"I am afraid it is not nearly that exotic, my love," he breathed. He stroked the skin over her ribs and down her hips as he kissed her throat and ears and so came round to her mouth again. His strong hands kneaded her buttocks as his kisses grew stronger, more demanding. She knew what she wanted now. His caresses were a delightfully torturous denial of their mutual need. Finally, his right hand touched her knee. As though a special catch had been released, she spread her legs to him. He pushed his erection into her gently, opening her bit by bit. Her hands moved over the undulating muscles of his back and loins to his buttocks as they thrust him fully inside her. She kissed his chest, his throat, his shoulders, as he slid in and out, slowly filling her again and again. When he groaned and bent his lips to her uplifted mouth, he began to move more urgently inside her. The inevitable crescendo ended in a trembling tightness of his body. He arched above her for a long moment as she throbbed around his jerking member, hardly able to get enough breath. He melted against her at last and they gasped together in the moonlight.
They lay entwined. The luxury of skin on skin was all the body comprehended. He murmured endearments as he brushed her hair with kisses. She had pleased him. And what she experienced was so much beyond mere pleasure she didn't know how to describe it. What she had done with the Italian boy was but a pale shadow of what she and Julien had done tonight.
Sarah did not know when sleepy fulfillment turned to actual sleep. But when she wakened, the beam of moonlight had moved across the coverlet. An ineffable sadness came over her. She looked up to where the fringe of lashes brushed his cheeks. At her movement, his eyes opened. A wall of distance rose up between them as each realized what must happen next.
She touched his face. The smile came naturally. "Time to go, before they find you, love," she said. Was her strength from accepting love, dark side, and blinding light together? Sienna seemed a faint, distorted reflection on the water, erased by the ripples of her love for Julien. Lust was exorcised by lovemaking. She would never be ashamed of what had happened here.
Julien clutched her tightly to his chest and buried his lips in her hair. She could hardly breathe, whether from his crushing embrace or from the pain emanating from him, she could not tell. She heard him groan her name and was startled by the passion in his voice. He held her face into his shoulder so she could not look up into his eyes.
"I came to say good-bye," he whispered. "But I can't do it, Sarah. I can't leave you."
He was in danger, with everyone looking for him. "You mustn't stay, my love."
Abruptly, he held her out from him. The pain and conflict that stirred in his eyes were palpable, even in the dim light. "Come with me." The words were torn from him.
Sarah felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. He couldn't do this. She was not that strong. He wanted her. He might even think it was love, though he had not said it. But she was still naive, still mortal, still not of his kind. She felt it as keenly as he must. She would grow old and he would not. He would grow tired of her, naive mortal that she was. And her decrepit body would make her repulsive to him. How would she bear the distance that would creep into his eyes, the excuses, the absences? "We are not alike," she choked. "It could not last."
"I know I should not offer. It is the one true crime. But I am weak, Sarah. I am weak." His rumbling voice was anguished. He took her shoulders and stared into her face. "We could be alike. I can make you vampire." Then he lost his nerve and clutched her to him, because he could not look at her. "It is not a gift, but a curse I offer you. Immortality, and a need for human blood."
Sarah was stunned. Then the numbness turned to fear. Immortal was too long a time. She had seen what a trial it was to Julien, drifting without direction through a world that changed but stayed the same. She had not the stuff of immortality. She was just a girl, one who could be petty, and vain—not worth immortality. And what about vampire? The immortality, in itself a doubtful gift, came with a price that stunned the senses. To be the stuff of nightmares, cut off from all humanity! To need human blood? An image rose of her caressing the muscular neck of some young buck, aching to suckle at his carotid artery. How could she do something like that? Was such a deed not just like using that boy in Sienna? She had not embraced true darkness after all. It might drive her mad, as it had driven Julien's redhead mad, Magda, who killed so many in London. Her mind fluttered. She would instantly be cut off from all she knew. She did not know what to say. How could he spring this upon her? Not fair, she cried inside, not fair! And not possible.
