There had been no more references she could make out either to Mr. Rufford’s condition or to Kivala. But she was determined to know more about her strange fellow passenger. Why had his agitation disappeared? Why had he been in such distress about Callow? Why did Callow’s wounds echo Rufford’s own? He was so eager to reach Gibraltar. She had heard him ask the Captain repeatedly about it. Why? What was there for him? She had to know.
A bold plan began to take shape. He would go ashore in Gibraltar. She wanted to know what he did there. A British woman in a dress would attract too much attention. She smiled in the dark. She could fix that. She was about to do something that Lady Rangle would despise.
Eight
The convoy put in to the harbor at Gibraltar on the late-afternoon tide. Mrs. Pargutter had recovered miraculously and now stood with Beth and Jenny at the rail as the Beltrane found her place among the crowded shipping fleet rocking on the water in the translucent light.
“How long are we to have in port?” Mrs. Pargutter asked Beth. “I must see all the shops.” Her voice was eager, her plump cheeks pink.
“The Captain says we sail on tomorrow evening’s ebb. We stay to acquire some five new members of our convoy.” Beth hoped Mr. Rufford would have time to carry out whatever it was he was planning, for she meant to discover what that was.
Mrs. Pargutter gasped in dismay. “A single day? Well! I shall bespeak a room ashore tonight, for a prompt start in the morning.” She turned to Beth. “You will come with us, dear Miss Rochewell? Will it not be heaven to feel solid land beneath our feet?”
Beth gazed out at the immense Rock that rose above the little harbor town. The stark stone rising sharply into the sky loomed over the waterfront. Lush gardens by the shore lined a broad avenue Beth remembered as the Grand Parade. It was filled to overflowing with a cross section of the world. She could pick out the red coats of the lobsters and the blue of naval officers of course, though not as many as during the war, before the Rock had been ceded back to Spain. Even from here she spied white turbans, the rich colors of Turks and Greeks, the pale blue robes of Tangier Coptic Christians, the black of Barbary Jews. Whitewashed walls, terracotta roof tiles, and bright shutters marched up the shoulders of the Rock. “I hope you are not disappointed of dress shops,” she said to Mrs. Pargutter. “This has always been a military town.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” Mrs. Pargutter tutted, her brassy curls shivering. “Wherever there are military men, you find the women who follow them and mantua makers aplenty. I am only sorry we are to be whisked away so cruelly.”
“Not a moment to be lost.” Beth smiled, quoting the naval phrase heard most often on any ship, even a Company Indiaman.
“Captain!” Mrs. Pargutter called, interrupting the Captain’s discussion of the state of the ship’s best bower anchor with his first mate. “How soon may we have a boat to go ashore?”
“Another glass.” The Captain frowned. “I will send my barge with you.”
Mrs. Pargutter turned to Beth. “Is he making me wait while he drinks?” she asked, outrage pulling down the corners of her mouth.
“No, no,” Beth soothed. “He means in half an hour. You have remarked that the sand runs in the glass, there by the bell, in half-hour increments? They toll their bell on the half hour.”
“The infernal bell!” Mrs. Pargutter exclaimed. “It has been giving me the headache for two weeks and more.”
Beth noted with satisfaction that the barge would be shipping across at sunset. True to her surmise, Mr. Rufford appeared just as the boat was launching, and ran down the side into the barge with a small valise.
“You, too, sleep ashore, sir?” Beth asked as the coxswain directed him to a seat facing her.
He glanced at her and carefully away. “One must take one’s opportunity as it presents.”
“Pull out, there!” the coxswain bellowed. The boat swung away from the side of the frigate and made for the quays, wending its way between the high walls of the moored ships.
“I do hope we may find lodging,” Mrs. Pargutter worried. She had burdened Jenny, sitting on her other side, with the huge valise she required for one night ashore.
“My father and I lodged at an inn called Fruit of the Vine on several trips into the Med,” Beth remarked. “It is most conveniently located, but quiet. We can try there first if you like.” She shot a glance to Mr. Rufford. She did not want to be looking all over town for where he had lodged. “Do you have a place bespoke, sir?”
