Blood Marriage (48 page)

He would return to her. He must. 

And if he did not? 

For the first time in her life she was grateful for the disease that cursed her blood. If Nicholas did not return to her, she would go to him soon enough. 

He'd bitten her twice. Whether to make her a vampire or heal her illness, his motives no longer mattered. Twice was not enough for either. Unlike the duke who'd lost his wife Sarah to flu, or Bergen who'd lost his young bride Lucretia to a man's mistake and a demon's evil, she would not face years of pain and loneliness.

"Sweet 'beth." The duke came into the room and stood beside her. He smelled of brandy and brimstone, but deep lines of grief and loss lined his face. Sorrow had sobered him. "I am so sorry. So very, very sorry. This is my fault. It was my sin that started it all, a long time ago."

Elizabeth slipped her arm through his and began the too familiar recitation. 

"
Hold on to love. Let all else go. Let our beloved dead rest in peace, their sins forgiven and forgotten. Let our sins be forgiven and forgotten as well, so that our troubled hearts may not disturb the peace of those who loved us in life, and love us still in death
." 

"It's a quote I think," the duke said. "But not one I recognize."

"A quote," Elizabeth agreed. "It is what my mother said over her husband's grave, and her brother's grave, and her sons' graves. In a few days when we bury her ashes with Lucretia's and the innocents whose bodies were so horribly abused in death, it is what I will say over their graves."

Marlbourne pulled her into his embrace, his large frame shaking. She hugged her father-in-law's neck and felt his tears on her cheek. 

"My son chose well," he choked out and left the room.

A few minutes later, Lennie and Fielding came in to strip Nicholas's filthy clothes from his body. Elizabeth took a dressing gown from the clothes press and left. She went first to the pink room to look in on Doctor Bergen. He'd been stripped and washed. His black hair was still damp, his face flush with returning health. Above the edge of the pink coverlet she could see the torn flesh on his arms and shoulders was healing rapidly. Suddenly his still chest expanded with a soft gasp. Then miraculously it began to rise and fall in the even rhythm of sleep.

Hope fluttered in her breast. Nicholas would awaken just as Bergen had. He must. And when he did she was determined that he wouldn't open his eyes to a disheveled wife, one with eyes swollen from too many tears. 

She left Bergen sleeping and hurried out into the hall and down to the blue room. A tub of cold water sat in front of the empty hearth. Nicholas must have filled it last night in anticipation of burning her mother's body, just as she had filled the one in their room, knowing she intended to be at the burning as well. 

Nicholas's things were arranged on the dresser. His clothes hung in the clothes press where she'd moved them when she'd banned him from their room. More of the tears she'd promised herself she wouldn't shed stung the backs her eyes, but she refused to cry. There would be time enough for that if he didn't return to her. But he would return. 

He must.

She removed her clothing and tossed it in the empty fireplace. Stepping into the icy water of the tub should have been jarring, but she was too numb with fear and grief to feel the cold. She washed with a swift mechanical thoroughness, soaping and dunking her hair, scrubbing her skin, and finally standing to dump two cans of cold rinse water over herself. Then she stepped from the tub, leaving behind water filthy with soot. She toweled dry and wrapped herself in the modest dressing gown, combed out her long hair and went back to her room. 

The tray of food and drink left on a small table attested to a footman having come and gone. A fire burned in the fireplace and several pails of steaming water waited near the tub, presumably for her. Nicholas lay in bed, the covers tucked beneath his arms, his hands loose at his sides. Like Bergen he'd been stripped and washed. His hair was still damp. Unlike Bergen the wounds on his arms and shoulders were open and raw, his skin deathly pale, his chest still.

The door to Bergen's room remained open. Elizabeth could hear the murmur of men's voices. She closed and locked it, doing the same with the door to the hall. Then she carried one of the steaming pails to the bed and folded the linens back from her husband's feet. She dipped a clean cloth in the hot water and wrung it out. 

She pressed the cloth to the bottoms of his feet, then began working up from his toes. Her strokes were alternately light and caressing, then brisk but gentle. Again and again she dipped the cloth in the pail, slowly progressing up his body, memorizing him as she went, allowing the hot cloth to convince her that his cold flesh was warming, ignoring the paleness that told her it was not.

