The Passion (9 page)

They are servants."

The careless autocracy of the statement rankled, and she returned, "Then you won't mind if I tel them. Perhaps I'll tel the newspapers, too, and the Comtesse de Crele, who was your guest the other night, and the Prime Minister of England and anyone else I please!"

A spark of interest caught his eyes, although his expression remained mild and barely amused. "Tel whomever you wish," he invited. "Of course, then I'll have to cut out your tongue. As for the Comtesse…"

He sipped his wine, watching her. "She wil be somewhat difficult to impress since she, you see, is one of us."

Tessa simply stared at him for a moment. The comment about cutting out her tongue was lost in the revelation about the Comtesse.

"I knew about you," she said softly, and mostly to herself. "But… others…" She looked at him in bewilderment, feeling humble.

His smile was smal and condescending. "So you
do
have something to learn after al ."

Tessa was breathless with the scope of it al .

"Of course," he said, "I shouldn't want you to think I am entirely representative of al my species. I am far superior to most, you understand…" The sparkle in his eyes was ful of charm and Tessa melted into it, as had no doubt many others before her. "But, to be perfectly honest, I have also been cal ed indolent and reckless and…" He shrugged as he finished off the wine in his glass. "Outrageous. For which you may be grateful, by the way. If I were not somewhat outrageous I would probably be a great deal less kindly disposed toward you now. My tolerance toward humans is one of the things for which I am most frequently criticized, you see."

Tessa said earnestly, "I'm glad."

He regarded his empty glass briefly, then swung his feet to the floor. "And now, my curious little kitten, if I have answered al your questions sufficiently…" He cast a questioning look at her, and she nodded hesitantly. He stood and crossed the room, retrieving another bottle of wine and a dish of confections from a silver tray on the bureau.

"Perhaps you wil be good enough to answer one of mine. Why in the devil did you come at me with a knife? What can I have ever done to deserve such treatment? I don't even know you."

Although his tone was mild and his expression was pleasant, Tessa sensed the confusion behind the question, a touch of what might even be considered hurt. It was the insult that concerned him more than the assault, the reason more than the result.

Tessa's shoulders tensed, and the words dried up in her throat. She had known the moment was coming, but she was not prepared to deal with it. She did not want to give him the answer he sought; she did not even want to think about it, for despite al else, this one thing had not changed.

Stil , the truth was there and she had to say it. If for no other reason, she owed that to the man whose death she had sought to avenge; she owed it to herself.

She spoke in a clear steady tone, watching him careful y, trying to make herself understand now what she had never thought to question in al these years. "You kil ed my father."

"What?" Outrage sharpened his features and he snatched away the dish of candies he had been about to offer her, tossing it carelessly onto a marble-topped table.

The dish shattered, and glass and chocolate showered like sparkling confetti across the floor.

"That is a pernicious lie! I've never kil ed a human in my life! Not," he added, frowning with brief remembrance as he fil ed his glass, "that I haven't been tempted to dispatch a few."

He tasted the wine, seemed to find it satisfactory, and paused for a moment to let its flavor do its soothing work upon his temper. He crossed the room for another dish of candies, selected a marzipan, and appeared to enjoy that taste in a similar fashion.

In a moment, his good humor apparently restored, he returned to the sofa and arranged himself upon it, crossing one knee upon the other and stretching out an arm across the cushioned back. He regarded her with little more than casual interest now.

"Who was this father of yours that I am supposed to have kil ed?" he inquired.

Tessa pressed her fingers together in her lap. "His name," she said, "was Stephen LeGuerre."

His face went very stil . His eyes appeared to darken with the slow dilation of his pupils as he looked at her. The wineglass, half raised to his lips, did not move.

"Stephen?" he said in a near whisper. "You're Stephen's daughter?"

