by Nancy Gideon
He was too determined to be discouraged by her words or his own discomfort, so reluctantly, Arabella supplied her support, and together they wrestled him to his feet. Steadying himself by gripping the edge of the table, Stuart exchanged a long look with Louis Radman. “How do you feel, my lord?”
“About as well as you look, Doctor.”
With an unsteady hand, Stuart felt the marquis’s sweat-dappled brow and lean cheeks, confirming the warmth Louis’s ruddy color suggested. He peered into the clear eyes and then strangely lifted his patient’s upper lip to check, Arabella supposed, the color of his gums. Or the length of his teeth. That shivered through her, but still her mind fought against it. As Stuart counted pulsebeats, Louis reached up to lift the cross from his chest. He stared at it in his hand, then gave a raspy chuckle as he lifted the crucifix to his lips and let it fall aside.
“Am I cured, then?” he asked the doctor, with a hesitant optimism.
“Time will tell, my lord. Do you feel any different?”
“Weak. I feel weak, and my mind is slow. I’m not sure.”
Stuart pressed his fingertips to his own slow-bleeding wound, then touched them to Louis’s mouth. The marquis tasted the smear of crimson with the tip of his tongue, then reflexively wiped it away with the back of his hand. And froze as the significance sank deep.
“Bella, fetch his lordship some water.” And when she moved out of earshot, Stuart leaned closer. “What is it, Radman? Is the impulse gone?”
He stared hard at the doctor’s torn flesh, but nothing other than a mild revulsion and a wince of guilt stirred within him. No frenzy to feed. No hunger. No thirst. And that was unheard of, for he was always hungry. For three hundred years, the sight of blood brought instant, desperate craving, even after he’d taken his fill. But now the ache in his throat itched for thinner substance, like the cool water Arabella tipped up to his lips. He drank slowly, with caution, for his system was unused to accepting anything other than the vile food of his existence. Yet the water slid down easily, quenching his thirst with a satisfaction he’d long forgotten.
And as he lay back, eyes closed, he murmured, “Dear God, can it be true?”
“Perhaps a side effect from the transfusion,” Stuart warned. “We must proceed with care, my lord. Do not assume too much just yet. The dawn will tell.”
Louis’s eyes snapped open. “The time. What time is it?”
Arabella checked the small watch pinned to her bodice. “Shortly after half past four.” Already? The night was nearly gone and she was amazed by its rapid passing.
“I must get home.” He tugged against the restraints. “Release me.”
“You are too weak yet, my lord,” Arabella protested, not understanding his urgency. Louis wouldn’t listen.
“I must go.”
“It’s the only way to be sure,” Stuart told him.
Louis took a quick, panicked breath. “I’m not ready. If you are wrong—” He yanked at the straps, but there was none of his phenomenal strength left.
It was then Stuart Howland collapsed. Arabella managed to catch him and guide him through the office into the comfort of his study. There, she eased him down onto the couch and quickly applied a pad of gauze to the gaping wound in his shoulder.
“Radman.” He panted faintly. “I must know. Do not release him... I must know.”
“Rest, Father. You’ve lost much blood and your body is in shock from it. You need medical attention. What do you want me to do?”
“Send for Wesley.”
“No.” Her every instinct rebelled against it.
“We’ve no other choice. I cannot handle things here.”
“What will you tell him?”
“The truth.”
Not knowing the whole truth didn’t keep Arabella from wanting to keep it from ones such as Wesley Pembrook. “No, Father, you can’t.”
“I need help, with my arm, with Radman. There is much to do, to explain.” But Arabella couldn’t cast Louis’s fate upon a jackal like Wesley.
“Rest, Father. I will see to everything. I’ll send for Wesley. I’ll tell him you were attacked by the graverobbers who tried to steal from you. I’ll tell him you were experimenting with transfusion. But you mustn’t mention his lordship. You must not tell him of your success. Father, do you hear me?”
But Stuart had faded out of consciousness, and worry for him supplanted all else. She raced to the outer door, and when she jerked it open, discovered a very pale Bessie Kampford.
