Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  The warlock's face was not crestfallen at this news, as Kristina had expected, but translucent with some inner joy. "Even better! The mating of a warlock and a mortal—"

  "Cannot be that unusual," Kristina said, losing patience. While she didn't relish the prospect of spending the rest of her life, whatever was left of it, alone, she wasn't about to settle for a mate she didn't love, just to have someone to call her own.

  Not that any woman could ever call a warlock her own. Like vampires, they were fickle creatures—Valerian and her parents were the only nightwalkers of her acquaintance who remained faithful to their romantic companions. Though when Daisy was between lifetimes, Valerian had certainly been known to engage in a variety of affairs of the heart.

  "I think," Dathan said, "that I should take my leave now, and return when you are in a better mood."

  "That," Kristina responded, "would be wise. Only don't bother to come back if you're going to hound me about marrying you, because I won't."

  Dathan sighed forlornly, spread his elegant cape like black wings, and was gone.

  Kristina walked Barabbas around the block—there was a scent of snow in the air again—and then took him back to the house and shut him up inside. A few minutes later she was in her Mercedes, driving downtown to her shop.

  The door had been replaced, and Max's friend and two of his helpers were just finishing the repairs to the jewelry counter. The floor had been swept, and as Kristina moved among the familiar antiques, she told herself she could open for business that afternoon, or in the morning at the latest.

  She wondered how long it would be, though, before Benecia and her sister returned to wreak more havoc. And where was the brass doorstop? Would he turn up one night, standing over Kristina's bed, a knife in his hand?

  She shivered. Barabbas was there to protect her, of course, but she couldn't depend on a wolf forever. Besides, the animal belonged to Daisy and Valerian; it's rightful home was with them.

  Maybe, Kristina thought sorrowfully, it was time to close down her shop and go traveling again. She could simply wander from place to place, the way she'd done after Michael's death. The world had changed a great deal since the days of steamer trunks and great ocean liners; countries had new borders and new names.

  There were other differences, too. She was deeply in love, and on this journey she would not have unlimited time. Every moment, every heartbeat and breath, was now infinitely precious.

  Max telephoned that night, and he didn't suggest getting together. That was fine with Kristina, because she wasn't ready to tell him about her mortality. He might see the change in Kristina as a reason to rejoice, but she knew it was a very mixed blessing.

  "You're okay, right?" he asked. She heard cupboard doors opening and closing, pans clanking. The man was decent to the core, a wonderful lover, and he could cook in the bargain. Amazing. "No creepy stuff has been happening?"

  Kristina bit her tongue. It was all in how you defined "creepy stuff," and she didn't want to enlighten him. She needed more of those anti-cramp pills, a warm bath, and a good night's sleep. "Barabbas makes a pretty good bodyguard," she said after a few moments.

  "You'll call if you need me?"

  "Yes," Kristina promised. She was beginning to wonder, though, if Max had decided she was too much trouble, with all her weird relatives and White Fang for a pet. It would be easier all around if he dumped her, right then, but she found herself braced against his rejection all the same. "I'll call."

  He destroyed her theory in the next sentence. "Thursday is Thanksgiving," he said. "My mother is putting on her usual feast, and she's asked me to invite you. Not that I didn't want to, of course." More pan clattering, a brief aside to one of the children, something about fishing somebody named Barbie out of the aquarium. "Will you come with us, Kristina?"

  "I'd be happy to," she said, then closed her eyes against a rush of tears. Why, why had she agreed, when she knew it was a terrible, even dangerous, mistake to draw the situation out any further? She had already let things go too far.

  "It's a long weekend," Max continued, making matters worse. "The kids usually stay with my folks, and you and [ do have that reservation at the lodge up in the mountains."

  Kristina had completely forgotten that, with all that had happened since. "Maybe you shouldn't be away from Bree and Eliette, over the holidays, at least. I know it sounds silly, but I didn't realize Thanksgiving was coming up so soon."

