Chapter 37

She looked at her reflection in her compact mirror and passed her ring finger along the edges of her lipsticked bottom lip, making sure they looked perfect. Damn! If she was a man, she'd sure want to kiss her. She smoothed down the figure hugging skirt of her dress and paid the taxi fare to the driver. Despite the seeming vanity of the situation, there was a reason she had taken such an extra care of her appearance. Even if she was without sleep and in turmoil inside, it was easy for her to "switch on" the charms she was so very well known for.

Her heels tapped on the cobbled street. She took a deep breath. The woman who knocked at the door had nothing in common with the drenched down to-the-bone woman and the anxious eyes that glimmered in the dark a few hours ago.

The Queen of the Forty Thieves had arrived.

He was getting lost. That's how he felt, if feelings apply when you are at death's doorstep.

Once that door opened, he was pulled inside with a force he had never experienced before. But his feet were rooted down on the black earth. All his life's memories flew violently around him, one by one getting sucked down that pitch black darkness that had opened up in front

Every single feeling he had felt, his parents, people he had loved, people he had hated, women he had desired, hopes he had, one by one were being erased till there was nothing left inside him. But his legs stood firmly on the ground.

The bleakness behind the door had started infecting everything around him. He turned his eyes up. The sky darkened and bruised above him. A single raven flew, cutting wide circles around him. Their eyes met. His legs quivered. He felt he would disintegrate into dust. The force became stronger.

At that moment he was ready to let go, a beam of light so bright, you'd think the sun had descended to earth, cut through the thick clouds. It hit the ground and the wind started dying out till he didn't need to battle against it. Tiredness, so heavy and grounding spread from his tows to the tips of his fingers and the roots of his hair, he thought his insides had turned to stone.

That is when he heard her voice calling him. Went deep down in his soul. Heat started spreading within his body. He opened his eyes.

Hi..." She greeted him with a soft voice and all the relief the breath that had left her lungs carried. The green in her eyes bore the light of the new day.

He grasped her fingers in his hand. She felt so warm against his cold skin. A faint smile was drawn on his lips.

"It bears no use to ask you how you're feeling" Terry commented when their eyes met. "But we're glad you're back to the land of the living..."

"And it looks like we cannot escape from you." He cut Terry before he said anything else.

Candy gasped. She raised her voice in disbelief for Christian's snipe remark.

"Christian!"

Regardless the rude remark which had clearly taken Candy by surprise, Terry's eyes when met with Christian's, revealed nothing. Instead, he turned to her. "I'll leave you two be", he said with a steady voice and without another moment to waste, he left the room.

"Honestly, Christian! That man saved your life." She said back to him and left him before he could even respond to her scorn as she rushed outside in a hurry to reach Terry.

He was already making his way to the hospital's entrance when he heard quick footsteps behind him. He stopped and turned at the sound of his name.

"I'm so sorry Terry! I don't know what came over him!" She said with one breath, in an obvious hurry to apologise to him. Her eyes were full of genuine remorse. He realised her hand rested on his arm. With a gentle move he took it and kept her fingers closed in his hand, enjoying for a moment their warmth. He let a faint smile.

"It's ok...Rose. The man just came back from death's front doorstep." He said. "I would probably be the same if I was in his shoes..." He added.

"No Terry...his remark was uncalled for!" She insisted and drew her hand away from his. Her move didn't go unnoticed. He took a deep breath, while he kept his eyes on hers.

"You should stop apologising for everyone and everything." He said back to her and as if he was to share a secret with her, he lowered his voice and his face towards her. "It doesn't suit your Rose..."

He pulled his face back up and took in her stare which looked puzzled. "You need to shed things of the past if you want to leave Candy behind, sweetheart."

He took a cigarette out the case and tapped its end on the gold surface. "Now if you excuse me, I'm going to smoke a cigarette and you'll go back to that man of yours who clearly wanted to see just you when he came around..." He added with a smile which she couldn't tell whether it contained mockery or not in it, but what she realised was that Christian's remark hadn't left Terry completely unaffected. However, she should have expected his reaction and the immediate wall he raised against her.

His words on the other hand about her...she had found them annoying.

Wasn't it proper to apologise for Christian's uncalled for behaviour? She felt her cheeks warming up from a growing anger but she kept her mouth shut from throwing some sharp comment back. If there was something Rose could benefit from, that would be to ditch Candy's impulsiveness. She flicked her eyelashes a couple of times.

