Immortal With a Kiss (19 page)

“I could have trusted there was a good reason for your leaving. And after all, we owed each other nothing after Avebury. What more could I ask from you? You saved my life several times over, and gave up Marius—and your freedom—in order to keep me from harm . . .” To my utter shame, I felt tears welling up. “That is why I did not understand after you left, why there was no word month after month. I knew why you had to go—I accepted that. You had to hunt Marius, of course. But it was as if—”

“Emma.” He gently but firmly pulled me about so that I had to look at him.

I dashed away the tears splashing onto my cheeks. “Pay me no mind. I . . . I am overset these days. Ever since the cottage. Shriving that child took a terrible toll on me and then the business with Ruthven after . . . I . . . I am not myself.”

He shook his head. “You have been angry with me, I know. I am sorry.”

I was trying desperately to gather my composure, to distance myself from the upsetting emotion of this conversation. “You have nothing to regret. You’ve come here to help me when you have urgent business elsewhere. It is very nice of you, and—”

“I am not nice,” he murmured. “And I did not come here just for you.”

My tongue failed me, and I stared blankly at him, my heart hammering wildly. I was afraid to speak, and yet somehow the words in my head escaped in a whisper. “What did you come for, then?”

His gaze swept my face. And then he kissed me.

His hand came to cradle the back of my head, holding me fast, and I felt overcome. If the earth had opened up right then and we had fallen together through space, I do not think I would have known it. This was what I had been wanting. My entire body wanted to melt, but my pride bit deep and I remained rigid in his arms.

He pulled back after a moment, staring at me. Dark questions lingered unspoken between us. My bravado was failing me, but I did not relent. He released me at last and turned toward the window.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked. His face in profile was sad, reflective. “From Blackbriar, I mean?”

“No!” The word exploded from me.

He smiled bitterly, casting me a sidelong glance over his shoulder. “But can you say you want me to stay?”

I threw my head back, closing my eyes as emotion swept over me. “What I want, Valerian, you cannot give me.
I want to not want you
. You do not know how much I pray to be free of this ache to have something I can never possess. I must be too weak, for I cannot seem to achieve it.”

He opened his mouth, and I cut him off with a sharp movement of my hand. “Do not dare tell me a thing—I know all of it already. Yes, I know, I must understand—your situation, and therefore
our
situation. And I do. I do understand, more than anyone else, perhaps, for I have my own demons to torment me, do I not? But I have noticed that being understanding has no reward. What has it brought to me, what favor, what advantage? Why must I always
understand
? Do you know how tired I am of it?”

There was an interval of silence, during which I glared at him until the realization of what I’d just blurted so furiously settled on me, bringing a flood of shame. I cut my head sharply to the right. I could not look at him.

But I could feel him staring at me. “My God, I never saw it.”

I finally forced my gaze to his. He appeared bemused. He gave me that smile, the secret, tender one that always made me want to weep.

“You’ve always dazzled me,” he said. “You are so brave—always, without fail. Oh, do not scowl at me, you are brave, you know—braver than anyone I’ve ever known in my life, and it has been a long, long life, Emma. And you are good. Such goodness I’ve scarce dared imagine. And then, as if that weren’t enough, you are—we all forget, all of us who’ve come to depend on you. Except maybe Sebastian, he knows. Yes, Sebastian knows, but he is the only one.”

“Knows what?” I whispered. It is a truth of human nature that we both fear and crave being known, and although I was not sure I could bear to hear more of this, I wanted more than anything for this man to know me. As I waited for him to answer, I felt my heartbeat throb against my ribs like a trapped bird.

“How vulnerable you are.” He reached out, then thought better of it and his hand dropped to his side. “Strong, brilliant Emma. In some ways—Lord, curse me for a dolt for not seeing it before this—but in some ways, you are so vulnerable.”

My entire body began to shake. I thought I would scream. A feeling welled up inside me, something like joy and terror mixed together in a blend that made the world tilt on its axis. I struggled to remain calm. Strong.

