One With the Night (6 page)

She paused, mulling that over. “That word seems so … comforting.” It didn’t seem right. “I certainly don’t find it comforting.”

“Nor do I,” he said, glancing at her. His head dipped in deprecation. Was that a wry smile? It was so fleeting, so hesitant, she could hardly be sure. But she had seen a gleam in his eyes, had she not?

“Well, I hope I never have to go there,” she said firmly. “It sounds dreadful.”

“I hope sa, too,” he returned, raising his brows. “Because th’ likes of us are no’ welcome. It’s only for th’ born.”

Hmmm. “The man who attacked us said vampires who were made must be killed. Do they all think that?”

“Pretty much.”

“So we belong neither to human nor vampire society.” She took a breath. “Unfortunate.”

“Aye.” His voice was … wry? Rueful? Did he think her naïve?

“So you think the Elders sent someone to destroy Papa’s laboratory so that there would be no other solace for their own kind and they could retain their power?”

“Somethin’ like that.” Again the fleeting expression that might have been a smile and the gleam in his eyes as he glanced at her.

“If they grow to hate their condition so much, why don’t vampires just commit suicide?”

He gave her a startled look.

“I mean, I know it’s against the laws of God, but…”

“Ye’ve never tried it, ha’ ye?” he asked.

“No.” She fought the urge to defend herself for not having tried suicide.

“Th’ Companion loves life.” His tone grew harsh. “Why d’ye think it heals its host and prevents aging? It rebuilds its host constantly because it dies when we do. I dinnae know if ye’ve noticed, but th’ thing is pretty persuasive.” Now he was mocking her!

She sucked in a breath. “I’ve noticed.” She paused. “So we can’t commit suicide?”

He heaved the saddle off the stall door. “It will no’ even let ye try, once it’s taken a firm hold of ye.”

She turned away. He knew that because he’d tried it. She was willing to wager on it. But this had another consequence. “How … how long can it keep healing us?”

“Ye mean, are we immortal?” His bitter chuckle was jarring in the glow of the lanterns and the soft sounds of the animals in the barn. “Short of decapitation, I think sa. It can even regenerate limbs.”

She turned back to him, pressing. “No disease?”

He shook his head.

“No scars, no marks of age?”

He glanced up at her and a muscle moved in his jaw. He knew she’d seen him naked and was asking about his scars. Would he tell her how he had come by them? “None but what we ha’ before we’re made. Th’ born grow up and just stop aging. No marks at all, I’m told.”

No he wouldn’t tell her about the scars. Wait—immortality! “Oh, my God.” Her gaze flicked about, unseeing, as the concept careened around in her head. What would you do, in the next minute, in the next year, in the next thousand years, if you knew you couldn’t die?

“I ha’ no’ found much of God in it at all…” he remarked, pushing through the stall door.

She grabbed his arm. Even through the sleeve of his coat she felt the contact like a blow. “They’ll be back, won’t they?”

He looked down into her face. His gray-green eyes had an expression that said he was sorry he couldn’t lie to her. “Aye, Miss Blundell. They will.”

“Don’t tell Papa,” she said, trying to put command in her voice. “It will only make him more nervous about finding the cure.” She should remove her hand from his arm. Sensation was charging right down to that point between her legs. She felt herself grow wet there.

“As … as ye wish. He’s yer father.” His voice shook.

She looked down to her hand on his arm as though it was a foreign object. If she didn’t move it she was going to … she didn’t know what. Burst, maybe. And him—did he feel it? Her eyes strayed lower. His breeches bulged. He did feel it!

She pulled her hand forcibly from his arm. They both let out their breath.

“Get … get on ta th’ house, Miss Blundell. I’ll bury yer unwelcome visitor.”

She shook her head. “You’ve already done enough for us. My father shouldn’t be exposed to this … this situation. But I’ll…” She swallowed resolutely. “I’ll do it.”

“Nae. A gently bred girl doesn’t bury headless corpses.” She was about to protest when he added, “Besides, I’ll be faster at it.”

That was true. She couldn’t admit she was relieved. “Are you certain you’re up to it?”

He nodded.

“There’s a spade in the corner. Come to the kitchen when you are done. The least I can do is manage some supper for you.” She crunched away down the gravel path toward the house, feeling lucky to have escaped with her senses. What was she going to do with Mr. Kilkenny in the house? The prospect was frightening. And exciting.

