Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.

 

~ Jane Austen

“What do you think?”

Vincent took the offered sketchbook from his brother and studied the drawing. It…showed promise. But how to phrase that without it sounding like a criticism?

Before Vincent was forced to make his thoughts known, the front door of the brownstone opened.

“I’m home!”

He heard Catherine toss her briefcase onto the entry table and waited for the sounds made by her high heels hitting the polished wood floor one by one. Then he said, “We’re in the library.”

“’We’?” she murmured as she took a turn into the second room on the right. The library was dimly lit, only the glow from the fireplace lighting the room Vincent used as his study when he was Above. She saw a dark-haired man turn to greet her, a ready smile upon his scarred face.

“Devin! You’re home!’

Devin glanced at Vincent as he said, “She always says ‘home’ instead of ‘back’ – makes me think she’s hinting at something!” But his arms rose in anticipation of the greeting he knew was coming.

Catherine threw herself into those welcoming arms and hugged her brother-in-law hard. At first, she sensed the tension in him, but she kept him close until she felt him relax fully into her arms. And, as always, she held him until he broke the embrace. She felt he should know there were no limits on her happiness to have him back…whether he considered it “home” or not.

“You look amazing, as always,” he said, looking down into her smiling face.

“You, too. It’s just a sin how you never seem to age.”

He smiled. “I’ve got no worries to make me gray.”

But the sadness behind his smile reminded her he was still grieving the loss of his companion of several years. Charles’ death freed Devin from a life bound by responsibilities he had hastily taken on, and which he was surprised to find suited him. But that freedom came with a sudden dose of loneliness. Only Vincent and Catherine knew how much it still affected him.

She looked down at the sketchbook. “What’s this? Your new occupation?”

Vincent handed it to her, and she gazed at it with a critical eye. Finally, she said, “It needs…something.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Devin muttered, stung by her assessment, even as he knew she was right: it did need…something.

“Of course.” Catherine was aware of the slight coolness in his reply and sought to find something more positive to say. “She’s quite a stunning model. You’ve caught her expression well.” She looked up, ready to hear the backstory. But she was disappointed in that.

“It’s not my new occupation, just my new hobby,” was all he would say.

Catherine glanced at Vincent while Devin accepted and put away his sketchbook, but Vincent only raised his shoulders in the slightest of shrugs to indicate he had no clues to offer.

“Well, it’s way better than anything I could do,” she admitted, trying to soothe his hurt feelings.

“But not as good as what my little brother can do with one hand tied behind his back.”

She didn’t have to agree. He was stating a fact.

“I have been sketching for many years, Devin. If this is indeed a ‘new’ hobby, you have come very far very quickly. Be proud of that.”

Devin sat abruptly on the couch, grimacing. “Sorry. I’m not used to not being great at whatever I decide to do.”

Catherine sat beside him, leaning her shoulder against his. “On behalf of those of us who have to work very hard to get good at even one thing…get over yourself!”

That drew an embarrassed chuckle from Devin. “Yeah, you’re right…as usual, sis.”

She could not express how much she loved him calling her that. Father objected, feeling it was disrespectful, but for an only child, having her brother-in-law refer to her that way made her feel loved and accepted…two things she still rarely felt from Father, despite his assertions.

“Am I also right that nobody’s thought of what to eat for dinner?”

Two growling stomachs gave their answer.

“I think we have a couple of frozen pizzas in the kitchen…unless some teenagers from Below have denuded the freezer.” She padded out of the room and down the hallway to the eat-in kitchen.

The men heard the freezer door open, and her announcement, “Still here! I’ll pop them both in the oven, and make a salad while we’re waiting.”

Devin entered the room as he said, “I’ll make the salad. No offense, sis, but…you focus on the pizzas, OK?”

Vincent, following behind, said, “I’ll set the table and keep watch over the pizzas. Maybe you could find a nice red to go with the meal, Catherine?”

“OK good,” she murmured, not insulted in the least by the implied criticism about her skills in the kitchen. Nobody could be good at everything.

* * *

In bed that night, they cuddled in the afterglow of the kind of intimacy they had only dreamed of for so long. Catherine stroked Vincent’s chest as his long fingers drifted through her hair. She felt as well as heard his deep sigh of contentment and smiled.

“Devin just…showed up?”

She felt him nod. “As usual. Out of the blue.”

“Any word on how long he’ll be staying?”

“None. But…”

She rose on one elbow and gazed down into his beloved face. “Tell me.”

He tucked pillows behind them so they could sit up and talk. “There’s something about the model. He asked me to evaluate his work, but I think he really wanted me to ask about the woman.”