His arms were on me, suddenly, hands cupping my shoulders, giving me something steady. But he did not embrace me. We were not lovers, no matter what our hearts wished, for we were still separated by the blood of Marius, by the part of himself he despised. If it came to it, he wanted to die rather than be made over. And he had made me promise that if he could not see it through himself, then I would kill him. Of all of the sacrifices anyone could have asked of me, this was too much.

He had bound me by solemn vow to kill the man I loved.

How I hated him for that.

Chapter Sixteen

S
ebastian brought me the news of Janet’s death. She was found hanged from a tree in the woods, an apparent suicide in precisely the same location where Victoria Markam had claimed to have found all the dead bodies that had subsequently disappeared.

That spot had to be significant to the girls, and I suspected I knew why. Miss Markam had found the cache of corpses by following the girls when they snuck out of the dorm. I could only surmise this was the place where they had conducted their lurid revels.

I do not know why, but the loss of the young girl with whom I’d only had a glancing acquaintance affected me deeply. She had been beautiful, and she’d been so young, with all of her life ahead of her.

“She was one of them,” Sebastian said. “She belonged to the coven girls. I’ve heard enough rumors about her, since she disappeared, to have little doubt.” He grasped my shoulder, forcing me to look at him. “Then we must see to her,” he said.

I felt my stomach twist in on itself, clenching itself into a knot.
Darkling I listen: And for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death.

One day, I would do this for my mother. I could not grieve over it. But that baby I’d had to shrive haunted my nightmares, and I was still tender.

Sebastian had more news when he, Valerian, and Father Luke came to fetch me the following dawn. “This might not be necessary,” he told me before I climbed into the carriage with the two men. “I heard in the village that Janet was pregnant. She’d been to see the doctor and he confirmed it.”

With so clear a reason for her despair, perhaps her death was not linked to the business with the vampire. I was so eager to avoid this duty, I almost turned around right then and returned to my warm bed. I was also of a mind to avoid Valerian, who sat in broody silence in the dark interior.

“We should be certain,” I said instead, and climbed in.

Sebastian sighed, and nodded in reluctant agreement. He’d been affected by the child vampire, too. He would not have argued had I called off our sojourn this day.

But the shriving was uneventful. Janet, pale and strangely beautiful in death, had not awakened, and I felt a sense of peace as I did my duty to protect her soul.

Father Luke stood beside me, wearing his vestments, and I made no comment as he raised his hand, the first two fingers extended, and traced a sign of the cross, first in the air, then over the corpse. This was the first time since last spring that he’d taken his proper role in the shriving of the dead.

He began his prayers, and I bowed my head, finding myself silently reciting the Latin along with him:
Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the soul of thy servant, Janet, from every bond of sin, that being raised in the glory of the resurrection . . .

When he faltered, I glanced at him. His pale skin shimmered with a sheen of fine sweat. He swallowed with difficulty, as if emotion dammed in his throat.

He began the prayer again, and once more he stumbled over the blessings.

I exchanged a worried look with Valerian. Sebastian, too, was staring hard at the priest. Finally, he managed to finish his prayers, picking up the edge of his embroidered stole draped around his neck and kissing it in conclusion of the rite. No sooner had he done so than he spun on his heel and quit the cottage.

“Perhaps it is what happened, that last time with the woman and the child in the cottage,” Sebastian said, quietly coming up beside me. “God knows it was horrible.”

I nodded. I was sure that was it. The carnage of that dawn was very much with us all on this day. “Thank God we’ve been spared another scene like it,” I murmured.

As the sun broke over the horizon, we set about packing our belongings back into the carriage. We were anxious to be away before we were discovered. That was when we noticed Father Luke was no longer with us.

He was not in his room at the inn, either. I waited by the trap, eager to get underway lest I be late returning to school. Sebastian brought out the troublesome news. “He’s gone,” he told Valerian and me with something akin to panic. “He’s gone to find opium. I was afraid of this. The melancholy still weighs on him.”