“Not yet.” His answer was short, to discourage her.
“Single gentlemen prefer The Bells, I believe. The staff speaks English, and French as well as Spanish and Catalan.”
He raised his brows at her.
She refused to blush. “My father’s partner, Monsieur L’Bareaux, always stayed there.”
He said nothing. She could only hope that he would be found later at The Bells.
It was after midnight. Beth pulled the rough cloth of her jacket around her and huddled farther into the doorway. The breeze off the harbor carried a bite that said the warmth of autumn waned. Overhead moon and stars were obscured by clouds, and the air held the threat of rain. Rufford had chosen The Bells after all. The boy from whom she’d bought her clothing knew exactly where the English gentleman with the broad shoulders had lodged. These homeless scamps knew everything, and luckily this one spoke only partially broken French, for her own Spanish extended hardly beyond commonplace courtesies. Her pieces of silver had been exchanged for coarse flaxen trousers held up by a rope, a ragged knit shirt, and the all-concealing jacket, as well as some sturdy sandals. Trousers came naturally to her, since she had often worn them when digging with her father, and they were far more practical than a dress for straddling a camel. She had concealed her hair under a bright kerchief bought from the market. With her brown complexion and small stature, she was sure she could pass for a street urchin.
The streets cleared of drunken soldiers and sailors, some Beltranes among them, and lights dimmed. Beth sank into a heap in her doorway, so anyone passing would think she was another orphan. Off-key voices howled closer until a last wheelbarrow trundled by with two souls dead to the world piled in it, pushed by two more scarcely better off. Beth began to wonder if she had mistaken her man, or whether he would creep out some back door and avoid her entirely. Her backside was numb. Just as she despaired, a shadow eased out of the door across the street. She would know those burly shoulders anywhere.
He glanced around, but his gaze passed over her still form and he strode off toward the corner. She waited until he turned uphill, and followed silently. He made no attempt to conceal himself as he walked up into the poorer sections of town. It was she who melted from doorway to doorway in pursuit. Cobblestones gave way to packed earth. The houses grew smaller, crouched behind stone walls that faced the street. Once he stopped at a house where an open window gave directly onto the roadway. It was half-open to catch the breeze off the water. But a dog began to bark and he moved on.
At last a door opened just as he passed, and light leaked full onto his countenance from what looked to be a small tavern. “Estancia, where are you going?” a voice yelled in Spanish. The slamming door was the only answer. A woman stepped into the street, swearing under her breath, almost into Rufford’s arms. He stepped back in surprise. Beth sheltered behind a morning glory vine draped over a wall, blossoms sleeping in the darkness.
“Ehh, hombre,” the woman challenged, sizing up Rufford with a practiced gaze. Her blouse, white in the dark Gibraltar night, had slipped from one shoulder. “Soy yo. ¿Tu quieros hacer con una mujer a muy habilidos esta noche?”
Rufford hesitated.
“Francais?” she asked. “Bon. C’est une nuit parfait pour l’amour, n’est pas? C’est un jardin tout près.”
Still he hesitated, so she reached out slowly and took his hand, as she would a wild animal’s. He let her draw him through an arch covered with the same vine that sheltered Beth. She gave them a moment, then tiptoed after th
em. Peering around the arch, she saw the woman lead Rufford to a stone bench in a circle of flagstones, surrounded by a black jungle of tropical plants. The woman lounged across the bench, breasts swelling beneath her low-cut blouse. Rufford loomed above her, uncertain, as though he might turn and run at any moment. Then Beth saw his shoulders sag. He sank to the bench.
Beth slid through the dark leaves, some smooth and shiny, perhaps schefflera, and some light and prickly, Pride of Madeira, their purple flower cones now indigo in the night. Had Rufford come ashore for a common liaison with a Spanish harlot? But there was something in his defeated attitude that said this was more important, more costly, than a carnal need. The moon broke through the clouds and lit the flagstone circle as though it were a stage. Beth found a place where she could crouch among the riot of the garden unseen and yet see Rufford’s face.
