Midnight Harvest (74 page)

“I wasn’t indulging you,” he said without heat.

“How can you—” She stopped her outburst. “I don’t want to think about war, or loss, or loneliness, or anything unpleasant. It’s hard enough to think about losing you.”

“You needn’t,” he said mildly. “Shall we talk about painting? Or art? Or books? Or music? You have only to tell me.”

Her eyes snapped. “Don’t be so reasonable!” Then she stood still. “I’m sorry. I’m being beastly.”

“No, not beastly: you’re distressed,” he said. “I don’t mean to presume, Rowena; I know you, and that brings comprehension.”

“You think you know me,” she countered, appalled at her lack of manners. “How many men know women? Most of you don’t even listen to us, or take us seriously!”

“Ah, but I am not quite a man, and I learned more than three thousand years ago to listen,” he said without a hint of apology.

“Vampire makes a difference? Is that it?” Her outburst upset her even as it filled her with a kind of excitement. Recklessly she went on, “Is it because of my blood?” Her straight stance warned him that she would not accept any half-answer.

“Yes, because of that, and because I have seen your work, and you have done me the honor of admitting me to your confidence.” His dark, enigmatic eyes rested on her for the greater part of a minute while the foghorn uttered its two-note warning to ships. “I do love you, Rowena. Time and distance will not change that.”

“And you will love others,” she said, so suddenly that she astonished herself. “With the same passion and the same—the same totality?”

“Yes, I will love others, but not quite as I love you, for no one else is you. Love is our life, and we are bound to pursue it. As will you.” He gave her a little time to consider this. “That won’t diminish my love for you, nor yours for me.”

“You keep saying that, but are you so sure?” She had dared to approach him and now stood a little more than an arm’s length away from him. Astonished, she said, “I’m jealous. Of no one I know.”

“You have no need to be. You cannot be supplanted in my heart: not now, not anytime.” He spoke equably.

“Are you making light of me?” she demanded, wishing she could stop this confrontation and not knowing how to do it.

He refused to rise to her bait. With his dark, enigmatic eyes on hers, he closed the distance between them. “You haven’t experienced my nature in yourself. When you do, you’ll realize that we are drawn to life, and the totality of those to whom we’re drawn.”

“What a nice way to think of prey,” she said, deliberately caustic.

“Hardly prey; we’re not tigers, or sharks, and what we require is more complex than a meal,” he eluded her with such gentleness that she felt tears well in her eyes. “Oh, you can hunt for living men, and their terror will suffice to feed you in the most basic way. I’ve had such … an actuality before now, and I’m still aghast at what I did then, millennia ago. It is a dreadful experience.” He tried to shut out the recollections of the oubliette in Nineveh, and the abased feeding of his captivity; he pushed the memory away. “If you want to continue to know the joys and grief of living, if you want nourishment rather than subsistence, you must search for those who can knowingly accept you, and take on the risks that intimacy brings. Blood is the most essential, most truly personal manifestation of life, and to use it as nothing more than liquid is ultimately disrespectful to both you and those whose blood you take. Even those we visit in sleep give up their dreams to us; those who receive us as what we are do us great honor, for it is through that knowing, that love, that we live rather than simply survive.”

She glared at him. “How can you tell me this? Are you trying to convince me that you give all those you love everything you have given me?”

“No, and yes.” He went into the studio and sat down on one of the covered chairs, leaning back on the overstuffed cushion under the muslin drape. “Each of you is different, and all of you have courage and passion, or none of you would countenance what I am. Few women are willing to know my love for what it is. You did, and others have as well, but there are not many of them, and I treasure each of them as I treasure you. The rest, those for whom I am a pleasant dream, to them I am grateful, but it is the gratitude of loneliness.” The memory of Csimenae made him flinch. “Still, I treasure all but one of them.”

“All but one,” she mused, approaching him reluctantly, as though compelled to do so. “Why should you want me to be one of those women?”

