by P. N. Elrod
“And what of women?” she murmured.
Here did I begin to blush. “Well, I—I’ve not been celibate, but no woman I’ve been with has ever suffered from my appetite. Do you know so little of me to think I would hurt anyone for the sake of my own pleasure?” I’d had the hard lesson of that only last night. Never again.
“That’s the whole point, Jonathan. You’ve changed. The abilities you have now put you above all other men, beyond their laws, beyond their punishments—”
I responded with a snort of disbelief. “I think not, dear lady.”
“Then you haven’t fully grasped it yet.”
“Ah, but I have, with both hands, and just as quickly ungrasped it.”
“You’re still young.”
“So my sister tells me, but I’m no fool. Is that what’s upset you? You thought I’d turned into some sort of murdering bully?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I think it is, but for pity’s sake, be assured I am the same man you knew before. Perhaps a little wiser, even. Believe me, I’ve been all over this subject of bullying with my father and sister—”
Another stricken look took her. “Your family knows?”
“Only Father, Elizabeth, Oliver and, of course, my valet Jericho. . . .”
She continued to stare.
Impatience got the better of me. “How could I not tell them?”
“And they. . . accept you?”
“Of course they did, once they got over the shock.”
“They must be marvelously understanding.”
“I’m not saying it was easy for any of us, but between the choice of having me like this or buried and rotting in the churchyard, they had no trouble making their decision. In fact, they want to thank you for what you did.”
“Thank me?”
“For all the trials we’ve been through, this change brought me back to them, and for that we are grateful to you. My condition has given me a greater appreciation for life, theirs and mine together. I know how precious and fragile it is, how quickly and easily it may be destroyed by a careless hand. I think the whole point now is not so much that I’ve become like you, but whether or not you can accept it yourself. I pray that you will.”
“I have no choice,” she said unhappily.
This low mood of hers baffled me. “Don’t you?” I snapped. “Did you not make a choice that time? You took me to your bed and we made love and you gave your blood to me. Did you not choose then to make me as you are? Or was I just a convenient means to increase your own pleasure?”
“No!” She raised her fists in frustration. “Oh, but you don’t understand anything.”
“Then help me to do so!”
But she said nothing. My anger had accomplished that much.
I suddenly wilted in my seat, and turned from her, overcome for the moment by the black pall of fading hope. She was afraid, and I could not fathom why. “Forgive me, Nora. It’s that I’ve waited so long to see you. I have so many questions, and you’re the only one who can possibly answer them. But if you can’t or won’t, I shan’t press you. I’ll respect whatever reason you have, even if you don’t share it with me.”
A long time—a long silence—later, she asked, “Do you really mean that?”
“I’ve made it a habit to only say what I mean. It’s no guarantee against my making a fool of myself, though. Perhaps I’m being a fool now, but better that than for me to distress you in any way. Obviously this has been a shock to you, and an unpleasant one; I don’t want to make it worse.”
“A shock? More than you could ever know or guess.”
I hardly dared to look at her, but did. She’d relaxed her tense posture and no longer trembled. That was some progress. “Will you talk with me, Nora? Please?”
Another long silence as she looked hard into my face. Then she nodded.
I closed my eyes with relief. “Thank you.” I remained where I was so she might make the first move. That wise instinct told me she was still quite capable of taking flight, and it was best she advance at her own pace without any push to hurry on my part.
Very guarded and pulled into herself, she perched on Oliver’s chair by the fire. I would have to be careful and slow. Difficult, for the strong urge rose in me to enfold her in my arms and try to give comfort. Later, perhaps, if and when she was ready for it. Now was not the time.
“Where shall we start?” she asked, clasping her hands together. She reminded me of a schoolboy about to be tested on a disagreeable topic.
Though the question wanted to leap out as a bellowed demand, I made my voice mild. “Why did you not prepare me, tell me this would happen?”
Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Because I didn’t think it would.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not the only man I’ve loved in that way, Jonathan.”
“There was another?”
“Several others, long before you.”
This was hardly news considering how much she enjoyed the company of her gallants. As skilled as she was in making love, she’d have had to practice with and learn from someone, or many someones. Past and done with to be sure; there was no reason for me to be jealous, but all the same I couldn’t help feeling a familiar barbed thorn of jealousy trying to sprout in a dark place in my mind. I firmly ignored it.
“Others with whom you exchanged blood?” I prompted.
“Yes.”
“So they could be like you?”
“Yes. But when they died. . . they stayed in their graves. It never worked.”
“One must die for the change to occur?”
She nodded. “Over the years I came to think I would ever be lonely, that I could never share this existence with anyone else. That being true, then it wouldn’t matter sharing my blood with those I truly loved. It was done for pleasure—for our pleasure—but also I always hoped that one of you just might cheat death as I had. Jonathan, of them all, you’re the only one who’s ever come back.”
