Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (24 page)

“You’ve treated me,” Elisabeth said bravely, though in truth her courage was starting to crumble, “like I was your sister!”

The master stared down at her, clearly astounded. “My behavior has been impeccable!”

“Whatever that means!” Elisabeth flung out her arms in exclamation. ‘Talk like a plain man for once, damn you, and not some walking book with skin and hair and eyeballs!”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “What would you have me say?”

Elisabeth swallowed. “I wouldn’t have you say nothing,” she replied boldly. “You don’t only talk too fancy, sir—you talk too
much
as well!”

He watched her in pointed silence, his arms folded.

A terrible thought occurred to Elisabeth, a reason why he had never touched her in any intimate fashion.

“No,” Valerian said before she could voice the possibility, “I do not prefer boys to women.”

It was almost a relief that he was reading her mind again; at least he was paying attention.

Elisabeth blushed, holding his gaze, fierce and intimidating though it was. “I need somebody to lie down with me,” she said. “I need to be held real tight in somebody’s arms.” And then she began to cry. Noisily, with a great deal of snuffling and heaving of shoulders.

Valerian hesitated, then stepped forward and, without a word, pulled her into his embrace. She wailed into his fancy tunic, the fabric bunched in her fists.

Presently, when she’d expended most of her great sorrow, he lifted her gently off her feet and carried her up the stairway and along the passage to the door of her chamber. She was certain she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he left her alone, feeling the way she did, but he stayed.

He undressed her slowly and with reverence, admiring and caressing her breasts as he bared them, lightly touching her soft white belly and the tangle of skin beneath, where her legs met.

Elisabeth lifted her hands to his face and drew his head down. When their lips touched, he moaned, somewhere deep inside himself, and for Elisabeth it was as if there were stout ale mingling with her blood, racing through her veins.

After a while he pulled back from her, just far enough to look into her eyes. His hands, though cool, seemed to set her flesh ablaze with sensation.

“Is this what you want?” he asked. “The choice must be yours, beloved, not just mine.”

She nodded, frantic and feverish, and pressed herself close to him.
Beloved.
The word found its way into her very soul and tolled there, like a bell. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

He laid her gently on the bed and took off his clothes without hurrying. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, making his splendid body glow like polished marble, and as she watched him, it occurred to Elisabeth that he was too beautiful, too perfect, to be human.

Valerian was indeed, as he himself had once told her, more than a man.

‘Touch me,” she said, and he lay down beside her on the soft mattress, taking her into his arms. There was a single flaw, she saw, as he poised himself above her, a long, thin scar, pink against the alabaster whiteness of his skin, spanning the width of his torso.

“I have wanted you for so long,” he told her, and she believed him.

Elisabeth had never known such piercing desire, never dreamed of feeling the way she did that night. She could not lie still and, putting her arms around Valerian’s neck, she moved her hips in a circular motion beneath him.

He groaned, and somewhere far off a hound bayed in primitive harmony.

Their joining, too long delayed, was neither gentle nor ordinary. One moment they were separate, the next they were a single being, with a shared heartbeat, breathing the same air, thinking with one mind, one soul entwined with the other.

There was a sense of the inevitable, of a destiny that could not have been avoided. They moved together, their pace rapid, urgent, fierce.

Elisabeth pitched beneath Valerian, her hands moving wildly over the smooth flesh of his back and the flexing muscles of his buttocks, as if to take the whole of him inside her, as she had taken his manhood. She had pretended with other men, but with Valerian there was no need; her rising cries were born of the purest pleasure.

Valerian did not try to quiet her; instead he thrust harder and deeper. Although he made no sound at all, Elisabeth saw ecstasy in the planes of his face and felt it in the way he trembled upon her.

She reached satisfaction first, sobbing and breathless, soaring into a new place, far above the reach of her own mind and soul.

When Valerian followed her into the flames, only moments later, he gave a long, low cry, and started to spill himself into her. Then his body jerked convulsively, as if to leap to some new and unexpected height of pleasure. He closed his eyes, his head thrust back, and gave a raspy, triumphant shout.

The name he called was not her own. It was Brenna’s.

Elisabeth didn’t care, for he’d given her what she wanted, and she had never aspired to earn his love, never so much as hoped for such a thing. She cradled him in her arms and soothed him with light fingers and whispered words while he shuddered in the aftermath of a climax that had been emotional as well as physical.

Presently he slid downward upon her warm and welcoming body, still trembling, to rest his head between her breasts, and she stroked his hair. He turned and took her nipple, tentatively at first, and then with greed. Elisabeth felt something reawaken inside her and coil itself tighter and tighter.

She moaned and arched her back, offering herself, and he took her eagerly, gratefully, running his hands down her sides and then lifting them to her breasts again.

When he claimed her for the second time, Elisabeth exploded immediately, a fiery spiral unfurling within her, the circles ever-widening, flinging light with every revolution, warming the parts of her soul she’d kept secret even from herself.

Valerian loved her over and over that night, satisfying every desire, meeting every need. Sometime just before dawn, he let her sleep at last, and when she opened her eyes at midmorning, he was gone.

She got up, washed, donned a clean gown and overskirt, and silently dared Kate Crown, who brought her breakfast on a tray, to speak so much as a word.

Kate did not take the challenge, but the fine ring on Elisabeth’s finger caught her eye, and there would be talk about it in the kitchen for sure. The maid left the food on the table next to the bed with its tangled covers and left the room again.

Elisabeth ate fruit and brown bread and some cold meat, then used her knife to pry up the loose floorboard. She took out the hoard of gold, which was tightly bundled in a bit of cloth pinched from the kitchen, and marveled at how heavy it was.