She stared wildly into his eyes, until finally words were wrenched from her. "I am afraid."
He must have felt her stiffen, drawing away from the future he offered. He searched her face, and she saw him realize the truth of what she said. He slumped against the pillows.
"I don't know why I said it," he murmured, releasing her. In his turn he drew away.
Now she found herself with more words than she could manage. "It wouldn't last. Too many years. We would drift apart, slowly or quickly, I don't know. I don't think that…"
He pressed two fingers against her lips. "You are perfectly right." He rose abruptly and began to dress. His silhouette against the moonlight was stark. The bed felt cold as well as empty. She wanted to take back her words. But to what purpose? "My parting gift is too small, Sarah," he said, breaking the silence. "But I want you to have Thornbury Abbey. You deserve to know all passages to your villa belong to you." As she roused herself to protest, he smiled down at her, with a ghost of a smile that broke her heart. "I will not take no for an answer."
The villa and the abbey were all she would have left of him. She stared at the scroll on her night table as though it were some talisman, and felt the world grow alien around her.
"You must promise to visit my storeroom before you begin to excavate," he continued. "I will leave one or two things I would like you to have."
"I will not take your most prized possessions, Julien. You cannot ask it."
"Then hold them in trust for me, my love, and enjoy their beauty for your lifetime."
Sarah's heart contracted. For her lifetime. "A mere moment in the passing scheme of things, isn't it?" she asked, in a small voice.
"You will fill it with living," he said, as he dressed. "You will excavate my home and save it for posterity. You will rebuild Clershing and leave the land better than you found it." His voice rolled out of the darkness and surrounded her, almost harsh. "You will marry and have children. Someday I will find a dynasty of strong sons and daughters who have inherited your intelligence, your generosity, your belief that things change for the better."
"You see my future so clearly." He laid her life out from a distance given him by time. Time she would never have with him.
"Yes," he breathed. "And I envy you."
"All but my mortality," she said bitterly.
"That most of all." The words were stark. "The one time it was possible, I was too weak to end it. And you and Corina refused to oblige me. Now, I go on."
Sarah felt herself drifting out away from him, their conversation a tenuous line that held them together. What had she done? I have no choice, she wanted to scream.
When he was dressed, he came to stand over her. "Sarah…"
Her gaze roved over him, drinking in his silhouette for the last time. He paused, his eyes boring into her with more intensity than she had ever seen in him. He reached out and with one finger, touched her cheek. A deeper darkness whirled quickly up around him, its inky blackness still touching her cheek. Then he was gone.
Sarah stared out of her bedroom window into one of those crisp winter mornings where mist burning off the streets evaporates into a day so white, so pale that the light seems to shine right through everybody and everything. The beadle had questioned her regarding the whereabouts of Julien. Jasco told him firmly that the doors were locked all night, and no one could come in without his knowing. The beadle stationed two of his minions to watch her house. She could see them at the corne
r. She received the intelligence from Amelia that Corina was mad and Snelling in his own gaol with little interest. Julien was probably already in Bristol shipping his treasures to some safer hideaway. They could not touch him. Neither could she. That was all that mattered.
She turned from the window and surveyed the room wildly with something quite like horror growing in her bosom. Her gaze only steadied as it came to rest upon the old and slightly tattered parchment tied, it turned out, with a bloodred ribbon. She touched it softly and gathered it in to her lap as she sat on the bed. It was the last she had of him. She pulled the bow of the ribbon until the roll rustled and relaxed. As she unfurled it, a slip of paper drifted onto her lap. She recognized the hand immediately and her heart clenched.
Dearest Sarah:
Lestrom has the letter that cedes all rights to the abbey lands to you. This deed proves my own entitlement, in case you should need to demonstrate my right to leave the land as I choose. I hope the abbey gives joy to you and all your progeny. Please know I want you to have the best life can offer.
With my heart,
Julien.
