One With the Night (32 page)

“You mean he thinks she will kill him if he doesn’t submit to her.”

Clara threw up her hands. “Does he strike you as a man afraid of death?”

No. Kilkenny wasn’t afraid of death. Somehow she felt like Clara was backing her into a corner. Very well. He wasn’t afraid of his own death. He might be afraid for someone else. Who else was there? He hardly knew Flavio or Clara. Her father … She swallowed. Her father was past all pull on Mr. Kilkenny. Who, then?

Oh.

But he’d never …

She was in no danger anyway. Not as long as Elyta needed her for the formula …

Oh.

Once she found it, Elyta would kill her to secure the formula for herself and make sure no one else could get it. She’d been naïve to think that Elyta would let her save made vampires when the Elders wanted them all dead.

“Ask him why,” Clara said simply.

“I can’t ask him that. Any more than you can tell Flavio you love him.”

Clara looked startled at that. “I’m not beautiful like you, Miss Blundell.”

“Nonsense. I’m not beautiful. I can’t hold a candle to Elyta Zaroff. Love does not depend on looks. How do you know how he feels until you tell him how you feel about him?”

“You counsel me to reveal myself, and you won’t do the same?” Clara challenged.

“It’s
not
the same.”

“Isn’t it? Can you say to me that you don’t love him?”

Jane’s world shifted. The kitchen still glowed with lamplight. Clara hadn’t changed a jot. And yet everything had changed. She
did
love Kilkenny. She had to be honest with herself and just admit it. Her feeling for him wasn’t only the vampire need for sex. She cared what happened to him, wanted to be with him, mourned that they were parted by two different natures. And one big reason she wanted to be human again was so
that
barrier at least wouldn’t stand between them. The dichotomy of what she believed about him and what was said about him, including what he said himself, was illusory. He might be a traitor. He might have killed in his time. But if he had, there were reasons for it. She felt his center was good and true. She knew he was worth loving, because … because she loved him, and she believed in herself enough to think she couldn’t love a man who didn’t have that strong center of honor, one capable of great love in return. She did know that about Kilkenny. He had revealed his nature in how he treated Mrs. Dulnan, or how he tried to protect her from the distasteful details of her condition, or in the courage it took to try to find a good path forward when he had been so damaged.

But that didn’t mean he loved her. So she didn’t answer Clara’s question. She didn’t say she loved him. “I just can’t assume…”

“So it is the same.” Clara had her backed well and truly in the corner now.

Clara was right. Neither woman had the courage to find out that their love was not requited. “Well, I can’t, Clara, that’s all. But I can refuse to think the worst of him.” Jane started to get angry again. Elyta
was
compelling him, through a threat to her. In some ways Elyta had made her a party to the sick play she’d seen in the barn.

And … and
bloody hell
if she was going to take that sitting down!

“They are coming,” Clara said.

CHAPTER
Nineteen

Jane whirled as Elyta pushed through the door, resolution rising in her breast. Her heart was pounding. Could she do this?

“A forest of glass has grown in our absence, Kilkenny,” she exclaimed, smirking at Jane. Kilkenny hung back, his eyes on the floor. His shirt was bloodied in several places. Her Companion shivered inside her veins in reaction to the scent of blood. He held his plaid loosely about his loins and he was carrying his boots as though Elyta had not given him time to dress. Jane realized he had been bloody when they sat in the kitchen so many hours ago, waiting for Flavio and planning formulas. He must have been bandaged or his clothes concealed it. Now Elyta didn’t care who knew what she did to him.

“Clara,” Elyta barked. “Mix Kilkenny a draft of that tonic. He’s going to need his strength. Is supper ready? Or should we call this breakfast? I never know.”

Flavio appeared in the doorway. He froze when he saw Kilkenny. “Up to your old tricks, Elyta?” he said through gritted teeth.

“And what have you to say to that?” Elyta sneered. “I lead this expedition. And I require that my needs be met, so I may be strong and focused.”

Jane saw in Flavio’s eyes that he wouldn’t stand up to Elyta.

Well, there were kinds of compulsion available even to those who weren’t as strong as Elyta was. Jane went calmly to the sideboard and took her notebook from the drawer.

“Have you made progress today?” Elyta asked. “Clara, get some wine from the cellar.”

“Oh, yes,” Jane murmured, stalking to the great hearth as Clara headed to the basement stairs. “I’ve come a great way even in the last few minutes.” She stirred up the fire with a poker until the flames blazed bright from the peat cubes and opened her notebook.

