“I haven’t made a vampire for years,” he said. “I can still manage it, but I hope you don’t intend that we have a large family.”
“My family has doubled in the past three weeks, with you, Marthe, and Ysabeau added. I don’t know how much more family I can take.”
“You need to add one more to that number.”
My eyes widened. “There are more of you?”
“Oh, there are always more,” he said drily. “Vampire genealogies are much more complicated than witch genealogies, after all. We have blood relations on three sides, not just two. But this is a member of the family that you’ve already met.”
“Marcus?” I asked, thinking of the young American vampire and his high-tops.
Matthew nodded. “He’ll have to tell you his own story—I’m not as much of an iconoclast as my mother, despite falling in love with a witch. I made him, more than two hundred years ago. And I’m proud of him and what he’s done with his life.”
“But you didn’t want him to take my blood in the lab,” I said with a frown. “He’s your son. Why couldn’t you trust him with me?” Parents were supposed to trust their children.
“He was made with my blood, my darling,” Matthew said, looking patient and possessive at the same time. “If I find you so irresistible, why wouldn’t he? Remember, none of us is immune to the lure of blood. I might trust him more than I would a stranger, but I’ll never be completely at ease when any vampire is too close to you.”
“Not even Marthe?” I was aghast. I trusted Marthe completely.
“Not even Marthe,” he said firmly. “You really aren’t her type at all, though. She prefers her blood from far brawnier creatures.”
“You don’t have to worry about Marthe, or Ysabeau either.” I was equally firm.
“Be careful with my mother,” Matthew warned. “My father told me never to turn my back on her, and he was right. She’s always been fascinated by and envious of witches. Given the right circumstances and the right mood . . . ?” He shook his head.
“And then there’s what happened to Philippe.”
Matthew froze.
“I’m seeing things now, Matthew. I saw Ysabeau tell you about the witches who captured your father. She has no reason to trust me, but she let me in her house anyway. The real threat is the Congregation. And there would be no danger from them if you made me into a vampire.”
His face darkened. “My mother and I are going to have a long talk about appropriate topics of conversation.”
“You can’t keep the world of vampires—your world—away from me. I’m in it. I need to know how it works and what the rules are.” My temper flared, seething down my arms and toward my nails, where it erupted into arcs of blue fire.
Matthew’s eyes widened.
“You aren’t the only scary creature around, are you?” I waved my fiery hands between us until the vampire shook his head. “So stop being all heroic and let me share your life. I don’t want to be with Sir Lancelot. Be yourself—Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell.”
Once I had spit all that out, the blue sparks retreated from my fingertips. They waited, somewhere around my elbows, in case I needed them again.
“If I come closer,” Matthew said conversationally, as though asking for the time or the temperature, “will you turn blue again, or is that it for now?”
“I think I’m done for the time being.”
“You think?” His eyebrow arched again.
“I’m perfectly under control,” I said with more conviction, remembering with regret the hole in his rug in Oxford.
Matthew had his arms around me in a flash.
“Oof,” I complained as he crushed my elbows into my ribs.
“And you are going to give me gray hairs—long thought impossible among vampires, by the way—with your courage, your firecracker hands, and the impossible things you say.” To make sure he was safe from the last, Matthew kissed me quite thoroughly. When he was finished, I was unlikely to say much, surprising or otherwise. My ear rested against his sternum, listening patiently for his heart to thump. When it did, I gave him a satisfied squeeze, glad not to be the only one whose heart was full.
“You win,
ma vaillante fille,
” he said, cradling me against his body. “I will try—
try
—not to coddle you so much. And you must not underestimate how dangerous vampires can be.”
It was hard to put “danger” and “vampire” into the same thought while pressed so firmly against him. Rakasa gazed at us indulgently, the grass sprouting out of both sides of her mouth.
“Are you finished?” I angled back my head to look at him.
“If you’re asking if I need to hunt more, the answer is no.”
“Rakasa is going to explode. She’s been eating grass for quite some time. And she can’t carry both of us.” My hands took stock of Matthew’s hips and buttocks.