  No pot clanging, no muttered instructions to the kids.

  "Don't say no, Kristina," he said. "My daughters aren't being neglected—they always spend that weekend with my parents."

  Heaven help her, she didn't want to refuse. She yearned to be alone with Max, making love, talking in front of a fire, playing in the snow. The way things stood, that might be the last true joy she ever experienced.

  "All right, I'll go," she promised very softly. She would give herself, and Max, that one glorious interlude together, and then she'd do what she should have done long before and put an end to the relationship. She'd tell Max she was selling the store, leaving Seattle and never coming back, and she fully intended to keep her word.

  "Pick you up at noon on Thursday?" There was a smile in Max's voice; it warmed Kristina and eased the ache in her heart just a little.

  "I'll be ready," she said, silently calling herself every sort of fool.

  Then, after taking two more of Daisy's pills, she ate an early dinner, took a brief bath, and crawled into bed with the stack of letters she and Max had been working their way through together. She supposed she should have waited, but that night, it seemed, nothing had the power to distract Kristina from the gloomy future but the past. The days of yesteryear, while grim in their own right, had one advantage on the years to come—they were over.

  … Michael was inconsolable after his father's death; he blamed himself for both his parents' passing, I think, though he never admitted as much to me. He would have said even less to Gilbert, who represented everything Michael himself was not and could never be—he was good, strong, steady. Even handsome, though in a less fragile way than Michael.

  Late that summer Gilbert brought me a strange and magnificent gift, a little baby swaddled in rough blankets. He explained that the poor little mite was a foundling, that his mother had given birth to him beside one of the roads passing through the estate, and had perished there.

  I was filled with yearning, for while I had put my own powers firmly out of mind, I was certain that I could not bear an infant of my own. Yes, of course, my mother, a vampire, had brought me forth in quite a normal fashion, but I was an oddity and I knew it. Here was a helpless, needy child that I could love, dote upon, educate.

  I felt as though I had been drowning and someone had flung out a rope, that I might catch hold and be saved.

  I recall that Gilbert looked at me, and at the child, with the most moving tenderness glowing in his eyes. "I wish things had been different, Kristina," he said, and that was all.

  But I knew what he meant. That we might have been together, as husband and wife, and produced babes of our own. He did not know the truth about me, though Michael did, by then, and had reviled me for it often.

  I might have known how my husband would react to the introduction of a foundling into the household, although it was rightfully Gilbert's estate, and not his own. He called the infant a bastard—true no doubt, but surely not the fault of the child and very probably not even the fault of its mother—and ordered me to send him away.

  I refused, and Michael tormented me day and night. Then one morning, when Gilbert was away in London, my husband confronted me yet again, in a drunken rage. We were standing at the top of the main stairway leading down into the great hall of Cheltingham Castle—great Zeus, Phillie, why did I challenge him then? And why there?

  I had named the baby Joseph and engaged a nurse for him, and I already loved him as much as if I'd given birth to him myself. And so, in a moment of temper, I told my husband I would soo
ner give him up than the child.

  He backhanded me then, did Michael, and I went sailing down the stairs, end over end. Had I not been what I was, I would surely have perished, and even so I suffered incapacitating injury. When I awakened, Joseph had been taken from the house, and my searching, however frantic, was fruitless.

  I can write no more just now. I know you understand.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 15

  « ^ »

  The next of the many letters Kristina had written to Miss Eudocia Phillips, her former governess, was dated nearly six months after the one in which Michael had engineered the disappearance of Kristina's adopted child. Even after all this time, remembering made Kristina's heart ache, for no amount of searching had turned up even a trace of the baby boy, Joseph. Not then, at least.

  … Your letters have brought me so much comfort, Phillie. You would tell me, wouldn't you, if you found the story too burdensome, too full of sorrow, and could not bear the telling?

