Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(71)
Her sister had died. Perhaps she had as many scars as he did. He waited for her to go on, just holding her.
“But my job, evil as it was, it was all I knew,” she said at last. “If I was not that, who was I? But I knew if I went home I wouldn’t have the strength to stand against my father when he wanted me to pick up where I left off. So I did not go home. I came here.”
He wouldn’t ask her what she did. She was not ready yet to tell him. Not that he thought whatever it was would be evil. He knew she wasn’t evil on some deep level he couldn’t explain. “And the ghost act was to keep people away.”
She nodded. “I needed time to think. And these English, they are so strict with all their rules for what a woman must not do, and how she must be attended always by servants, and receive callers and live just so and I could not stand this. So I lived outside their censure.”
“What were you thinking about?” he asked softly, moving a strand of her midnight hair away from her forehead.
“Who I was.”
He could understand that. He’d defined himself as a bastard, a servant in Melaphont’s stable, a lover of Emily, a prisoner, a pirate, and now a gentleman. He wasn’t sure he was any of those, not really. He nodded, and waited.
“I look back on all those months.” Her voice was pensive. “I was half-alive. Not thinking, though that was what I came here to do. Not feeling.” The silence stretched.
“Does that mean you know who you are now?”
She chuckled. “No. I am more confused than ever. I know only that I was not living.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Yes.” She looked up at him and smiled.
He could not help but swell a bit with pride. He might not be alone in the sensation of joining tonight. But if there was any way forward together there were other things he must know.
“So tell me about the red eyes and the disappearing.” He didn’t dare mention the wounds at his neck.
“Must you ruin all with your questions?” she snapped, pushing away from him and sitting up. “Can you not just live in the moment?” She looked around, as though she realized where she was for the first time. She got out of bed, gloriously naked, and pulled the heavy draperies closed. “It will be light soon. I must move my things from the other room.”
“I’ll help,” he said. But he felt bleak inside. The bond he’d felt to her had snapped.
He got hold of himself. He couldn’t dally with a woman anyway. The revenge he’d desired for fifteen years had to be planned all over again. Melaphont must be his focus, not this tiny woman who had ravished his soul as well as his body tonight. She had secrets she would not share. He had no time to pry them from her. Where was his determination now? He forced himself to think about revenge. Money. Money was what Melaphont cared about. That and his house. Then those things were what he would lose.
By the time she had finished moving her things, it was daylight. She was getting sleepy. The room was over warm, but she couldn’t open the draperies to catch a breeze. Drew was sweating and pale. She could not make him suffer here. “Go to your room and get some sleep.” She managed a smile.
He examined her face, nodded once. And he left.
She felt bereft. She had trusted him last night with her fragile psyche as well as her body. And she had felt almost . . . reborn. Until he had ruined everything with questions that reminded her what a gulf there really was between them. They were not even the same species, no matter how close they had felt. She lived forever and he but a blink of time. The feeling of being joined spiritually was only the effect of the Tantric exercise she had always made the Aspirants practice. It wasn’t real closeness, and certainly not anything else she might name. She had just been surprised by his tenderness.
She could never even tell him she was vampire. It was strictly against the Rules established by her father and the Council of Elders. Even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t trust him enough for that. He would be appalled, as humans always were.
She slept fitfully until nightfall. No light leaked from his doorway as she went to the kitchen. She heated water for a bath. A roast chicken he must have prepared sat, untouched, on the cutting board with some greens she did not recognize. The English always overcooked their vegetables. She ate standing. The night was hot again. Thunder sounded in the distance. Lightning threw the kitchen into periodic bright relief. She bathed, sorry the soap washed his scent from her body, then dressed and wandered to the front of the house. But there were no lights on in that wing. Where was he? Perhaps the stables.
His horse had his nose stuffed in the manger, and the barn was filled with contented grinding. The creature didn’t seem to mind the storm outside as long as he had his oats and hay. There were several bales piled neatly at the end of the barn aisle, and his stall was clean and filled with fresh straw. The place smelled of hay, and saddle soap and oil from the freshly cleaned tack. But there was no sign of Drew. At least she knew he wasn’t far. He wouldn’t go anywhere without his horse. She realized she’d been worried he might have left.
She wouldn’t want that.
She headed back to the house. The skies let loose in pelting rain. Drops bounced off the gravel and flapped in sheets across the stable yard. She was soaked to the skin instantly. Breaking into a run, she made it to the kitchen.