Komal listened as he answered her questions, then she nodded. “Why don’t you go eat the meal Sarah has laid out for you and I’ll join you in a while? I’ll send Sarah out. I need some time to observe her, check some things, focus on what’s happening.” He couldn’t quite make it down the stairs. He paced, ended up at last sitting on the landing, his feet through the slats, head against the rail, half dozing. Listening to Komal’s murmuring voice, he strained to hear a response from Marguerite.

Sarah brought him out of his concentration with a touch on his elbow. She sat the tray containing a sandwich, iced tea and an attractive bowl of fruit salad next to him. It all looked fresh like summertime and it hurt him to look at it. It made him imagine walking down his back steps in the morning to see Marguerite in summer white cotton, her head bent in concentration over a book, considering her tea samples. He wanted her to move in with him. He wasn’t so far from her business at his Tampa home and he could renovate it, make it more like the Gulf home if she liked it better. He’d hire security to keep an eye on her park twenty-four hours a day. He simply could not countenance being without her, not having her body next to him while she slept. She’d never wake alone from nightmares, never have to go to sleep worried or without someone to talk about those worries with. He was moving far too fast, he knew. He was scaring her with how quickly he was moving into her life. But she’d kept the ring. She had. No matter what else had happened, she’d kept it.

He put his hand into his pocket, felt the smooth touch of it there. The bastard had taken it off her finger, died with it clutched in his filthy hands. Mac had retrieved it for him. He’d have it cleaned, the prongs retightened, make sure it was perfect before he put it on her finger again. He pulled it out, stared at it.

“You should put it back on her.”

“He’s touched it.”

“So have you.” Sarah put the sandwich in his other hand. “Eat.” She held up her ring hand. “It becomes a part of you and you feel its absence. Keenly. She’ll feel better with it on.”

Tyler swallowed a bite that he was sure was as delicious as anything Sarah made, but it had no taste. “I can’t right now. He broke her fingers. The knuckle’s all swollen.” She lifted her arms, unlatched the silver chain of the cross she always wore, held out her hand. Bemused, he put the ring in it and she strung it on the chain. Leaving the cross on the chain with it, she folded the necklace back in his hand. “Put that on her.

She’ll know it’s there. It will make a difference.”

“I don’t know what religion she is. She’s never said and getting information out of her is like pulling teeth. Contrary woman.”

Sarah smiled. “It doesn’t matter. The cross is a reminder of faith. We all have faith in something. Otherwise, we wouldn’t go on living.” She rose, ruffled his hair and went back down the stairs.

He held the necklace in his hand, closed his fingers on it as if it were her. With gentle possession, fierce need. All-consuming love. He was a man who’d lived enough years to know what love was and what it wasn’t. He’d loved his wife. He loved the woman behind the door and would do all he could to keep her well and safe, if only she’d trust in him to do so and come from the place deep inside her where she now hid.

Well, whether the damsel was by his side or inside a fortress with him outside, she was still his to defend and he couldn’t let her down.

He made himself finish the meal, rose and splashed water on his face in the hall bathroom, got himself a clean shirt and was shrugging into it when Komal emerged.

“Let’s go downstairs and talk.” She gestured to the open sitting room, which was clearly visible from the bedroom door.

He nodded. “Let me call Sarah to sit with her.”

“I was going to suggest the same.”

When they faced each other in the sitting room, Komal began without preamble, apparently recognizing from his expression he had no patience for any other approach.

“Everything looks fine. Normal. Remarkable, considering the physical feat she pulled off. Her body temperature is somewhat low.”

“She’s always cold. Her skin’s always cold.”

Komal put out her hand, her dark eyes warm with understanding. “I’m not a doctor but my gut and experience say she’s had a complete breakdown. She’s drained, so tired there’s nothing there. Exhaustion. Sheer and simple. She’s out there floating in the wreckage, the post-flood. I think she just needs time for the water to wash out and to feel the people who love her around her. You need to keep a close eye on her right now.

Very close.”

He understood from the emphasis, the sudden sharpening of her eyes, what she meant. He’d known it, suspected it, but it was difficult to hear from someone who was trained to see it.

“But he’s gone. She faced him, annihilated him.”

“The man who haunted her life is gone, but the evil that chose to manifest itself in the body of her father is not gone. It never is. Off to find another willing host, innocent prey. Will she ever annihilate the feeling of his hatred, his betrayal? His hands on her?