"Suit yourself..." She said back to him, keep everything closed behind those batting eyelashes of hers. Turned on the spot and walked back down the corridor to the hospital room leaving Terry behind with the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips and his hands shoved down the pockets of his trousers, in search of the lighter.

"Good morning Billy."

"Your Majesty."

"Charlie in?"

"Boss's here, yes." He replied. "Been waiting for you..."

"Good." She commented as they made their way to his "office".

"Black Feather's ok?" He quickly asked before he knocked the door of the Boss's room.

"Apparently so." She replied. Details she hadn't managed to gather, but she had told the taxi driver to pass by the hospital on her way to Charlie. She saw the police still in front of the hospital entrance. She had smiled, finding it funny to feel relieved to the sight of bluebottles for once in her life. He must had survived the night if they were still there.

The door opened. He was standing by the big window, smoking.

"Boss...Alice is here to see you."

He didn't reply. Billy didn't say anything more either. Instead, he turned, threw a quick glance over to Alice and turned away. She walked towards his desk. The smoke from his cigarette was snaking up towards the ceiling. Alice knew his intimidation ways. Prolonged silence was one. She chose to purposefully ignore it. With alcohol. She walked towards the round mahogany table, next to the leather armchair. Shards of rainbow light danced up on the ceiling as the sun hit the heavy crystal decanter when she picked it up. She poured herself a couple fingers of bourbon, and took a sip.

"What the fuck happened last night Alice?" She heard his deep voice behind her. She turned his way. He still hadn't shifted from looking out the window. The cigarette kept burning between his fingers. He brought it to his lips, took a long drag.

"Whatever happened, it wasn't his fault." She said with a steady voice, taking another sip of bourbon. She let it stand on her tongue, feeling the burn.

"And how did he end up in the hospital then?"

"The poor schmuck tried to save me Charlie..." She said in defence of Christian.

"...Poor schmuck...Alice?" He said, sounding surprised. He turned and looked at her. He walked a few steps to reach an ashtray. He took a last drag of his cigarette before he crushed it. He lifted his eyes again from the ashtray, this time falling intently on her face.

"You have feelings for the guy...?"

She arched her brows in surprise, and emptied the contents of her glass in one gulp. Bourbon tears came to her eyes. She locked her stare on Charlie, and smiled a hard smile.

"Me?!" She asked and let out a loud laugh. "Are you jealous Charlie?" She asked again, and sat down a chair facing his desk. Crossed her legs and took out a cigarette from her silver case and put it between her scarlet red lips.

"Boys don't interest me Charlie...you know that." She said before she flicked the lighter on. Took a couple of puffs and pushed the smoke out. Stared at it for a second.

"It was my mistake last night if you want to know." She proceeded explaining while her eyes followed him as he sat behind the desk. He leaned forward, and let his elbows rest on it. Laced his fingers together. "I'm all ears Duchess..."

"I went on my own Charlie..." She said. "He warned me not to do it, because it would have been risky that night"

"Hadn't we agreed both you'd have to be there?"

"Yes..." She replied and took another drag of her cigarette.

"So he ignored my order..." A faint shimmer of anger laced the tone of his voice.

"True...but," She turned his argument around, "If we'd been both there, the wifey of Lord Wooster would have caught us red handed and believe you me, it would have been a mess."

"A bloody mess Charlie..."

He did not say anything. He was processing her argument.

"Would you want the murder of a Lady on your back?"

"So you thought to stab...poor schmuck...instead?" He said and mocked her at the same time.

"He asked me to do it, so I could get away" She replied, ignoring the jealousy in his intention.

"And I did..." She added.

"For now that is..." He returned to her with a surprising statement. She brought her eye brows together, looking confused. She stubbed her cigarette out.

"Looks like you don't know Duchess...since you went home and you got yourself all dolled up to come and see me..."

He said as he got up. Moved at the front of the desk and stopped in front of her. He leaned his hips on the desk and put his hands deep inside his pockets. "Word on the street has it that the police is on the lookout for you..."

"What?" She asked with a raised voice. She sounded confused.

"Your poor schmuck you see, sung like a bird it seems."

"That's impossible!" She couldn't believe it. She almost jumped up from the chair and started pacing in the room.

"Oh yes...looks like it is Alice..." He smirked as he spoke, "His come-hither look worked a charm on you, doll."

"Stop fucking say that Charlie!" She stopped pacing and nailed him with a stare full of fire.

"I can send a couple of men of mine and finish him off...while he's still in there" He said now that he had her going.

