Chapter 9

It took them five days.

Vincent’s leg was much improved by the soak in the mineral spring, and it continued to improve steadily over the rest of the journey. His body’s ability to heal was a continuing wonder to Catherine. But Vincent’s injury was not a minor one, and on the evening of their first day’s travel, his weariness and pain showed in his face.

Catherine too was weary, but her heart went out to him; it was so unusual for him to show any sign of fatigue. She finished the last of her chores and turned to look at him. His chores were finished also; he was sitting with his back against the tunnel wall, his hands in his lap, his head leaning against the wall, his eyes closed.

"Vincent?"

He turned his head to look at her. "Mm-hm?"

"You’re exhausted. Let’s make this a long stop. We don’t need to get going after eight hours; we can choose our own time."

He rolled his head back and forth against the wall. "We need to get to the torches. And we need to think also about conserving food." He sat up straighter. "You’re right, I’m tired. The crutch is the only thing that’s made this day’s trek possible. We must just put up with a certain amount of discomfort in order to follow our plan.

"But Catherine, you’re very tired also. My injury will continue to improve with every day; however, I’m afraid that in your case, infection is very likely. You may be glad before the trip is over that we made good time before you began to feel worse." He stopped for a moment. "Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t want to alarm you."

She smiled. "Come on, Vincent. We’re in this together, and I can certainly bear the truth. You should know that by now."

His glance touched her tenderly. "I do. I am somewhat concerned about your injury, though.  Father will be very upset when he finds out that there was no disinfectant in my first aid kit. I can’t remember the last time I used the kit. I must have used the disinfectant and forgotten to replenish it years ago." He shook his head with a small wry smile. "Father won’t forgive that easily! I'll get a lecture."

At the mention of Father’s name, Catherine thought of something that she must tell Vincent. "Father  was very good to me when I came Below looking for you." She looked down at her hands for a moment, reluctant to relate what she had done.. "Vincent…I told him…what had happened that night. I couldn’t see any other way to make him understand how serious the problem was. And I had to get to you. I had to!"

He didn’t look at her, examining his own hands with some attention. "I see." He said nothing more for a moment, then looked up at her. "Yes, you had to tell him. I understand."

"Do you? I know you wouldn’t have wanted him to know." She reached over and put her hand over his. "I’m so sorry, Vincent. I just didn’t think...I should have, but I was so intent on finding you. I would have found it very hard to lie to him; it just seemed the right thing to do. And he understood right away that it was a serious matter. He didn’t hesitate for a moment. He agreed that I had to find you, and arranged for the trip."

"He would understand. Father is at his very best when faced with a problem that requires decisive action. I…" He hesitated, looking down at her hand, still covering his. "…You’re right, I would have preferred that he not know. It’s a shameful thing that I did."

"I’m glad you did it."

Vincent’s head jerked up, and he looked at her with amazement. "What?"

"Well, look where it’s brought us, Vincent."

"What? I don’t see…"

She smiled tenderly at him and continued softly, "You kissed me, Vincent. Did you think that I’d forgotten that? And I’ve told you what I’ve longed to tell you for all the time I’ve known you. That I love you and want you…so much."

"Catherine…don’t…" He turned away, tension in every line of his body.

She knew at once what he was doing and she took immediate steps to correct the situation. "Vincent, don’t you do this! Don’t you dare try to go back to the way things were before." She sat up straight, exasperation erasing the exhaustion that she felt. "I will not allow it! I did not go through all that we’ve been through to go back to square one!" She tugged at his sleeve. "Look at me!"

When he turned back to her, she was astonished to see a small smile on his face. "Are we going to have another battle? If so, perhaps you should remember that I’m no longer tied by the leg."

She couldn’t help grinning back. "Are you threatening me? Well, if this battle ends that way the last one did, I’m all for it. Come ahead!" Her fists went up.

"Oh, Catherine, I don’t want to battle with you. I want to….to have peace between us." His hands came out to take her fists, and he carefully straightened each finger.

Her voice changed, was soft and throaty. "I want to have love between us."  She looked up at him, her lips parted, her eyes soft with her feeling for him.

Vincent was very tired, and discouraged by how hard the day had been for him.  When he looked down at the love shining from Catherine’s eyes, it seemed that to touch the moist softness of that mouth could heal all the ills there were. He knew now how her mouth felt, how it tasted, knew the healing to his soul in her kiss; how could he not do it? He stared down at her, and without his conscious will his head slowly came down until his mouth covered hers, gently, tenderly.

Her arms came up around his shoulders, and his circled her, drawing her against him. His tongue moved over her lips with velvety smoothness, touching softly in the corners of her mouth, reaching farther in to slide over her teeth. And she melted into him, moaning into the kiss. His mouth left hers then to slide over her face, to touch lightly on her eyes, her nose, then moved slowly down her neck to the hollow of her throat. His voice shook as he murmured, "Oh Catherine, my love, my love..."