Silence between us. Thick, viscid and perturbing. “Wh—why? What makes me different?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to know!”
“I don’t! I don’t even know why I came back!”
My mouth was like sand. “Nora, how did you die?”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready to speak of that yet.”
Her voice was so hushed and suffused with pain, I gave up for the time being any thought of pressing her on the subject. A disappointment, and now came to roost the distressing notion that she did not possess all the answers to my questions. I’d feared that possibility. Since it was apparently becoming a reality, I would have to make the best of it. I nodded acceptance and squared my shoulders. “Well, then. You didn’t think any of your lovers would return, and yet you still hoped? That’s why you’d exchange blood, in that hope. Shouldn’t you have given any of us some sort of a warning, though?”
She shook her head decisively. “I did once, and when I lost him forever I could not do so again for any other. It would have been too hard to bear.”
“How so?”
She grimaced, then looked at me. “Pretend it’s that night again, that night I shared all with you, only instead of taking you to my bed and letting it happen as it did, I first explain what I want to do and what might happen to you after you die. Would you not have second thoughts?”
“Possibly, but I’m sure I’d have done it anyway”
“But since none of the others had ever come back, I’d only be filling you with false hopes, the kind so brittle and sharp that when broken cut you right to the bone.”
“None of that would matter to me, though, since I’d be dead and uncaring of the business.”
“Not so for me, dear Jonathan. I told all of this to the first one, the first man I t
ruly fell in love with. I explained everything to him, the consequences, the possibilities, everything there was to know about this—this condition. He had no objections, quite the contrary, and we lived and loved until the year the plague came. Right on his deathbed he was making plans for both of us for his return—only he never returned.”
Tears. I’d seen her weep with sorrow but once before. Now did they stream down her cheeks.
“I miss and mourn him to this day. Losing him was made worse for me because of the hopes we’d had. He was so certain that he made me certain, and when I lost that. . . it was too much. Ever after I thought it best to live for the present and not the future. It made the partings when they inevitably came. . . easier.”
“For you.”
“For me. I was ever the one left behind.”
“Until now.”
She gave me a look such as would crack my heart.
“If this is what you’ve hoped for for so long, then why be afraid of me?” I asked.
“B-because of the one who made me like this. I was not born this way. He was my lover and shared his blood with me.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know him and, God willing, never shall.” She brushed impatiently at her wet face. “He fed on people, on women. Said he loved them, said he loved me, but that he couldn’t control his hunger. He killed to feed his hunger.”
Understanding flooded me. “Dear God, no wonder you—oh, Nora, I’m not like him, and may God strike me dead before I ever become like him.”
“But he said he couldn’t help himself, that he had to—”
“Then he was either mad or a liar.”
“Perhaps so. When I came back from death, I feared I’d soon be killing, too.”
I felt a sharp chill stab through me, but gave no sign of it. “And did you?”
“No. It wasn’t in my heart to do so. I came to believe it was because I’m a woman and made of softer feelings. I ran away before he knew of my return.”
“To England?”
“France. I knew the language. There I came to see I need not live in fear of what I’d become, that this life could be pleasant for myself and others, and there I first tried to make another like me.”
“But all the while fearing he’d kill for blood like the first man?”
“I’d grown so desperate, was so wretchedly lonely, I was willing to sacrifice the lives of others to ease that loneliness.”
I tried to imagine such desperate solitude. My own experience was limited. I knew what it was to be alone, recalled certain miserable patches while passing from boyhood to manhood, but I’d never endured the kind of isolation Nora described.
“It must have been wretched, indeed,” I whispered.
“It still is.”
“Was,” I hazarded, adding a note of hope to my tone.
“I don’t know.”
An honest response. “Then time alone will prove to you I’m no monster killing to feed an uncontrolled appetite.”
A smile, so brief it hardly touched her lips. “He was mad or a liar or both. You are not like him. If you were, you’d not be so kind to me.”
“ ’Tis love, not kindness.”
“People change. We’ve been apart for a very long while.”
“I’ve not changed where my feelings for you are concerned. You’ve been in my thoughts constantly, and not just because of the questions I want to ask you. The years we were together here—you’ve touched me as no other woman could, Nora. Can you tell me they meant and mean nothing? Or have you changed? Or have you . . . have you found another?”
A sharp look. “No, I’ve not.”
“Well, then. Do you love me?”
Eyes shut, then open. “Yes. Always.”
I closed my own eyes, grateful, humbly grateful for that blessing. The heaviest burden of all lifted from my heart. But when I looked at her again, I saw she was yet watchful. “Then tell me what troubles you. Why are you still this way with me? Afraid.”
“You’ll learn of it sooner or later.”
I gestured, silently urging her to go on.