“Ah. Sneaky. Well, what did you say?”

“Nothing. You came home before I could gather the words to ask in as oblique a manner as possible.”

She nodded. “Since direct questions never seem to elicit a serious response.” Shrugging, she added, “Well, we will be alert for the opportunity to present itself. And until then…”

Vincent received her “until then” eagerly, and they slipped back down under the bedclothes for more of what they had been doing before.

* * *

Catherine smelled the coffee as she came downstairs, yawning due to the early hour. Saturday mornings usually were lazy, but with Devin in the house, it was bound to be a more chaotic day. She was right, for when she entered the kitchen, Vincent and Devin were hosting several members of the Tunnel community.

“Ah, Cathy, how nice to see you finally awake.” Father stood, gentlemanly despite his snideness, and offered her the kitchen stool he’d been perched on.

“Well…I had…quite a night,” she replied, fluttering her eyelashes a bit more than necessary, so he got her point. Watching him blush and squirm helped her slough off his snippy greeting.

Devin thrust a mug of coffee into her hands. “Easy now, Chandler. Don’t embarrass me in front of the children.” He smirked as she frowned at him.

Vincent cleared his throat. “Mouse and Geoffrey have come with a request.” He indicated a box full of…things…on the counter. “They have built a computer and wish to use something called dial-up to test it.”

“If this computer we built works up here, Mouse said he could wire a phone line down to Father’s library so we could all do research on the World Wide Web.” Geoffrey’s enthusiasm was infectious.

“Of course! If you need anything, just let us know,” Catherine replied, ruffling Geoffrey’s curls.

Mouse picked up the box and scurried to the brownstone’s library, Geoffrey trailing him. Vincent shrugged, realizing his space would be invaded for the foreseeable future. “I’ll just start the laundry,” he said as he disappeared into the pantry.

“Laundry? Really?”

Father was about to work himself into a dudgeon when Devin interjected, “He’s gonna show me how his fancy washer and dryer work. I have a duffle bag full of dirty clothes and don’t want to bother the laundry crew Below with extra washing.” He left the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time to the guestroom.

The kitchen was now empty except for Catherine and Father. She eyed the toaster. “I’m having an English muffin. May I make one for you, too?”

Father harumphed. “What you Americans call ‘English muffins’ are hardly edible.”

She turned to look at him, her hand holding the muffin slices over the toaster, forcing him to ask.

“Yes…I suppose I could eat one. Please,” he added.

Nodding, she dropped them into the toaster slots and slapped the toaster into action.

* * *

“There’s not enough for a full load,” Vincent muttered.

“I travel light.”

“Ummm hmmm.” Vincent knew the “need” for doing laundry was just a pretext to escape proximity to their father. They had both done it, so he couldn’t blame his brother. But only one of them felt even the slightest guilt at leaving Catherine alone with the older man.

“How long can we reasonably expect to stay in here before the Old Man comes looking for us?” Devin whispered. “I’m about due for another ‘we never see you’ lecture.”

Vincent caught the sound of a butter knife scraping across a toasted muffin. “I suspect now that he’s fed, he might be in a slightly better mood.”

Then he heard tea being poured.

“Ah, the unmistakable scent of Earl Grey is filling the air. I think we’re safe to resurface.” He grabbed his brother’s shoulder and marched him back to the kitchen.

“This lemon curd is just the thing to disguise the poor quality of the muffin,” Father was saying.

Vincent noted the crumbs on his plate; it wasn’t his first muffin of the morning.

Catherine’s glare at Vincent was like shooting daggers. He suspected there’d be a price to pay for abandoning her. Trying to do penance, he slapped his father on the shoulder. “What’s on the agenda for tonight’s Council meeting?”

While Father wound up to begin responding, Catherine took her plate and mug of tea and scooted out of the kitchen, her hostess duties done. As she left, she “accidentally” bumped her hip into his, and Vincent knew that all was forgiven.

* * *

Devin came out of the laundry room with his clean, dried, and folded clothes to find Catherine alone at the kitchen counter, thumbing through his sketchbook. She looked up as he set the small pile on a kitchen stool.

“I’m excited to see how you’re developing your style. This model must be quite the inspiration.” That was as much of an opening as she could give him in order to elicit a non-joking response.

He sat on an empty stool beside her. “She is. She’s actually the instructor. She just substituted for a model who didn’t show up for the class one day.”

“Ah. Well, she must have been a model herself once, since she knows how to hold a pose.” She had done a bit of art-class modeling during college and knew it wasn’t as easy as it looked to hold still while others stared at you and drew.