His statement stopped every thought inside her mind like a bucket of cold water.

"What?!"

He raised his eyes. It was his turn to look surprised. Her reaction and change in attitude was immediate. She realised that and toned down her worry right away. "Let me handle it Charlie." She tried to explain herself, "I need to know after all."

"Need to know whether he ratted you out?" He sounded confused.

"Well… yes" She replied. There was hesitation in her voice, but it was true. It didn't make sense. He had asked her to stab him and then he exposed her? Could he had done it while being delirious? Or when he lost consciousness?

"When we partnered up...what did I tell you?" She asked him.

"You won't take any lives..."

"That is right!" She confirmed his words.

"This implicates me too love" He argued.

"And if he's responsible, he'll pay Charlie" She said with a determined voice.

"Black Feathers in an asset to us..." She added. "Everyone likes him."

"Apart from the toffs and the police." He counter argued.

"Yes...but we don't care for them now, do we?" She softened her voice as she got close to him. So close, he could smell the bourbon on her breath. Her lips touched his. Her heart beat quickened. Do everything to put some distance between McDonald's bullets and the man who had taken a knife for her.

"You seem pretty determined..." He whispered as they were kissing.

She nodded, and deepened her kiss. " I may take advantage of that then..." He added, taking her hand. She already knew the way to his bedroom.

By the time she turned the door handle, a wave of tiredness washed through her body making that handle feel like it was made of cast iron. Even if the initial drama of Terry kissing Marion had happened so long ago in her mind, she had come to lose Christian all together. Having kept the questions at bay, a dramatic night had passed and she kept going strong, because she needed to be that way. She always needed to be strong for everyone around her. And now, not a moment pass from when Christian came round, he snaps at Terry, and Terry turns into his usual obnoxious self. Her stamina was running out.

She came in the room, closed the door behind her and lay her back on its surface for a couple of moments, taking a breath in. She felt weak.

"You look pale..." she heard his voice from the bed where she had left him. She opened her eyes. They were burning. She wondered whether she had fever.
"You shouldn't have spoken to Terry that way Christian!" She said to him as she walked towards him. The tone of voice was stern. "He saved your life, if you must know!"

Christian wasn't responding. Only kept looking at her. Standing next to the bed. Almost over him. His eyes were like dark lakes. "Do you remember at all driving you here? Brought you up the stai..." Her voice cracked.

"I am sorry."

Her words stopped mid-air in the sound of his apology. He tried not to let go but the guilt he felt was threatening to overwhelm him. Could his eyes explain what the tongue could not? Because he did not even for a moment for his stare to turn away from hers.

His apology came unexpectedly and had stopped everything else. So much so, that the only thing she heard after, was her own heartbeat.

"I am sorry." He repeated the words. His dark grey eyes sparkled in the light of the morning.

"Christian..."

She sat on the bed next to him.

"For everything I mean...not my snapping to that Graham fellow...but for everything I've put you through" he confessed. His hand reached out. Laced his fingers with hers.

"Up till I met you...I hadn't anyone to really care for...so whatever could happen to me was inconsequential"

He stopped. The words crammed inside his throat. Took a deep breath, kept the emotions held back before they rush out the corners of his eyes. "What I want to say Rose is this..." He said and turned his face back to her.

"I'm not good for you. You deserve better." His voice sounded deeper than usual, filled with regret. He should had said that to her a long time ago, he realised now. She gasped. Her brows arched and her eyes widened in disbelief. She cusped his hand between hers.

"Deserve better?!" She raised her voice. "You are a hero my love!" She continued, squeezing his hand, trying to make him see. She was dumbfounded by his behaviour. First with Terry, now with her. "What has gotten into you?" She leaned closer to him and touched his forehead to check for fever.

He took her hand. His lips kissed the inside of her wrist. "Rose..." He said, "I brought you trouble." He pressed his lips. She took her hand away. She got up on her feet. The room felt small all of a sudden and the air thin. Surely, it must had been the ordeal he passed. She could not explain why else, now he sounded adamant to break up with her. After such a long night, feeling drained, having almost nothing left inside her emotionally, she was not prepared for...definitely not for what he was suggesting.

She moved to the window. The day had already dawned. The summer sun had been hanging from the blue sky, glorious, a king on his own domain. Last night's storm was as if it had never happened. She wished it hadn't.

"Trouble?!" She repeated his words. "Can you listen to yourself please?" She didn't turn to look at him. They both went quiet. On the street, people had started going to their everyday business while memories flooded her mind. Some of them, she counted the best of her life. He had given them to her. "You've given me myself Christian..." he heard her say back to him. "Even more than that..."

