Hocking, Amanda Letters To Elise (My Blood Approves 4.5) (3 page)

I ran after her, and she sped up. I was faster than her. I easily caught her. I grabbed her wrist, gently as not to hurt her, and she stopped, whirling around to face me. Her body pressed into me, so I could feel how hard her own heart hammered in her chest. She stared up at me, searching my face.

“What game are you playing?” Elise asked.

“This isn’t a game.”

She pulled her wrist from my hand and stepped back from me. “Just because I want to kiss you doesn’t

mean we can.”

“Why not?” I asked, and I made myself stay in place. I wanted to follow her, to be close enough to touch her again, but I knew that wasn’t what she wanted, so I stayed firm.

“Because.” She stood up straighter. “I am a lady, and I have morals.”

“Yes, of course,” I nodded, feeling the blush on my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to… tarnish you.”

“Good, because you can’t.” She turned away. “If you’d like to walk with me, you can. But nothing more.”

I hurried to catch up with her, and we walked slowly down the road. A little boy ran out in front of us, nearly into her, and she paused to let him pass.

“You don’t know what this is?” Elise asked softly after he’d gone. She kept her eyes focused on the path in front of her, only occasionally glancing up at me.

“You mean this… pull between us?” I asked.

“Yes, exactly,” she nodded quickly. “The pull.”

“No, I haven’t the faintest idea,” I shook my head. “My maker might know, though.”

“You know your maker?” Elise looked up sharply at me.

“Yes, don’t you?” I gestured back to the market. “Wasn’t Catherine yours?”

“No, she’s a friend, more like a sister.” Her steps slowed a bit as we talked. “My maker was a stranger that my father paid to turn me, and then he promptly abandoned me.”

“Your father paid him?” I asked, not hiding my shock.

“We were dying,” Elise explained. “Both my younger sisters and my mother had already died. It was only my father and I left. The famine hit our family hard.”

“So to save you, he hired someone to turn you?” I asked, and she nodded.

“But he left me, alone with my father.” Her face darkened. “I had to learn how to be a vampyre on my

own.”

I remembered how I’d been when I’d first turned, and I could only imagine what a starving girl like Elise had done, alone with a human.

“I’m sure my maker will have answers,” I said, hurrying to erase the thoughts on her mind. “Would you

like to go talk with him?”

“Not now.” She shook her head, and her hair looked even more like fire as it shimmered across her back.

“I should be heading back to help Catherine.”

“How did you meet Catherine?” I asked, desperate to keep the conversation going. I didn’t want to lose her.

“Luck, really,” Elise smiled at the thought. “I wandered around for a bit and came across her. She lived outside of the city with a garden. She lived like a human, not that animal I’d believed I was, and she taught me how to do the same.”

“That doesn’t sound bad,” I said.

“It’s not, really.” She stopped, looking back towards the market. “I really do need to get back and help her.”

“But we’ve only just met,” I said, and I’d already begun to panic at the thought of her departing. I didn’t know how I would possibly survive when she went out of my vision.

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head again, and I knew she meant it.

“When will I see you again?” I asked, and when she didn’t answer right away, I said, “I have to see you again.”

“Tonight,” Elise said. “Where are you staying?”

“We’ve rented a room above the pub,” I said.

“Tonight then,” she nodded once to convince me. She smiled and turned away, running back the way we

had come.

This time, I didn’t follow her, despite how badly I wanted to. The thread around my heart tightened,

squeezing it painfully, when she disappeared. My very being wanted to go with her, and I could barely

breathe at the thought of being without her, even for a few hours.

When I found Ezra, I immediately told him about Elise and the way I felt around her. It was more than

emotion. It was something physical. My body craved hers, my blood yearned for her. I had to fight to

keep my feet from chasing after her.

Over a pint of whiskey we both pretended to drink, Ezra told me everything he knew about it, which

wasn’t that much. He’d heard of stories of vampyres being bonded to each other. Something in their

blood made them meant for each other. It was a physical reaction, something that pulled them

together.