His breath caught in his throat, making a very different kind of purring sound from the one he made when he was angry.
“You ride, and I’ll walk alongside,” he suggested after another very thorough kiss.
“Let’s both walk.” After hours in the saddle, I was not eager to get back up on Rakasa.
It was twilight when Matthew led us back through the château gates. Sept-Tours was ablaze, every lamp illuminated in silent greeting.
“Home,” I said, my heart lifting at the sight.
Matthew looked at me, rather than the house, and smiled. “Home.”
Chapter 28
S
afely back at the château, we ate in the housekeeper’s room before a blazing fire.
“Where’s Ysabeau?” I asked Marthe when she brought me a fresh cup of tea.
“Out.” She stalked back toward the kitchen.
“Out where?”
“Marthe,” Matthew called. “We’re trying not to keep things from Diana.”
She turned and glared. I couldn’t decide if it was directed at him, his absent mother, or me. “She went to the village to see that priest. The mayor, too.” Marthe stopped, hesitated, and started again. “Then she was going to clean.”
“Clean what?” I wondered.
“The woods. The hills. The caves.” Marthe seemed to think this explanation was sufficient, but I looked at Matthew for clarification.
“Marthe sometimes confuses clean and clear.” The light from the fire caught the facets of his heavy goblet. He was having some of the fresh wine from down the road, but he didn’t drink as much as usual. “It would seem that
Maman
has gone out to make sure there are no vampires lurking around Sept-Tours.”
“Is she looking for anyone in particular?”
“Domenico, of course. And one of the Congregation’s other vampires, Gerbert. He’s also from the Auvergne, from Aurillac. She’ll look in some of his hiding places just to make sure he isn’t nearby.”
“Gerbert. From Aurillac?
The
Gerbert of Aurillac, the tenth-century pope who reputedly owned a brass head that spoke oracles?” The fact that Gerbert was a vampire and had once been pope was of much less interest to me than was his reputation as a student of science and magic.
“I keep forgetting how much history you know. You put even vampires to shame. Yes, that Gerbert. And,” he warned, “I would like it very much if you’d stay out of his way. If you do meet him, no quizzing him about Arabic medicine or astronomy. He has always been acquisitive when it comes to witches and magic.” Matthew looked at me possessively.
“Does Ysabeau know him?”
“Oh, yes. They were thick as thieves once. If he’s anywhere near here, she’ll find him. But you don’t have to worry he’ll come to the château,” Matthew assured me. “He knows he’s not welcome here. Stay inside the walls unless one of us is with you.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t leave the grounds.” Gerbert of Aurillac was not someone I wanted to stumble upon unexpectedly.
“I suspect she’s trying to apologize for her behavior.” Matthew’s voice was neutral, but he was still angry.
“You’re going to have to forgive her,” I said again. “She didn’t want you to be hurt.”
“I’m not a child, Diana, and my mother needn’t protect me from my own wife.” He kept turning his glass this way and that. The word “wife” echoed in the room for a few moments.
“Did I miss something?” I finally asked. “When were we married?”
Matthew’s eyes lifted. “The moment I came home and said I loved you. It wouldn’t stand up in court perhaps, but as far as vampires are concerned, we’re wed.”
“Not when I said I loved you, and not when you said you loved me on the phone—it only happened when you came home and told me to my face?” This was something that demanded precision. I was planning on starting a new file on my computer with the title “Phrases That Sound One Way to Witches but Mean Something Else to Vampires.”
“Vampires mate the way lions do, or wolves,” he explained, sounding like a scientist in a television documentary. “The female selects her mate, and once the male has agreed, that’s it. They’re mated for life, and the rest of the community acknowledges their bond.”
“Ah,” I said faintly. We were back to the Norwegian wolves.
“I’ve never liked the word ‘mate,’ though. It always sounds impersonal, as if you’re trying to match up socks, or shoes.” Matthew put his goblet down and crossed his arms, resting them on the scarred surface of the table. “But you’re not a vampire. Do you mind that I think of you as my wife?”