“Because you are a capable, remarkable woman.” Aware that he had her attention, he went on, “You are capable of making your way in the world as not many women are, and you want to make your way—you don’t resent your freedom as many others are apt to do. You have defined yourself, which is what I most admire about you: that you are utterly Rowena, that you have remained true to your soul is what I love.” He spoke directly, no tinge of seduction in his words. “The vampire life has many benefits to offer those strong enough to endure it, but it demands understanding and compassion—of one’s self as well as those loved. You have that capacity, if you are willing to accept it.”

She stared down at him. “Thank you. I think.”

“You asked me: that is my answer,” he said to her softly.

“Damn you,” she muttered.

He was neither angry nor hurt. “Why?”

“Because you disarm me,” she said, and sat down on the arm of the chair. “If I could convince myself that you were unreasonable or unkind or self-centered, or that you would become indifferent to me, I wouldn’t have to listen to you, and you wouldn’t have to repeat yourself. I could dismiss it all as your self-indulgence, as the kind of male arrogance that is all around us. But I can’t; you saved me, all those years ago, and when the family regarded me with shock and dismay, you sent me your encouragement, although you suffered the terrible loss of your ward, and you have never shown me anything but generous concern. How can I pretend to have no tie to you now, when you’ve been my staunch support for so long? Had there been no Blood Bond, I would esteem you, and love you. I admit that at present I feel some ambivalence about my emotions, but I have no doubt about my love for you.” For more than a minute she was silent; she seemed almost defeated as she stared out the window at the advancing fog. “I thought we’d have rain before now.”

“Is it unusual for the autumn to be dry?” Saint-Germain asked, following her conversational lead.

“There have been dry autumns,” she said slowly, and fell silent again.

Saint-Germain laid his hand on her leg, the silk of her hose a slick beneath his fingers. “How much longer do you want to stay here?”

Rowena sighed. “I don’t know. Until it’s dark.” She leaned toward him, her eyes pensive. “I have lived here a long time, and I feel as if an old friend had betrayed me. I’m sad that it ended this way.”

“The house can’t change what happened. A man did that, not the home,” Saint-Germain reminded her.

“It’s not sensible, I know,” said Rowena. “But that’s how it seems to me.” She moved so that she could put her arm along his shoulder.

“Then that’s how it must be,” said Saint-Germain, almost apologetically.

She kissed his brow. “I wish I could keep you here, but I know that I can’t. You’re right, and that’s obvious. But…”

His eyes held warmth and grief in their dark depths. “You understand. Understanding isn’t always an easy burden to bear.”

“To have so much end at once—living here, in this house, your company, the conviction that I could not be hurt…” Again her voice trailed off.

“Such matters are never easy,” he said, turning to kiss her fingers that lay on his shoulder.

“Still…” She sighed. “I don’t know. I feel as if I’m losing my sense of direction, or my orientation. I don’t know where I am, or where I’m going—not all the time, but enough to fash me.” She looked toward the window. “Fog’s getting thicker. It must have been warm inland today.”

“That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?” Saint-Germain said, and felt her nod.

“Um-hum.” Rowena said nothing more until the dining-room clock chimed four. “Teatime,” she said remotely, then a bit more directly, “Or it would be, back in England. Here, for the women who go to the Saint Francis, it is. But the rest of us…” Her words drifted off again. “My mother used to chide me for not being more accommodating, for not acquiescing to the men I knew. She warned me that I would end my life alone. She’d probably think I had proven her right, and she would expect me to be chagrined.”

Saint-Germain looked up at her. “And are you chagrined?”

“Occasionally,” she admitted slowly. “Not the way my mother intended, but chagrined, nonetheless.”

“Why?” he asked with genuine interest.

“For not doing enough; isn’t it obvious?” she said at once. “For being too frightened to take more chances on myself. I told you that I’m disappointed with myself, didn’t I? Well, that hasn’t changed just because you’ve been here. I know what I could have done, and won’t do, and it shames me.” Moving suddenly so that she could face him fully, she said, “If you could persuade me that becoming a vampire would end that for me, I’d be glad of it.”

“I can’t promise you that,” he said. “All I can promise is more time—how much is never certain, but the chances are that you will have a century or two at least, if you want.”

