A Discovery of Witches(73)

The creaminess of the wine and the oysters collided with the taste of sea salt in ways that were utterly bewitching. “It’s as if the whole ocean is in my mouth,” I answered, taking another sip.

We finished the oysters and moved on to an enormous salad. It had every expensive green known to mankind, nuts, berries, and a delicious dressing made with champagne vinegar and olive oil that Matthew whisked together at the table. The tiny slices of meat that adorned it were partridge from the Old Lodge’s grounds. We sipped at what Matthew called my “birthday wine,” which smelled like lemon floor polish and smoke and tasted like chalk and butterscotch.

The next course was a stew, with chunks of meat in a fragrant sauce. My first bite told me it was veal, fixed with apples and a bit of cream, served atop rice. Matthew watched me eat, and he smiled as I tasted the tartness of the apple for the first time. “It’s an old recipe from Normandy,” he said. “Do you like it?”

“It’s wonderful. Did you make it?”

“No,” he said. “The chef from the Old Parsonage’s restaurant made it—and provided precise instructions on how not to burn it to a crisp when I reheated it.”

“You can reheat my dinner anytime.” I let the warmth of the stew soak into my body. “You aren’t eating, though.”

“No, but I’m not hungry.” He continued to watch me eat for a few moments, then returned to the kitchen to fetch another wine. It was the bottle sealed with red wax. He sliced through the wax and pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Perfect,” he pronounced, pouring the scarlet liquid carefully into a nearby decanter.

“Can you already smell it?” I was still unsure of the range of his olfactory powers.

“Oh, yes. This wine in particular.” Matthew poured me a bit and splashed some into his own glass. “Are you ready to taste something miraculous?” he asked. I nodded. “This is Chateau Margaux from a very great vintage. Some people consider it the finest red wine ever made.”

We picked up our glasses, and I mimicked each of Matthew’s movements. He put his nose in his glass, and I in mine. The smell of violets washed over me. My first taste was like drinking velvet. Then there was milk chocolate, cherries, and a flood of flavors that made no sense and brought back memories of the long-ago smell of my father’s study after he’d been smoking and of emptying the shavings from the pencil sharpener in second grade. The very last thing I noted was a spicy taste that reminded me of Matthew.

“This tastes like you!” I said.

“How so?” he asked.

“Spicy,” I said, flushing suddenly from my cheeks to my hairline.

“Just spicy?”

“No. First I thought it would taste like flowers—violets—because that’s how it smelled. But then I tasted all kinds of things. What do you taste?”

This was going to be far more interesting and less embarrassing than my reaction. He sniffed, swirled, and tasted. “Violets—I agree with you there. Those purple violets covered with sugar. Elizabeth Tudor loved candied violets, and they ruined her teeth.” He sipped again. “Cigar smoke from good cigars, like they used to have at the Marlborough Club when the Prince of Wales stopped in. Blackberries picked wild in the hedgerows outside the Old Lodge’s stables and red currants macerated in brandy.”

Watching a vampire use his sensory powers had to be one of the most surreal experiences anyone could have. It was not just that Matthew could see and hear things I could not—it was that when he did sense something, the perception was so acute and precise. It wasn’t any blackberry—it was a particular blackberry, from a particular place or a particular time.

Matthew kept drinking his wine, and I finished my stew. I took up my wineglass with a contented sigh, toying with the stem so that it caught the light from the candles.

“What do you think I would taste like?” I wondered aloud, my tone playful.

Matthew shot to his feet, his face white and furious. His napkin fell, unnoticed, to the floor. A vein in his forehead pulsed once before subsiding.

I had said something wrong.

He was at my side in the time it took me to blink, pulling me up from my chair. His fingers dug into my elbows.

“There’s one legend about vampires we haven’t discussed, isn’t there?” His eyes were strange, his face frightening. I tried to squirm out of his reach, but his fingers dug deeper. “The one about a vampire who finds himself so bewitched by a woman that he cannot help himself.”

My mind sped over what had happened. He’d asked me what I tasted. I’d tasted him. Then he told me what he tasted and I said—“Oh, Matthew,” I whispered.

“Do you wonder what it would be like for me to taste you?” Matthew’s voice dropped from a purr toward something deeper and more dangerous. For a moment I felt revulsion.

Before that feeling could grow, he released my arms. There was no time to react or draw away. Matthew had woven his fingers through my hair, his thumbs pressing against the base of my skull. I was caught again, and a feeling of stillness came over me, spreading out from his cold touch. Was I drunk from two glasses of wine? Drugged? What else would explain the feeling that I couldn’t break free?

“It’s not only your scent that pleases me. I can hear your witch’s blood as it moves through your veins.” Matthew’s cold lips were against my ear, and his breath was sweet. “Did you know that a witch’s blood makes music? Like a siren who sings to the sailor, asking him to steer his ship into the rocks, the call of your blood could be my undoing—and yours.” His words were so quiet and intimate he seemed to be talking directly into my mind.