He’d never experienced it before, so he believed it to be a myth. He didn’t understand the purpose for it, but he understood very little of why vampyres acted the way they did.

Listening to me talk of Elise, he was convinced that this was the case with the two of us. We were

bonded together, meant for each other, and nothing had ever sounded sweeter. I’d like nothing more

for the rest of my life to start with Elise as soon as possible.

Ezra tired of listening to me speak endlessly of Elise, her smooth skin, her fiery hair, her hypnotic eyes…

so he sent me out with a pad of paper to write down my story of Elise.

So here I sit on the stone by the pub entrance, scribbling all the things I can’t keep inside as I wait for Elise to arrive. Elise, my love, my true…

August 17, 1852

Dearest Elise,

I hope this letter finds you well. My heart aches without you, but otherwise, this journey is setting

alright with me. I’ll never learn to enjoy being at sea, but the boat ride from Dublin wasn’t that long, and I am grateful for that.

As I write this, we’re not yet to London, but I expect we will be soon. The carriage is jostling us about a lot, so forgive the mistakes and the ink on the paper. Ezra is sound asleep next to me, and I wish that I could travel like him.

Maybe I would, but I can’t keep my thoughts from my last conversation with you. It’s that you said this time apart would be good for us both that has me so terrified.

I know this only because you feel as though I’m rushing things, but I’m not. We have only been courting for three months, that is true, but I am certain that I want to be with you for the rest of my existence.

My proposal isn’t that strange.

Eternity is a very long time, but I know what I am agreeing to with you. I lie awake thinking of you when I should be sleeping. Ezra complains because I say your name in my sleep, and it keeps him awake.

We are bonded together, just as he says we are, and we both feel it. Why can’t you trust that I love you?

I’ve done nothing to dissuade you of that, have I?

Ezra and I bought the house down the road from you, so we can be near without being too near. I’ve

enjoyed the few kisses you let me steal, and I never ask you for more. I respect your decision to wait until marriage, but that’s not what I am encouraging marriage.

I love you, Elise. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Nothing can part me from you, my love, not even this distance between us. My heart still belongs to

you, the way it always has, and always will.

I still feel your lips pressed to mine, taste the salt on them from the tears in your eyes as you kissed me goodbye. I assured you it was only a month to do business, to make our lives better, and you told me

the time apart would do us both good.

The night before I left, when we stood in the moonlight in the garden behind your house, my proposal

felt hasty. I know. But it wasn’t. I’ve thought of it since I met you, but when I’m with you, the words come out all wrong. My tongue fumbles that which my heart is certain of.

Elise, you are my love, my world, my true. You are the compass that keeps me due north. You are the

moon that tells me when to wake and the sun that tells me when to sleep. You are everything, and so

much more than that.

What I wanted to say to you, when your soft hand was cold in mine, and I saw you looking up at me with worry in your eye. You think I’ll go to London and won’t return – as if I could exist without you, as if I even have a choice not to come back.

I want to pour my heart out to this paper, but I fear the paper cannot contain it all. My love is spilling down the edges, seeping to the ground, and out the carriage door. The wind will carry it back to you,

carry my heart to you, to where it belongs with you.

Do you not see that, Elise? You possess me, the way the Devil possessed Judas. Not that you are evil –

but that you have taken over my soul, that you occupy my body, that my very being belongs to you.

I am going to London for you, for us. I know you love the farm, that you love managing the land your

father once churned. But the earth can dry up, it can turn on you, and you know this better than

anyone.

I want a life for us that is built on something far more stable. Ezra believes something is happening in America, something we should return to. He’s speaking of the gold rush in California, and sees that as an opportunity for us to grow. To have something, instead of scraping by. He wants to be a captain of

industry, and on this, I agree with him.

