Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Michael hadn't heard her so happy since he'd introduced her to the miracle of Beethoven on the stereo.

“Didn't I tell you?” he said.

And she bobbed her head, still smiling, and said, “You did, sir, you did-though I still don't understand how it's been done.” She quickly surveyed the glowing lamps and the silver reflectors, before once again protecting her eyes.

“Try a strawberry,” Michael suggested. “The cook here uses them to make strawberry shortcake.”

“Truly?” she said. “It's all right?”

Michael reached up and plucked a juicy one from the vine and held it toward her lips. She hesitated, a hot flush rising into her cheeks, then bent her head to the berry and neatly bit it in half.

The hot lights played across her hair as she savored it, and the golden rim of her brooch gleamed.

“Finish it,” he said, still holding out the remaining half.

She paused, her lips moist from the berry, and their eyes met. His heart was overwhelmed by such a confusion of feelings-tenderness, uncertainty, desire-that he could barely hold her gaze.

But she held his, as she leaned forward and took the rest of the fruit into her mouth. Her teeth grazed the tips of his fingers before she withdrew, delicately plucking the green crown of the strawberry from her lips. He stood, transfixed.

And she said, “Thank you, Michael.”

Was this the first time she'd used his name-for real and not just in a dream?

“That was a great treat.”

“It's a Christmas present.”

“It is?” she said, surprised. “Is this Christmas Day?”

He nodded, his shoulders positively aching from wanting to reach out and embrace her. But he didn't dare. That was not why he'd brought her to the lab. That was not in the game plan. There was no future in that.

So why did he have to keep reminding himself?

“At Christmas, we would decorate the house with mistletoe and ivy and evergreens,” she said, meditatively. “My mother would make a pudding, stick a sprig of holly in the top, and douse it with brandy. When my father touched a match to it, the whole room would blaze like a bonfire.”

After a few seconds, she turned around and stepped out of the glow from the lamps. “The light is very hot.”

She moved down one of the aisles, the long blue dress with its billowing sleeves and high white collar emphasizing her slender frame; her fingers trailed across the rows of tomato plants on trusses, the lettuces and onions and radishes all being grown on tabletops and in shallow bowls of clear liquid.

“There is no soil,” she said, over her shoulder. “How does anything grow?”

“It's called hydroponics,” he said, following her up the aisle. “All the minerals and nutrients that the plants need are mixed into the water supply. Add light and air and you're done.”

“It's miraculous,” she said, “and rather like the hothouse at the Great Exhibition. My father took me there, with my sister Abigail.”

“When was that?”

“Eighteen fifty-one,” she said, as if it were generally known, “at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.”

The shock never entirely wore off.

There was another bank of lights off to the rear, illuminating a tiny garden of roses and lilies and Ackerley's prized orchids.

“Oh, how beautiful,” Eleanor said, stepping into the narrow aisle surrounded by the brilliant red roses and the multicolored orchids, on their long, crooked stems. Even without the soil, there was the hot, humid scent of a jungle. Eleanor unfastened the top button on her collar, but no more, and breathed deeply.

“I could not have imagined a place like this,” she said, taking in the riot of color and scent, “in a country so remote and cold. Who takes care of all these plants? Is it you?”

“Oh, no,” Michael said, “they'd be dead in a week if I were in charge.” But how could he possibly explain, to her of all people, what had happened to Ackerley? And what would she say if he did? Would she then confess to him her own undeniable, but secret, need?

If there was one thing he knew, it was that he never wanted to hear words to that effect pass her lips.

“We all pitch in,” he said, to provide some sort of answer. “But most of it's programmed by computers and timers.”

He realized that none of this would make any sense to her. “It's mechanical,” he added, simply, and she seemed content… but reflective, too. Even as she pressed her face to the roses to inhale their aroma, he could tell her thoughts had entered a darker channel. Her brow was furrowed, and her head held still.

“Michael,” she finally said, without finishing her thought.

“Yes?”

After another moment of deliberation, she plunged ahead. “I can't help but feel that there's something you're not telling me.”

She has that right, Michael thought, but there were so many things he wasn't telling her that he wouldn't have known where to start.

“Does it have to do with Lieutenant Copley?”

Michael hesitated; he didn't want to lie, but he was forbidden to tell her the truth. “We've been looking for him.”

“You know that he will come looking for me. If he hasn't already, he soon will.”

“I'd expect that,” he said, “from your husband.”

She looked at him intently, as if her suspicions-or at least some of them-had been confirmed. “Why would you say that?”

“Sorry, I just assumed-”

“In Sinclair's eyes, that may be so. But in the eyes of God, we are most assuredly not. For reasons I can't explain, it could never happen.”

Why her peremptory tone should have pleased him so, he did not wish to dwell on. But since the topic had been introduced, he felt he couldn't let the opportunity go.

“But wouldn't you want to be reunited… assuming, of course, that he's alive and well?”

She studied one of the yellow orchids intently, rubbing her fingers on the waxy leaves.

He was surprised that she wavered at all.

“Sinclair was, and always shall be, the great love of my life.”

Her fingers caressed the golden yellow petals themselves.

“But the life we are forced to lead together cannot be sustained… nor should it be.”

Michael knew of course what she was referring to, but kept silent.

“And over the years, I fear that he has fallen in love with something else-something that holds him in its sway more powerfully than I can ever do.”

The misters suddenly went off, sending a fine spray of cool water into the air above their heads, but Eleanor didn't move.

“What?” Michael asked.

And she replied, “Death.”

The misters stopped again, and she turned to one side, as if ashamed by what she'd just admitted.

“He has been steeped in it so long that he has learned to live with it. He keeps it by him at all times, like a loyal hound. He wasn't always like that,” she quickly added, as if regretting her betrayal. “Not when we met, in London. He was kind and attentive and always so eager to find ways to amuse me.” That last caused her to smile.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Oh, just remembering. A day at Ascot, a dinner at his club in London. Poor Sinclair-I think he was often just one step ahead of his creditors.”

“But didn't you tell me once that he came from a family of aristocrats?”

“His father was an earl-and Sinclair would have been one, too, one day-but he had called upon the family fortune on too many occasions already. His father, I believe, was sorely disappointed in him.”

The mist had settled like a fine veil atop her hair.

“And his prospects… they were altered in the Crimea. Everyone who went there was changed by it, everyone who survived was damaged. It was impossible not to be.”