His mouth moved up to her ear, and she felt his tongue come out to taste the soft skin under it. She shivered and moaned, her hands coming to his head to hold him where he was. "I love this… I love you, kiss me…"

The sound of her voice seemed to bring him partially out of his daze of desire. He raised his head and looked into her eyes, a long look that told her without words of his adoration. His mouth came to hers once more, a soft kiss held just for a moment, then his arms dropped and he straightened, putting his head back against the tunnel wall.

"Catherine…" His voice was a hoarse half whisper. "I…I can’t…I’m unable to resist you. When you look up at me like that, I’m lost. I don’t know what I’m going to do..."

"Well…you could just relax and enjoy it?" She looked up at him, a spark of humor in her eyes. "You do enjoy it, don’t you?"

It wasn’t a question; she knew how he felt. It was plain to see in his panting breath, his hoarse voice, his trembling hands, now clasped tightly together in his lap.

At that he turned his head enough to look at her out of the corner of his eye. "It is…beyond belief. Kissing you is…it’s heaven, Catherine. But I have no right..."

"Did you notice me struggling? Did I cry out and fight you?" She smiled tenderly at him. " …Or did I just sink into your kiss, loving it so much…"

He rolled his head back and forth against the wall again. "It can only lead to…pain."

"No. It can lead to love, Vincent. It can lead us to such happiness…such contentment."

He was silent.

She reached to put her hand on his cheek, and before he could think about it he had turned his head to kiss her palm. Then he took her hand from his cheek to hold it in his, shaking his head. "Catherine, I must not do this. But I cannot resist you; please, help me." He didn’t turn away from her this time, he looked down at her steadily, and then he began to talk; for the first time he talked freely, telling her of his feelings about her coming to him as his mate.

"This is not for us. I have no business to do this, and I must not! You must see that I am no fit mate for you. Look at me, Catherine! How can you think of…of mating…with me!"

His voice broke a little on that sentence; and Catherine opened her mouth to answer it; but he put his finger to her lips and she subsided. He paused, regaining his composure, then continued. "We must remain dear and loving friends, nothing more. I must learn to curb my feelings for you, to set you free. This life of mine is not for you! Do you think I could condemn you to my life? Not in this world. There is nothing for you here, in the tunnels.

"The whole world is your playground, Catherine. You have youth, beauty, intelligence, a loving heart. There is nothing you cannot accomplish, nothing! And you have money, to make anything you wish a possibility. You have every advantage that life can give. Do you think that I could…" His eyes dropped from hers as his voice choked, but he went doggedly on: "That I could sentence you to the life underground? When the whole world is yours for the asking? What kind of love would do that to you? What kind of love…"

He could speak no longer. Grief overwhelmed him at what he knew he must give up. He turned himself away from her so that all she could see was his bowed head and shaking shoulders, as he finally lost the battle with tears.

Catherine didn’t know what to do. If she tried to hold him now, she thought it would only intensify his grief. So she put a hand on his shaking shoulder, and waited for the storm to pass over him.

It took only a few minutes. He quieted, and in a couple of minutes more he straightened. Without turning, he began to apologize. "I’m sorry Catherine. You don’t need this, to see me…"

"Stop!" She wasn’t about to let him apologize for his grief. "Just stop that, Vincent. If you will turn around here and look at me again, I’m going to tell you my side. Turn around."

He did as she asked, slowly. His face showed no trace of the tears just past, but he looked tragic. Catherine was torn by the sadness in his eyes; she wanted with all her heart to hold him in her arms. But this was not the time.

She mustered all of her inner concentration and began to speak with slow thoughtfulness. "What you say about me is true. I do have, I have had, all the advantages. I can do pretty much anything that I want to, outside of things like private jets and chateaus in France. My money doesn’t stretch to that kind of expenditure. But I could do pretty much anything I want.

"But there’s a problem with that, Vincent. What I want…is you. I could travel the world, I could buy things that please me. But…those things would not satisfy me. I would only think of you.

"Do you think that this feeling that I have for you is temporary? Or shallow? Examine your own feelings, Vincent, and then you will know what mine are. This isn’t going to change. I will love you, and want you, only you, until my dying day. If you reject my love, I will spend my life alone. The very thought of any other man touching me makes me shudder with disgust. If it isn’t you, it will be nobody, for the rest of my life. I want only you.