The woman urged him on, her full-throated murmurs unintelligible. Perhaps she quoted prices; perhaps she promised ecstasy—Beth couldn’t hear. She ran her fingers through his hair until his ribbon came loose and it tumbled forward. Beth could almost feel its lush curls. The whore pressed her breasts against his chest as he hung above her, and Beth held her breath.
Rufford himself inhaled and turned his head up, as if in supplication.
When his gaze dropped, Beth was shocked to see that his eyes had gone red. They glowed in the night with their own inner light, crimson instead of blue. His eyes had betrayed a faintly red cast that night she saw him heal, but nothing like this inhuman fire. He gazed at the whore, who went suddenly limp. She would have fallen, but he caught her. She lay draped across his arm, her breast heaving, her head lolling so that her throat was bared. Rufford panted over her for a long moment, then opened his mouth. By the light of the moon, Beth saw canines gleam, impossibly long. Then he bent over the harlot’s throat. Beth saw her jerk once, then lift herself to Rufford in a sensual pull as he stayed there, kissing. Kissing? Sucking?
Revulsion showered Beth. Of course, sucking! Like a bat. One of those vampire bats Granger mentioned. He was a vampire? Her heart wrenched in anger, in grief or horror. She wanted to run from the garden, but she dared not move lest he see her and she, too, fall victim to him. Her heart trembled and her stomach heaved. This was no “condition.” She tried to remember vague legends: garlic, wolfbane, sun, blood, dead but undead, immortal, evil.
With a grunt of effort, Rufford tore his lips from the woman’s throat, and sagged over her body. With effort, he raised himself and resettled his victim against his shoulder. Beth watched in morbid fascination as the woman’s eyes fluttered open. “You will remember only that someone thought you were beautiful, valuable, that you were loved,” he growled as his eyes began to fade through burgundy to blue again.
The woman woke, as from a trance. She sat up and looked around, confused. Rufford stood. Beth could see him flushing, even in the moonlight that washed the color from the world. “For your trouble,” he muttered, and laid a golden coin upon the bench.
“Estancia!” a male voice called from the tavern. Light flickered in a window that gave onto the garden. “Dónde estás, Estancia?”
Rufford looked around to the voice, then back at his victim. “Comó estás? Bueno?”
She looked up at him, dazed, and nodded. “Bien, assez bien.”
He turned, striding out through the arch as the call within the tavern rose again.
Beth pushed after him, freed from her spell. In the archway, he looked both ways, hesitated, and then headed uphill again, away from his inn and the wharf.
She should scurry back to the Fruit of the Vine and safety. She knew what Rufford wanted with Gibraltar now. She knew why Callow bore the same marks that Rufford did. She wondered that she hadn’t realized it long before. She, too, paused in the archway, undecided. Behind her, a door opened. Light cascaded over her. “Estancia, venga. Se está hacienda tarde.”
Beth stepped out of the light to avoid discovery. Almost against her will she turned to follow Rufford’s retreating shadow. She was following evil itself into the night. Why? Why would she do that? Her heart was still pounding, but her brain cleared enough to think.
Her brain did not like the words evil and horror. Those were superstitious words, words in which her father had never believed. Granger’s words about bats came back to her: “Some, by nature, like blood. It isn’t fatal to their victims, and the poor beasts can’t help it, certain.” Was a drunken surgeon more liberal-minded than she was? The look of shame on his face, the sag of his shoulders, said that even Rufford didn’t think it was a condition, but some evil. She remembered his wild concern for Callow, his guilty, almost tender questioning of the whore.
Her thoughts collided all the while her feet followed Rufford. Clouds closed over the moon, casting the street into darkness. Beth longed to move to the center of the dirt lane to avoid the filth at the edge, but though Rufford now seemed oblivious to his surroundings, she dared not risk discovery. Whatever he was, he would not like being followed by a fellow passenger. Fellow passenger? How could she return to the confines of a ship with one such as Rufford? Yet she didn’t have enough money to bespeak a coach in the morning and abandon her voyage.