I can’t ask for your hand if I have no means for us to live. I’m not recanting my proposal, but I am

working up to it. I must earn the right to be your husband, and I assure you that I will. When we return, I will have everything I need.

Until then, I will have the memory of you to spur me on.

Do you remember our first kiss? You’d been dodging it for weeks, just as determined to keep your virtue as I was to steal it. I was meant to be helping you garden, but I spent more time distracting you than working.

I took your hand, and you fell down laughing onto the grass. I lay above me, looking in your eyes, certain I’d never seen anything I’d ever want more. I bent down to kiss you, overjoyed when you let my lips

touch yours.

Something surged between us, something deeper than passion or desire. My blood warmed, flowing like

liquid fire through my veins. I could feel your heart in my lips, hear it pounding in my ears. It was if love had a physical manifestation.

This month will be agony without your kisses, I know it, but it is a necessity. It must be done, for the good of us both, and hopefully, you will understand how much I love you, how much I need you.

Until I return to you, remember you are my love, my life, my very self.

Eternally yours,

Peter

May 12, 1853

My only love, my Elise –

Your trust in Catherine is rightfully placed. I’ve tried on three separate occasions to sneak into your chambers, and she has thwarted me every time. I’d like to say I hated her for this, but I know she is only following your wishes.

But why must you wish it so? I know that tomorrow, as soon as the sun sets, we will be wed on the

moors behind your farm, but nothing has ever felt longer than this night. The morning sun hasn’t begun to rise, and already I feel as though I’ve been waiting for days.

Perhaps that’s because it’s taken almost a year for this day to come. I know part of that is my fault. The month in London turned into three. That time apart anguished me as much as it did you, but that’s all

behind us now.

Ezra and I have a great share in the business, and I can now afford to treat you the way you deserve to be treated and give you the wedding of your dreams. I’d like to say give you the house of your dreams, but I know how loyal you are to this farm.

I don’t understand it, but that might be because of how quickly I left mine. I left my home one morning in the spring to fetch a doctor for my sister, and I haven’t been back in almost twenty years.

I don’t have a home, not in the sense of house or land. You are my home. Wherever you are, that is

what home will be.

My hands are trembling as I write. I feel strange and giddy, reminding of a time when I was a small boy.

My father’s mare Helena was giving birth, and I stayed out in the stables all night with my father and older brother Daniel. They told me to go back in, but I refused.

I remember so clearly the moment when the foal’s legs emerged from the mare. The smell of the straw,

the way the lantern lit up the barn, the sound of our stallion Lysander neighing.

It was in that moment, I realized something amazing was going to happen. A creature would be alive

that wasn’t before, and nothing could be more magical than the creation of life. I trembled with

excitement and expectation.

That is how I feel right now. In an existence so full of death – dependent on it really – this is the only thing I’ve ever done that has felt like creation. We will begin a life together. We will cease to be two people and become one.

I will not be able to sleep until I see you again, until I can take you in my arms and press you to me. Until I know that you are mine, now and forever, before God and the earth, you belong to me as I belong to

you.

Your everlasting groom-

Peter

July 8, 1853

My dear brother, Ezra,

I meant to write you sooner. I truly did, but you know how honeymoons go. I’m so very grateful that I

waited to wed Elise until I had enough money to travel this way. Although I’m certain that the two of us would have been as happy any place, as long as it had a bed.

Oh, brother, forgive me for being crass, but I’ve had no one to speak of this with. Our wedding night –

there aren’t words. This wasn’t the first I lain with a woman, although this was my first time with

another vampyre, but it was nothing like I remembered it being.

In the mornings, after a woman had shared your bed, and I would see your face, I would think that I

must be doing something wrong because I never looked like that. And maybe I was, but I finally

understand the sublime, exhausted expression you always wear.

After the wedding, we barely made it to her room before our clothes were off – and I’m certain that you heard us, you and Catherine were so near, and for that I apologize. But that was a moment I couldn’t