“Japanese tea ceremonies, cha-no-yu…”

Her voice drifted off, and he coaxed her back. “What about them? Talk to me, angel.”

“During…the cha-no-yu… You do things a certain way, behave a certain way.

Make the outside world quiet…contemplate… Stupid things. The way a flower grows.” Her throat was rusty with disuse and she was quiet for another moment while he waited, trying not to press. “Only it’s not stupid. It’s beautiful. Simple and perfect. Why can’t we be like that…”

“You’re like that to me,” he said at last. “I could sit and watch you do nothing for hours except sit in my garden. With the flowers. With that perfection.” He fished out a handkerchief, took it to her eyes as he saw a tear fall into the bowl of the cup.

“Not.” She sniffed. “Only if I was naked. You’d get bored otherwise.”

“You being naked would be a lovely perk, but you’re wrong. I would spend my entire life looking at you. Clothed or not clothed. I want to, remember?” She closed her eyes, her face adjusting carefully to burrow into his neck. As her hand lowered, he helped her ease the cup back to the table. “You never give up.”

“No. I don’t. Not on you.”

“You should. Just let me die, Tyler. I’m so tired.” Fear crawled inside him. The anger that was so close to the surface ripped at him with rabid teeth, but he managed to rein back the reaction. Lifting her from him, still supporting her, he curved his hand around her delicate jaw, his finger teasing her lips, bringing her eyes up to him. “Not going to happen. So stop pouting about it and get over it. I love you and you’re stuck with me. You sleep as much as you need to, until you’re no longer tired. Awake or asleep, I’m here with you.” A sigh went out of her. Her blue eyes drifted closed, the lids coming down over that distant, sad look, but he thought for a moment he saw a reaction of aggression.

Defiance. But then she was gone, her breath even, telling him she’d left him again.

The desolation swept him, but he fought it. She’d spoken.

To tell him she wanted to die.

He lifted her, carried her to the sofa in the sunroom. He spent the rest of the afternoon watching over her slumber, doing paperwork, watching TV, reading. Trying not to lose his mind and roar his frustration.

Chapter Nineteen

“Mr. Winterman? There’s a gentleman at the door for you. Well, actually he says he’s here for Miss Marguerite.”

Tyler left Robert watching over Marguerite and was surprised to find Brendan standing in his foyer. He wore jeans and a crisp shirt, his hair styled well. Every inch of him the late twenty-something professional, the pretty-boy type with a great body, the kind of looks that would make a woman run through a stoplight and create a four-car pile up to gawp at his ass if he was walking down the sidewalk.

He was a beautiful man, a man who carried Marguerite’s brand. Tyler was all too cognizant of that as he turned from his contemplation of the vaulted ceiling, the artwork. “Master Tyler. You have a beautiful place here.”

“Brendan. It’s a long drive, unannounced.”

“I thought I could make a better case in person. It’s going around The Zone, what Mistress Marguerite did. I want to help. I thought I could help, in some way.”

“How?” Tyler asked bluntly.

“Her name was on the news. Everyone knows she saved the little girl and the kidnapper was a man named Peninski, a released convict.” Brendan met Tyler’s gaze.

“Do you believe in Fate?”

Tyler blinked, once. “I met Marguerite. So yes, I do. Not to be rude, Brendan, but…”

“You don’t have time or patience for small talk.” Relief crossed Brendan’s his features. “It saves me from having to make it. Let me get to the point, then. When I was six years old, my parents were killed in a car wreck. I was placed in an orphanage.

There was a girl there named Marie Peninski.”

Tyler stilled as Brendan inclined his head, acknowledging that he now had his unwilling host’s full attention.

“I only knew her for six months before I was adopted.” His lips twisted. “I was lucky. These looks of mine were from birth. And even more fortunate, it was a good family.”

When he shifted, Tyler remembered his manners though it was an effort. “Let’s sit down in here.”

Brendan followed him to the sitting room, sat tensely on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, his hands clasped together.

“In the orphanage, she was known as the girl that never talked to anyone, that looked through you. But she didn’t look through me, though I don’t know why. I guess I was lucky in a lot of ways. Maybe God decided a kid that had lost his parents deserved all the breaks he could get, though a lot of kids who deserve them don’t get them. Like her.” He shook his head. “When I was alone and frightened, crying into my pillow at night, she’d show up by my bed like this pale ghost. Scoot me over, play games with me, tell me stories. Always during the night. During the day she kept to herself. But if I got afraid or worried, or just needed her, I’d go stand by her, by this chair she sat in by the window. Eventually she’d just pull me into her lap. I didn’t make her talk and she just held me.”