., He moved suddenly and with the swiftness of a panther, so that she couldn't have escaped him if she wished and she had no time to decide if she should try. He was bending over her, her face grasped tightly in his steely fingers, and with the pressure of his hands he pul ed her to her feet. His eyes were urgent, scanning her every feature as though the only thing of importance in the world was that he should commit her face to memory—or find, perhaps, in his own memory a face that matched.

His grip was strong and would surely leave red marks on her skin; his breath came quick and hot.

The terror that went through her was not for her own personal safety—she was far beyond that—but an instinctive, primal reaction to being that near to a creature so magnificent, of being held in his grip, of being at his mercy. She could not catch her breath, and her chest ached with trying.

Final y those iron fingers relaxed; a softening came into his eyes. "Yes." The whispered word was like a caress as it floated across her skin. His gaze, moving over her, was gentle, almost wondering.

"You are Stephen's daughter. I see it now."

He passed his hand lightly over her hair, memorizing by touch as he had by sight a moment ago, and danced his fingertips over the puffy marks his grip had made on her skin. His gaze was far away and his smile was fil ed with sorrow, rich with pleasure. "Stephen LeGuerre," he said softly, "was the first human I ever loved."

He retrieved his wineglass and stood for a long moment with his back to her, staring into it, silent and lost to her. He turned abruptly, his eyes alight with memory. "We were boyhood friends, did you know that? His father was a vintner on my uncle Gerrard's estate in Bordeaux, where I was sent to learn the trade. Stephen's father was a skil ed man, with brown gnarled fingers that always reminded me of the vines he worked, and he was very bright, which was why Uncle Gerrard employed him…

When Stephen grew older and completed university, he proved to be even brighter, and set to work exporting our wine to England and the United States. He made a good deal of money, I believe.

Stephen and I, we were inseparable almost from the beginning. I was very serious in my youth, though you may not credit it now"—his eyes twinkled briefly with fond remembrance—"and he taught me to laugh. He reminded me not to be so pompous. He taught me al that I know about humans… about trust… about friendship."

With the last his smile faded slowly and the twinkle in his eye was driven away by shadows. He lowered his gaze once again to his wineglass, and Tessa's heart caught in her chest with a sudden ache—for the memories she could not share, for the father who had been taken from her too soon, for the surprising tenderness of this creature who mourned him as she did… and who was his murderer.

In a moment he looked at her again, though this time his smile seemed wry and forced. "So he told you of me, did he? His daughter. He spoke of you often, and his great affection for you gave me cause to doubt al the things we have been taught about the way humans regard their young. He mated with an Englishwoman, I recal that, but I think after a time the match proved to be less perfect than he had hoped… She did not like living in France, I think, and he did not like living with her."

His lips quirked a little with amusement, and then he seemed to recal himself. "I beg your pardon. I hope I haven't offended. Your mother—she is wel ?"

Such unexpected courtesy took Tessa aback, and she had no chance to dissemble. She thought briefly of her mother, a smal dried-up woman who had seemed withered by the winds of life, constantly thirsting for what she could not have. Even as a child Tessa had wondered how such a humorless shel of a woman could ever have married a bright spirit like her father. Now, of course, she realized that her mother had once been a beautiful girl, and thought it was a shame her father had been unable to see the bitter soul behind those pretty eyes. She knew without asking—had always known—that her father would not have shared the secret of the loup-garou with his wife.

And she wondered what her mother would think if she could see her now.

"No, you're right," Tessa said. "She hated living in France and returned to Cornwal after—after we received word. I had just turned ten. For the rest of her life I heard nothing but how she despised you, and blamed you for taking my father from us. She was jealous, I think, of the time he spent with you, and always had been. She died last year a bitter woman, and I'm not sure she was ever happy. As soon as I could I came here, to France."

He nodded. "Then you are an orphan, and I am sorry." His eyes quickened with interest. "What did he tel you of me, your father?"

