"I did not mean to wake you," she greeted him. "How are you feeling?" Recognition dawned. His eyes lost their unaccustomed uncertainty. The power focused in them.
He searched her face. "I am quite recovered, I think."
"You will pardon me if I disagree. But you do look much improved."
As if to prove his assertion, he pushed himself with obvious effort to a sitting position, propped against the wall. As the coverlets fell to his waist, Sarah noted with a start that the bruises and scrapes, even many of his cuts had disappeared. There were no scabs, not even any scars, nothing to say they had ever been. Sarah smiled nervously to conceal her amazement, but he saw it and looked down at his chest and belly to see what startled her.
"Now it is I who must talk to you," he said, before she could decide to retreat. "I must tell you what it means to be vampire, if I am to ask for your help." He motioned to the chair. With her heart in her mouth, she sat. Was it dangerous to know a vampire's secrets? "My kind are not true vampires since we do not feed on blood." His voice resounded in the darkened room. "The blood we drink is not digested. It is consumed by the parasite that shares our bodies." It all sounded so reasonable. "Our parasite Companion is the true vampire. It feeds on blood cells. Do you know what a parasite is?"
"Of course I do," she snapped. "You needn't talk down to me."
"My mistake." His tone was faintly amused, though his mouth was serious. "The parasite has two important proprieties. It regenerates cells. Thus it extends our life almost indefinitely. Regeneration also causes swift healing. Hence the legend that vampires are immortal or undead. I have never been dead and I can be killed by very ordinary means, but the damage inflicted must be great enough to kill before regeneration can begin." His voice was inexorable. "Stakes through the heart would do the job, as would decapitation, disembowelment."
Sarah winced at the violence in his words. He continued more gently. "I want you to know. It is important." She dared to cast a glance at him and nodded.
"The Companion uses energy for regeneration, but by focusing that energy, the host, too, can use the power. It is a kind of mental discipline, not something supernatural. A field of such force can be generated that light does not escape. Reflections in mirrors disappear. The field becomes so dense it collapses in on itself and the body disappears, pushed out of space. We have learned to control the reappearance with a fair amount of accuracy. The body may be transported a short distance before reassembling in another place."
Sarah looked at him incredulously. "You mean you can disappear?"
"In a sense, yes."
"And reappear in another place, perhaps from Bath to London?" she asked warily.
Davinoff sighed. "Don't let's go through that again. I am good for a mile or two, no more. You will have to take my word for that."
"Then how did you not disappear from Corina's cellar?" Sarah asked, puzzled.
"Ah, she found my Achilles' heel. Laudanum drugged my Companion as well as me. I could not disappear, or heal as the dose got bigger." The weary voice went on. "Vampires do not transform themselves into bats. I believe this tale was invented to explain swift and invisible relocation at night. They say, too, that sunlight kills us, that we only live at night. True in some sense. The ultraviolet component of sunlight is uncomfortable, like light that is too bright. I have used tinted lenses ground in Germany to my own specifications to circumvent this problem. They fit directly to my eyes. But I am most comfortable at dusk or at night."
Sarah remembered the little dimpled discs of smoky glass she had seen in his trunk.
He shrugged. "Most of the rest is pure fantasy. We are not harmed by symbols of religion. Plants or roots do not keep us away, least of all garlic, as you yourself mast know."
Sarah glanced at the garlic poultices still bound to his body and thought back to all the stories she had heard. "What about your victims?" She blushed, realizing her blunder. "I mean the legend that people whose blood was sucked by vampires themselves become vampires?"
Davinoff chuckled and rubbed his eyes. "It is possible to become vampire. But the parasite would have to be ingested. The victim would have to drink the vampire's blood."
"How often do you need blood?" She was in some way accepting this fantastic story. But what was more fantastic than what she had seen in her own cellar with her own eyes?
He took a breath. "Not often. We can go as long as a month."
"Do you need more now?"
"Yes," he said simply. "Your gift saved my life. But I will need more soon."