Devin didn’t respond. She glanced up at him. He was looking down at his hands, not at her admiring his sketches.

“Tell me?” She could only give him the opening, she couldn’t make him get to a point he wasn’t ready to share.

He sighed. For a moment she thought that would be his only response, but finally he added, “You know me.”

Smiling tenderly, she put two fingers under his chin to get him to look at her. When she held his gaze, she said, “I know what you show me. I would love to know more.”

His eyebrows briefly rose in surprise, then he smiled in return. “You got me, sis. OK…” He took the sketchbook from her and flipped through its pages as he spoke. “I met Jocelyn at a bar in Brooklyn and hit it off like crazy with her. But she turned down my gentlemanly offer to walk her home.”

Catherine rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, a pretext, I know! Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. All I’d gotten from her was a first name and that she taught at Brooklyn College. So…I did some digging through their catalog, found that the only Jocelyn was Jocelyn Petersen, and,” he spread his arms wide and bowed, “’Charles Everson’ enrolled in one of her classes. We both acted surprised at the start of the semester to find that we had met before.”

She could figure out the rest of the story without his aid. How he had fallen hard for this woman under his false identity, how he couldn’t figure out a way to come clean without raising her ire or suspicion.

“How can I help?” was perhaps not what her brother-in-law expected to come out of her mouth at that point but, to his credit, his surprise was short-lived.

“Well…I’m toying with a couple of possible scenarios. I’m in witness protection so can’t use my real name in public. That could also explain my inability to tell her much about my life before meeting her. Or…I have a pal named Charles Everson who was originally registered for the class, but he couldn’t take it and I just pretended to be him to take his spot.”

Catherine regarded him with narrowed eyes. “You are kidding, right? Those are awful ideas. She’d be an idiot to believe either one.”

His shoulders sagged. “Yeah, which is why I’m moping around like a love-sick teenager. I can’t figure out a good excuse to talk my way out of this. And I really…really care for her.”

Having never heard that latter sentence come out of his mouth before, she realized how desperate Devin was. So, this was the reason that, despite being back in New York for nearly two months, he was only now letting them know he was in town.

“Let me think about this, OK? Maybe get your brother’s big brain working on it, too, if you don’t mind?” She willed him to feel her empathy as she squeezed his arm in support.

He shook his head. “I know what he’ll say. This is what I should expect when I’m never honest with people up front.”

She leaned in to whisper into his ear, “No, that’s what Father would say. Your brother is quite a different man, who loves you in quite a different way, I promise.”

When she leaned back again, she saw the tears forming in his eyes. He hopped off the stool and turned away before she could see them fall. “OK good, as the big kid would say.” He grabbed his clothes and left the kitchen.

* * *

“Poor Devin,” was all Vincent said in response to Catherine revealing his brother’s situation.

“Not knowing Jocelyn, we can’t tell how she might react to finding out that ‘Charles’ is actually named Devin.”

He nodded. “I’ve never seen him like this, tied in knots over a woman. Not that I know about his earlier personal relationships. But given the way he’s lived his life, I’ve always assumed his interactions with women were…short-lived.”

Catherine sat back against the pillows on the velvet-covered couch in their library and watched her Bondmate pace. The fire was crackling, suffusing the room with warmth as the city was settling into the deep part of the night beyond their windows. They were alone. The Council meeting had ended hours earlier, and Devin had gone out, promising not to wake them when…or if…he came home.

“Let’s assume this isn’t another in a series of briefly lit candles. If he’s genuinely attracted to her, and she to him, he needs to come clean before their relationship…deepens. Betrayal after intimacy would likely be a death knell. When trust is broken…”

Vincent ceased his pacing and sat beside her, taking her hand and gazing into her eyes. “You know I have little experience in this arena. Was that…was that…”

She wondered why he was having so much trouble getting his thoughts out.

Finally, he managed to finish his question. “Was that…what happened between you and Elliot?”

Her eyes widened. This wasn’t something they had ever discussed. Had it been preying on his mind all these years?

“God…no! Oh, Vincent!” She wrapped her arms around him as she said, “We never…got to that point. We’d kissed, yes, and I won’t say the opportunity never arose for more intimacy, but…something always held me back. I know now, it was my bond with you.” She leaned back to look him in the eye. “He betrayed all the people in that apartment house and, through them, me. That’s why I broke things off with him.”

The relief in his eyes pierced her heart. All this time…?