“Miss, be you all right? Those horrid screams and goings-on. What—”
“Mrs. Kampford, listen to me carefully.” Arabella’s crisp tone steadied the loyal servant. “I want you to send for Mr. Pembrook. There’s been an accident. The doctor has been injured.” She spoke over the older woman’s gasp. “Listen to me. You must be discreet. No word of this can get out. I’ll explain all to you later. Order up a hack and have it brought around back immediately. Then I want you to sit with Father until Mr. Pembrook comes.”
“You’ll not use our own carriage?”
“No.”
“But what about you, Miss? And him?” She nodded toward the office meaningfully.
“Do not concern yourself over his lordship. As far as you know, he was never here this evening. Do you understand? He was never here.”
Bessie’s eyes went round with fright, but a deeper light of protectiveness prevailed. No matter what the trouble was, she would see it spared her beloved employers. “You can count on me, Miss.”
“I know I can, Bessie.” And she leaned forward to give the tiny woman a hug. “Now, go see to what I told you. Hurry, and be silent.”
“Yes, Miss.”
As Bessie scurried off to do her bidding, Arabella raked a trembling hand through the disarray of her hair. It was madness, what she was doing. She should do nothing and let Wesley assume control when he arrived. She was in far over her head and flailing. But a deep, driving instinct told her to guard Louis’s secret from the world—no matter what it took, no matter how gravely it placed her own life in jeopardy. That’s what scientists did. That’s what love required.
She found her father lost to consciousness, but in no further danger, so she rushed into the office. The room was an incredible shock to the visual senses: the violated corpse, the splatters of blood everywhere, the figure of Louis Radman secured by straps. A scene out of Bedlam, but she ignored it all as she went to Louis’s side. He turned toward her, the movement an obvious effort. His face was flushed and fever-dampened, his respiration fast and light. He spoke to her with a quiet anxiousness. “Please, I must go now. I must get home before the dawn. Release me, Bella. Please. I am no danger to you.”
Was she crazy to believe that, after what she’d witnessed? Still, she touched his cheek with gentle fingertips. “Trust me, Louis.”
He regarded her for a long moment, then nodded. She sensed what a tremendous confidence that was, and vowed not to betray it. Quickly, she worked the buckles loose and threw off the straps. “Are you strong enough to stand?” She could hear the sound of hoofs clattering on cobbles in the mews. Their transportation had arrived.
“Help me.”
Common sense told her he shouldn’t be moved, but the situation called for expedience. Slipping her arm beneath his shoulders, she lifted. He was weak and very unsure of his footing, but she managed to get him to the door, leaving a scene behind that would plague Wesley with questions. She couldn’t care about that just yet, not until she had Louis somewhere safe.
After he mumbled an address to the hired driver, Louis dragged himself up into the body of the rig, and there his strength gave out. Throughout the jostling ride, he lay slumped in Arabella’s lap, his head cradled in her arms.
Arabella knew enough about the human condition to know Louis Radman was in desperat
e straits. She considered taking him to the hospital for the professional care she couldn’t provide, but quickly dismissed that notion. The hospital was a place where the unfortunate went to die. And Louis wasn’t going to die, not if she could help it.
The neighborhood they traveled to was one of quietly neglected elegance. The homes were large and separate, the addresses not fashionable, but respectable. Just the place someone of a retiring nature would seek to be alone. No one would take notice of another’s comings and goings, so she wasn’t concerned with her reputation. Not that she’d worry, anyway. All that concerned her was the figure thrust into her care. And he was all-important.
The rig jerked to a rocking stop in front of a brooding gothic-style manse. A single light shone in the interior of the downstairs rooms, the only one burning in this cool predawn hour. Someone was up, waiting for Louis to come home. It was then Arabella realized how little she knew of him. She knew only what she’d seen, and even that, on this night of shocks and surprises, she could scarcely credit.
“You be wantin’ me to wait, ma’am?” the driver called down, as she pushed open the door.
