Chapter 245
Part 13. Homeward
"Where's Ines?"
"She's been asleep ever since the physician left. She asked for a sedative, so we gave her a little more than yesterday."
At Juana's answer, Luciano climbed the stairs with a troubled look.
It had already been more than ten days. Since he had found a couple of Escalante retainers and a bloodless Juana on Mercedes Street.
Literally, he hadn't found Ines at first. If Juana hadn't been a face so familiar to him since childhood, and if she hadn't been sitting there blankly, crying and drawing every passerby's gaze, he might never have found his sister collapsed in the road.
Startled as if struck on the head, Luciano had yanked the coach to a stop and jumped down, and it didn't take long to load the unconscious Ines into the Valeztena carriage. If he took her back to House Escalante, her condition would be relayed to the Duke and Duchess before Ines had any say in it, so he turned the knights back almost by force right there on the street. Even he, her own brother, could not immediately tell what had caused this.
"Shall I wake Lady Ines?"
"No. It's fine."
With their mother still planted at the Valeztena ducal residence, that was no better a choice than Escalante.
The refuge chosen instead was Luciano's villa at Mardel near Mendoza, the small estate they had inherited from their grandmother Belinda, where the siblings had gone in and out as very young children.
Grandmother had wished to leave this place to her granddaughter Ines, but Ines had brusquely declined as bothersome, and it was shoved off on Luciano. He too had thought it would be of little use, but as he grew up the place proved unexpectedly handy—chiefly because their mother Olga loathed setting foot in a house brimming with her mother-in-law's traces.
So when Ines first woke and asked where she was, and he answered "the Mardel villa," her reply—"Then I won't have to see Mother"—and the relief in it were only natural. The Duchess was the sort who, when a child fell ill, would practically try to smother them.
Luciano sat in the chair where Juana had kept vigil by the bed and looked in silence at his sleeping sister's face.
They still could not say what had caused her to faint suddenly in the street that afternoon, nor what had kept her laid low for days afterward.
"…Again they don't know the cause."
Luciano remembered that cursed illness that had gripped his sister for a full four years. He also remembered that it had never truly healed—only vanished one day without warning.
Only after the sudden disappearance of the illness did Ines, on seeing him, begin sometimes to muster a reluctant smile, and—though not warmly—to speak to him as if nothing much had been wrong. As if she were the girl of sixteen again. As it had been before she fell ill—when time had more or less ticked along.
Staring at his sister's neatly shut lids, Luciano swallowed a weary sigh. Ten days earlier, he had been nearly panic-stricken, terrified that at the sight of him she would scream and faint, or weep herself into collapse, as at sixteen.
It wasn't merely her hatred he feared; it was that it might be a portent of that nameless illness. Preventing a relapse mattered above all.
If that damned thing came back—
Luciano spread his large hands and pressed hard at his temples. It was a supposition he could hardly bear to let himself think. With that alone, everything of Ines would be shaken—from her very life to her marriage to Cárcel Escalante.
Most of the fits she'd suffered over those four years had led to strangled breathing; leave her alone for ten minutes with no one around, and if a fit struck without warning, she could very well die. Luciano remembered the few times he had slipped into that room only when she was limp as a corpse, and watched her claw her way back to life.
Since even breathing had been difficult when she saw him, if she looked at him during a fit she might truly let herself die. Even had his father not commanded him not to appear before his sister, Luciano would not have dared show himself before her when she crumpled.
What good would it have done, when she was losing her breath, to say he worried for her. Whenever death seemed to hover over Ines's face, Luciano fell into a dread that felt like déjà vu. He stood by the door for a long time until she began to breathe deliberately and deeply; only when her eyes would start to open did he flee the place.
He wanted to watch over her every day, but he could not. He wanted to be near her, even from very far away, even in the moments when her eyes were shut, but he could not. What if, even from afar, she happened to see him and trembled in terror—or, in anger, hurt herself. It was a blank, helpless time, with not a grain of a reason known.
Hatred was a sad thing, but fear for life made time go slower.
And only now had you finally been smiling.
With that girlish face he hadn't seen even in childhood, flushed cheeks hidden, speaking of that excellent husband of yours…
The face that had told her to come to Calstera for a little holiday had been very unfamiliar to him, and yet, strangely, not unfamiliar at all.
He remembered the awkward picture of her calmly urging him while her fingertips busied themselves, as if nervous. The voice that awkwardly spoke of going hunting with him; the eyes that—like his—softened in that instant.
"At least it won't be that."
It mustn't be.
The Peral physician who had half-pulled Ines from the mire had not hesitated to call it a madness. If House Escalante came to know as much—
The image of his sister from a few years ago, lying like this and panting with ragged laboring breaths, twisted the happy face of the woman who had worn a wreath and blushed; the Peral doctor's cold face bobbed up; the Crown Prince's ill-omened eyes gleamed like a snake.
'It was definitely a gunshot wound. I only caught a glimpse, but I know.'
"...Luciano?"
"You're awake?"
Only a couple of hours after falling asleep, Ines opened her eyes blankly and knit her brow as if her head ached. As Luciano poured water from the bedside pitcher Juana had left, he spoke.
"They said they increased your medicine. I was worried."
"I just wanted a nap, that's all."
Raising herself a little, Ines drank a bit as Luciano held the cup to her lips.
"I'm better now. Why are you here again?"
"I've no reason except to see how you are."
"What about the Empress and House Escalante?"
"Mother is making excuses. As ever."
"…What on earth did you tell Mother?"
"I said you might start having fits as before. She shut her mouth and agreed."
Laying her head back, she burst into a laugh.