Sarah was on dangerous ground as she unrolled the parchment itself. The note was so final. She hardly saw the carefully painted Gothic letters interspersed with tiny colorful paintings instead of capitals. The signature was familiar: Henry VIII, R, in flourishes. Henry had given this to a Julien who looked just as he looked last night, just as he would look for how long? She rolled the parchment carefully and retied its ribbon. As for her, gray would soon frost her hair. Each birthday would etch its mark upon her until, in a mere breath of time to one as old as Julien, she would be an ancient hag. But it didn't have to be so. Julien had offered to wipe away death for her, but at a price she was not big enough to pay.
The dike she had built in her mind burst. She had sent him away! She turned her head toward the ceiling. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He had offered her a choice, a bridge for the gulf between them, and she had refused. She was afraid of immortality, afraid of being vampire, of needing blood. She was afraid she might enjoy how she got it. Sienna! She had worried for years that her willing embrace of the sex act made her evil. Now she realized there were darker acts yet, just as the crypts below the abbey had stairways to lower levels still. She was too small to change from a lowly mortal caterpillar into an immortal butterfly with bloodred wings.
She threw herself into her pillow. This time there were no numbing sobs to keep her soul from tearing at itself. She did not know if she cried or not; she simply clenched the pillows to her face as her mind battered against reality like a moth at the window, trying to get to the light.
If there had been a knife to hand, she might have acted upon her despair, her hatred of herself and the of life she saw before her in the only way that would quiet the storm of her emotion for certain. But she did not have the means. More than that, somewhere inside, she knew she deserved despair. It was her fault.
She threw herself to the window and grabbed the heavy drapes to close them against the sunlight. She paced furiously from one side of the room to another. Tears coursed down her face. She did not notice when her fingers began picking at the lace covering the bodice of her new waisted dress. When Addie scratched at the door, Sarah shouted at her to go away, and the shout spiraled up into a wail of pain, until she clapped her hand over her mouth to stop it.
Sarah heard Madame Gessande in the hall shush Amelia's tears. "Go downstairs, my friends. I will handle our jeunne fille." Madame would find the door unlocked. Sarah had opened it this morning. Was it the third day, or the fourth, since… since it happened?
As the door opened, she saw Amelia, wringing her hands, alternating between admonishments and entreaties to Madame to make Sarah come out. Addie hovered behind them. Sarah turned back to the window. This morning, when she had glimpsed her tattered lace bodice, her hair down in places from its knot, the glazed and sunken eyes surrounded by dark circles, she had been surprised how like Corina she looked. She hung on the heavy velvet drapes and leaned against the window, peering out through the crack. That was when she had unlocked the door.
"Sarah," Madame called softly, stepping into the room and closing the door on the others.
"I know," she murmured. She couldn't manage to put her life in her voice. She turned with effort to Madame, who tried not to register her shock.
"What do you know, cherie?" Madame whispered.
"You are come to tell me I must get on with things." She took a wavering step toward Madame and sank to the floor.
Madame rushed to kneel beside her, clutching her to her breast. She brushed Sarah's forehead with a kiss. "At the very least, it is time to eat."
Chapter Seventeen
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Sarah entered the drawing room of Madame Gessande's cozy house on Queen Street feeling remote. She knew why the woman had invited her here. The room was warm and inviting, the windows fogged against the cold drizzle outside; the red Persian rugs and the faintly exotic air created by the many artifacts Gessande had collected in her travels made it feel as lively as the animated conversations filling it. It was filled with her friends drinking tea and brandy and ratafia. In the corner, a group was talking to Dr. Parry. They hadn't noticed Sarah.
"My diagnosis?" the doctor was saying. "Hysteria, plain and simple."
"Do you think the condition permanent?" Mrs. Piozzi asked.
"No, no," Dr. Parry blustered. "She became aware of herself enough to stop talking about the monster with red eyes, though I could tell she still believed in it. But the nightmares continue, and she always stuffs a shawl under her door at night."