“Yes, if you please.” As curious as she was about Louis’s world within, she recalled her promise not to linger in his presence alone. And she was concerned about her father and what conclusions Wesley was coming to. First, she had to see Louis inside, so she shook him gently. “My lord, we are home.” She hadn’t meant to say it exactly that way, but how nice it sounded, so shared and intimate. In her lap, Louis stirred with a moan. “You must help me get you inside. Can you stand?”
He attempted it with little success. Where had all that incredible strength gone? He managed to drag himself upright, but slouched there, sagging back against the squabs of the carriage, his expression ghastly in the lamplit interior.
“Louis?” She touched her palm to his cheek. It was hot and fever-slicked. “Should I see you to the hospital?”
That brought his eyes open and a weak negating shake of his head. “Help me inside,” came his hoarse instruction. “I’ll be all right then.”
“Are you certain? We have no way of knowing how Father’s treatment will affect you.”
“Inside. Hurry.”
Together, they navigated what was luckily a short walk to the front door. It opened as they approached. There, instead of the expected stuffy servant, stood a slender boy. His Asian features were drawn with wariness. Arabella guessed his age at perhaps fourteen. His black-eyed gaze flashed in rapid uncertainty between them. He didn’t look inclined to let them inside.
“I am Arabella Howland. His lordship is a patient of my father, Doctor Stuart Howland. Do you understand English?”
The boy stepped back, opening the door wider so she could haul the stumbling Louis over the threshold. Then, without a word to her, he slipped his narrow shoulders beneath Louis’s other arm. As he shut the door, the first pale grays of dawn were beginning to highlight the eastern sky.
Arabella had the vague impression of crowding elegance and unused spaciousness as they passed several open rooms. The pervading atmosphere was of damp mustiness, as if the house had been uninhabited for decades. When they reached a door at the end of the wide hall, the boy stopped, his hand on the knob, as if unsure of whether to go farther. And slowly, Louis withdrew his arm from about Arabella’s shoulders.
“Louis—”
“Go home, Arabella.”
“I can’t just leave you like this. What if you need help? What if you need—me?”
He gave her a small sketch of a smile and let his knuckles trail lightly down one pale cheek. “Return to your home, my love. There is nothing you can do for me now. I will come to you when I can. Go, now.”
And he nodded to the boy, who was quick to open the heavy door. She could see stone steps leading downward into impenetrable darkness.
“Louis—”
“Go, Bella.”
It was after the door was closed between them that the words he’d used settled deep.
My love.
“Louis!”
She tried the knob, but it wouldn’t give. The door was locked from the inside. She leaned against the barring portal and closed her eyes.
My love.
LOUIS SANK DOWN into an unnatural rest—unnatural, because it was no rest at all.
When the sealing darkness closed over him, thought and sensation should have ceased, becoming the faint twilight sleep he was expecting. Instead, he was all too aware of things—of the throbbing wounds in hand and arms where he’d been seared and pierced at the Howlands’ home. The burning tingle continued with the pulse of new blood through his body. It was an odd awareness, the feeling of warmth, the threads of pain and weariness. They should have been lost to him with the coming of dawn.
Also new to him, and somewhat frightening, was the sense of aloneness. Adrift in complete blackness, he tried to reach out to make a mental link. Nothing. His calls were unanswered. His thoughts stretched out into emptiness. A seeping panic stole over him as he tried and failed again to make that psychic connection. He could hear his heart beating wildly, pumping new blood, new life, as his shallow breaths filled the confining space with moisture. Where was the deep sense of peace he longed for? Where was the disassociating rest? His mind continued to turn frantically and his awareness steeped with smothering sensation, not of the outside world, but of the world within this small enclosure. Finally, it was his own weakness that dulled his mind and quieted his panic. And he slept.
Even the nature of that sleep disturbed him. He was conscious not of peripheral matters, like the sound of footsteps overheard or of the whir of carriages on the street out front. He was plagued by strange images, and with some surprise, he recognized them as dreams. Dreams! As in mortal sleep.