“Read to me of your conclusions,” Elyta commanded, taking Jane’s chair.

Jane smiled. “No, I think not.” She took a breath. Then, abruptly, she tore out a fat bunch of pages from the middle of the book and tossed them on the fire. They caught in an instant. She cast the rest of the book on the flames. The pages curled and blackened.

Elyta jumped to her feet. “What have you done? You stupid cow!” Elyta raced to the fire and grabbed at the pages, but they crumbled in her hands. Big flakes of ash floated up through the flue. She snatched back her fingers, cradling them to her breast. They were red and blistered, but even as Jane watched they healed. “Were those your only notes?” Elyta asked, her voice as hard and cold as the stones at the bottom of Loch Ness.

“Yes,” Jane said. Her heart felt light for the first time in some time. Kilkenny stared at her in consternation. “I think I have learned a lesson from you on compulsion, Elyta.” She almost laughed. “Let’s see if I have got it right.” She glanced to the hearth. Even the leather cover of the book was only charred shreds now. “You want the formula. There is now no written record that can help you to it. Though my own notes were tenuous at best,” she amended in the spirit of disclosure. “So all that is left to you is what is in my head.”

“Not much has changed.” Elyta said with a sneer.

Jane nodded slowly. “Except me. And now I say that you will not use Mr. Kilkenny so, or I will not help you to your formula.”

Elyta shrugged her shoulders. “I will compel…”

“You can’t compel creativity.” Dear Lord, she hoped that was right. The compulsion she had witnessed produced physical actions. Could vampires compel a state of mind? Right or wrong, she had to bluff it through. “It’s going to take lots of imagination, all my knowledge and Mr. Kilkenny’s too as well my experience helping my father, to rediscover the cure. So, Elyta, how badly do you want it? Enough to forgo your ‘needs’ until it is found?”

“Jane,” Kilkenny said quietly. “Dinnae do this. It’s after ye ha’ found th’ cure ye need protection. Then ye’ll ha’ nothin’ ta use against her.”

Jane felt the breath sigh out of her body. He’d as much as told her she’d guessed right (with Clara’s help, of course) about his motivation for consorting with Elyta. She smiled at him. “Let’s cross that bridge anon. I can’t let you—”

“It was nothin’. It meant nothin’ in th’ scheme of things.”

“It meant something to me.” She turned to Elyta. “Do we have a bargain?”

Elyta’s eyes were black diamonds of hate. “You
dare
…”

“Yes. What do you say?” Elyta’s reaction told her all. She could not compel creativity.

“If you think you can stop me from doing what I want with him—”

“Mr. Kilkenny will not leave my side. He’ll sleep in my room and work with me and bathe in my presence. If you so much as speak to him, I’ll stop work on your cure. Is that clear?”

Elyta bit back whatever words she would have said, and flounced from the room. They heard her stalking up the stairs.

“I’ll take her supper,” Clara said calmly. Jane saw her glance at Flavio.

“Let me,” he said. “She’s in a lather. And I have a few words for her myself.”

Kilkenny and Jane watched Clara dish up food and hand a plate to Flavio. “I’ll just set us places in the dining room,” she murmured and withdrew.

Jane knew she couldn’t avoid blushing if she looked at Kilkenny. So she looked into the fire instead. All that about bathing in her presence—it was another bluff; she’d probably go mad if he did. And it smacked of Elyta’s air of ownership.

“Ye did no’ ha’ ta do that.”

“Oh, yes I did.” She gathered herself. “One has to make a stand.”

He looked much struck. Then he raised his brows. “Ye did no’ believe me when I said she was no’ compellin’ me.”

“No.” She chanced a glance at him. He still puzzled her. “You want everyone to think you’re such a bad man.”

“Ye’ve no idea.”

“Case in point.”

“Jane, ye dinnae know how bad th’ world can be.”

She liked it when he called her Jane. “You’re right. I’m beginning to find out, though. Elyta is a very bad woman.”

“I’m bad.”

“You’ll have to tell me more about that sometime. Right now I think you are generous and self-sacrificing, and courageous in the face of evil.”

“Jane, ye dinnae know me.”

There was such an air of resignation about him. “Mr. Kilkenny, do you want help getting those rings out, or not?”

“What?”

“Well, I assume you want them removed.”

He straightened and held his marvelous lips together tightly. “Aye.”

