"So why do you let her come around here?" Marley had wondered that ever since he had confessed that his one-night stand had been with Rosa.
"She just shows up. I can't control that."
He wasn't telling her everything. Not even close, she could just tell. But she was leaving, because that was her choice, the right thing to do, and there was no sense in getting worked up over it.
"Maybe she's in love with you." Marley could certainly understand how that could happen.
Damien burst out laughing. "Please. That is not the feeling Rosa has for me."
His cell phone rang and he glanced at the number.
"You can answer it," Marley said. "I'm going to run up and change. Thank you for not making tonight a bikini theme." She stood up and squeezed his shoulder as she walked past him. "Oh! And here's that letter I keep forgetting to give you." Marley pulled it out of her pocket and set it on the table.
Then she went quickly toward the house. She had an hour and she was going to finish those letters from Marie before this party and return them to Anna.
It was time for all the answers.
"They are both going to die!"
I hovered in and out of consciousness, but I heard Gigi's agonized words floating over from my left.
"Whatever will we do? There is no family here… oooohhh, this is so horrible. My poor mistress, so young, so sweet."
Gigi was in full dramatics and it was comforting for some reason, I pried my eyes open to check on Damien, I had insisted they put me in bed with him, regardless of how scandalous that might be. If we were both to die, better not to divide the staff to attend us. Given Gigi's words, I knew Damien hadn't expired while I was in my faint, but I was prepared for the visual evidence that it was merely a formality that he lived.
He was still, lying on his back, but very clearly breathing.
"Get yourself into the hall," the housekeeper reprimanded to Gigi. "Running on like that will not help anyone."
Right as they passed into the hallway, Damien's eyes opened. With a soft groan, he turned to me and whispered, "Marie?"
"Yes!" I gave a sob and managed to turn onto my own side, so that we lay facing each other. I was so desperate with relief that it didn't occur to me how curious it was that he had such mobility in the face of such an injury. Gratitude rushed through me, pleasure, confidence that if Damien could speak, could move, he would recover. "How are you feeling, Damien?"
His answer was not as expected. He didn't sound agonized, in pain, afraid or at peace, as the dying are usually one or the other. In a firm, strong voice, this was where my husband leaned in to me, eyes locked with mine, and told me the truth.
What truth is that? That he was not going to die. That he could not die, ever. Can you imagine such a thing? Had you guessed this would be where my letters are leading? No, neither could I at that moment.
Yet he told me all in great detail, in urgent whispered tones, how he had bartered with a demon, and gained eternal human life in exchange for his servitude.
It sounded fantastical, a fevered result of his accident, his imagination run wild under the influence of the doctor's carefully administered laudanum. "Hush, Damien," I whispered. "You need your rest."
"It was her, you know," he said, green eyes glassy and hard. "Rosa is the demon's daughter, and she is the one who granted my request."
"The horse threw you, and when you fell, your thoughts have been jumbled." The candles flickered around us, the clock on the mantel ticking with slow, loud predictability, and the bed curtains shrouded around us, attempting to block out the late afternoon sun with little success, and I was suddenly afraid.
"No. It's the truth." Damien sat up, startling me. He moved his neck, raised his arms, shifted his hair aside to show me there was no longer a wound where his temple had been dashed open. "If I had not made this bargain, I would be dead now. No man can survive a broken neck."
I just shook my head. It was incomprehensible, what he was telling me, and I did not wish to hear it. My body was still cold and exhausted, my thoughts floating in a whirlpool, with nothing to stop their motion, no solid surface to cling to.
"And my task assigned to me by the demon father is to promote and inspire sin in others, particularly the sin of lust." Damien rested back down on his elbows, speaking quickly, urgently.
"What?" The sin of lust. The sin I had succumbed to, so eagerly and blissfully. The sin that had stripped my womb of our child—yes, that would be a sin brought forth by a demon. And I confess, I thought if anyone would willingly strike a deal with a demon, it would be my always arrogant, always reckless husband.
"To facilitate this goal, I have been given the power of attraction. Women cannot resist me. Women will abandon their values to seek pleasure with me."
"Abandon their values …" So I knew it was true then, most absolutely, as I knew I could not resist Damien, and even as the horror, the shock, the disgust all warred within me, can you believe that I took pleasure and relief in learning that I was not as weak as I had assumed? Inability to resist the lure of selfish sexual pleasure was such a failure, such a demonstration of the weakness of my character. Yet here it was said to me that I'd had no choice, no hope of resisting. How could I stand firm against the satanic and immoral pull of a demon?
Sweet, sweet rationalization. Yet another tool of the devil, but I took it, I sank inside it, I wrapped it around me without hesitation.
Damien took my hand, "We must call Rosa in here, and she can grant you the same exemption from death."
"What? No!" Submit to such an aberration? I couldn't fathom doing such a thing.
"You are dying," Damien said, his voice rising. "I cannot let you bleed to death, Marie. I will not."
"Rosa is that woman… that woman in the red gown? " I wanted to be indebted to her for nothing, and I wanted no part of immortality. I had succumbed to so many sins, I would not compound them with giving myself over to the devil. The very idea terrified, sickened.
"Yes, she will save you."
"I do not want her to save me. It's not right." But I was glad that Damien wanted me to live. Even then, as we were, both covered in blood and feel ing the pain of punishment for our misdeeds, I felt that selfish vanity, pride, greed, that Damien cared about me, wanted me with him in eternity.
Perhaps it was more guilt on his part than love, but I chose to believe what I wished. He loved me enough to want an exemption from death forme.