Valerian was quick to reply. “I will search for him. He can’t have gotten far. He’s got to be up in the woods where we just were.”

“I am coming with you,” I said.

“Do you think that wise?” Valerian said. “They will miss you.”

My position was precarious with Miss Sloane-Smith, and the gossiping Trudy Grisholm was watching me closely. That, in addition to Sebastian’s rightful assertion that I would slow them down—“You are a dreadful horsewoman,” he reminded me—convinced me to leave the two of them to it. I hurried back to the school and managed to stable the trap and the horse, get inside, freshen my appearance, and change my clothes just in time for my first class.

I waited the entire day for word, which came in the form of a sealed note late that afternoon. Eloise Boniface brought it into the dining room when we gathered for supper.

“The innkeeper sent this up from the village for you,” she whispered, and I noticed gratefully she made certain Trudy was nowhere in sight.

I hastened out of the dining hall to a private spot and tore open the note with clumsy fingers. “We have him,” it read in Valerian’s spidery hand. “He is safe. He is asking for you. Come when you are able.”

I
t was not until Sunday that I was able to get free and go down to the village. As painfully impatient as I was to have to wait until then, I realized my position at Blackbriar was on thinner ice than I would have thought. I could tell by the manner among the teachers I counted as my friends, Eloise and Ann Easterly particularly, for they tried to give me gentle advice.

“Why don’t you come and sit with me this evening?” Eloise had prodded soon after we returned. “You are alone far too much.”

And Ann always was there to fetch me for every meal, during which she made special effort to draw me into conversations. I suppose her intention was to make me seem friendlier, less aloof, and I was touched by her loyalty.

I became aware that there was a line being drawn, with me on one side and the sly Trudy Grisholm on the other. So I was present at every meal, sat with the teachers in the parlor in the evening, joined in their discussions, and in every way tried to appear dependable, sensible, scholarly, and untroubled. But all the while I was biding my time, and after services on Sunday I slipped away to the inn at last.

Valerian was in the common room when I arrived. He knew better than to approach me in a public place. Mrs. Danby greeted me in between her rounds seeing to the tables. While she was occupied, I wandered over to the empty hearth. Madge was not in her chair, but I wanted to get another look at the headstone.

I found it a curiosity, more so since the name Winifred had come up in the story about my mother that Eloise Boniface had told me.

“Are you that chilled?” Mrs. Danby said as she found me by the hearth.

“No. I was looking at this,” I said, pointing to the headstone.

She frowned. “It’s depressing, isn’t it? Well, at least they put it in upside down so it’s not so obvious there’s a gravestone there.”

“Why was it put in the wall?”

“Well, now, we aren’t ones here in the fells to waste.” She clasped her hands together under her ample bosom. “When that wall was built—hundreds of years ago it was—they used all the stone they could scavenge. That’s how it’s always been around here, make use of what’s at hand. So, they put the headstone in there.”

“So it was removed from the grave?”

“Well,” she said, giving a sigh, “that’s an ugly tale. That Winifred’s grave got opened up after she was gone and her remains burned. They said it was because she was a witch, but women like that—known to have the sight, and maybe know a thing or two about herbs—were always regarded with suspicion. It was how it was with all the women in that family, through the generations.”

I wondered if that suspicion was due to her healing gifts, or the close association with Holt Manor. I was still unsettled by the connection of that dragon necklace I’d seen; I didn’t know what to make of it.

“I heard of a Winifred whose son, Alistair, was a groundskeeper up at the school,” I said. “They also took care of Lord Suddington’s house. Was this her relative?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, that’s right. The husband and son did the school, took care of Holt Manor before Lord Suddington came back. She was the last of the Winifreds around these parts.”

This made sense. I felt anger at the prejudice against women whose only crime was a desire to help others with their healing talents. I felt it for this Winifred whose grave had been defiled and her headstone stolen and placed in the inn’s wall, and for the Winifred who had tended my mother. And I felt it for me, for the tale of this poor woman’s persecution was a cautionary one. Women with powers were thought to be dangerous, even if those powers saved your life. You could be thought a witch, or insane, or worse . . . evil.