When she reached the hole over his heart, she didn't remove the bandaging the runners had placed there. She hadn't the courage to look. Instead she cleansed the wounds on his arms and shoulders with great care before moving on to his face. 

She dipped her cloth one final time into the warm water. Lingering over the cleansing of his face, tenderly she traced his strong jaw, his forehead, nose, cheeks, and temples. Finally she dropped the cloth on the floor. Her fingers brushed the fullness of his lips. She closed her eyes and touched her lips to his. A cold kiss where once there had been such warmth and passion. Her heart clenched. 

He would return to her. He must.

She let her dressing gown fall to the floor, then slid into bed beside her husband's cold body. Not his dead body. She wouldn't allow herself to think that. He was vampire. Only half. But surely that only meant it would take him longer to heal. 

Please, God, let him heal
.

She pressed herself along the length of him, careful not to brush against his wounds, willing the warmth of her bare flesh to warm his. Her hand stroked his cheeks and ran down his chest, stopping just above his bandage. 

Please, let him heal

She pressed the palm of her hand flat over the wound in his heart. Then snatched it back. 

Had she felt something? Again she put her palm to his chest. She waited, and the waiting stretched from slow seconds into long minutes. Nothing.

She pressed her cheek against the wound, listening, listening. Stillness. Death.

Grief bordering on madness pressed in on her, stripping the numbness away. The tears she'd denied, as if by denying herself grief she could also deny him death, could no longer be stopped. She clung to him, her body wracked with sobs, her tears soaking the bandages beneath her cheek. Until finally exhaustion overcame her and she slept.

Chapter Forty-Eight

"Why would our sweet Beth lock us out?" Marlbourne asked.

Detective Fielding shrugged. He could think of any number of reasons a young bride might lock her bedroom door. But the one that made the most sense when she'd locked herself inside with her dead husband's body, then didn't answer when they banged and yelled... well, it was a sad scenario, but one he'd seen before. In this case, he hoped he was wrong.

"I could kick the door open," Doctor Bergen offered.

Fielding looked at the man. It was dusk, not even a full twenty-four hours since he'd been staked through the heart, yet he looked as hale and healthy as if he'd never been killed. 

"Won't be necessary," Lennie said, adjusting tobacco from one cheek to the other. He pointed in the direction of the stairway landing. 

The priest was coming down the hall, key in hand.

"Perhaps it would be best if Lennie and I went in first," Fielding said.

The duke shook his head. The man was surprisingly sharp when he wasn't drunk. 

"She hasn't done herself an injury," Marlbourne insisted. "She's a Devlin. She wouldn't."

But the worry in the duke's eyes echoed Fielding's own. Fielding exchanged looks with Lennie. The burly runner frowned. 

The men stepped aside to allow the priest through. Vlad turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. The men poured into the room. 

And stopped. 

Lord Devlin lay in bed exactly where Fielding and Lennie had left him. But he wasn't alone. The blanket they'd tucked beneath his arms had been pushed down to his waist, exposing his muscled stomach and bandaged chest. It also exposed the sleek, decidedly bare back of the lady lying across him. Her hair was fanned out over the sheets to one side, save for a single lock that trailed down her back, paralleling her spine. Like dark chocolate curled in cream, the lock of hair nestled at the small of her back, just above the gentle swell of flesh that disappeared from sight beneath the coverlet. 

Fielding stood with the other men gaping in stunned silence. Then Lady Devlin moaned softly in her sleep and moved slightly, exposing the merest hint of the soft curve of a breast. The men stampeded from the room. Vlad pulled the door shut with hushed speed and turned the key in the lock with a hasty click.

"The skin looked good," Lennie said. Then his rough face turned a fiery red. "Lord Devlin's...uh, skin tone...I mean."

"He was breathing! Wasn't he?" Marlbourne asked.

"He was!" Vlad's bearded face stretched into a broad smile. He and the duke embraced, pounding one another's shoulders with joy.