That was better. She hated seeing him despise himself so. “Do you want help?”

“Nae. I’ll do it.”

“Good. No time like the present.” She pointed to the room that held the bath and the mirror. “I’ll make up some salve using all this shiny equipment Flavio brought us.”

He nodded once, his lips still a hard line, and moved stiffly toward the small chamber. At the door he turned and glanced back to her. “D’ye want me ta leave th’ door open?”

She shook her head, embarrassed. “I think she’s busy for a while.” The sound of arguments upstairs must be obvious even to him.

His eyes softened. “Thankee.”

Jane felt herself flushing. “Anyone would have done it.”

“Nae,” he murmured. “Anyone would no’. Ye’re th’ courageous one.” He slipped through the door and closed it softly behind him.

Jane let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Clara appeared in the doorway. “Thank you, Clara,” Jane said. “You were right.”

Clara just smiled. They both heard a sharp intake of breath from the small room to the side of the hearth. Clara raised her brows in inquiry.

“She pierced his flesh with some rings,” Jane said curtly. “He’s taking them out.”

Clara nodded. “He’ll want a bath. And soap will keep his welts from festering. I’ll put water on to boil.” She poured a bucket of water into a caldron and headed for the well.

Jane realized she was shaking. Was it a reaction from facing down Elyta? Or was it the hunger of her Companion making her feel so tenuous?
Focus, Jane!
Very well, she’d not think of Kilkenny in the little room with the bath, naked, removing the rings from his nipples and his sac. She shivered. Not doing too well at focusing, at least on anything other than Kilkenny. She felt an itch course along her veins. She paced the room. She wouldn’t be hungry now. She wouldn’t!

All right. Kilkenny. If she was going to focus on Kilkenny, she should make something useful of it. She peered at the herbs above her. Ahh, woundwort.
Prunella Vulgaris.
She’d make a salve. If she started now, it would be ready for him by nightfall.

*   *   *

Dinner was an odd affair. Elyta was fuming in her room. Kilkenny drank the potion Clara mixed him, designed to bolster his strength, though now it would not serve Elyta’s purpose. He sat stiffly, because of the welts on his buttocks no doubt. Jane forcibly occupied her mind in memorizing possible combinations of ingredients for the formula tomorrow. She’d make up a batch and see how it looked. Still, she could hear the beat of Kilkenny’s heart and smell the blood on him. And she realized she had no choice but to make good on her promise to keep him by her side if she was going to be sure Elyta did not slide back to her old ways, probably with Kilkenny’s misplaced complicity. How could she bear having him near? Even now she felt inflamed, not only in her loins but in her veins and arteries.

Clara sewed up his chest after his bath, while Jane stole surreptitious looks at his strong torso as she worked on her salve. Jane could have done a better job, but Clara’s was good enough and Jane didn’t dare touch that chest. She might just burst into flames in some unlikely spontaneous combustion. Kilkenny was silent. Had her actions alienated him further somehow? Or perhaps he was just ashamed. Jane wanted to tell him he mustn’t dwell on what had happened, but what right had she to advise him?

Flavio and Clara began to yawn. Jane watched Clara staring at Flavio out from under her short eyelashes. Finally Clara stood. “Flavio, let’s leave these two.” He was about to protest when she put her finger against his lips. This startled him so he just stopped in mid-breath. “Come upstairs,” she commanded, drawing him from his chair. Flavio had an air of surprise and … speculation about him.

Jane felt the vibrations in the air ramp up. Two vampires were reacting to touching each other. She smiled encouragement at Clara. After all this time during the long journey together, she was finally making a push to achieve her goal. Clara looked embarrassed. The poor girl only lacked self-confidence. She was so self-effacing she made herself plainer than she was. Jane felt depressed by Clara’s act of courage. Jane had faced Elyta, but she hadn’t faced Kilkenny yet.

Flavio turned Clara to the door by her elbow. “You’re right, Clara. It’s time to retire.”

Jane tucked an escaping tendril of hair behind her ear and began to gather up the dishes. She was tired, too. The sun was shining somewhere outside the darkened windows, and the days were getting longer. The last nights had been so wearing, she felt as though her bones had turned to lead in some kind of reverse alchemy. She stacked the plates. Kilkenny gathered up the silver and the trays that had held the chicken and the roasted potatoes. They carried them back into the kitchen and washed up in silence. Jane was nervous and dropped one of her mother’s cups. It shattered. She looked at it with horror and began to cry.