"If we were to go back to our ‘loving friendship’, as you call it, our beautiful love would wither and dry. You can see that as well as I. We will have to be careful not to touch each other. We will have to be careful even about looking at each other. When I look at you, I want you, and I know you feel the same. I see your desire for me in your eyes, and it excites me. You see that in my eyes, and it excites you. So, we mustn’t look at each other.

"We’ll have to be careful what we read to each other. No love poems, no romantic novels. No Jane Eyre, no Pride and Prejudice, no Wuthering Heights. And we shouldn’t see each other too often. It’s very difficult for me to keep from touching you, and I know you feel the same way. So we should keep apart as much as possible.

Is this your idea of a future for our love? It isn’t mine. The truth is that we want each other. And without that ultimate intimacy, the only alternative is to break it off entirely. Is that what you have in mind? Because I tell you in all seriousness, Vincent, I think I will die. Not right away, of course. I’ll continue on for a while, but the spark, the will to continue, will have gone. I think that eventually I’d give up my job, just hole up in my apartment and wait for something to give me relief from my grief. I’ll die eventually, if that’s the only way to get that relief."

"No!" His arms went around her, and he pulled her to him frantically. "No! None of those things will happen. We will find a way. Oh, Catherine, I promise you that we will find a way." She felt his heart pounding next to hers, and his lips on her hair.

She raised her face, hoping for another kiss, but it was not to be.

He looked down at her with a crooked smile, and touched her mouth lightly with a trembling finger. "I want it too, so much, but we will wait."

She sat up straight. "Does that mean that I can hope? That someday we will…?"

He raised his shoulders in a small shrug. "Catherine, I don’t know how to answer that. I only know that we must talk about this further. But I don’t see how we can avoid the dreadful consequences that you have outlined, without taking some steps…toward love."

"Oh Vincent!" Her hands came up to frame his face, and she looked up hopefully once more.

Catherine thought there was a touch of satisfaction in his face, and pride at her desire for his kiss, but he said with his small smile, "Rest now, Catherine. We have a long journey ahead." He got up, moving away from her clinging hand, and began to unroll their blankets.

After a few moments, he stopped what he was doing and turned to her again. "Catherine, while we are traveling, I ask that we…keep apart. This journey is going to be hard on both of us, and we…I…can’t shoulder the additional…tension…of…of…lovemaking. It’s too hard for me to stop…please, Catherine, I want…us to talk more about this, to make a decision when we are rested and …not in isolation from the world. Is that acceptable to you?"

Catherine sighed and resigned herself with grace. "Yes, Vincent, that’s acceptable. I know that we’ll need all of our strength just to get home. Yes, it’s all right with me."

And so they continued on their journey as dear friends. But neither forgot the delight to be found in the other’s arms.

Catherine’s body healed, but not at the rate that his did. Her exhaustion was exacerbated when the cut on her side became infected as Vincent had feared, in spite of his painstaking care of it. Their journey was slowed by her inability to walk for a full day; Vincent's time sense knew how long they walked, but Catherine felt that the days were endless, so she never knew that he had cut them short. By the end of the third day, she was beginning to run a fever. Vincent gave a great sigh of relief when they came in sight of the first pipes, on the morning of the fifth day.

"Sit down here, Catherine. I’m going to call for help." He made a place for her to sit with his cloak under her and his pack for a backrest, and turned to tap urgently on the pipes. When he had finished the message, Catherine began wearily to regain her feet, but Vincent stopped her, pressing her back down on the cloak.

"Just sit there. The relief party will bring a stretcher." His hand caressed her hair briefly before he straightened.

Catherine was indignant. "Vincent! I am not going to be brought home on a stretcher! I’ve made it this far, I can certainly walk the rest of the way!"

Vincent shook his head. "You cannot walk. You have been extraordinarily valiant throughout this whole trial, but you will go home on a stretcher. That’s the way it is going to be, Catherine. I would have been carrying you for the last day, if it hadn’t been for this…" He lifted his crutch. "Brave as you are and gallant as you have been, you will agree to do this…for me." The last two words were spoken with immense tenderness.

She had been ready to fight, but those words made it impossible for her to argue any longer. And in truth, she was more than happy to relinquish all control to him, and to ride home. Getting to her feet one more time had loomed in front of her as an insurmountable task.

"OK. I’ll…" Her words were interrupted by the chatter of the pipes. Vincent tilted his head to listen to the message, and a small smile crossed his face when it was through.

"Father wants to know the extent of your injuries, and if I’m all right." He began to tap rapidly in reply. When he finished, he came and let himself down beside her.

"What did you tell him?"

"I said that you were totally exhausted and had an infected cut on your side, and that I had hurt my leg, but that it was well on the way to recovery. He will worry about both of us until he sees for himself that we are all right, but that can’t be helped. He worries. Now rest, Catherine, we have perhaps three hours before our rescuers arrive."