  When last I wrote, I told you how Michael had taken my son from me, and struck me when I confronted him for what must have been the thousandth time. The wounds I suffered when I fell down the stairs were insignificant compared to what that final treachery did to my spirit. I was destroyed and could no longer endure living under the same roof with Michael Bradford.

  Still, I had cracked several ribs in my fall and could not travel, so I had no choice but to remain at Cheltingham, at least until I'd recovered. Michael, in the way I have since learned is typical of such men, was immediately contrite, as solicitous as any husband might have been in the circumstances—rushing down the stairs, shouting that a doctor must be sent for, soothing me and stroking my hand as we waited. I lay there at the base of the stairs, beyond anguish, with servants hovering about, for Michael had decreed that I must not be moved until the village physician had examined me.

  How ludicrous it seems that Michael should be my caretaker, my constant companion, when he had been the one to do me hurt in the first place. I despised him and wanted him to go from my sight, not just then hut forever, but he would not leave me; even after I was carried to a downstairs bedchamber, where my ribs were bound and I was given laudanum to ease my pain. In some ways, Phillie, that was the greater torture, his continued and doting presence. The drug numbed my flesh but could not reach the anguish in my soul.

  Michael held my hand. He stroked my hair. He said he was sorry and swore he had never meant to do me any harm. I believe he meant what he said, as he was saying it, but I hated him as I have never hated anything or anyone before.

  "Tell me where Joseph is,'' I said. I thought one good thing might come out of Michael's remorse, at least—that I might learn the whereabouts of my foster child. When I had sufficiently recovered, I meant to fetch the boy from wherever he was being kept, and then put Cheltingham behind me forever. I would miss no one there, except for Gilbert.

  I hoped that my parents and Valerian would come to me at last, once I had truly separated myself from Michael. I felt an almost inexpressible yearning to see them again, but I confess I was embittered, too—quietly furious that they had refused to step in when I needed them so much. Knowing that they had good reasons, and that the decision was a difficult one for them, was of no consolation then.

  Michael hesitated a long time before answering my question about Joseph's whereabouts. Then, the very picture of compassion, he said, "You must cease your fretting over the brat, Kristina darling. We shall make our own babies.''

  I turned my head upon the pillows; I could not bear to look at him. And I was wiser now; I knew better than to let him see how I despised him. "I want Joseph,'' I whispered.

  Michael brushed my hair back from my forehead. "He is gone,'' he said. Such a tender motion from the very hand that had bruised me, and sent me reeling and tumbling down a long flight of stairs.

  I felt a terrible chill at the words—surely even Michael, with all his sins, would not destroy an innocent child! I was not to know Joseph's fate for a long time, and when I did, it only made me hate Michael more.

  It was very late that same night, when my husband had ceased his feverish ministerings at last and left me in peace, and I was half insensible from the drugs the doctor had prescribed, that Valerian appeared at the foot of my bed.

  I thought at first that he was an illusion, or part of a dream, so long had it been since I had laid eyes upon this beloved creature who called himself my guardian vampire. He has always had an irreverent sense of humor, but then you knew that.

  What I remember most about that visit from Valerian was the sorrow I saw in his face and in his magnificent countenance. "Have you learned your lesson, sweet Kristina?" he asked.

  I moved to sit up, but I could not.

  I wanted to plead with him to find Joseph, to bring my baby back to me, but something stayed my tongue. "What lesson was that?" I asked, a bit testily, I fear, for he had tarried long in coming to me, and I had suffered so much in the interim.

  He feigned one of his melodramatic sighs. "Kristina," he scolded in a quiet voice.

  "All right, yes—I chose the wrong man, for the wrong reasons.''

  "Anyone might have made that error. The worst part, my darling, is that you stayed with that monster. Why didn't you simply leave him?"

  "I kept hoping he would change.''

  Valerian flexed his elegant white fingers. "Do you know what it is costing me, little one, not to rouse the wretch from his drunken stupor and kill him in a manner that would cause Genghis Khan himself to cringe?"

  "Yes," I said. "I can imagine."

  "I have come to take you away.''

