedly that I feel the fire of it when I'm with you. I want it. I want your light to shine on me. I should never have said those words."

She didn't answer. If she'd thought of an answer, she might have said it, but nothing really came to her mind. Except that she couldn't imagine being severed from Ash right now, and she didn't think that Michael could, either. In a way, it seemed that Michael needed Ash more than she did, though Michael and she had not had a moment, really, to talk of these things.

When the doors opened, she found herself in a large living room, with the floor tiled in rose-and cream-colored marbles, with the same kind of large, snug leather furnishings that had been on the plane. These chairs were softer, larger, yet remarkably similar, as if designed for comfort.

And once again, they gathered around a table, only this time it was very low, and set out with a dozen or more little offerings of cheeses and nuts and fruits and breads that they might eat as the hours passed.

A tall, cold glass of water was all she required just now.

Michael, his horn-rimmed glasses on, and wearing a battered tweed Norfolk jacket, sat bent over the day's New York Times.

Only when they were both seated did he tear himself away, fold the paper neatly, and put it to the side.

She didn't want him to take off the glasses. They were too appealing to her. And it struck her, suddenly, making her smile, that she rather liked having these two men with her, one on either side.

Vague fantasies of a menage a trois flitted through her mind, but such things, as far as she knew, never really worked, and she could not imagine Michael either tolerating it or participating in it in any way. Sweeter, really, to think of things precisely the way they were.

You have another chance with Michael, she thought. You know you do, no matter what he may think. Don't throw away the only love that's ever really mattered to you. Be old enough and patient enough for kinds of love, seasons of it, be quiet in your soul so that when happiness comes again, if it ever does, you will know.

Michael had put away his glasses. He'd sat back, his ankle on his knee.

Ash had also relaxed into his chair.

We are the triangle, she thought, and I am the only one with bare knees, and feet tucked to the side as if I have something to conceal.

That made her laugh. The smell of the coffee distracted her. She realized the pot and cup were right in front of her, easy to reach.

But Ash reached to pour for her before she could do it, and he put the cup in her hand. He sat at her right, closer to her than he'd been in the plane. They were all closer. And it was the equilateral triangle again.

"Let me just talk to you," Ash said suddenly. He'd made his fingers into the little steeple again and was pushing at his lower lip. There came the tiny scowl to the very inside tips of his eyebrows, and then it melted, and the voice went on, a bit sad. "This is hard for me, very hard, but I want to do it."

"I realized that," said Michael. "But why do you want to do it? Oh, I'm dying to hear your story, but why is it worth the pain?"