“I know I told you I thought I was falling in love with him, and now I understand that you assumed it meant…more, and for that, I can never apologize enough. I just never realized that assumption might reasonably be made, but seeing the situation in retrospect… I’m so sorry.”

He pulled her back into their embrace. “I knew you had a life before and beyond our time together, and that you had relationships. And it was me who kept pushing you to find someone Above. Never apologize, Catherine.”

She clung to him, knowing that even without any “fault” there was still pain to assuage, words that should have been spoken, situations that should have been explained…

That night she proved to him yet again how much he meant to her, and that no one else could ever come between them.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking about your…dilemma.” Catherine poured coffee for herself and Devin.

“Me, too. I’ve come up with another possible excuse for using a different name,” he said. “See, if I was in the French Foreign Legion, I…”

She shook her head while rolling her eyes. “Oh, please…stop! I have a much better idea.”

“All ears.” He smiled as he sipped his coffee, adding afterwards, “This is one thing you’ve learned to make well!”

After giving him a severe frown-face, she waved his comment away. “Here goes: tell her the truth.”

He nearly spit out his mouthful of brew. “What truth?!”

“The real story of your life. You’ve lived an extraordinary one, so why not lean into that ‘version’?”

“I’m really Devin Wells who ran away from the tunnels beneath New York as a teenager and…” he began, eyebrows raised to indicate just how crazy that sounded.

“Well, OK, not the Below part, although that could come in time. But why not tell her of your singularly uncommon lifestyle? Maybe fudge a bit about pretending to be things that require licenses, like a physician…or a lawyer for the DA’s office…”

He sat forward on his stool and stared at her. “Sooo…being a guide in South Africa…”

She lifted a finger in clarification. “No need to affect the fake accent.”

“…and working as a chef in Italy…”

She thought about it. “You could make it sound like you were apprenticing, perhaps.”

“…and being a bush pilot in Australia …”

“Nope! No mention of flying – you should have had a license, remember?”

“Right. OK, my time working in Scotland Yard, or…”

She shook her head, her eyelids closing in disbelief, and murmured, “Please tell me you weren’t pretending to be a detective.”

He snorted. “Assistant to the forensic pathologist. Don’t worry, I did take classes and read a lot first. It really was a fascinating…”

Catherine breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s table that one for a while. Other jobs that might not raise her blood pressure…or mine?”

He thought back. “I worked on a cattle ranch in Montana. After all that riding, I went on the rodeo circuit for a bit…won sometimes, too!”

“That’ll do. What else?”

He ticked off another few jobs Catherine deemed worthy of inclusion – night watchman, bartender, dog-walker – and they all added up to a real…and believable…resume. All that was left was explaining away the name he’d given her: Charles Everson.

Catherine gazed at him for a long while, then perked up and snapped her fingers. “How’s this? You are using a pseudonym for your art, and just got caught up in the moment when you met her, innocently introducing yourself using it, figuring you wouldn’t ever see her again. You registered for the class as Charles, obviously, never dreaming she would be your professor.”

He considered her idea. “Could work! I didn’t get her number when we first met, so it wasn’t like I’d planned on deceiving her beyond that random chat. And she didn’t tell me her last name. As far as she knows, my signing up for the art class was total serendipity.”

“I can’t believe I’m helping you in this charade. I should feel terrible about it…”

“But you don’t, do you? In fact, it’s kind of fun!”

His smirk made her itch to poke him. But…she had to admit it was fun concocting a way out of his situation – sort of. At least, with minimal lying…rather than wholesale lying.

But what would Vincent say?

* * *

“I’m not sure this is much better than his original sin.”

Vincent’s lips were twitching as he said it, though, so Catherine felt he would get on board with the idea.

“It’s a sin of omission, at least. All right, many omissions. But consider his other ideas: French Foreign Legion…witness protection…”

Vincent waved a hand as he shook his head. “His hormones are making him stupid.” He sighed, then said, “In a world of bad choices, this is the least bad one, and filled with more truth than he had initially planned to tell. If this turns into a serious relationship – an unlikely possibility where my dear brother’s concerned – more truths could eventually be revealed. The Tunnels being the last one.”

“Yes. This lets him strip away the layers of his life as warranted, and since there are so many of those…”

“And realistically, what are the chances they will become a couple? I think this is the safest way for him to proceed, and the most honorable on his part. When the inevitable happens, she won’t know anything that could harm him, and off he’ll go in some new direction we haven’t yet imagined.”

* * *

The wedding was held in the living room of Catherine and Vincent’s brownstone. It was an intimate ceremony. If Jocelyn’s parents found those attending on Devin’s side dressed strangely, they were too polite to say anything.