“He believes he knows best, as men of his station often do; it seems to me he is failing in his trust, largely because he deems that such a failure is impossible,” Ragoczy remarked. “He fears you will influence your children—and he is correct: you will.”
“My father-in-law doesn’t care about them, not really. He thinks only to supervise them for my late husband.” She began to weep in earnest, her expression filled with chagrin.
“He, too, lost a child,” said Ragoczy.
“But Fridhold was grown, not eight years old.” She trembled, her hands flexing, reaching for her arms.
“I doubt that matters,” said Ragoczy.
“Whatever the case, it offered him no insight.” She folded her arms, clutching at her upper arms with straining fingers. “If he has no compassion for me, well, that is his way. But he has none for my children, and that worries me.”
“Understandably.”
“He thinks of me as a rival,” she said suddenly, “and he a jilted suitor. He blames me for the loss of Fridhold.”
“So it would seem.” Ragoczy was still appalled at the apparent unconcern von Scharffensee had shown toward Hero, and found this explanation as reasonable as any. “I wish I could ease your hurt.”
“You mean you wish you could drink my blood, don’t you?” she countered, and clapped both her hands over her mouth, turning stricken eyes upon him, offended by her own temerity.
“Yes,” he said quietly and calmly. “I would like that; it would be nourishing and it would provide the intimacy for which we both long, if you are willing to allow me to touch you in more than your flesh.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she whispered.
“Possibly not,” he agreed without condemnation. “But there is truth in it.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it, Comte. I didn’t mean it.”
“That may be, but you had to say something,” he said as he took her hand in his, holding it palm up. “You said it to drive me away, for just now intimacy is more than you can bear.”
“I … I suppose so,” she confessed, her eyes welling with tears. “But I don’t want that, not really.”
A thousand years ago he might have pressed the advantage in that admission, but he had learned not to use that leverage: what it gained in the moment, it lost over time. He sat on her bed while she wrestled with her emotions, then, as she looked at him directly, he said, “But you aren’t ready to make love yet, either; to you it feels like a betrayal of your child. You thought you were ready, and you miss my companionship, but now that you make the attempt, you see the loss is still too overwhelming, too raw.”
She nodded twice. “You do understand.”
“In my way.”
Wishing to deflect his compelling gaze, she pushed back from him, and to add to her remoteness, she asked, “How is that? How can someone as old as you say you are understand?”
He recognized her ploy as an attempt to distract him, but answered her, his voice low and steady. “It is nearly four thousand years since I came into my vampiric life; I have spent most of that time saying good-bye, and every one of those losses left its mark on my soul. I may not understand your personal grief, but sorrow and I are old companions.” He touched her arm. “I will not force myself on you; that would blight our closeness. When only our skins touch, there is little to bind us together.”
“But skin is the best we have,” she said morosely.
“It has not been so before,” he said, as gently as he could, his dark, penetrating eyes on her. “I am willing to wait.”
“Until I am old and wrinkled? Until I have grandchildren?” She clamped her jaws closed, as if to keep from speaking at all.
“If that is required,” he said. “Time is more inexorable for you than for me.”
“Because I am alive,” she said. “Because every day brings me closer to the grave.”
“And because you are alive, you age,” he said, unflustered. “Age takes a toll on the passions as much as the body.”
She glared at him, daring to meet his compassionate gaze and to ignore what he revealed in his eyes. “That is intended to cheer me?”
“No; I thought it would reassure you, so you will understand—”
“That you are patient?” she challenged. “Or is it easier to wait for a willing woman than have to search out another one?”
He remained where he was, still as water, seeing her tempestuous emotion worry at her. “You must not despair, Hero. You are not condemned to a lifetime of dejection and loneliness, much as you are convinced it is so now. Loss is always with us, but so is restoration.”
“No? Can you be sure of that?” She pulled her night-rail more tightly around her. “You have never lost a child.”
“I know you cherished hopes for your daughter, and all of them are left in shambles.” He stared at the far wall. “It is going to be a freezing night tonight.”
“And you, with your cool skin, will you keep me warm? Or is it I who should keep you warm?” As she heard herself speak, she was almost overcome with mortification that she should be so unpardonably caustic. She tried to think of something that would lessen the excoriating impact of her remarks. “Comte, I apologize.” That seemed wholly inadequate; she tried again. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I never intended …”
“But you do, you know: you intend to cut yourself off from all pleasure and succor because you deem yourself to be undeserving of either.” He said this softly but he held her attention. “You want to inflict pain on yourself.”
She fixed her eyes on him as if mesmerized. “Why shouldn’t I bear the anguish? I deserve it.”
“Do you think so?” He shook his head slowly. “No, Hero, you need not flagellate yourself with whips or recriminations.”
“You say that as if it were nothing but a change done as easily as I might change my clothes.”
“I think such changes are very hard.” He gave her a moment to speak; she remained silent. “But time will separate you from those you miss more than distance. Each day memory slips them farther away.” His dark eyes were glowing, alive with the recollection of those he had lost.