"I could use a drink," Fielding said.

"Absolutely this calls for a drink!" Marlbourne's voice was merry as he started to lead the way to the stairs.

"Tea," Vlad said firmly, hurrying in the duke's wake. Lennie followed. 

Fielding waved for the doctor to precede him. Not that he didn't trust the man, but after all he'd seen in the past twenty-four hours he preferred to keep the doctor and his like in front of him rather than behind. The man grinned wickedly, as if he'd read the detective's mind.

"Seems unfair," Bergen said. "I've died numerous times and never once awakened like
that
." He cocked one brow at the Devlins' bedroom door, then sauntered off down the hall. 

Fielding glanced at the door and tugged at his suddenly too tight collar before following the doctor. He wondered what Maria was doing tonight.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Nicholas gathered the pleasant warmth covering his chest closer, and a sweet moan stirred him fully awake. He opened his eyes. The angle of the dim moonlight creeping through a gap in the curtains told him it must be past midnight.

He took a deep breath, pulling in a familiarly intoxicating scent. The crown of her head was just below his chin, her cheek pressed to his chest, her breasts bare against his flesh. Relief rushed over him.

His last memory was of her suspended in mid-air below the
diavol varcolac
. He brushed feather-light fingers over the curve of her arm, reassuring himself she was real. A purple bruise marked her shoulder. He lifted the bed covers, looking down to where her legs entwined with his. More bruises and a few scrapes, but nothing that looked serious.

Mentally he examined his own body, realizing he felt no pain. His hand went to his chest. He shifted her weight a little and pulled away the bandages covering his heart, then tossed them to the floor.

She mumbled in her sleep, unconsciously moving her body against his in a way that made his blood warm. He lifted a lock of her hair and whirled its dark silk around one finger, then brought it to his cheek and let it glide over his lips. Last night she'd fought like a tigress for both of their lives. And won. She was sleeping the deep sleep of the exhausted. It would be rude to wake her.

But then he wasn't feeling particularly polite at the moment. He released her hair and put two fingers beneath her chin, lifting it. Ducking his head, he brushed her lips with his. No, polite was definitely not what he was feeling.

"Elizabeth..." The sweet scent of her made him dizzy with need. In one quick move he shifted her off his chest and onto her back, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Elizabeth." 

"Hmm?" she murmured.

Her eyes opened. For an instant there was doubt in their sleepy violet depths, as if she wondered if she were dreaming. Then they widened and she gave a cry of joy. Her arms wrapped his neck. She clung to him, sobbing his name over and over while showering kisses over his cheeks, his mouth, his shoulders, and anyplace else she could reach. 

"Nicholas...Nicholas." She kissed the rough stubble on his chin, dragging her teeth across it lightly. "I was afraid I'd lost you. Never do that again. Never leave me."

Nicholas eased himself a little away from her, her words reminding him of the one thing that remained unresolved between them. He'd promised himself he would be honest with her, tell her the truth, allow her to choose. 

It wouldn't be fair to talk to her about it now. She was emotional, vulnerable. It would be too easy to seduce a yes out of her. Which was precisely what made it the perfect moment.

He raised his head, seeking her mouth once more. Her eyes seemed to devour him. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

He tasted those tears, then captured her lips with his, kissing her hungrily, silencing the sweet sound of his name on her lips.

"Elizabeth, there's something we need to talk about," he said against her mouth. 

He didn't wait for her to answer, parting her willing lips with his, exploring and possessing her with his tongue. When he finally left her mouth, he trailed small kisses down the side of her throat, grinning at the way her body squirmed beneath his. He fought the urge to bring his leg between hers, knowing once he did he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to take her -- and he wasn't ready yet. He wanted more than her body; he wanted her blood. And her permission. 

"You're a vampire." She stated it as if it was old news, hardly worth mentioning. 

"Half," he corrected. 

"Half," she agreed, the word made into a little squeak of pleasure as he nipped playfully at the pulse in her neck.

"You're dying, my love," he said, leaving her neck to plant a slow kiss on her lips. "Don't leave me, Elizabeth. Stay with me. Let me make you fully mine."