"You will not take the blood by force. I cannot live knowing that I set free a force of evil." She deliberately set her will against his. Let him kill her now if he would.
"I swear the countess and all her predecessors gave most willingly," he answered dryly.
Sarah found herself uncomfortable with that fact, perhaps not for the right reasons. "I'm sure they did," she returned. "Enough now. I think you will be more comfortable upstairs in a real bed. Can you manage the stairs?"
He nodded.
She helped him rise, wrapped in his bedding. That was good. She didn't want to confront his nakedness, now that he was himself again. Heat suffused her face. She wouldn't think about that. Gingerly, she slid her arm around his waist to steady him. Weak as he was, she could feel the power radiating from his body. It struck her like a blow and wound around her spine and into her most female recesses. Sarah Ashton, she admonished herself, stop this. Resolutely, she moved him to the stairs. Let him break her neck, if he wished, as he had strangled Reece. The feeling around her spine shivered into fear. But nothing more dangerous occurred than the shock of holding him, knowing he was naked under the coverlet. They stopped to rest, then made their way up to the first floor. By the time she turned back his bed and laid him in it, he was exhausted. "I shall return in a few hours," she promised.
Sarah went down to the drawing room and pulled the heavy draperies back to let in the light. The sleet against the mullioned windows was turning to snow. How many days? She stared out at the front garden, bleak with winter. Five, or six. Wait! Tomorrow would be Christmas. She would spend the anniversary of the birth of the Son of God as man with a man who was very nearly the devil himself. Sarah chuckled and drew her hands across her eyes. She ought to think if she should be afraid. But she couldn't think anymore, so she went to care for the horse. She let the warmth of his hide under her hands heal her, his soft nicker soothe her mind. She sat in the straw and listened to the wind whistle around the stall. Her companion fixed his attention single-mindedly upon his oats. The rhythmic grinding of his great teeth was quite consoling.
Then it was back to the kitchen to make a meat pie for dinner. Fires were laid and candles lit as light faded in and snow began to fall. Finally she went to the front hall where Davinoff's portmanteau waited, and opened it, not for the first time. She rubbed her hands on her skirts and touched the fine white shirts, the crisply rolled cravats. She picked up the heavy black cape by the shoulders, almost reverently, and shook it out. In the gathering gloom, she looked for boots. Had he two pair? They were at the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in tissue to preserve their gleaming surface. She chose black breeches, a white shirt, a richly brocaded dressing jacket in black and red, and some soft slippers, then climbed the stairs.
Had her feelings changed since the first time she descended a darkening stair? A thrill of fear still hummed along her spine. The realization that she liked the fearful feeling struck her in midstep. How dull her life seemed before Davinoff! This was a thing she had in common with Corina. Corina was a thrill-seeker. Was Sarah not also enamored of risk? How else had she found the courage to face Davinoff in the cellar? She felt more alive than ever before. There was no joy in crossing streets, Corina had told her once. And Sarah, deep down, agreed. Dangerous to admit yet another way she was like Corina. Yet, in one way she was not like. She had taken no pleasure in Davinoff's pain. She continued up the stairs, easier in her mind. She didn't know if she w
ould have participated in Corina's twisted sexual torture in Sienna. Who knew what the influence of the mushroom would have meant? But if the mushroom magnified what was in your soul, she could say for certain that it would not have found Corina's sick brand of titillation there.
Sarah had expected to tap on Davinoff's door, but it swung open and Julien ushered her into his room with the gracious gesture of a host. He had removed her poultices. There were no marks at all upon his body. Regenerating cells had made his flesh virgin once more, Corina's cruelty erased. He had bound a bath cloth about his waist. His manner had an animal ease and grace. She had seen him naked. She had tended to his every need. Yet she reddened in the face of his conscious undress. The heat in her loins told her she was still not to be trusted. The mushroom had revealed her other predilection most clearly.
"Good evening, Lady Clevancy." His rich voice had taken on new strength. "Let me take those from you." He gathered the clothing from her arms.