She turned and locked her eyes on him. "Trouble...? Unless you want to call fixing me a trouble." She walked towards him.

"Rose...please...listen to me."

"I'm not listening anything else," She said. She didn't feel good. Whatever had make Christian behave the way he did when he woke up, was not something she expected. She wanted to throw up. "Please rest," She said and struggled to make herself heard. "I will be back with clean clothes ok?"

"Rose..."

She turned away. She resisted the urge to just fall in his arms, to feel his lips on hers, a kiss that would make everything go away. Closed the door behind her and swept with the back of her hand the swelling of the tears gathering inside her eyes.

He was smoking his cigarette, watching the morning hurly-burly of the street outside the hospital. People walked by in a hurry, cars were passing by. London town had definitely woken up. Doctors, nurses went up the stairs leading to the main entrance of the hospital, starting their day long shifts.

Wasn't he a witness of a similar scene back in Chicago, more than ten years ago now? When he had spent the entire night after the theatre performance, desperately looking for her? Waited in vain in front of a very similar hospital back then. Scanning every single figure, dressed in a nurse's uniform. Some of the stares he had got back then, weren't all that welcoming. At moments, he felt like a sad weirdo, the way he waited, seemingly without any particular reason, chain smoking outside that hospital entrance.

This time at least, it was different. And then it wasn't. Yes, he knew where she was now, but still, she wasn't his.

Thankfully, the morning crowd kept him distracted. What had caught his attention in particular was the two police officers who had come to take over from their colleagues who had spent the night there. There was some quick debriefing between them and then the two bright-eyed and bushy tailed officers took their place in front of the hospital entrance. Terry noticed they'd ask women staff to show them their nursing badges. In fact, they were stopping every woman who came up the stairs before the hospital entrance. Asked them about what would be the type of visit, who would visit, were they working there. Feeling intrigued, he came near one of the officers. He greeted them both. Initially, they looked at him with suspicion. Especially as he came to realise his shirt was blood stained. How he had not noticed up till that moment, was beyond him. But not surprising, given what went down the night that had passed. He explained himself. "Did the search had to do anything with last night's stabbing?"

"Indeed it has, Mr. Graham," Officer Martin replied. "It looks like a woman was at the scene last night."

"Any lead in particular?" He asked.

Terry did not really hear the officer refusing to let any further information, being classified as such. Her figure appearing at the entrance didn't let him. He excused himself as she approached.

"Are you ok, Rose?" He asked.

"Yes."

"And Christian?" He asked again, searching her face more intently.

"He's fine too."

Her tight-fisted answers to his questions weren't particularly putting him at ease, nor did they convince him that everything was fine. "Are you sure?" The question left his lips before he could have stopped it. He really did not mean to pry, especially after what they had been through. Despite Christian's comment having thrown him off quite a bit.

"Terry...I'll need to get Christian some clean clothes," She said, ignoring his question, "I'll need to change too."

He patted the pockets of his trousers in search for the keys of his car. "Oh! I didn't say that to oblige you to drive me to...". He stopped and looked at her. "You have already a lot on your plate...the play too...Ma"

He didn't let her finish. His eyes pointed to his jacket, she still was wearing. "Keys must be in the side left pocket." Just as she ignored his question, he decided to ignore her protesting. She put her hand where he instructed her and took it out with the keys dangling from her fingers. She gave them to her.

"Come." He said and it sounded almost like an order. She did not say anything more. She felt so empty and dry inside, she didn't have the energy to fight. "You don't mind us to stop at the hotel also for a little while." He added when they sat down and was putting the key to the engine. "I'll need to change too..." He explained, and threw a glance to his blood stained shirt.

Candy felt a squeeze in her stomach. Somehow she hadn't noticed the blood on Terry's shirt. Everything came back flooding her brain. Tears started pouring out of her eyes. The engine was running, and they were ready to go, but he hesitated. He didn't know what to do.

"Please drive..." She gave him the answer.

Moments later, they found themselves on the road. She felt grateful for the summer wind on her face, cooling the flames on her cheeks while drying the fresh tear tracks that kept getting renewed, trickling down the corners of her eyes.

He kept his eyes on the road, while shooting her with glances every now and then. Definitely she wasn't the same Candy from when they went in Christian's room earlier. He tightened his lips, while turning again his attention to the traffic, and put his feet down the accelerator.