Dark Jenny

THIRTEEN

After Kay left, I locked the door again and walked to the window. It was dark now, and the shadows in the courtyard below told me the moon was just rising. It would probably not reach the hilltop for a few hours. Not only would that be past midnight, it would be awfully close to morning and wouldn’t leave me a lot of darkness to use. I figured I might as well try to get some sleep, and the drinks I’d guzzled during my interviews made that actually feasible.

I stretched out on the bed, fully dressed down to my boots; I wasn’t quite ready to relax all the way yet. But with some forced deep breathing, I got calm enough that my mind drifted, and I assume I did sleep a little.

Until another knock, softer than Kay’s, snapped me wide-awake.

I slid from the bed, drew my knife with my left hand (I was getting better at that), and pressed myself flat against the wall beside the door. Mock-sleepily I said, “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” a female voice said, too quietly to be recognized.

“ Me is half of what a cat says.”

“It’s Iris.”

I put the knife away and opened the door. She wore a dark cloak with a hood. I could see only her lips, chin, and the hollow of her throat. But I recognized her just the same. The sweep of her shoulders and the little smile lines at either end of her mouth were unmistakable; I’d know her at a hundred yards in the fog.

“‘ Me is half of what a cat says’?” she repeated drily.

“ Ow is the other half.”

“Oh, I got it,” she assured me.

“Late for a house call, isn’t it?”

“I go where the injuries are.” She pushed back the hood to reveal a serious, though no less lovely, face. “Bob Kay asked me to check your hand before you left. He said you might run into trouble and wanted to be sure you were as sturdy as we could make you.”

“Really?” I did my best not to grin. I was only partially successful.

“Aren’t you a little old to keep acting like a horny teenager?” she said, but with a smile. “This could just be a trick to get close enough to do you in.”

I closed the door behind her. “A man’s got to die from something.”

She slipped the cloak from her shoulders and tossed it over the back of a chair. “Truer words were never spoken.”

My grin faded. She held a long, shining straight razor.

She scowled when she saw my expression. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to slit your throat. I just thought that if you lost your beard, you’d be harder to recognize.”

“Oh.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“It’s served me well.”

“Yeah, well, not tonight it hasn’t.” She quickly arranged a pitcher and bowl on the table, turned a chair toward the lamp, and motioned for me to sit.

“ You’re going to shave me?” I said dubiously.

She put one hand on her hip. It accented her curves, as did the long, low-cut dress, complete with black lace at the wrists. I suddenly realized that she’d dressed up for me. “The first surgeons were also barbers,” she said wryly. “Trust me.”

The skeptical old soldier in me listed all the ways this could be a trap. “Uhm… maybe you should just keep me company while I do it.”

“That should be fun to watch, unless you’re left-handed.”

She had me there. Still, it would be a brilliant way to get me off guard and finish me with little fuss.

“You either trust me or you don’t, Eddie. But I have to tell you, if you won’t let me close enough to shave you, you’ll never get me into bed.”

At last I said, “Well, since you put it that way…”

I took off my shirt, a little self-conscious of my less than youthful belly, but I figured a doctor wouldn’t mind. When I turned to face her, though, her eyes were wide with something very much like awe. “My God, ” she whispered.

For just the tiniest fraction of a second I thought my physique had rendered her speechless, then I realized what she meant. “Yeah,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”

She bent close to examine the three-inch puckered scar near the center of my chest. Then she scurried around to look at my back. “It went all the way through?” she gasped.

I nodded.

“And you didn’t drown in your own blood? Or die from gangrene?”

I shook my head. “I was off my feet for a while, though.”

“I’ll bet.” Now she regarded me with a mix of pity, admiration, and tenderness. “What happened?”

“It was a long time ago,” I repeated, and stared at the wall. I couldn’t meet Iris’s eyes because I might see Janet’s instead. And then I’d hear her screams.

After a moment Iris said, “Okay. It just surprised me on a professional level. Most injuries like that don’t get the chance to develop into scars.”

I shrugged. “We all get surprised sometimes.”

I took the offered seat. She wrapped a towel around my neck, then lathered me up with something she produced from her bag. It smelled pungently fresh, and I was alert for any change in awareness the fumes might bring about. When nothing happened, I finally relaxed. It was a tremendously luxurious feeling.

She ran the blade up the side of my neck and just over my jawline. It went shckt as it sliced through my whiskers. I said, “So how come you haven’t bagged one of these handsome, wealthy knights?”