He turned into a narrow alley. Had she seen another shadow there? She stopped, then moved quietly to the corner where he had disappeared. She saw him gliding, almost preternaturally smooth and quiet, a blacker shadow on the darkness. Ahead of him flickered another shadow, or was it two?
The alley was filled with crates and rotting vegetables, molding rags and human filth. The stench was nauseating. Ahead, Rufford slid after his quarry. She picked her way through the maze of half-seen obstacles to another narrow lane. Rufford was moving faster now into an empty field with grasses growing up around half-burnt timbers and fallen stones. He was gaining on the other shadows—three? They sauntered, muttering, up to no good this late, surely. Could he manage to subdue three? But she had seen his strength. He had pushed off a pirate’s corsair single-handed. He had not been violent with the woman, but with three to one, someone would get hurt. Should she shout? Should she warn them of their danger? But that would reveal her. And she could not let Rufford know he had been discovered.
It was all one in the end, for she tripped over a stone in the tall grass and went down with a gasp. The quarries glanced back and began running. Rufford hesitated and stalked back toward her. She struggled to her feet and turned to dash away, heart pounding.
A strong clasp gripped her arm. He turned her with a growl. She squirmed to escape, keeping her face turned away, her eyes downcast. He had her by both shoulders. But he did not shake her, hit her, do all the thousand things he might have done if he was angry. The heated power in his hands on her shoulders seared her.
“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “No tiene miedo.” He dragged her to a crumbled stone fireplace, sheltered by a tree only singed by the fire that had destroyed the building.
And she was not afraid. His arm encircled her. She sagged against his strength. He pressed her to his chest while he fumbled with her shirt collar. She could see him perfectly clearly in the moonlight!: the cleft of his chin, the vulnerable lips that puckered too sweetly for evil, the curling hair, unbound. But more than these was the strength that emanated from him, the scent of cinnamon and ambergris. The sense of him penetrated to her core. Her head lay along his arm. He leaned over her. She could hear his panting breath, a low sound in his throat like a growl. She turned to him, baring her carotid artery, and looked up.
“You!” he exclaimed. But he was gasping. His eyes had gone full red. “Why have you done this?” She thought for a moment he would pull away, but then, with something like a snarl, he bent to her throat.
The twin pains, when they came, were not unexpected. She only thought they would be sharper. Perhaps it was the languor that overcame her, but the piercing of her skin did not seem important. What was important was his scent and the nearness of his body. His lips were soft against her skin. Now both arms embraced
her and pressed her breasts into his chest. His mouth pulled at her throat, sucking, and she moved her body in some instinctive counterpoint, her hips pressing against his thigh, which had somehow gotten between hers and hers between his. She was burning, throbbing in her loins with the pulse of her blood, her mother’s blood that ran within it, his blood. He held her tighter. She could hardly breathe, and now his hips were thrusting back, even as he pulled against her throat and pressed her against his body. She did not care. Let him take all the blood she had, just so she might stay here, in this almost ecstasy, forever with him.
With a cry, he withdrew. He wiped the blood from his mouth and shook his head, as if to clear it. “Too much. Too much.” But still he held her close. She looked up into that countenance as if she had known it forever. She saw guilt suffuse him. He turned his gaze to her, still burgundy, but fading. “You will remember . . .”
“Everything, always,” she whispered.
His eyes widened and snapped back to blue. He let her go as though she were a hot coal. Beth dropped to her knees, unable to stand on her own. She wavered.
He threw himself down on his knees in front of her and took her shoulders to steady her, examining her neck with horror. “God, what have I done?”
She smiled sleepily at him, unable to speak. He looked wildly around, came to himself, shook her to get her attention, and muttered, “You will remember nothing.”
But it was too late and he knew it.
From somewhere far away she could see the pain in his eyes, see him swallow and look about himself as though something would occur to change what had just happened. He examined her again, taking in the ragged urchin’s clothing, no doubt. “I must get you back to your rooms.” He stood and hauled her to her feet. Taking her arm, he pulled her through the burnt remains toward the lane beyond. She didn’t care if she got back to her rooms. She wanted to stay here, in the ruins, with him. She stumbled a few steps and sank again.
Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] Page 12