Chapter 249
Whatever had been going on in his head, from start to finish it was baffling and absurd to Ines. At some point, Cárcel was already moving away toward the bath.
That is, at the instant her lips were about to touch him below, he had gently removed her… She hadn't even registered it then; his hands cradling her face had felt too precious. Even when he collapsed to his knees facing her, she didn't fully grasp it.
She'd simply assumed he wanted to kiss. Cárcel Escalante loved smacking kisses without rhyme or reason, and he never seemed to look out for his own interests. Right. Add those two together and you could get a foolish man who, more than having the woman he adores take him in her mouth, desperately wants to make little kissing sounds all over her face. A man like Cárcel.
To be frank, she also rather liked the sight of him naked, kneeling…
But the lips she expected to descend on hers landed only on her forehead, and then he—the foolish Escalante—
Ines stared at the closed door and tried to make sense of the sudden spill of tears from him. Crying? Why on earth? What do you have to cry about—when I'm here? When I came to you…? For a moment the "big present" Ines thought so haughtily, then quickly lost her confidence.
What if I wasn't a present at all…
By no means did it look like tears of awe and gratitude. Nor did it feel like guilt.
Naked, with a weapon-like arousal still fierce, kneeling with a strangely devout air and looking at her—it was the first time since his return that he had looked at her without avoiding her eyes.
Half of why that sight didn't seem ridiculous was his face and body; the other half was because she, if anything, was more inflamed. When she had turned him to show the bared back like a penitent and bent him over the console, she had thought she couldn't possibly be more excited. The same when she reached forward and stroked him; the same when, uncharacteristically, he swallowed his groans and, as if enduring some great trial, held to a foolish stubbornness.
Then, shedding only those desolate tears, he suddenly put on a robe.
While Ines stood nonplussed, he drew her up by the hand and led her to the other console where there was water set out. The hand dirtied from toying with him was carefully washed and dried. In the midst of that extreme tenderness, he met her gaze smoothly—as if he had never avoided it. Then he said,
"It looks like the water's ready."
Why would that… As she stared, wide-eyed, he added,
"I'll wash and come out. Go on down and rest, Ines."
Ines—truly stupidly—just watched him go.
Perhaps from the moment he met her gaze again and smiled the way he always did. That face was the one she wanted most to see… She was only struck speechless for a moment, and suddenly she was alone.
"…Did I just get refused?"
He'd even gotten hard, saying he was all for it… She had even offered to use her mouth—as if bewitched, without knowing what possessed her—and knelt before a fully undressed Cárcel Escalante. Compared to all the things he always did for her, it wasn't something she couldn't do once in a while. Strangely, she felt not the slightest aversion with him.
And yet she had dreaded it so much.
Ines recalled the words she had once screamed like a madwoman when she reached the cliff edge where she had recited prayers so many times that in the end she couldn't even remember how to pray.
This sort of thing is nothing, it's no big deal. It has no effect on me. It never even happened…
If it were merely a numb legacy from those days of forcing the thought, she wouldn't be this angry now at being kept from doing something that would have been good for him. The loss belongs to that ungrateful dog…
She kept wanting to force Cárcel to his knees—the way he felt oddly as if he were on the other side of a wall, the way he dared avoid her eyes. She wanted him quickly back to how he had been, to see him crumple into a smile toward her. To make him kneel, she would even kneel first for a different reason—hounding him to his limit… Ines couldn't believe how, like a child whose treat had been snatched away, she had been briefly dazed. Nor could she believe that now he really was beyond a literal wall.
Whether it was her combative temperament tipping into sheer stubbornness, or whether his uncharacteristically passive, modest bearing had birthed some perverse streak in her, she couldn't say.
Unslaked desire and anxiety jostled through her head. Why is he like that? Did he hit his head wrong and that's why? He's not in his right mind. Maybe he's hurt and exhausted. Because he's in pain. Well, his complexion…
Through the constant confusion, cool rebuttals slipped in one by one. For someone out of his mind, his eyes are too clear. For someone who would have turned Calstera and Mendoza back and forth without sleeping just to see my face a moment, he wouldn't be keeping his distance because he's tired. As for his complexion—I'd have to see his face again to judge.
Ines gazed at the closed door. Again—she needed to see him again.
Come to think of it, this had never been something he particularly liked. It wasn't that he didn't get aroused; it was that he never seemed to welcome that arousal—something oddly off about it. She should have stopped at teasing him with her hand… Ines, dead serious, regretted it and finally buried her face.
…How did you get hurt?
Her anxiety hopped any which way. She found herself biting her nails, then bit her lip hard. She barely felt the pain. His body was still large, but he looked, subtly, a bit thinned. Had he perhaps lain ill alone somewhere on the way?