She studied him as if searching for any trace of duplicity. Finally she clasped her hands in her lap and stared down at them. “Would you like me to leave?”
“Leave? No, certainly not,” he said, aware that her despair was once again threatening to overcome her.
“Then what? You can’t want to continue in this way, can you?”
“No, I would rather not have to carry on with so much unresolved heartbreak impinging upon us.” He smoothed the revers of his dressing-gown. “But I see no reason to cut our dealings short in homage to your self-condemnation.”
Her face went pale. “What do you mean?”
He rose from the bed and paced her bedchamber in a measured, deliberate tread. “If you believe you must immolate yourself on the altar of family sorrow, you show neither your sorrow nor your family much grace. I know you embrace your agony in order to keep your daughter with you, made real by the pain of her death. You are convinced that if you set the agony aside, you will lose the memory of your daughter. But that approach, if continued, will turn the memory of her into something always painful, and she deserves better than that, as do you. Let her go, Hero, let her go; for you cannot keep her with you, and let all your thoughts of her be joyous ones, as they can be, in time, if you do not cling to her death.” He stopped moving and gave his whole attention to her; his voice became more musical and his demeanor was filled with commiseration. “If I were uncaring, perhaps I would not be moved by your affliction; but we have a Blood Bond that will continue until the True Death claims one of us. It grieves me to see you add to your anguish in this way. What you endure is hard enough without increasing the wretchedness you want to put behind you.”
“Is that what I am doing?” She had no part of softness in her question. “You have decided how I am to remember my own child?”
“No
, I am telling you how I have learned to deal with centuries of losses.”
She looked past him at a picture of a narrow stretch of river over which a broken stone bridge rising out of the current stretched unsuccessfully toward high banks; at present it appeared to be a reflection of her state of mind. “When spring comes, he will try to put me off again, my father-in-law. He will send my boys away, or tell me it is inconvenient to visit, or plan another journey for them to take.”
“That he may, but it will not succeed.” He sighed once. “You and I will yet visit Scharffensee, or whatever place he has taken your sons.”
“You will do so much for me?” She sounded more tired than annoyed. “Why would you do this? I haven’t done anything to merit your help.”
“I do not bargain with those I love, particularly not about what you need.” He went to put another small log on in the fireplace. “There is no reason to keep the room so icy. Let your body be warmed, by the fire if not by me. The frost on the windows warns you of a hard night.”
“I should let it chill me; perhaps I will not be so distrait if I am cold enough.” She leaned back against the satin-covered bolster, making a gesture of concession. “If you insist on heating the room, this is your château and I am your guest.”
He watched as the log began to smoke as the low flames curled up around it. “I do not wish to impose upon you, but I would not want you to become ill.”
“In imitation of my daughter?”
“It is one possibility, and one I have seen before.” He touched his fingertips together.
“You mean I might sicken and die?” She laughed a bit wildly. “I would be with her and Fridhold then, wouldn’t I? And my father-in-law would not have to deal with me.”
“Possibly, but it would be a high price to pay for very little satisfaction.” He drew up a chair to the side of her bed, and sat down, facing Hero across the silk of her comforter. “You may wish to make yourself free of the complications that have marked your life since your husband’s death, but dying is not the way. You hope to be with your husband and daughter, but you forget your sons, who will need you as they grow older.”
“They have their grandfather,” she said.
“Who is what? sixty years old? How much longer will he live? And what will happen to your boys then? They have already lost their father and their sister. If they lose their mother as well, think of how abandoned they will be when their grandfather dies.”
“He will provide for them.”
“Money and lands, yes they are all very well, but that will not be what they seek most: context will be gone.” He held Hero’s gaze with his own. “It may be tempting to trust to the next world rather than this one, but—”
“How can you say that to me?” she demanded. “I have wanted to have my children with me, but my father-in-law has prevented it.”
“Your father-in-law has laid down conditions he thinks are reasonable. You have to fulfill his conditions and he will have no cause to keep your children from you.”
“The probate court awarded Fridhold’s children to his father’s care in lieu of Fridhold having made a Will, as they always do. He didn’t know he would die so young, and the court upheld his father’s claim without a hearing. How can I hope to gain the approval of the magistrates? The probate marshall makes that impossible.” The way she asked made it clear that she had mulled over this question many times.
“You must have an acceptable residence, proper servants, and an income high enough to keep your children in a manner appropriate to their rank, or so the document you showed me stipulated. Have I erred in my summation?”
Hero shook her head. “Which my father-in-law knows is impossible. Were I in a position to live with my father, although he has some means, the court would not approve, nor would my father.”
Ragoczy offered a one-sided smile. “That will change as soon as the castle above Zemmer is ready for its occupants. You said you liked it when we visited it on the Amsterdam trip. The Graf will not be able to object to your receiving your sons for a part of every year so long as you have land, a staff, and the income from the land to provide for your sons and yourself.” He saw her take this in, astonishment mixed with dubiety as she grasped what he was telling her.