CHAPTER
Four

In spite of the crisp April night, Callan was sweating, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Blundell had better find this cure soon. If the vampires who wanted to destroy it didn’t kill him, his response to Miss Blundell would. She had felt exactly what he had in that barn tonight. He could smell her woman’s musk. Two vampires with the heightened sexual appetite given by their Companions in the same house was likely to be a torment for them both.

The grave behind the barn was nearly complete when he heard movement. He leaned on his spade as the old man toiled up the rise, carrying a lantern.

The doctor held the lantern high to peer at the corpse and its severed head. “It seems a shame to bury the creature before I have a chance to examine the body.” Miss Blundell’s concern that her father needed protection from grisly reality was apparently much mistaken. He’d called the vampire a creature. Did he feel that way about his daughter?

“It would no’ do ta have th’ servants find him.”

“We don’t have servants. They took fright over our need for blood.”

Callan could believe that.

“But Jane does for us,” Blundell continued. “It is really more convenient that way.” He reached for the head.

“Dinnae touch it! Ye might infect yerself.”

The doctor jerked back and sighed. “I suppose it is too dangerous to leave unburied.”

Callan frowned. “Ye and yer daughter take care o’ th’ house and th’ animals yourselves?”

“My research takes up all my time,” the doctor said, pushing himself up. “Jane takes care of the whole. Very handy, Jane.”

A gently bred girl who cooked and cleaned and took care of the horses and milked the cow? He’d seen a goat too, hadn’t he? No help, no visitors. “Must be a hard life for her.”

“Oh, Jane has her books and her journal, and she paints studies of the local flora. Very amateurish, of course. She’s very content on her own.” Blundell waved a hand dismissively.

Callan tossed the shovel aside. The grave was deep enough. He rolled the body into the hole with one boot. Now it was time to get a commitment from the doctor. “Are ye close ta findin’ th’ cure?”

“I … I wanted to talk to you about that, Mr. Kilkenny.” Blundell cleared his throat. “Jane mentioned your name.” He paused again as though unsure how to proceed. “I have encountered a problem in completing the cure I think you may be able to resolve.”

“I’ll stay on ta protect ye from others in return for yer word I can ha’ some of th’ potion after ye’ve treated yer daughter.”

“I’d be grateful, of course.” Blundell lowered the lantern as though to conceal his expression. Didn’t he know Callan could see his agitation even in the dark? “But the problem is empirical testing. In order to make real progress, I must test my formulas on an infected host.” Blundell rushed on. “Well, you must see that I can’t test a concoction on Jane. Of course, if it
doesn’t
kill the parasite, the parasite itself will heal any damage. But…”

The formula might kill both parasite and host. What did Callan care? Hadn’t he longed for death? Was there anything he would not risk for a cure? He picked up the head by its hair and tossed it into the grave. It landed with a thunk. “Ye can test yer formulas on me,” he growled. It looked as if he’d be the first to receive the cure, if he lived.

“Excellent.” The doctor beamed. “Just excellent. I’m sure I’ll make much faster progress.” His mission accomplished, he nodded briskly and raised his lantern to head down the hill. Callan shoveled a spade full of dirt into the hole. “Uh … Mr. Kilkenny?”

Callan straightened. Blundell had turned back.

“Don’t tell Jane about our little arrangement, will you?”

So, if she knew, her father thought she would insist on sharing the risk. He couldn’t blame a father for not wanting to poison his daughter. And he thought better of her because her father had to lie to her to achieve his goal. “I will no’ tell yer daughter.”

The doctor nodded, his jowls moving over his neckcloth, and hurried back to the house.

*   *   *

Jane had been preparing dinner when the vampire attacked, so she could provide a kidney pie and a brace of partridges, potatoes and early sorrel with butter sauce, to sustain Mr. Kilkenny. Though her father liked eating in the kitchen, she had moved the meal into the more formal dining room until she could clean up after their ministrations to Mr. Kilkenny. Her father had picked at the kidney pie and retired, exhausted. She had just finished laying a fresh place at the table when Mr. Kilkenny came into the kitchen, rolling down his sleeves over forearms corded with muscle. How she did like forearms! His were covered lightly with fine black hair. His shirt was open at the collar, revealing a pulse throbbing in the vulnerable notch of his neck.