"I took the liberty of opening your portmanteau. I could not carry it upstairs," she said, excusing the second rifling of his trunk, still blushing, tingling. "I hope you will find these suitable."
He bent over the clothes now tumbled on the bed. The curls of his dark hair brushed the nape of his neck and contrasted starkly with the fine pallor of his skin. "Most welcome," he murmured. "My trunk from the Christopher?"
"I had it sent." She explained Corina's ploy for covering his disappearance in several convoluted sentences. All trace of the ease she had felt on the stairs had disappeared.
"Ingenious," Davinoff muttered.
Sarah did not like his tone and changed the subject. "Shall I bring your dinner here?"
"You have served me long enough." He nodded. "I shall be glad to go down."
Sarah watched the broad shoulders and muscled thighs disappear into the dressing room. She was alone with a man in the house, a very virile man. All the proprieties were offended. In such a case was it polite to wait or go downstairs? She waited, straightening the room, lighting a lamp, in case he needed something.
When the door opened, the alchemy was complete. He was the man she had seen in the crypt, the focus of the ball at Carlton House, Quixote's master. Outside, the snow was cold and quiet. Inside, she was aflame, lit by the intensity of his eyes upon her as he crossed silently to her and offered her his arm. Without even thinking, she placed her hand in the crook of his elbow.
"So there is a world aside from cellars and that bedroom," he marveled as they went downstairs. "I am afraid I scarcely noticed this morning."
"I regret to say it has been waiting all along," Sarah managed.
"I have been dead to it. What day is it?"
"As nearly as I can make out, tomorrow is Christmas." Sarah answered while leading him into the dining room. She could feel his eyes upon her as she lit the candelabra. "I am afraid we must fend for ourselves. I brought no servants under the circumstances," she apologized.
Davinoff followed her into the kitchen and offered to choose the wine. He emerged from the cellars many minutes later with a dusty bottle of claret and a gleam in his eye. " 'Ninety-eight, Lady Clevancy. That cellar is a treasure trove." He opened the bottle and left it to settle as he watched her move about the kitchen. He asked questions about how she had managed for the past week. She told him of the supplies left from her last trip.
"There is still a ham," she excused, "and potatoes and carrots in the root cellar, and flour and cheese. I'm afraid I will be able to produce only simple dishes." Sarah was acutely aware that well-bred young ladies barely knew the location of their own kitchens. But soon she found herself talking about her father's cook, Selby, and what a comforting retreat solid things like eggs and cream had been from mathematics and Italian in her childhood, as she cut the meat pie.
Davinoff did not even blink when she told him about the mathematics. That usually provoked surprise that any father would bother teaching such subjects to a girl. Instead, he volunteered to set the table.
"May I propose a toast?" he asked, as they sat to the long table in the dining room.
She nodded warily. What toast would a vampire make?
He lifted his glass, but his eyes held hers. "To new life," he proclaimed softly.
She searched his face. "To new life," she whispered in return. Her eyes retreated to her glass as they sipped in silence. She could still feel his gaze. Dinner might be very long. She could drink of no topic that did not touch upon blood or murder or Corina's perfidy.
But Davinoff surprised her. He turned more voluble than she had ever heard him. He talked of his travels on the Continent. He spoke of Rossini's operas in Venice and seeing the work of a Spanish painter named Goya. Sarah had seen Goya's startling portrait of the Duke of Wellington and shared Davinoff's enthusiasm. She offered up her own enjoyment of the quality of light in a painting called "Frosty Morning" by an Englishman named Turner. The conversation stretched and turned. There was no need for glittering allusions and quotations designed to display one's education. Davinoff talked about what interested him. Sarah did likewise. Davinoff mentioned the death of Madame de Stael, Sarah the death in the same year of Miss Austen.
"I have never read her books," Davinoff remarked.
"I'd be glad to lend you one," Sarah offered. "You might not think her subjects grand enough to be great literature. Yet she has found favor, even with the prince regent."