“You said I could live there, and my children, too,” she said, picking her words with care. “I thought you intended to reside there, as well. That I would be your guest.”
“No doubt I will visit, from time to time,” he said. “But the castle should suit you and your sons most satisfactorily.”
She blinked twice, not only in surprise but to keep from crying again. “You said nothing about making it mine.”
“You will be my resident guardian of the estate, and as such you may live in it as your home for as long as it suits you.”
“But it will be yours,” she said, looking uncertain again.
“Yes. I will pay the staff and the maintenance, and I will deal with any taxes that may be imposed. You do not want to undertake such costs yourself, do you?” He saw understanding dawn in her eyes. “A widow owning an estate has little to protect her, but a widow managing an estate is not so vulnerable.”
“I never thought about that,” she said in a measured tone as she assessed what he had told her. “You’re right, of course. No one should know that better than I.”
“I will have Kreuzbach draw up a binding agreement that will satisfy any court that you have the security they demand for you to have at least partial domestic custody of your own children.” He gave her time to sort this out. “They cannot expect you to have more than that to justify restoring your family to you.”
“How do you propose to present this to the court?” She was becoming interested now, aware that he had the position and fortune to do exactly what he described.
“I thought I would present it to your father-in-law first,” he said. “When we visit him.”
“And he will deny you,” she said with heavy conviction.
“Perhaps. But I can be persuasive. He will have to listen to me because we are of equal rank, if for no other reason.”
Hero laughed harshly. “One nobleman to another, you mean.”
Unfazed by her contempt, he said, “I can require his attention as you cannot.” He moved closer to her, leaning forward in the chair.
She shook her head, then started to cry again. “I hate feeling so helpless,” she exclaimed as she sobbed.
“That is why you may depend upon me. I know you are not helpless, just stymied.” He would have liked to take her hand, but realized she would see the gesture as weakening her, so he only said, “You have not had an ally to turn to for many years.”
“Are you trying to make up for that? Or are you trying to prove something to Madelaine de Montalia, and this is your opportunity to do so?” As soon as she said the name, she was sure she should not have, but she could not stop speaking. Letting go of her arms, she gathered her hands together. “I … Comte …”
“I have nothing to prove to Madelaine,” he said softly. “Nor to you. You know what I am and how I live, and what I know because of it. Scratch and claw as you will, I know what you are because I know your blood, the truest part of your self. It will take more than harsh accusations to drive me away once we have touched.”
She glowered at him. “Perhaps I have changed.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps some part of your character is newly come to light, but none of that can alter what I know of you.” He made himself more comfortable. “You cannot reprove me with Madelaine’s name, or that of anyone I have loved, not even your own.” This, he knew, was not entirely accurate, for there was always Csimenae, who might still be hidden away in the fastness of the Pyrenees.
“Did you intend from the first that we should be lovers?” Her voice hardened.
“No, I did not,” said Ragoczy. “Madelaine wrote to tell me that you had been treated badly by your family and needed an ally, something she could not do herself from the
Ottoman Empire.”
“So keeping me is a favor to her?” she asked, ending with a harsh laugh. “You indulge her through me.”
“No; she sympathized with your predicament, as I know she told you before she proposed that she put me in contact with you.” He set his concern aside and continued. “She provided our introduction. If she had not wanted us to meet, she chose a strange way to accomplish that goal.”
“So she threw me to you?” Hero asked, aghast at herself for so callous a suggestion.
“No—and well you know it.”
She wept more determinedly now, disgusted at all she had done and said since she summoned him to her chamber that evening. “Why am I behaving so … so shabbily?” she asked of the bolster.
“It is the way in which you come to terms with your grief,” said Ragoczy. “You lash out.”
“But at you? At Madelaine de Montalia?”
“You would lash out at Annamaria, if you could, for leaving you, as Fridhold left you,” said Ragoczy, so kindly and with such empathy that she stopped weeping to stare at him. “I felt the same consuming anger for nearly five centuries, and I made myself the thing I most despised. Gradually Egypt changed that, but it was not easily done.”
Hero used the corner of her sheet to wipe her eyes dry. “Madame de Montalia—I didn’t slight her, not truly.”
“Of course not,” said Ragoczy, and got up from the chair. “You will want to rest, to recover yourself.” He went to the side of the bed and bent to kiss her forehead. “Sleep well. We will talk more in a day or two—when you are ready.”
She took hold of the revers of his dressing-gown. “I apologize, Comte. From the bottom of my heart.”
“You need not,” he said, making no attempt to disengage her hands. “Think of all you have said tonight as lancing a boil. Once you let out the poison, you will be able to heal.”
“A boil!” She stiffened. “My grief is nothing like that.”
“It will not be any longer,” he assured her, laying his hand lightly on her shoulder. “But you might have let it become one. As it is, you are going to improve through the winter, and that will make your meeting with your father-in-law less arduous than it would have been otherwise.”
Saint-Germain 21: Borne in Blood: A Novel of the Count Saint-Germain Page 21