“Who says I haven’t?” She rinsed the blade in the water basin.

“No ring.”

“Most doctors don’t wear jewelry. Tends to snag on the edges of wounds.”

“That’s nice to know. But you didn’t answer my question.”

The razor skitched up my cheek. A big blob of soapy beard dropped onto the towel over my chest. She said, “I don’t care for soldiers much. I know lots of women swoon over a man in uniform, but I’ve seen them at their worst. Once a man is taught to be violent, it becomes his first instinct. And when there’s no war to fight, way too many of them turn it toward their women.”

“I was a soldier once. And my current job requires violence on occasion.”

“I know.”

“But you’re here.”

She rinsed the blade in the bowl. “You’re different. You stuck up for that girl when you didn’t have to.”

“I just happened to be there. Any decent guy would have.”

“My point exactly. There aren’t many decent guys in armor. Some are better than others, of course. Bob Kay comes close. But even he wouldn’t take a swing at Dave Agravaine. And believe me, that guy’s needed his face smashed in for a long time.”

She began working around my mouth, so I stayed quiet. I felt the swell of her breasts against my arm as she leaned over me, and I smelled her light perfume. I resisted the urge to glance down when the neck of her dress gaped slightly. Well, I mostly resisted. I felt like a kid entranced by the thought of seeing his first naked female body.

Finally she finished, wiped my face with a towel, then nodded toward the mirror above the mantel. “Check yourself out.”

One glance at my unadorned features reminded me why I’d grown the beard in the first place. I had to admit, though, that I looked completely different. “You’ve successfully removed that ugly growth,” I said, “and revealed the uglier one beneath it.”

“So the patient will survive?”

I turned to her. “The patient will grow it back as soon as he can. But he appreciates the effort.”

She stepped forward, so close that I reflexively put my hands on her waist. She pressed her hips against me and let my arms take the weight of her upper body. Her hands lightly touched my bare cheeks. “Now that you won’t scratch me up if you kiss me,” she said in a husky, unmistakable voice, “let’s discuss my fee.”

“I thought you worked for the government.”

“I do. But you don’t. You’ve run up quite a tab, what with an office visit and two house calls.”

I felt her breath on my upper lip. Her hands moved down to my chest, and one fingertip ran along my scar. I said, “I certainly wouldn’t want to stiff you.”

She giggled. “Are you sure about that?”

She was so close I could hear her slightly ragged breathing. “ Now who’s a horny teenager?” I said.

The smile left her face, replaced by the kind of look men dream about inspiring in women like her. She said, “I’m no teenager, sword jockey.”

Then she proved it.

Later I looked up at Iris as she sat astride me in bed. The moon was now centered in the window, and its light cast her in pale blue, edged with orange from the dimmed but persistent lamp. Her skin glistened with sweat, and her lips had that delicious puffy quality some women get when they’re aroused. She rolled her hips slowly and bent over me; her breasts slid against my chest. With her eyes closed, I wondered for a moment if she pictured someone else beneath her. Then she smiled down at me and traced her fingers along my hairless cheek. “You clean up nicely.”

“And you dirty up well.”

She laughed and kissed me. I looked past her shoulder at the moon, did some quick calculations, and decided it would reach the pinnacle of the hill within the next half hour. “I have to go soon,” I said into the kiss, which showed no signs of stopping.

“I know,” she agreed, and pulled back enough to look into my eyes. She ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I should probably mention that this is not characteristic of my normal behavior.”

“Or my normal luck.”

She laughed again and wiped the perspiration from her eyes. She had a slender, trim shape under her clothes that spoke of her active life, and a couple of scars of her own that I intended to ask about someday. “I’ve just never met anyone like you,” she continued. “And I knew I’d regret not doing this if I never saw you again.”

“Really.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement of disbelief; I did not generally inspire unrestrained lust in intelligent, beautiful women.

She nodded. “I know myself, Eddie. I know what I respond to. It’s not the shallow surface, no matter how handsome or wealthy it is. You can believe me or not.”

I rose and put my arms around her waist, feeling the muscles of her back move beneath her skin. “I believe you.” I rolled her onto her back. She went willingly, opened herself to me, and together we pounded out the last of our lust with much noise and effort. We finished with barely enough time for me to dress, pack, and head downstairs. Getting out of that bed was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever done.

We made no awkward promises, except the unspoken one that was in our kiss as I slipped out the door. My last sight of her like that, naked in the moonlight, would stay with me for a long time.