She laughed, for the first time without nervousness or hidden anger. “All right. I won’t press you again.” Rising from the arm of the chair, she took his hand and urged him to rise. “Come with me.”

He followed her to the stairs and up to the guest room at the front of the house over the dining room. “This isn’t your room,” he said as she opened the door.

“That man tried to kill me in my bedroom,” she answered, and went through.

On the threshold, he paused. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes. It is,” she said as she kicked off her shoes and began to unbutton her jacket. “I want to say good-bye to this place with something better than an attack.”

Saint-Germain came into the room and drew the curtains closed, then came to her side, taking the jacket from her. “Let me do this.”

She shivered and handed the jacket to him, which he laid over the back of the grandmother’s chair next to the dresser. “Go ahead,” she murmured, and stood to allow him to unbutton her blouse, which he put atop the jacket before he tugged her silk-and-lace slip out of her skirt’s waistband and over her head, then dropped it on the chair.

“You are a very beautiful woman, Rowena,” he said as he reached around her to unfasten her white brassiere; he put it on the seat of the chair, and turned back to her, and touched her arms, and then her breasts, taking his time in rousing her.

“I’m getting old,” she said, looking down at her exposed flesh.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful,” he said, and kissed her nipples as he knelt before her and unfastened her skirt.

“How do you suppose I’ll feel, if I live to seventy or more? My grandfather lived a long, long time, so I might, too.” She put her hand on his head, pulling her fingers through the loose, dark waves. “I wish I could come to your life as I was twenty years ago, or thirty, like a butterfly emerging from a wizened cocoon. But if I have to wander the world an old, old woman—”

“I’m a very, very old man,” Saint-Germain reminded her as he unzipped her skirt and helped her to step out of it.

“We’ve been through this before: you don’t look much older than forty: that’s the difference,” she said, watching him unfasten her hose from her garter-belt and roll each one down her leg. He bent to kiss the swell of her left calf and trailed kisses down to her ankle, then did the same with her right, enjoying her anticipatory shudder. “How do you know what to do?” she marveled, then said, “No, don’t tell me.”

He undid her garter-belt, so now all she had on were her panties. “Do you want to take those off, or shall I do it?”

“I’ll take them off,” she said. “While you take off your jacket.” She paused. “I saw your scars, when they were taking you into the hospital.”

“Some women find them … intrusive,” said Saint-Germain, laying his hand at the base of his ribs, the wool of his roll-top pullover seeming as insubstantial as gossamer.

“You know my scars,” she said. “Why won’t you let me see yours?”

He looked up at her. “Does it matter to you?”

“God, yes!” she exclaimed. “I don’t want to feel like a bird with a broken wing while you soar. I don’t want to dwell on my lackings. If I can see that you, too, have had deep wounds—”

“They killed me,” he said with a hint of irony.

“Well, those are deep wounds,” she responded reasonably, plucking on the shoulders of his jacket to convince him to rise. “I need this from you, Saint-Germain.”

The room seemed suspended in silence; the distant baying of the foghorn was muted, and the traffic in the street was little more than a mutter.

“Then you shall have it,” he said as he straightened up, and shrugged out of his jacket, putting it over the arm of the grandmother’s chair.

His compliance startled her, and for a moment she could think of nothing to say. “Thank you,” she finally told him. She watched him carefully as he took off his roll-top pullover and dropped it on the jacket. The white swath of scars spread from the base of his ribs to his belt. “The trousers, too,” she told him, staring at him in fascination mixed with revulsion. Seeing the scars in the hospital was somehow different than here, and she made an effort not to look away, though she had to swallow hard against the sudden tightness in her throat.

He unbuckled his belt and opened his fly; he let the garment drop, then crouched to untie his shoes and remove them, and his socks. As he stood up, he gathered up his trousers and folded them before putting them over the arm of the chair atop his jacket.

“What on earth did they do to you?” she could not keep from asking. “What kind of execution does that?”

“They disemboweled me,” he answered. “A very long time ago.”

“With what? The edges look so jagged.”

“A wide-bladed bronze knife,” he said, holding up his hands to indicate its length. “About sixteen inches long. It took a long time: hours.”