I shook off this dark thought. “Well, thank you for telling me,” I said. “I had wondered. I notice your mother is not in her usual place in her chair. Is she well?”

“Oh, bless you for asking, Mrs. Andrews, but she’s having her rheumatism today. I keep her in bed through the worst of it.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear she is suffering,” I said sincerely. “Please send my regards.”

“Kindness itself you are, and understanding of the old. The mind goes, you know. Some complain about her. She can ramble on so. I’m glad it didn’t upset you.”

“Not at all.” I hesitated, and then said, “Although when I was in here last, Sir Charles Morton had a fit of pique over it.”

“Oh, him,” Mrs. Danby said with a sneer. “What was he on about?”

“Your mother mentioned something called the Cyprian Queen. It upset him a great deal.”

She made a snorting sound, a kind of derisive laugh. “Oh, well, he wouldn’t care to have his high and mighty self associated with that old legend, would he? He’s complained about her before—my mother, I mean. But I can’t keep her locked in her bed day and night, and her talk is harmless. It’s just an old scary story nobody else puts any stock in.”

“I suppose he believes that kind of talk casts a bad light on the school somehow.”

“He’s a popinjay,” she agreed. “Thinks better of himself than he is, that one. But I can’t say that I blame him. Rumors of girls going missing from time to time would hardly benefit any institution educating female students.”

I had noticed Valerian watching me the entire time I conversed with Mrs. Danby. He said nothing, wisely keeping his distance so as not to draw attention to our frequent meetings. He followed me with his obsidian gaze as I crossed to Sebastian, who was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “He just returned,” he said, referring to Valerian as we climbed the stairs. “He went into Penwith to see about several deaths that appeared to be the work of our vampire.”

“Ruthven is feeding far away now, so he will not stir suspicions,” I surmised.

“Exactly. Valerian thinks he favors the larger city, where the more dense population makes it less likely the strange deaths will be noticed.”

We were at the top of the stairs. The door to Father Luke’s room was to our left. “How is he?” I asked.

Sebastian’s face puckered into a dark scowl. “You will see for yourself. He will not speak to either Valerian or myself, the ungrateful cur. I have a mind to leave him to this business of destroying himself, to which he seems so devoted.” The cloud of grief in his eyes bespoke his deep feeling in contrast to his brash words.

I braced myself and entered the room. It was darkened again and it stank of unwashed body, and of despair.

“Do not open the drapes,” Father Luke said. I had expected him to be abed, as he had been in the early days of his recovery, but he was seated at the table. “I will light a lamp if you want.”

I approached slowly and sat down. “Please,” I said.

He took the flint box and used it to light an oil lamp among the refuse strewn on the table surface. We sat in silence.

“Do you recall the time you came to me, and asked me to hear your confession?” he said finally.

“I do, yes.”

“I have no one to hear mine,” he said.

I blinked in astonishment, not certain I was getting the correct inference. “Do you want to make a confession to me? But I am obviously no priest.”

He closed his eyes. “I want to say it. Say it all. If I do not, Emma, I will go mad. It keeps spinning inside my head, and I need to get it out.” He shook his head violently. “Even if the bishop himself were here, I could not speak. I took vows—not just the ordinary ones of ordination. Vows of secrecy that bind me . . .”

He took a moment, frowning in thought. Then he said, “I have broken them already, so many times. But I cannot go to the Church for this. The truth is, I do not trust it anymore. That is part of my suffering. I want to tell you. I trust you, Emma.”

My throat constricted, but I found my voice. “Then I am here, father.”

“Do not call me that,” he snapped. “Call me Luke if you must, although that is not even my name. I am a man of lies, Emma. That is the first thing you must know. Luke is the man who lived a good life, but I am only part him. The other parts . . . I have done terrible things.”