There was enough there, she guessed, to keep her for years, if she was careful, and she wouldn’t have to go back to the Horse and Horn, either, or to any place like it. The night just past had changed her, in some way she didn’t fully understand. She knew now that she would never lay with another man in the whole of her life. She had made a serious mistake in wooing the master to her bed, for she had fallen in love with him in the course of their time together, but she knew he couldn’t return her regard.

Valerian cared for a woman named Brenna, and Elisabeth, wise in the ways of men, knew it was an eternal bond. There was no room in the master’s heart, generous as it was, for the likes of Betsey Saxon.

A tear fell onto the back of Elisabeth’s hand as she replaced the board in the floor. She could have stayed, if only she’d left well enough alone and contented herself with what she had. She might not have discovered what love was, might not have learned to need and want the impossible.

Everything was different now.

The servants were busy, and it was easy to creep out of the house into the shifting morning fog, with the bundle of gold coins rattling beneath her skirts and bumping against her thigh as she walked.

She didn’t know which way to go, and it didn’t really matter, as long as she got away.

Elisabeth wandered all that day, growing more frightened and confused with every passing moment, and finally took a room above a seedy, dockside tavern. She lay curled on the filthy bed, the gold clutched to her middle like an unborn child, and watched the eerie dance of the fog outside the high, narrow window.

She slipped into a strange reverie, and a fever followed, with terrible cramps in her bowels.

Valerian found her that night, just after sunset, and brought her home, holding her even in the carriage, and she felt his tears on her face and in her hair.

He bathed her himself, tenderly, and sent for a physician, but Elisabeth was dying. She knew it, and so did Valerian.

He asked her about the ring once when she was lucid, but she could not recall where it came from, and said she was sorry if she’d pinched it from one of his lady friends. He wept silently at her words and did not speak of the ruby again until the following night when he was feeding her spoonfuls of broth.

“Kate said a gentleman brought it, the evening before you ran away,” Valerian said gently. “That would have been a fortnight ago, as of tomorrow. Do you remember a caller, Elisabeth?”

She sensed that the ring had meaning, as well as value, that it was terribly important in some way, but she couldn’t recall any man. She wished she did, for that would mean she didn’t have to die a thief, with the fires of hell licking at her toes.

“No,” she replied, her eyes filling with tears, and she saw by Valerian’s expression that he believed her.

Just before dawn Elisabeth awakened to see an angel of death standing over her. He was very beautiful, and a tear left a glittering streak on his cheek.

Despite her weakness, she became aware of a probing sensation, and felt his mind searching hers, reaching past the fever, the confusion, the pain, into that place where her spirit lived.

“We can be together for all time,” he said. “Let me give you the gift—”

Elisabeth had risen out of her body, and she could see so clearly now that her physical eyes had closed. She knew what Valerian was, knew he was damned, as surely as Lucifer and his fallen angels. She loved him without reservation and without regret, but the price of that love, her very soul, was too dear.

She came back to herself briefly and with an agonizing effort. “No,” she said. “I cannot.”

Valerian held her tightly, and she rested her head against his shoulder, inexpressibly weary. She felt his grief and wished she could console him or simply say good-bye, but her consciousness was fading, stretching and spreading itself thin like smoke, until finally it became part of the fog stroking the window glass with white, shifting fingers.

Dying, it turned out, was easy. A simple matter of letting go. . . .

CHAPTER
12

Valerian

Las Vegas, 1995

I was remembering Elisabeth Saxon when I returned to Daisy at sunset of the following day, having taken my fitful rest in a burrow far beneath the ruins of the baron’s keep. Remembering, with punishing clarity, that I had not watched her closely enough, not protected her. Perhaps I had even cursed her with my lovemaking. I suffered greatly over her passing, certain that she would not have fallen ill and perished after much suffering if I had left her alone, instead of dragging her away from that wretched tavern to live in a city where disease flourished. I forgot about the mysterious ring in my frenzy of bereavement and did not notice that it was gone until the undertaker and his helper had come to take her away.

Elisabeth’s death had been my doing, of that I was certain. And now Daisy was doomed as well, if Krispin had his way.

Beneath that terrible certainty was another brier, caught in the tenderest part of my psyche and festering there—my fragile, cherubic brother, whom I had loved, despised me and wished me harm. That pup, who had frolicked at my heels, who had emulated my every word and move and aided me in all forms and fashions of mischief, had somehow become a ravening wolf, bent on tearing out my heart.

Thus distracted, I failed to concentrate and bungled into Daisy’s apartment with an ungraceful crash, finding myself in the shower stall.

The running water instantly drenched my hair and the dusty suit and cloak I was wearing, and I roared in surprise and dismay, reaching for the plastic curtain and shoving it aside. There was a simultaneous scream from beyond.

Daisy stood on the cheap pink-fluff rug, dressed in a pair of oversize pajamas, with mayhem in her eyes and a baseball bat poised at shoulder level, ready to do serious damage.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she spat, “it’s only you.” For a moment I thought she was going to take a swing at my head anyway, and although it would not have done me any lasting injury, I was still relieved when she lowered the bat.

Belatedly, I confess, I turned off the shower spray and stepped out of the stall, snatching a towel from a nearby rack and sponging gingerly at my sodden, mud-streaked cloak.

“Who were you expecting?” I demanded somewhat impatiently. “Norman Bates?”

Some of the air seemed to go out of Daisy, and I thought I discerned the faintest glimmer of tears pooling along her lower lashes.