His expression darkened. “I heard the whispers in the orphanage. In a way, it’s like prison. You know everything about each other. I wasn’t old enough to understand a lot of what I heard then, but I remembered. And I saw her scars when she came to my bed at night. She wore this oversized nightshirt and it would slip off her shoulder, so I could see. I touched them once and she just sat still, let me do it, but said I didn’t need to know what they were.

“That same night, she curled up around me like she usually did, stroked my hair like my mother did until I fell asleep. But I woke up a little while later to find her holding me so tight, shaking, her face buried in my hair. She was crying for ‘David’. I told her she could call me David if it made her feel better. In hindsight, I know she was sleeping in my bed as much for herself as for me.” Tyler could not speak, the images Brendan was creating too powerful for interruption. He waited silently as the man drew a deep breath, continued. “When I got a pair of potential parents interested in me, I decided I couldn’t leave her. It felt wrong.

So I asked them if they would adopt Marie, too. They were good people, as I said. They even talked to the director about it. But the court case was still going on and plus…” He lifted a shoulder. “They looked at the psychiatric report on her. They were good, kind people who wanted to adopt a little boy without complicated baggage. Even though you never get over the desperate fear of abandonment, I think…” His color rose, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “No, I know why I put up with Tim’s bullshit as long as I did instead of knocking him on his ass as he deserved. But it wasn’t near as severe as what she’d been through.

“I was going to refuse to go with them, but Marie told me it would make her happy to know I had a good home, people who loved me and that I needed to go. When I left, I offered her my teddy bear.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a semi-embarrassed smile and he looked toward the Isis statue on Tyler’s coffee table. “I know it sounds like a stupid, sentimental thing now…”

Tyler found it difficult to maintain any significant level of jealousy at the emotion in Brendan’s voice, the honesty reflected in his tone. “It doesn’t sound stupid in any way.”

“But she wouldn’t keep it.” The man’s face was a mixture of memory and regret, but admiration as well. “She was old enough to know that when I went to bed that night in my new home, with these two strangers who had become my new parents, I would desperately need something of my past to hold. She took a ribbon out of her hair and tied it around the bear’s neck. Told me he’d watch over me for her. I’ve never met anyone like her, Master Tyler. Not even since. So damaged and yet she never stopped trying to protect someone who needed it.

“I didn’t see her again for twenty years. Never expected to. And then my friends took me to The Zone and I knew her. Remembered the eyes, the hair. Even then, so young, she had a presence.”

“Did she know you?”

“No. I think there’s a big difference in the way you look at six versus twenty-six.

And I never told her. I just…she was right. Tim was abusing me. I dumped him. At the moment I’m enjoying being on my own, thinking about what I really want. She came back into my life and gave me a gift. Again. I meant everything I said about the brand. I wanted her mark on the outside, because she’d already left it inside. She’s my Mistress,” he said determinedly, even as Tyler’s expression became more forbidding.

“Now and forever. And I love and honor her as such.

“I thought… Something told me to get in the car and come here and ask. I just had this feeling that she needs something from me and I swore to serve her. So with your permission, Master Tyler, I’d like to see her and talk to her, visit with her awhile. Today and maybe after that. And help you take care of her, if there’s an appropriate way for me to do that. I’m available as long as you think I can be useful.” Tyler studied him. The story was remarkable. He knew as well as Brendan that there were few coincidences on that scale in life. And on top of that, there was nothing he wouldn’t attempt to bring Marguerite back. To revive that ghost of a smile he’d started to see more often. To repeat that one miraculous burst of laughter he’d heard when she ran toward the chapel, her hair wet ropes of silk across her shoulders.

Brendan might just be a stroke of fate sent to accomplish that. Hell, he was ready to shave his head and become a cult leader if it would work. Or worse, jump out of an airplane. The grim humor, offered to himself as if he could anticipate sharing it with her to coax out one of those smiles, gave him some hope, just as Brendan’s presence did.

“All right.” He rose, gestured. “She’s out on the Gulf side lawn. Let’s go find her.