She looked at the floor. “You know how I live. How I take a little from my cavaliers, and in return they gift me with the means to maintain my household. You know how I must keep them under the control of my will so there is no chance of rivalry amongst them, for each other or for me, else they’d be fighting or worse.”
“Such as what happened with Tony.”
“Yes. Have you done the same kind of thing yourself, bringing people around to your will?”
“Necessity forced me to learn to use that talent.”
“Talent or curse.”
“Both, then. What of it?”
“I cannot use it on you. It only works on those who are not like us.”
I shrugged. “Again, what of it?”
“Don’t you see how it is for me?”
I tried, but gave up, shaking my head.
“Because of that. . . talent, I am able to control others exactly the way I want to suit my interests, never mind their own.”
“But you’ve never abused it to my knowledge.”
“Have I not? With you? Jonathan, I can control them, and at the last I was forced to control even you so you would forget certain things, but now that you’ve changed—”
“You can’t control me. Yes, I do see your meaning, but why would you want to?”
“It’s not a question of want but of need. That’s why I’m uneasy, fearful. With the others, with the way you were then, I always had that ultimate advantage. I could always be safe from harm, always guide and determine things for my convenience, always avoid being hurt. Now that you’ve changed, I’m as vulnerable to harm from you as any normal woman is with a normal man.”
“You can’t think I’d ever want to hurt you,” I protested.
She shifted ever so slightly in her chair, not meeting my gaze. It was answer enough.
This was a grievous blow; I bit back the pain as best I could. Nora had ever been the strongest, most confident of women. Now did I see the foundation of that strength and with that came an insight on why she was behaving this way. “You were bitterly injured in the past, were you not? By the one who changed you, perhaps? You must have, to think so badly of me.”
Her expression grew dark. From what memory? “You see the face God gave me? Because of it I’d ever been property in the eyes of others, a thing to be bargained and haggled over like a piece of cloth in a market and never more so than with him. In the end, when I’d changed, his control over me ceased to be. It was the one thing that saved me so I could leave him. But ever afterward there were always men wanting to possess me, tell me what to do, kill or die for me. I wanted only to be loved, not owned, and using my will on them was the one surety I had for achieving something close to that love.”
“You risked this with your first love, did you not?”
“Because he was my first. I didn’t know as much then as I did later. Things are different for me now.”
“Things are different because your life is your own—”
“Then are women no longer property, bought and sold into marriage by custom or law or betrayed into the same by their own feelings? Am I not now betraying myself to you because of my feelings?”
“Or entrusting yourself, knowing that I would never willingly harm you.”
“You say that now, but later, when you become jealous . . . I can’t abide it. It’s ever been the cause of my sorrows.”
“Then I shall give it up,” I said lightly. “I only want you happy.”
“I cannot live with you, Jonathan, if that’s what you want.”
“But can you live without me? How long have you waited to share this life with someone? Will you let past fears and hurts control you now that you’ve a chance to give
up the loneliness? Or have you grown so used to having things your own way, having things so perfectly safe and orderly that you don’t dare love for real? I’m taking the same risk, Nora. Think of that.”
She did, and blushed.
“I’m not the man who hurt you. I am this man. He loves you more than life and will do anything to preserve your happiness. You trusted me once before, did you not? And asked me if I trusted you. You once said you did not want a puppet. Well, here I am!”
Her eyes had grown wide, her mouth pursed; she was silent for so long I worried I’d said too much. “You’re not afraid,” she finally murmured.
“Only of losing you. But if that is what you wish—”
“No!” She tucked in her lower lip and looked away. Betrayed by her feelings, no doubt, as was I.
“Nora?”
“You’ll not try to keep me.” From the hard, deliberate gaze she fixed on me this was a statement, not a question.
“Only in my heart.”
“And not judge or be jealous of me and what I do.”
“If you’ll do the same for me.”
“I will not marry you.”
“Your love is all the marriage we need. Should you cease to love me, then we’ll part if you wish . . . but I hope to heaven you won’t.”
“Your word on this?”
“On my honor as a gentleman. And yours?”
“If my word alone before God will serve. I lost my honor ages ago, and I’m hardly a lady.”
“You are and ever will be in my eyes.”
The made her smile, bringing one to my lips in turn. Tentatively I extended one hand to her, palm up. As placation, as offering, as a plea, as all or none, for her to take or refuse as she chose.
She slipped her hand into mine.
Thank God.
Now was the time. I stood and drew her up to me, holding her close as I’d wanted to for so long, able to finally give her the comfort she needed but had been afraid to accept. Perhaps she thought my change had altered things between us, and though I didn’t see it myself, I’d respect her experience. It was that or lose her. Never again.
Unlike our first night in her bed, I was now the experienced seducer, not she. Many beginnings suggested themselves, but only one was the best of all choices for this moment. A few kisses and caresses, then I unbuttoned my waistcoat, loosened my neckcloth, opened my shirt. I waited, looking at her.