“The dining room is just through there.” She heaped a plate with food and took it in while he washed his hands. As he fell to his dinner, she fetched a bottle of claret.

“I dinnae expect wine,” he protested.

“You’d prefer whisky?” she asked. Scots always liked their “wee dram.”

“Ale is good enough for th’ likes ’o me.”

He didn’t seem to think much of himself. She smiled. “But we’ve a cellar full of this French claret my father has had for twenty years. It ought to be drunk before it goes bad. Surely you can choke some down?”

He looked taken aback. Perhaps vampires were unused to mockery.

“We may live on a remote farm in the Highlands, Mr. Kilkenny,” she continued with feigned severity, “but my father likes to command the elegances of life. And we aren’t poor. No, no, no. A Harley Street doctor who attended the
ton
on their beds of pain? We can spare you a bottle or even enough to get thoroughly foxed if you like.” She raised her brows.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and shrugged with that tiny thinning of the mouth that might be a self-deprecating smile, so attenuated as to be almost unrecognizable. “I am no’ used ta…” He trailed off. Had he been going to say “kindness”? She poured the ruby liquid. He was about to return his attention to his plate when he seemed to recollect himself. He stopped and gulped the wine. “It’s verra good,” he muttered.

Well, that seemed dragged from him! She fetched her own plate and sat across from him. “Papa says you’ve agreed to stay on in case any others come,” she said, toying with her sorrel.

“Aye.”

Would he volunteer nothing? He had been forthcoming in the barn. She had a thousand questions she wanted to ask him! “Are there … many of the … the born?”

“Enough.”

How annoying! “You’re not very talkative, are you?”

He stopped and sat back, chewing, and took another drink of wine. His gray-green gaze roved over her, a certain hunted look in his eyes, and beneath that a heat that felt only too familiar. She flushed. He saw it and looked away. “I talked once. A lot.”

“You … you don’t anymore?” She picked at her partridge breast.

“Nothin’ worth sayin’.”

“Ah.” Had he resolved not to answer her questions? She noticed that his hand shook almost imperceptibly as he reached again for the glass. But of course he was exhausted. He’d engaged in a fight to the death, healed wounds that would have killed a human man a dozen times over, then cared for his horse and buried a vampire. She felt small and selfish. Indeed, as he sat back, he seemed to have used the last of his strength. He blinked and licked those marvelous lips, half-dazed.

“You should rest,” she admonished. “I’ve put your things upstairs. First room at the left.”

“I … I should sleep in th’ barn…” He pushed back from the table and stood, wavering on his feet and looking around.

“Nonsense! When we have four perfectly fine bedrooms unoccupied?” How did he think he’d get up to the barn in this shape? She got up from the table and steeled herself. “This way,” she said firmly and took his arm. The effect of feeling his biceps beneath the fine linen as they clenched against her touch produced an effect that hadn’t diminished with repetition tonight. He looked down at her, a question in his eyes. He felt it too, she was sure of it. And then his eyes swam. She braced herself.

As he passed out, she let him fall gently to the floor and then got round and put her hands under his armpits to drag him up the stairs and into his room. She heaved him onto the bed and pulled off his boots for the second time tonight. She didn’t feel up to undressing him. Not with the current that was running between her brain and her woman’s parts. She lifted his stocking feet onto the bed, pulled a quilt from the chest and laid it over him. She grabbed his boots. They smelled of blood and the leather would soon stiffen. There was time to clean them yet tonight, along with the kitchen.

At the door, she paused. The light from a candle on the small hall table leaked through the half-open door, bathing his face in faint, golden light. His dark, thick lashes brushed his cheeks. His lips had relaxed into fulsome sensuality. She breathed in. Cinnamon, and something else, overlaid on a smell that she could only describe as intensely male. Sweat? Yes. But also a faint smell of … something primal.

It was all she could do to break the spell and close the door.

Having him in the house was going to be torture. But it would be worth it if she could get him to tell her about being a vampire. If her father failed and there was no cure, then she’d need all the information she could pry out of the laconic Mr. Kilkenny over the next days. She took the candle along to her own room. She just hoped she could survive the experience.