Portrait In Death

Because of him.

His mother, Summerset's daughter, both dead because of him.

He stepped through the open door of Summerset's quarters. In the living area PA Spence was ru

The wall screen played one of the morning newscasts. Summerset sat, drinking coffee, watching the news, and ignoring the PA as she cheerfully detailed the progress of his injuries.

"Coming right along," she chirped. "Excellentprogress, particularly for a man of your age. You're going to be up and around on your own again in no time, no time at all."

"Madam, I would be up and around on my own now if you'd go away."

She clucked her tongue. "We'll just get a reading of your blood pressure and pulse for the chart. Bound to be elevated since you insisted on drinking that coffee. Black as pitch. You know perfectly well you'd do better with a nice herbal tonic."

"With you nattering in my ear I may take to starting my day with vodka. And I can take my own vital signs."

"I'll take your vital signs. And I want no trouble from you today about your vitamin boost."

"If you come near me with that syringe, you'll find it deposited in one of your own orifices."

"Excuse me." Though he'd have preferred to slink away u

"I'm not quite finished. I need to update his chart, and he needs his booster."

"Ah, well." Roarke slid his hands into his pockets. "You look better today."

"I'm quite well, considering."

And angry with me, Roarke noted. "I wonder if some fresh air might be in order. Why don't I take you out through the gardens for a bit, before the day heats up."

"That's a fine idea," Spence said before Summerset could answer. And she whipped the pressure syringe from behind her back, had it pressed against his biceps and administered before he could blink. "Nothing like a nice turn around the garden to put roses in your cheeks. No more than thirty minutes," she said to Roarke. "It'll be time for his physical therapy."

"I'll have him back for it." He started to step behind Summerset's chair.

"I can navigate this bloody thing perfectly well myself." To prove it, Summerset engaged the controls and propelled himself toward the terrace doors.

Roarke managed to get there in time to open them before he whisked through.

Back poker straight, Summerset drove over the stone terrace, turned down one of the garden paths. And kept on going.

"He's in a very sour mood this morning," Spence commented. "More so than usual."

"I'll have him back for the therapy." Roarke shut the door behind him, and followed Summerset down the path.

The air was warm and close, and fragrant. He'd built this world, he thought, his world surrounded by the city he'd made his own. He'd needed the beauty. It hadn't been simply desire, but survival. With enough beauty, he could cover up all the ugliness of all the yesterdays.

So there were flowers and pools, arbors and paths. He'd married Eve out here, in this manufactured Eden. And found more than his measure of peace.

He let Summerset glide himself along for the first few minutes, understanding the man probably wanted to put some distance between himself and Spence as much as he wanted the control.

Then Roarke simply stepped up behind the chair, stopped it. Locked it in place. He walked around to sit on a bench so that he and Summerset were on the same level.

"I know you're angry with me," he began.

"You've saddled me with that creature. Locked me in with her as my warden."

Roarke shook his head. "Christ Jesus. You can be as mad as you like about that. Until you're healed you'll have the best care available. She's it. For that I won't apologize. For the things I said to you last night, for the way I behaved, I will. I'm sorry for it, very sorry."

"Did you think you couldn't tell me?" Summerset looked away, stared hard at a violently blue hydrangea. "I know the worst of you, and the best, and everything between." He looked back now, studied Roarke's face. "Well, at least I see she tended to you. You look rested."

Surprise flashed in Roarke's eyes before he narrowed them. "Eve discussed… she spoke to you about what I've learned?"

"However we disagree, whatever our difficulties with each other, we have one thing in common. That's you. You worried us both, needlessly."

"I did." He rose, walked a few paces down the path. Back again. "I can't get a grip on it. Any sort of a grip. It makes me sick inside in a way I haven't felt… in a very long time. And I wondered, I let myself wonder, if you knew."

"If I knew… ah." As another piece fell into place, Summerset let out a long breath. "I didn't. I had no knowledge of this girl. As far as I knew, Meg Roarke was your mother."

Roarke sat again. "I never questioned it."

"Why should you have?"

"I've spent more time, taken more care turning over the background on a low-level employee than I have on my own begi

"You protected yourself."

"Fuck that." It was temper as much as guilt that radiated from him. "Who protected her?"

"It could hardly have been you, a babe in arms."

"And no justice for her, not by my hand. Not by her son's hand, for the bastard's been dead for years now. At least with Marlena-"

He cut himself off, drew himself in. "Marlena died to teach me a lesson. You never blamed me for it, not once have you said you blamed me."

For a long beat, Summerset looked over the garden. Those violently blue hydrangeas, the bloodred of roses, the hot pink of snapdragons. His daughter, his precious child, had been like a flower.

Beautiful, brilliant, and short-lived.

"Because you weren't to blame. Not for what happened to my girl, not for what happened to your mother." Summerset's gaze tracked back to him, held. "Boy," he said quietly, "you were never to blame."

"Neither was I ever i

"You could have blamed me." He set the flower in Summerset's lap because that, too, was unexpected. A small gesture, a small symbol. "You took me in, when he'd damn near beaten me to death, and I had no one and nowhere to go. You didn't have to; I was nothing to you then."

"You were a child, and that was enough. You were a child half-beaten to death, and that was too much."

"For you." Emotion all but strangled him. "You took care of me, and you taught me. You gave me something I'd never had, never expected to. You gave me a home, and a family. And when they took part of that family away, when they took Marlena, the best of us, you could have blamed me. Cast me out. But you never did."

"You were mine by then, weren't you?"

"God." He had to take a breath, a careful one. "I suppose I was."

Needing to move, Roarke got to his feet. With his hands in his pockets he watched a small fountain gurgle to life above a riot of lilies. He watched the cool water until he was calm again.

"When I decided to come here, wanted to make my home here and asked you to come, you did. You left the home you'd made for the one I wanted to make. I don't think I've ever told you that I'm grateful."

"You have told me. Many times and in many ways." Summerset laid his hands over the strong blue flower, looked out over the garden. The peace of it, and the beauty of it.

The world within a world the boy he'd watched become a man had created. Now that world had been shaken, and needed to be put steady again.