"A recommendation beyond reproach," Davinoff remarked acidly.
Sarah was driven to defend her partiality. "She writes most tellingly of the human soul in its most common and uncommon manifestations. I find her reading of society very pungent."
"Upon your recommendation, I am agog to read her work," Davinoff demurred. Sarah had the feeling he was laughing at her behind his serious eyes.
"Well you might tease me, sir," she said, rising and taking their plates, "but I think we have little enough understanding of the human condition these days. Only look at the riots last year in Derbyshire." She moved into the kitchen with purpose and found Davinoff following her.
"Who was rioting this time?" he inquired. "Was it the weavers again?"
"You mean the Luddites? No, this was no protest against machines, but against wages that won't support a family. How can Mr. Wilberforce say we have banished slavery when people still live in such conditions?" Sarah scraped the dishes. Davinoff stacked them on the sideboard and waved her back to the dining room when she began to wipe them.
"Slavery has not been banished," he remarked, following her. "You have no slaves within the country, but your merchants still support the trade elsewhere."
Sarah found herself blushing. "That will be outlawed, too, one day." She collected their glasses. Davinoff took up the candelabra and the wine bottle.
"Perhaps," he said. "I expect that outlawing investment will take much longer than banishing the chains and whips themselves." They moved into the drawing room and sat by the fire Sarah had laid. She agreed, but Sarah was stung by his condescension.
"If you disapprove so, I am sure you will allow your voice to be heard."
He sat back in his chair and studied his glass. "The endless ingenuity of human cruelty holds only a mild interest for me. Did you know the Inquisition has been reinstated by the pope?"
"Excuse me?" Sarah was shocked. "A mild interest?"
"It is the repetition that numbs one, I expect. The insistent ignorance and intolerance, the bigotry…" He trailed off as though becoming bored already.
He was just as maddening as he had been at Countess Delmont's dinner party. But now she need not frustrate her desire to retort. "Do you mean we should do nothing to halt cruelty?" she snapped. "You may feel that way generally but certainly not in a particular sense."
His eyes flicked over her, their intensity masked by amusement. "I have forgotten myself, have I not? I should be grateful for your humanitarian impulses."
Her own boldness threw her into confusion. "You have no need for gratitude. I only did what any fee
ling person would have done in the same circumstance."
"I rather doubt that, but I shall let it pass," he said. Sarah hoped he would begin again their delightful conversation and restore the mood. But he brought up the one subject she least wanted to address. "I have been wondering, actually, how you and Mrs. Nandalay can possibly be friends." He reached to pour some winking ruby liquid into her glass and his.
There was a short silence. What could she say? "I have known her from a child," she said simply, then smiled and purposely lightened her tone. "You of all people know how magnetic she is. I am but a pale reflection. It always stung me that I was not more like her." Her smile evaporated. Why did she feel compelled to explain the final pain? "I knew what she was. I have known for years. I was also afraid I was too much like her. There are… things… we have in common. I could not criticize what I knew, somewhere deep down, she was becoming. That would have been too much like telling her I hated what she was." She chuckled bitterly and closed her eyes. "Let's not sidestep the issues. I would have been admitting I hated part of me as well." Her eyes snapped open. "Are we all tainted? I never believed in original sin. Yet you believe that humans are naturally cruel and violent. And there are other needs, needs that drive us…" Her voice trembled as she looked into his face for answers. "My only hope is that it takes an acknowledgment of evil to deplore it. I no longer know."
Davinoff did not speak, but watched her, his knuckles just touching the corner of his mouth as he leaned back in the wing chair, his elbow propped on its arm.
Sarah sat back in her chair. "I think she is mad. She has lost her balance."
"And you have not," he murmured.
"I have talked too much of me," Sarah said, wishing she could unsay all the things she had not meant to say. "Please speak of you."
"There is time for that later. There is always time." His words carried a weight of weariness that startled her. "Enlighten me on your method of wresting me from my captor."
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