InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Metempsychosis ❯ Disasters ( Chapter 64 )

Staring out the windows of the French doors that led to the terrace and the open yard behind the house, Ashur frowned as he watched Jessa disappear down the path with Carol.

Two days since they'd become mates, and, in those two days, he couldn't say there was much, if any, real progress.  She was stuck on the idea that it was all an accident, and even when he'd tried to tell her that it wasn't, she hadn't listened.  She also seemed to believe that he'd only settled for her, which was entirely asinine, but the more he tried to get her to listen, the more closed off she became, to the point that she'd insisted upon sleeping in her old room in the maid's quarters, which was more than enough to set his temper off into realms unknown, and he'd ended up drinking himself stupid both nights since then, too . . . If he could get her to listen, maybe to talk to him, maybe . . . But no, stubborn to a fault, she was, like she really had no interest in trying to improve the situation at all.

He had no idea why.

Just now, however, he was waiting for Manami to return from picking Kells up at preschool.  They'd only gotten back an hour ago, and he'd thought maybe it was better for Manami to pick Kells up since she'd admitted that the boy was still very upset with his father, and didn't that just figure?

At least he'd be happy about the turn of events, if he actually understood what was going on, that was.

'Well, you didn't really expect that she'd be pleased that you took it upon yourself to make things official without talking to her first, did you?'

Snorting loudly at his youkai-voice's words, Ashur rolled his eyes. 'What I . . .?  You're the one who suggested it!  It wasn't my idea!'

'Yeah, but you're the one who listened, so it was your fault.'

'Of all the stupid, ridiculous—How the hell do you figure that?'

'It's not like you usually listen to me, ever.  How the hell was I supposed to know you were about to start?'

Erupting in a low growl, Ashur refused to reply to that bit of nonsense.

He was sinking here, no doubt about it.  Just how in the world was he supposed to get her to listen?  To talk to him?  Just how was he supposed to figure out, what was on her mind when he seemed to be the very last person she would willingly discuss much of anything with . . .?

Ashur shook his head.  After the meeting with the generals, Cain had pulled him aside, asked him not to contact MacDonnough just yet.  It seemed that the old bastard had gotten it into his head that he'd won the battle and the war, even though Jessa had yet to travel to Ireland.  He didn't seem to realize this, however, given that she wasn't really required to check in with him.

Cain was of the opinion that Ashur should wait to talk to MacDonnough until after he'd finally gotten things straightened out with Jessa, because if MacDonnough sensed the rift between them, he could well try to claim that they were coercing Jessa into complying with their ultimate plan, thus refusing to grant her estate to Ashur, which could, potentially, cause even more trouble.  If he protested Ashur's right to claim her estate and her father's vacated title, he could well reassign it to anyone of his choosing, regardless of whether Jessa held a legitimate claim or not . . .

"Daddy!"

Turning around at the sound of that voice, Ashur broke into a slight smile as he caught Kells and scooped him up, the click of the front door closing echoing in the distance.  "Did you miss me?"

Kells shook his head as he bounced happily.  "Nami said Jessa's here!  Is Jessa here, Daddy?"

"I should have known," Ashur muttered.  "Yes, she's here, but we need to talk before you go looking for her."

It was obvious that Kells wasn't really in the mood to listen, and he shook his head, wondering briefly, just why no one in his life was willing to do anything the easy way . . .

"Listen, Kells . . . Jessa and I—"

Kells frowned.  "Why you smell like Jessa, Daddy?  Well, not all like Jessa, but some like her . . .?"

He sighed.  "That's what I'm trying to tell you.  Jessa and I are mates.  Do you understand that?"

He thought it over, his tiny face scrunching up into a thoughtful frown.  "Like Uncle Ben and Aunt Chaiwwy?"

"Yes, like that," he allowed.

Kells considered that for a long minute, too, but slowly, slowly, his eyes flared wide.  "Then Jessa's my mommy?" he asked, only this time, there was a hint of reluctance in his voice, almost as though he were a little afraid that Ashur was going to say that she wasn't.

"Uh, yes," Ashur replied.  Kells gasped, his eyes sparkling, bright, but before he could redirect into a happy, hyper ball of energy, Ashur stopped him with a finger to his lips.  "I want you to listen to me, okay?"

Kells nodded quickly, and only then did Ashur remove his finger.  "Jessa's my mommy!"

Ashur sighed.  "Kells, you promised you'd listen."  The boy gasped and nodded emphatically.  Ashur wasn't entirely sure that he trusted him, but he also didn't figure that he was going to get him to calm down until after he saw Jessa, and he couldn't do that until he got Kells to understand.  "You can't call her, 'mommy'.  Not yet, anyway."

"Why not, Daddy?  Why not?"

Steeling himself against the rising agitation in the child's youki, Ashur frowned.  "Because right now, Jessa's a little . . . freaked out by everything, and if you call her that, you could freak her out more, and we don't want that, so . . . So, just hold off for a little while, okay?  Just until she's gotten used to the idea that we . . . That we're a family now, all right?"