  I closed my eyes, but tears seeped through my lashes and sneaked down my cheeks. "I hurt so much,'' I said with a nod.

  "I know,'' Valerian said softly.

  "As much as I long to leave Michael, it is difficult for me to go without saying good-bye to Gilbert.''

  Valerian's lips curved into the thinnest of smiles. "Don't worry, beloved. One day you will undoubtedly see him again, under other circumstances.'' He rounded the bed, bent over me, and touched my forehead, and instantly I was unconscious.

  When I woke, it was morning, and I was back in the house in London where I had been so happy as a child. My parents were asleep in their lair, and Valerian, of course, was in his, wherever it was, but I was surrounded by familiar servants, and they fussed and fetched and tried their utmost to bring me cheer.

  My heart was broken, however, and I could not be happy.

  That same afternoon there was a tremendous scuffle downstairs, and I was dreadfully afraid that Michael had come for me, perhaps bringing ruffians to assist him. Our servants were all elderly, and the vampires of the household could not help, being in their usual daylight trances, far below ground..

  I remember that I grasped the candlestick from the table alongside my bed and summoned up what I could of my neglected magic, prepared to defend myself as best I could. On pain of death I would not return to Cheltingham.

  There was more shouting, but then I heard my personal maid, Minerva, who had often attended me at Refuge, our country home near Cheltingham, speak in calming tones to the protesting mob.

  Moments later, she entered my room with a little bob and said, "It's all right, miss. You may put aside the candlestick, for it's Lord Gilbert who's come to call, not his brother. Will you see him?"

  Before I could reply—my smile would have given away my feelings on the matter already—Gilbert filled the doorway, tall and handsome, his face contorted with a peculiar combination of rage and sympathy. Minerva perched upon one of the cushioned window seats overlooking the back garden; rules of propriety were observed in our household, by the servants if not the primary inhabitants, and I must not be left alone with a man who was not my husband.

  Gilbert was dressed for business—he had come to London to attend to matters related to assuming his late father's title and the estates—but he was clearly a country gentleman in his tweeds and scuffed boots. H
is brown hair was rumpled where he had repeatedly thrust his fingers through it.

  "Oh, God, Kristina,'' he murmured. "It's true, then. He did injure you.''

  "I asked again about the baby," I said. "About Joseph. ''

  Gilbert drew a chair close to the bed and took my hand in his. Tears rose in my eyes and in his as well. "I have had the whole of England search for that child, he said raggedly. "You know that.''

  "He's killed him. Michael has killed my baby.''

  Minerva, who had been stroking one of the house cats, a tabby called Trinket, and pretending not to listen, gasped at this.

  Gilbert and I were silent for a long time, then Gilbert spoke.

  "I cannot believe, even after all Michael has done, that he would stoop to murder. Especially a child."

  "Then you are a fool,'' I replied, unkind in my grief.

  Gilbert, as usual, was understanding. "You needn't worry about Michael after this," he said. "I'll make a remittance man of him, provided I don't succumb to the urge to do murder myself. In the meantime, Kristina, you must stop tormenting yourself over little Joseph.'' He paused. "God in heaven. I curse myself every day for ever bringing the infant to you in the first place. I thought—"

  I squeezed his hand. "I know what you thought,'' I said gently. "That you might give me joy.''

  He nodded, then bent and kissed my forehead. "I will deal with Michael,'' he said. "And if there is a way to get the truth out of him regarding the babe, I will do it. In the meantime, you must rest and recover.''

  I knew, somehow, that I would not see Gilbert again, and clung to him for a long moment when he would have turned to leave the room.

  "Good-bye,'' I whispered.

  He kissed my mouth that time. It was light, brief, but in no way brotherly. "Farewell, sweet Kristina,'' he said. And then he strode out of the room without once looking back.

  Minerva, poor dear, was sniffling and dashing away tears with the hem of her apron when I glanced in her direction. "Such a dear man,'' she said.