"She always fretted someone might see me like that. She must have been quite content that I shut myself up in Pérez."
Luciano silently set the cup back on the table.
"You seem to have a bit of strength back. Can you say I'll be staying here awhile?"
"…'Staying here'?"
"I need to go to Calstera."
"In that condition."
"By now Cárcel will have returned to Calstera. So just lend me a horse."
He shot her, for once, a frankly displeased look. Ines, unconcerned, sat up again.
"It's still before noon; if I leave now, I want to arrive before evening. That's why I took the medicine and slept more in advance."
"If I hadn't come, you wouldn't even have told me."
"If I see Cárcel, I think I'll be all right."
"..."
"When I'm with him, I think I'll be all right. So…"
"Just take my carriage."
With a low sigh, Luciano smoothed back Ines's disordered hair. As if she'd expected as much, Ines slipped from the bed with a confident smile.
"¡Dios mío, señora!"
"Have you been well?"
"How can you appear so suddenly! And what is this pallor? And what are those ghastly things that have been arriving one after another lately?"
"I'm quite all right. Where's Cárcel?"
"He said what day he'd come, but there's no word yet."
Ines, unable to hide her immediate disappointment, still smiled as she slipped off her gloves and handed them to Arondra.
"Ah—Raúl is briefly out to El Tabeo just now. If he knew you'd returned, he'd run up Logroño Hill on his two feet to get back."
"I see."
"Your gifts have filled the two of your bedchamber, Lady Ines. There's hardly room to set a foot."
"I told them to send all but a few to the residence near headquarters."
"Was there some mix-up?"
Sure enough, no sooner had she entered the bedchamber than she called the servants with a sickened face. Arms tied with ribbons in every color soon left their chamber and headed for the residence by headquarters.
It was more like the room vomiting them up. Ines picked out only a few she wished to give to Cárcel at once, had them stowed in the second-floor storeroom, and at last, left alone, looked around the bedchamber.
'…Late at night a thunderous crash sounded from the second floor, and just as we reached the stairs a gunshot rang out.'
It looked as if nothing had happened, but everything had been changed—from the carpet underfoot to the curtains of a similar shade, even the bedding.
'It seems the intruder was forced over the terrace in a fierce struggle.'
Her gaze drifted slowly to the terrace.
'From the bed onward, there must have been a brawl; the chamber was a horrible mess with blood everywhere.'
And then back to the bed.
Dragged backward and falling, looking up—the moment of death flashed back: Anastasio's collar crossing her vision. The sensation of breath breaking off was chillingly vivid, and yet what gnawed at her mind was the trace of Cárcel Escalante she had searched for helplessly while lying on that bed.
Why had he not been there.
Had he been spending an ordinary day, not knowing she would die. Perhaps yearning for her from the field. Or else…
That he had already died.
'…Dreams started wrong no matter how I began them. In the end the child died… It was horrible and vivid. Standing like a ghost in the middle of a battlefield, I watched helplessly as my child died.'
Forcing out a blocked breath, Ines stepped onto the terrace. The thoughts would not stop. How many years later would it be. If she called it the future, then it was scarcely different from twenty-six, when she had put a gun to her mouth—time so little remained. If she called it another life she didn't know, it was nothing but horrific.
Even so, she would rather it be a thing of the past. If it had already gone by, if only nothing had happened to him, she would rather add only a terrible memory.
All the lives already gone had been terrible. And yet she had been able to forget. A woman who had died twice could hold Cárcel as if none of it had ever been.
If so, then even if, once more, her life had been terrible—
If only now far more time could be granted them…
"…But if that really was in the past, Cárcel."
Speaking into the wind, from which no answer would return, Ines whispered softly:
"Did you, even then, rent this little house to lure me, and tell me absurd lies?"
Let me hear the answer to this foolish question, she wanted. From him, whenever he was whom she did not know.
From the man who would not vanish in the future.
Cárcel did not return to Calstera the next day, nor the day after. It had already been five days past the ten he had told Arondra and Raúl it would take, and yet there was no word that should have come even sooner.
So Ines looked down, day after day, at the road that led back to the residence.
This small room tucked in a corner of the second floor—which must once have been used as a nursery by some officer couple who had lived here—was, because the residence was cramped, now being used to store the master couple's important effects.
By the window stood a small desk, just the size a slightly older child might have used. Ines had Kara tidy that spot alone, sat down, and sometimes read. From the rear of the residence where the main gate stood, only from here could one see the single road that climbed up between the Logroño residences, all the way down below.
Her eyes were mostly on that road—and sometimes on the book she was not really reading. At times she closed them to pray. By and large she felt a peace in which nothing much happened, but sometimes it felt as if fear had been etched into her veins. When the sun went down, she worried over his absence without ceasing.
It was not the first time that a pain of only a few days felt like scores. Nor was it the first time she imagined only a cliff waiting at the end of the waiting. She was sick to death of waiting. But she did not know how not to wait for him.
So it was, a few days later.
When she opened her eyes after her morning prayer, she saw him, like a mirage, riding back down on a black horse.
Sunlight sparked over his hair like the dream of the previous night.
Ines dropped her rosary without thinking. Standing up, she knocked the book—perfectly fine on the desk—down to the floor. But there was no time to notice anything.
She ran down to the first floor. She shoved aside both Raúl—aghast, wondering whether madam had taken leave of her senses—and the startled Arondra, barreling down the corridor to the front door.
Down the stairs she could already see the main gate standing open. He had come. Truly. Safe. Ines sprinted for the stables, all thought scattered.
Like a lie, there was the back of Cárcel tying up his horse. Cárcel. Cárcel Escalante. At last, Ines threw her arms around his back.