Kells seemed a little crestfallen as he slowly nodded, bottom lip jutting out in a pronounced pout.  "Oka-a-ay," he finally agreed.  "But I can call her mommy sometime?"

Ashur smiled just a little.  "I'll tell you when you can.  Fair?"

Kells nodded, again.  "Can I go find her now?"

Setting Kells on his feet, he chuckled.  "She went down that path with Carol," he told the boy.  "Just remember your promise, okay?"

"Okay!" Kells hollered, tearing outside when Ashur opened the door.

"So . . . Now that we're alone, tell me that I was imagining all that tension between the two of you?"

Heaving a sigh, Ashur turned to face Manami as the latter slowly ambled toward him, arms crossed over her chest, looking entirely sweet and fresh in a pretty white sundress.  "That bad?"

She shrugged.  "Bad is a relative term."

"She . . . She was going to go back to Ireland—Told MacDonnough that she would agree to mate Kingston's son, which is laughable since Kingson's son has no intention of marrying her, ever."

"You found him?"

Heaving another sigh as he strode over to the wetbar, Ashur nodded.  "Kind of."

"Kind of?"

"He's Devlin."

"Devlin?"

Sloshing cognac into two snifters, Ashur nodded slowly.  "Yep . . . It's a long story.  Suffice it to say that he's not interested in marrying a girl that he looks at as if she were his sister."

"I had no idea . . . I mean, I never saw him before, which is odd since his father's the duke . . ."

Ashur shook his head.  "Not really that odd; not if you knew the whole story."

She took the glass he offered her and settled onto the sofa.  "His father . . . He's a strange one . . . There's just something about him that's . . ." Trailing off as she tried to decide what word she wanted, she frowned, sucking in a cheek as she pondered it.  "I guess you could say that he's, for lack of a better term, creepy."

"Creepy?  How so?"

"He's just . . . He's very assertive in a really strange kind of way, and he has this habit of . . . Of almost looking through you, like he's searching you, assessing you, I guess . . . He told me once that he was a collector, but the way he said it . . ." Suddenly, she rubbed her arms, as though she'd felt a sudden chill.  "I did wonder, though, just why he was so anxious to have his son mate Jessa.  I mean, there were a few others with daughters who would have suited if he were simply after money, but he has more than enough of that, and it's not like he would be after the title of marquess, either—He's a duke, for God's sake.  It was almost as if . . . as if there was something about Jessa herself that he wanted . . ."

"But she's just a simple fire-youkai.  I mean, there are a number of them—better trained in their abilities, too, I'm sure."

Manami nodded, smiled.  "I don't know.  It was just odd feelings.  I'm sure it's nothing, and even so, he cannot demand his son mate her now . . . But tell me why the tension?"

"I . . . I didn't ask her if it was what she wanted," he admitted.  "I just . . . I thought . . . I mean . . . Damn it, how does she not know? I know, and if I know, then that means her youkai knows, so why doesn't she?"

Manami frowned.  "I met her parents once at a soiree in London . . . Her father was the nicest man you could ever meet—jovial, good-natured—bragged on his daughter every chance he got, but her mother . . . She was much more reserved, a little stuffy, like she was afraid of stepping a toe out of line . . . She seemed very sweet, but . . . But I remember that the ladies were talking of their children, and Lady Orlaith . . . she barely said anything about Jessa, but what she did say . . . "

"Go on," Ashur prompted when Manami trailed off.

Manami sighed, biting her lip, and she looked like she was trying to make up her mind, whether or not to give voice to the memory.  Finally, she shrugged, as though maybe it didn't matter.  "She said that her daughter . . . would be lucky to find a good match, that her mate spoiled her and pampered her to distraction, and she was very interested in something that one of the other ladies had said—something about a treatment they had heard of that could permanently straighten youkai hair . . ."

He snorted, gaze darkening.

"Good thing it was just a rumor," Manami went on with a laugh.  "That girl's hair . . . It's amazing . . ."

"Did she say anything else?'

Manami blinked.  "Who?"

Gritting his teeth, Ashur drained the snifter and set it aside.  "Her mother."

"Not especially . . . The only other thing that I really noticed was how almost jealous she seemed of the other ladies' daughters—most of them blonde or the like, and all of them looking like little more than Barbie dolls, they were so . . . so similar . . . Not one of them really stood out from the others, but maybe that's something that she'd wished for . . ."

"I don't suppose you attended the ball her parents threw?"

"Hmm, no . . . I did receive an invitation, but I was out on a hunt at the time, unfortunately."

He sighed.  He figured that it would have been just too much of a coincidence for her to have been privy to more interactions between Jessa and her mother . . .

Manami sighed, setting her glass on the coffee table.  "Unfortunately, I have to be going.  Will you tell Kells that I'll miss him?'

He nodded, pushing himself to his feet to see Manami out.  She started to retrieve her bag in the foyer, but he was quicker, and she laughed as she led the way outside to her car.  "You know, Ashur, it seems to me that the two of you really need to talk.  No distractions, no interruptions, no egos . . ."