"What is your prognosis, Doctor?"
"What she needs is quiet. We bundled her off to a convent in Lyon yesterday."
"Corina Nandalay in a convent," Mr. Wilberforce mused. "I did not think to see that day."
Madame pushed forward, seeing Sarah, eagerly followed by George Upcott. Madame had invited George? He was the only one her age in the room. He had called earlier in the week to walk with her in the Grand Parade. Each time she saw him, he seemed flushed and excited.
"Welcome, my dear," Madame said, holding out her hands. "Come sit by the fire."
"Thank you, Madame," Sarah murmured. Madame was drawing her back into society.
George bowed, and looked self-satisfied. "May I procure you a glass of ratafia?"
"That would be nice, George," Sarah agreed. Madame bundled Sarah off to sit with Mrs. Piozzi and Madame d'Arblay. Mr. Wilberforce and Mayor Palmer hovered in the background. Sarah took the ratafia from George with a distant smile, but did not join the conversation.
Madame d'Arblay finally addressed Sarah directly. "I must recommend Mrs. Stanhope to you, Lady Clevancy. I know you enjoy novels."
"I'm sorry, Madame d'Arblay," Sarah murmured. "But I have given them up."
"Given up novels?" Mrs. Piozzi peered at her.
Mayor Palmer changed the subject. "The last time I talked to you, Madame d'Arblay, you were all afire over the new story by that fellow Byron. The one about the vampire." Sarah blanched. Did they mean to torture her? "It was his secretary, Polidori, who wrote it after all."
"That makes me so angry." Madame d'Arblay shuddered. "They publish it under Byron's name to ensure a healthy sale. Then after everyone is talking about it, they admit it was the secretary who wrote it."
"What do you think, Lady Clevancy? You are our resident expert on Mr. Byron." Mr. Wilberforce passed her a plate of cakes he took from Madame Gessande's man Melton.
"I do not read Mr. Byron anymore, or Mr. Shelley either." She passed the tray on without taking a cake. "They do not live in the real world, either of them."
"The countess thinks it prerequisite for the job that poets not live in the real world," Mayor Palmer observed.
"I am more at home among Mr. Wordsworth's comforting daffodils. I am growing fonder of Mr. Southey, too," Sarah said resolutely.
"Our pedestrian poet laureate?" Mrs. Piozzi gasped.
George invited Sarah to refresh her glass, though it did not need refreshing. With dread tickling her throat Sarah went with him to the sideboard. "It is time we had a conversation, Sarah." He spoke with great determination. "I ask for your hand in marriage."
Sarah looked up, almost bewildered. Had Madame Gessande arranged this, just as she was arranging today for Sarah's acceptance into society again? "Why now, after all this time?"
George was bursting with anticipation. "Because… because you would be the perfect wife for me. You would further my career immensely." Sarah stared at him. "And… and because a refusal would devastate me."
A wife with a smirched reputation was not an ideal match. She'd thought George would certainly drop their association. But what did it matter now? She nodded. George grasped her hand and raised it to his lips. A satisfied smile played over his face. Sarah felt only resigned.
George turned to the room and raised his voice. "I say, everyone. Lady Clevancy and I have an announcement to make." What, did he mean to make it public right now?
Silence fell over the room. Mrs. Piozzi and Madame Gessande exchanged startled glances. Sarah realized that they had not expected George to propose. Everyone turned toward the couple. Sarah looked up at her affianced husband. There was a triumphant gleam in his eyes. Did marrying her mean so much to him? There was no love in that look, no tenderness.
"I wanted you all to be the first to know that Lady Clevancy has done me the honor of accepting my offer of marriage."
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Dr. Parry moved forward to shake George's hand. "Good show, old man." Soon everyone crowded around, offering congratulations to George or mock condolences to Sarah. Cups of tea and glasses of claret and ratafia were raised in salute to the couple. When they were done, George raised his own glass.
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