At last she couldn't resist the impulse; she tiptoed to the bath. Unlike in Mendoza, their bedroom here was narrow; she crossed it quickly and, standing at the door, drew a breath and tried the knob.
"…"
Only her hand moved.
Ines grabbed the knob again in disbelief, but the door, firmly locked, did not budge.
"…Don't tell me you locked it so I wouldn't come in?"
Just murmuring it made anger flare up; she blew out a huffing breath, as if she had never worried over him so plaintively.
"Are you treating me like some molester, or what?"
Unbelievable.
Cárcel Escalante, who would be beside himself with delighted embarrassment at the honor of bathing together if she suggested it—how dare he now.
"Escalante."
She called out, but with water splashing loudly inside he didn't hear her at all.
She didn't mean to roll around in the water with him, nor to tease him as earlier—just to look at his face one more time. She hadn't seen it properly. The time she had met his eyes had been far too short. She only meant to check his complexion again.
Do you know how much I wanted to see you.
How do you think I am here, like this… Until you came back—how much I… How long I looked down that empty hill road you weren't returning along…
Seething anger flared like a brushfire, then died the moment she recalled that pale face. Strictly speaking, she herself killed it.
Ines dwelt on the feel of him holding her tight in the stable, the breath with which he kissed her hand and recited a soundless prayer in desperate bursts.
That had been real. The awe, the joy.
Then what meaning did a moment of defiance have? She sat on the bed and, putting on a show of calm, opened the book she had been reading before sleep these past nights. She kept her body turned toward the bath.
Unlike her calmed heart, her eyes couldn't make it even half a page; they wandered over the print. It was the same book that had sat at the same place for days.
So, while the sound of running water came from the bath, Ines reread the same page over and over and then, slowly, lay down. She could do nothing about the way darkness stole over her vision.
Her body, fully relaxed, softened. Now that he had at least come home, it felt only natural.
She didn't know how long she slept; evening had long since fallen. Ines realized her body, which had been sprawled on her side any which way, had been laid straight. She sprang up, recalling in succession the sight of him on the road home she'd seen through the window; she wondered if all of it—from that scene to the way he disappeared into the bath—had been a brief dream.
She rushed out of the bedroom into a dark corridor; a slant of light from the study showed through. Raul usually tidied the shelves Ines had disordered in the early afternoons. No one but her used the place in the residence. Without thinking, she turned her steps away from the stairs.
Pushing open the study door, which was almost closed with only a small gap left, she saw Cárcel sitting lean against her desk. Before she could even feel relief that his return wasn't a dream, the sight of him holding the Scripture raised a question.
Cárcel Escalante—with a book…
Now her gaze, genuinely full of concern, swept his face. He was so absorbed that he didn't even notice her presence with that animal sense of his.
What if he really had struck his head badly and still hadn't recovered.
"…Where's Captain Maso?"
At her question, Cárcel looked up in surprise; the instant their eyes met, he smiled gently.
"He's already been and gone. Redid the treatment, too."
"I didn't see him."
"You could've slept more. You still can."
"No. I'm going to look at you."
"…"
"You keep reading what you were reading."
His soft smile creaked and slipped away. It was the sort of thing he clearly hadn't expected—but when Ines did the unexpected, he usually clapped and called it amazing or unbearably cute; he didn't look creaky-eyed like this.
At her words, he looked down a little awkwardly at the Scripture; Ines stared at him, then brushed his hair back and stroked over the bandage.
"…Does it hurt a lot?"
"No."
"Then why won't you show me?"
"Because it looks ugly."
"A few marks won't make you ugly."
Cárcel only smiled.
"Can I unwrap it?"
"If you can wrap it again just like this."
"I don't think I can."
Giving up easily, Ines leaned in at his side and glanced at the page.
"'For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.'"
(Ecc 3:1) To every {thing there is} a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
Her gaze was moving to the next verse when Cárcel bent toward her and kissed her carefully. His large body tilted, and his straight, handsome face filled her view.
"When you're reading Scripture, I don't interrupt."
"I can. Why shouldn't I, in my own library."
"Right. Of course."
He laughed low, kissed her once more, and shut the Scripture with a crisp snap.
"When should we go to Mendoza?"
"Do we have to?"
Even as she asked back, Ines thought she sounded like a child. But Cárcel nodded as if it were only natural.
"If you don't want to go, we'll put it off as much as possible. To the very end."
"I don't want to go alone."
"I was asking so we could go together from the start."
"In that case, I'm fine going anytime."
When she said it with a satisfied smile, Cárcel's eyes went a little hazy—and then wet.
"Good. I want that too."
"Still, not right now. I like it here better…"
"We'll do everything you want to do, Ines."