"I know.  You're right.  It's just . . . she . . . She keeps things locked up so tightly, and she doesn't want to listen . . ."

She nodded.  "And you?"

"What about me?"

Manami rolled her eyes as she opened the car door and leaned on it.  "Communication is a two-way street, and I wonder . . . Have you tried to give her anything?  Anything she can hold onto?"

"She hates it when I give her gifts," he grumbled.

"Ba-a-a-aka . . . Not things, Ash—anything of you.   You're just like her in that regard.  You cling so tightly to your secrets, to your past . . . Have you told her anything at all?  About your . . . your parents?  About . . . About Kells . . .?"

"Of course, I have."

She nodded again.  "How much?  Because I know it's painful, but . . . but sometimes, those painful things are the things that you have to entrust to someone else so that they feel they can entrust things to you, too . . ."  When he didn't answer, she smiled, leaned forward to kiss his cheek.  "Just think about it.  Maybe if you open yourself up to your mate, maybe she'll feel safer in doing the same with you."

Ashur slipped her bag into the rear seat of her car and stepped back as Manami got in.  "Think about it, Ashur!  You two deserve to be happy!"

With a jaunty wave, she took off, and he sighed.

Was it really as simple as all that?  Just telling her about his past, about . . . about everything?

It sounded entirely too easy, and yet, he knew, didn't he?  Telling her all of those things . . . There wasn't anything 'easy' about it, and it wasn't about whether or not he wanted to tell Jessa.  Of course, he didn't.  Who in their right mind would?  That aside, he also knew, understood, that she deserved to know, needed to know.  He just had to figure out how to tell her, how to say it in such a way that she could understand, which really was the biggest joke of them all, considering he didn't understand it, in the first place . . .

Stepping back into the silent house, Ashur sighed and closed the door.

It was all well and good, the idea of telling Jessa these things.  The real problem was in the doing.  He'd told her parts of it, but even when he'd done that, he really had only glossed over it, and it wasn't that he didn't trust her with the information, no . . . It was just too damn hard to really let go of it, to give it voice and to put it out there.

'And maybe that's why she's having such a hard time, doing the same.  Just because she had a better upbringing than you did doesn't mean that it was easy or simple for her, either.  You've heard what Manami said, and you know that she doesn't ever say anything just for effect.  Between those things and what Myrna's told you?  You know, maybe her childhood wasn't as picturesque as she might want you to think it was . . .'

'This really isn't some kind of weird competition . . . It's not about whose childhood was worse or anything.'

'Maybe, but think of it this way: you're so much older than she is, right?  Which means, you've had a lot more life experience that enabled you to put some perspective on things—perspective she doesn't have yet.  In a very real sense, she's still very much a child, and before you get all defensive, I'm not saying that it was wrong to take her as your mate because in a lot of ways, it's for the best.  You can help her, you know.  You can mold her views, the way she sees herself.  It may take some effort, but she's still young enough that you can hopefully undo whatever damage she's already suffered.  She's not old enough for all of that to jade her yet, and you don't want her to go there, anyway.  If giving up a little bit of yourself is what it takes to help her heal, to help her to see just what you see when you look at her, then it's worth it, isn't it?  It's the same thing that you've done with Kells.  The only difference is that he never had to experience those terrible things in order to know the good . . .'

Pondering his youkai-voice's uncharacteristically long speech, Ashur nodded to himself.

A knock on the door snapped him out of his reverie, though, and he frowned at the unknown youki that he felt a he reached for the handle.

"Hello," the woman said when he opened the door.  The fire-youkai stood there, staring at him with a no-nonsense expression on her face.  Very pretty auburn hair pulled back into a severe knot at the base of her neck, eyes as blue as the summer sky so high above that somehow felt as though they were looking right through Ashur as he gazed back at her, she was older, certainly, easily older than Ben—maybe older than Sesshoumaru . . .  "I smell her on you.  She's chosen you as her mate, then?"
"Who?"

The woman shot him a look—a rather condescending look, at that—as though she thought that he was being obtuse on purpose, and she sighed.  "My Jessa," she said plainly.

"Your Jessa?" he echoed, unsure who the woman was or what she was doing there, in the first place.  Her brogue was thick—thicker than Jessa's was normally—but she spoke very properly.

The woman rolled her eyes and made a motion with her hands, as though she were shooing away a child.  "Stand aside, whoever you are.  I need a cup of tea . . ."

"Who . . . are you?" he demanded as she brushed past him and into his home.

She didn't stop as she strode off toward the kitchen.  "Oh, you're funny, now, are you?  I'm Lady O'Shea's housekeeper."  She stopped suddenly and turned on her heel, balled up fist resting on her hip as she gave him a very solid once-over.  "Now, if you'll be so kind to show me to my quarters?"

Ashur frowned and stared at the woman for a long minute before very slowly pivoting on his heel and heading toward the basement.  "This way," he said, wondering just why he was doing as she commanded . . .