And when he woke, it wasn’t with the abrupt surge of sharp and total control. It was a dragging sort of lassitude, a reluctant arrival at a conscious state. He hurt. His body ached, his head pounded. Muscles felt cramped, skin cold. An odd rumbling stirred through his belly, an emptiness that was hunger, but not compulsion. He didn’t understand, and he was afraid. He sent an urgent call, a silent command but it went no farther than the limits of his mind. My God, what was happening?
He pushed up with his palms, and his arms actually shook with the effort of lifting the silk-lined lid. In the mellow glow of lantern light, he shoved up his shirt sleeves. Flesh that should have been healed to a smooth, unmarred surface showed sore-looking cuts where Howland had spliced into his veins.
“Takeo?”
His voice echoed in the cavernous underground room, as thin and weak as he felt inside.
He climbed out of his resting place. What he usually accomplished with a lithe hop, he managed with much groaning and crawling indignity before an unceremonious tumble to the ground. For a time, he stayed on hands and knees, aware of how the cold seeped up from the hard-packed dirt floor, more aware still of how badly his limbs were shaking. What was this terrible frailty? Howland. He had to get to Howland to demand an answer.
Feeling as drained and depleted of energy as one of his victims, Louis stumbled up the stairs. His perceptions were so muted and uncertain, he didn’t know what to expect when he opened the door at the top. Certainly not daylight.
With a fearful gasp, he sank back into the shadows. My God, daylight! He’d lived so long within the glow of artificial brilliance, he’d forgotten how beautiful it was, how it shimmered and warmed. But he remembered how it burned. He remembered quite vividly the scorch of his flesh and the crisping of tiny white-hot flames when he’d been just a bit too slow in beating the dawn back to his lair. It had taken three decades for those wounds to heal. It wasn’t a lesson easily dismissed, so he was understandably cautious when viewing those sunbeams pooling with beckoning innocence in the upper hall.
Why hadn’t he known it was st
ill daytime? What was wrong with him?
Then a wondrous revelation struck him.
What if it had worked?
What if he was now mortal?
Howland had said there was one sure way to test that theory to prove success—if he came up and exposed himself to the pristine light of day and wasn’t consumed to ashes within seconds—a rather somber test. He hesitated, crouching like a wary animal upon those cold stone steps. None of his usual powers served him. His senses were isolated and frustratingly leashed within normal limits. How was he to know, unless...
He crept forward an inch at a time, pushing his outstretched hand along the wool carpet runner to the soft white edge of light, then nudged it farther, just a tad. Fingertips dipped into that bright circle. He sucked a startled breath. He felt heat. Warm, welcoming heat. No instantaneous combustion of flesh into flames. So he went farther, delving into that stream of daylight, trembling with anxiousness, with hope.
Then, with a ragged little laugh, he rolled onto his back, reaching his face up to the midday hour, basking, soaking up the warmth the way a contented housecat might. When he felt wetness upon his cheeks, he realized he was weeping with the sheer wonder of it. How long had it been? Too long. Centuries too long.
He lay there on the runner for leisurely minutes, closing his eyes to the intensity, opening his soul to the heat. Simply absorbing the natural rays.
“Louis?”
The quiet call took him unaware, and his eyes sprang open in alarm. Then the sense of wonder deepened to a dazed amazement.
Nothing had ever looked so breath-stealingly beautiful as the sight of Arabella Howland wreathed in sunlight.
Chapter Eight
“LOUIS, WHAT ARE you doing down there? Are you all right?”
He was grinning wide, his face was wet, and he began to laugh with a breathless excitement. “I’m not sure I can get up, so you must come down here to me.”
He stretched up his hand and, bemused, Arabella took it, allowing herself to be pulled down to the floor in an awkward twist of her cocoonlike skirt. And with his hands capping her shoulders, he led her over him, down upon his chest, and down upon his eager mouth. Their kiss was long, deep, and sweetened by relief. Louis soaked it up like warm sunshine. Then, finally, he rolled up over her, bridging his forearms on either side of her head so he could look down upon her.