A small cyclone whipped around my brain as I tried to figure out what my love for Matthew had to do with the deadlier members of the animal kingdom and a social institution that I’d never been particularly enthusiastic about. In the whirlwind there were no warning signs or guideposts to help me find my way.
“And when two vampires mate,” I inquired, when I could manage it, “is it expected that the female will obey the male, just like the rest of the pack?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said, looking down at his hands.
“Hmm.” I narrowed my eyes at his dark, bowed head. “What do I get out of this arrangement?”
“Love, honor, guard, and keep,” he said, finally daring to meet my eyes.
“That sounds an awful lot like a medieval wedding service.”
“A vampire wrote that part of the liturgy. But I’m not going to make you serve me,” he assured me hastily, with a straight face. “That was put in to make the humans happy.”
“The men, at least. I don’t imagine it put a smile on the faces of the women.”
“Probably not,” he said, attempting a lopsided grin. Nerves got the better of him, and it collapsed into an anxious look instead. His gaze returned to his hands.
The past seemed gray and cold without Matthew. And the future promised to be much more interesting with him in it. No matter how brief our courtship, I certainly felt bound to him. And, given vampires’ pack behavior, it wasn’t going to be possible to swap obedience for something more progressive, whether he called me “wife” or not.
“I feel I should point out, husband, that, strictly speaking, your mother was not protecting you from your wife.” The words “husband” and “wife” felt strange on my tongue. “I wasn’t your wife, under the terms laid out here, until you came home. Instead I was just some creature you left like a package with no forwarding address. Given that, I got off lightly.”
A smile hovered at the corners of his mouth. “You think so? Then I suppose I should honor your wishes and forgive her.” He reached for my hand and carried it to his mouth, brushing the knuckles with his lips. “I said you were mine. I meant it.”
“This is why Ysabeau was so upset yesterday over our kiss in the courtyard.” It explained both her anger and her abrupt surrender. “Once you were with me, there was no going back.”
“Not for a vampire.”
“Not for a witch either.”
Matthew cut the growing thickness in the air by casting a pointed look at my empty bowl. I’d devoured three helpings of stew, insisting all the while I wasn’t hungry.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
“Yes,” I grumbled, annoyed at being caught out.
It was still early, but my yawns had already begun. We found Marthe rubbing down a vast wooden table with a fragrant combination of boiling water, sea salt, and lemons, and we said good night.
“Ysabeau will return soon,” Matthew told her.
“She will be out all night,” Marthe replied darkly, looking up from her lemons. “I will stay here.”
“As you like, Marthe.” He gripped her shoulder for a moment.
On the way upstairs to his study Matthew told me the story of where he bought his copy of Vesalius’s anatomy book and what he thought when he first saw the illustrations. I dropped onto the sofa with the book in question and happily looked at pictures of flayed corpses, too tired to concentrate on
Aurora Consurgens,
while Matthew answered e-mail. The hidden drawer in his desk was firmly closed, I noted with relief.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I said an hour later, rising and stretching my stiff muscles in preparation for climbing more stairs. I needed some time alone to think through the implications of my new status as Matthew’s wife. The idea of marriage was overwhelming enough. When you factored in vampire possessiveness and my own ignorance about what was happening, it seemed an ideal time for a moment of reflection.
“I’ll be up shortly,” Matthew said, barely looking up from the glow of his computer screen.
The bathwater was as hot and plentiful as ever, and I sank into the tub with a groan of pleasure. Marthe had been up and had worked her magic with candles and the fire. The rooms felt cozy, if not precisely warm. I drifted through a satisfying replay of the day’s accomplishments. Being in charge was better than letting random events take place.
I was still soaking in the bathtub, my hair falling over the edge in a cascade of straw, when there was a gentle knock on the door. Matthew pushed it open without waiting for me to respond. Sitting up with a start, I quickly sank back into the water when he walked in.