See, that’s the thing.” Komal settled herself on the sectional sofa and drew him down next to her, giving him the seat that gave him a clear view to Marguerite’s room. “The nightmare wasn’t that he was still alive, but that he existed to begin with. With him gone, that hits all the harder, the truth of that. Will it ever be better? Will she ever not dream of the nightmare?

“Think of the Holocaust victims. Hitler’s dead, the Third Reich is gone, but is it?

When you’ve been touched by that kind of evil, you know that it doesn’t have a specific face. It’s an underground river in the subconscious of humanity, ready to rise up at the least crack in the soul of a willing host. And the only thing that makes life worth living when you really understand that is knowing there’s someone out there worth living for.”

“I’m here.”

“Yes, you are.” Komal smiled now, squeezed his arm. “It may take time, longer than you want or expect, but I think that’s the key. Let her know she’s not alone, that you’re here. You’re her raft. I’m just a phone call away if you need me for anything.”

It was an easy task, physically. Staying with her, making sure she was always in his sight, talking to her, touching her. Caring for her bodily needs. Emotionally, he’d never done anything harder than watching those distant blue eyes refuse to focus on him, her lips refuse to speak, day after day, no matter what he did.

And he understood then how his wife had been unable to take those long, awful days when his detachment was absolute, his attentiveness apparently shattered beyond repair. He’d left her side in their bed night after night to sit on that landing, staring into the waters illuminated by moonlight. Too numb to search for answers, just going through the motions of living, too tired to talk to her, no emotions in him to respond to her.

He was gentle with Marguerite, spoke to her, cared for her, did everything necessary to keep the pain of her physical injuries to a minimum. Inside, his emotions ran the spectrum from fury with her for doing what she had done, to the terror of reliving the memory, to the frustration with her lack of response now when he had so much love he wanted to give her. He just had to keep offering comfort and reassurance with it, not knowing if it was disappearing into the black void of her mind that her blank expression seemed to indicate, or if deep inside that void somewhere his angel was receiving his love, using it to nourish herself and grow stronger, to take control back from the trauma that had seized her body.

Several days passed. Leila was glad to come every day in her capacity as nurse to check on Marguerite’s physical state and Tyler stayed in touch with Komal. Marguerite would sit up if compelled to do so, allowed Tyler to bathe her without complaint and carry her into the bathroom for Sarah or Leila to care for more intimate requirements.

Tyler would have willingly done it all, but he was overruled by the two women who agreed that Marguerite needed to be the one to give her permission for that. Otherwise, he never left her. He laid her on a blanket in the garden by the statue while he worked with his orchids. Let her sleep on the sofa in his office or gaze out the window from the recliner as he made phone calls. Put her next to him in a chair in the solar as he ate breakfast and coaxed her to take a few bites. She chewed and swallowed without interest as the sun shone through the paleness of her skin. He was beginning to feel like he had a mannequin he moved around the house with him. It was dark outside and dark in his heart.

When he watched Komal drive back down the driveway five days later, he fought a weariness that threatened to make him weak. Marguerite needed his strength, not his impotent rage at a man who was dead. She’d killed him, slain her own dragon so it seemed, but as Komal had said, she’d discovered the dragon lay not in the man, but the memories that would not let her go.

He turned, went back in and up to the bedroom. In the growing evening, Sarah had turned on the side lamp and he saw she was brushing Marguerite’s hair, combing it out on the pillow, lifting her head as needed to straighten out the snarls.

“It’s as lovely as the manes of those horses you see in the arenas, the Lizzie horses I always call them. I thought it would soothe her to have it brushed.” She put it into a loose braid, bound it with a piece of ribbon she’d found somewhere in the nooks and crannies of domestic supplies he knew nothing about. “I gave her an extra pain pill while you were with Mrs. Gupta. She seemed a little more uncomfortable tonight, I suspect because of the rain we’ve been having. It should make her sleep more deeply.” Her sharp eyes studied him. “Maybe you should take one, too.” Tyler shook his head. “Thank you, Sarah. I’m sure she’ll thank you, too, when she’s able. I’ll sleep with her now, so go find yourself some rest. We’ll take it slow in the morning. A late breakfast. If she’s up to it I’ll spend the day with her in the gardens.”