Tessa pressed her hands together tightly. It was difficult to speak of, even now. Especial y now. "He used to set me on his knee in the nursery when I would awake crying in the dark and he would stroke my hair and whisper in my ear fantastical tales of his adventures with a man who could turn himself into a wolf at wil . And oh, how glorious he made those adventures sound! The way the sun lit upon the spires and minarets of ancient lands—"

"Yes!" he cried excitedly. "We did that. We set off by train and by boat to see Egypt on his twenty-first year!"

"And how a bear once stalked him in the great North Woods, and how his friend Alexander savagely fought it off—"

"Ha!" exclaimed Alexander, laughing. "That is a lie!

We both took off like scalded cats and didn't stop running until we'd seen the border of Germany."

"He told me," said Tessa, "how this creature, this marvelous creature who could take the form of wolf or man, could hear whispers behind closed doors half a province away, how he could tel by the smel where a man had been and with whom and what he had done, though it al might have occurred a week ago… how he could speak any language without a trace of an accent upon hearing it once, and memorize entire symphonies by merely glancing at the notes and quote the philosophers and perform complex mathematical and scientific operations in mere seconds. He told me you were strong, strong enough to lift a building off its foundation…"

Alexander grimaced. "An exaggeration. Pound for pound, we are no more than five times stronger than the average human male."

Tessa nodded. "And that you can see in the dark, and run as fast as a train, and…" Her brows knit faintly as the memory came back to her, a recol ection she had wil ingly ignored al these years past. "That you were kind. That you were…" She struggled over the word. "Civilized." Tessa looked up at him. "He said you were the most civilized man he had ever met."

The straight line of Alexander's jaw was clearly visible, his expression set. His voice took on a slight huskiness when he demanded, "Is that al ?"

Tessa shook her head. "He told me…" Her hand crept to her throat, touching the pain of memory that seemed to be lodged there, and her gaze lost focus as she looked back in time. "He used to hold me in his arms, and his eyes would grow bright, as though lit by an inner fire, and he would say to me, 'Tessa, never fear the unknown, the unbelievable, the miraculous. For these are God's ways of tel ing us there is hope…' He loved you, Alexander Devoncroix," she said thickly, looking up at him again. "And for this he died."

The agony in his eyes was something she had never seen before, incomparable in man or beast.

He demanded hoarsely, "Who accuses me thus?

Who told you this perfidy?"

"He went away with you!" she cried. "He was kil ed by a wolf, his body torn to shreds on the American plains! My mother told me this, but I knew the truth she did not—that
you
were the wolf! That you, the creature who could change his form at wil , the friend my father treasured so—that you had betrayed him in the end and, in the form of a wolf, had kil ed him! You deceived my father into believing that you were civilized and for a time I believed it, too, but it was al a monstrous lie. You are evil. From the beginning of time we've known that; even the Church teaches us so. You are the spawn of the devil, snatching babies from their cradles and devouring them whole, slaughtering careless travel ers on the highway in the dark of night, terrorizing the countryside—everyone has heard the stories!"

He regarded her with a mixture of outrage and amusement. "What utter nonsense!"

"Of course, most people regard these stories as mere fairy tales," she continued breathlessly, "but I knew differently. I
knew
what you were. And when I heard how my father died—my father, who trusted a monster!—what was I to believe except the obvious?"

Slowly, his eyes closed. The anguish on his face was exquisite, and it was a long, slow passage of time before he could bring it under control. "Tessa,"

he said at last, lowly, "I did not kil your father. I did my best to save him."

The sound of her own heart, pulsing strong in her ears, was al that fil ed the room. And then Alexander began to speak.

"It was the last of our great adventures," he said, his voice soft with remembrance. "We crossed the ocean, we saw the sights. High in the mountain passes of a place cal ed Montana, America, we walked the wilderness, we talked our dreams, we stared long into the moon on nights so clear they practical y melted on the tongue." He drew in a slow deep breath, tasting it, making Tessa taste it.