For All Eternity (The Black Rose Chronicles) (25 page)

Maeve nodded in full, if reluctant, agreement. “How did your warlocks fare against those monsters of hers?” “Like your encounter with the queen,” Dathan answered, “it ended in something of a draw. We fought until dawn was imminent, and then the opposing forces fled, of course, to escape the light. That was when I found you on the floor of that cave—until that moment I thought you’d deserted us.”

Had Maeve been mortal, she would have flushed with annoyance and outrage. “Do you believe me to be such a coward? Think again, Warlock—I have as much courage as
ten
witches!”

Dathan laughed and handed her the chalice again; it had been refilled and brought back by a cloaked creature Maeve had glimpsed out of the comer of her eye. “And as much pride, I vow,” he said. “Drink up, Mistress Tremayne. I fear we have many frightful adventures still ahead of us.”

C
HAPTER 13

Somehow Calder passed the night without awakening William and throttling him, and with the morning came a drizzling rain and a steady stream of visitors. Like crows in their black garb, the mourners passed by the casket single file, peering inside to see how death suited Bernard Holbrook.

All morning and all afternoon they came, the grieving, the curious, the indifferent, the relieved, and the secretly pleased. They ate hungrily of the food Prudence and her small staff had prepared, and speculated among themselves about Calder and William and the bruised state of their faces.

Calder hated every moment of that interminable day and dreaded the one to follow, for that would bring the funeral, the eulogies, the grim and final business of burial. To him, the world looked dark, and it was difficult to believe that the sun would ever shine again.

After the last of the sorrowful callers had left, Calder and William accidentally found themselves alone in the large dining room. William took a piece of smoked turkey from a platter and bit into it, regarding Calder through swollen eyes.

“We’ll have the reading of the will tomorrow, after the ceremonies,” the elder brother announced, reaching for another piece of meat.

Calder shrugged. “I don’t give a damn about that,” he said.

“Good,” William replied. “Papa was closeted away for hours one day, just last month, with his lawyers. I recall that he was especially exasperated with you at that time, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself in the street, with nothing to live on but that pitiful stipend the army pays you.”

Although Calder’s stomach rebelled at the very sight of food, he knew only too well that he would not be able to think clearly or function well in an emergency if he did not eat. He went to the long table, against his will, and filled a plate, taking slices of turkey and ham, some potato salad, and a serving of Prudence’s famous fruit compote. Then, by a deft motion of one foot, learned in boyhood, he drew back a chair.

He paused for a few moments, regarding the food he’d taken and envying Maeve because she didn’t have to trouble herself with the stuff at all. As he took up his fork, Calder raised his eyes to William’s face.

‘Take it all,” he said, only a little surprised to realize that he meant it. ‘Take the money, take this goddamned mausoleum of a house, take the illustrious Holbrook name and the power that goes with it.”

William blanched, his fingers tightening over the back of a chair. Plainly he hadn’t been expecting Calder’s acquiescence, but another fight instead. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

Calder ate a few bites of ham, chewing each one thoroughly, before answering. “You murdered my mother,” he said at last. “And that old man lying in there with his eyelids stitched together covered up for you. As far as I’m concerned, if I never see you or this place again, it will be too soon.”

Sweat beaded on William’s upper lip. “I killed Marie? Where did you get such an idea?” he demanded hoarsely, pulling back a chair of his own and collapsing into it. “And why is it that you can’t speak of our father with some semblance of respect, even now?”

“I loved him,” Calder conceded. “But respect is another thing. As for my mother’s death, well, you might say I have a way of looking into the past.”

William’s hand trembled visibly as he reached for a carafe of Madeira and then a wineglass. “I didn’t lay a hand on her,” he said.

“You’re a liar,” Calder replied, still eating. He knew his calm manner was unnerving his brother, and he was pleased by the fact. “She was going to leave this house, and our esteemed father, and you intercepted her. There was an argument, and you gripped her by the shoulders. She struggled, and you wouldn’t release her—until you thrust her away from you in a moment of fury. That was when she tumbled backward over the railing and fell twenty feet to the floor of the foyer.”

William had managed to pour wine, but his subsequent attempts to raise the glass to his white lips failed because he was shaking. “Pure fantasy,” he said.

Calder stared at him for a long, purposely disconcerting interval. “It happened just that way,” he insisted quietly, “and we both know it. Kindly don’t insult me with your denials.”

After casting a yearning look at his wine, William wiped one forearm across his mouth. “If you really believe this—this delusion, then why haven’t you tried to avenge Marie’s death?”

Calder smiled grimly. “There has hardly been time for that,” he said indulgently. “Still, we’re young, you and I,” he added with a shrug. “There’s no rush.”

At last William made a successful grab for his glass and raised it tremulously to his lips. After a few audible gulps, his color began to return, and he was steadier. “Is that a threat?”

Again, Calder shrugged, reaching for a platter and helping himself to some of Prudence’s cold rice salad. “It might be. Then again, it might not. To be quite frank, I haven’t decided how I’ll deal with you.” He chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, swallowed, and then gestured at William with an offhanded motion of his fork. “Rest assured, though, that I
will
deal with you.” William swallowed the rest of his wine and reached for the carafe while he could. “You don’t scare me,” he said, though his manner and the pallor of his complexion gave the lie to his words.

Calder smiled again and continued to eat.

That night he waited for Maeve to come to him, prayed that she would, and finally she appeared. She was as ethereal as a spirit, and throughout the magical encounter that awaited him, he feared he was only dreaming.

Without a word she slipped into bed beside him, encircling him in her soft, strong arms. She kissed the underside of his jaw and sent shivers of forlorn desire rushing through his system.

“Maeve,” he whispered.

She touched his lips with an index finger to silence him, then trailed kisses down over his chest and his belly. His manhood surged upright in response, and he drew in a harsh breath when she touched the tip with her tongue.

Calder groaned and arched his back, completely in her power. He whispered a plea, and she granted his wish, consuming him, and he writhed in a fever of passion and need. At the last possible moment, she moved astride him, and took him deep inside her, and rode him while his body buckled beneath hers in the throes of triumph. She muffled his ragged shout of release by laying one cool hand over his mouth.

“I love you,” he told her when their encounter was over, and she lay beside him, close and slender and solid. “Please, Maeve—don’t leave me. Don’t work your sorcery and make us forget each other—I can’t bear the prospect of that.”

She leaned over him and kissed his mouth, but lightly, brushing his lips with her own. Still she did not speak, but in truth there was no need of it. Everything she was thinking and feeling was plain in her dark blue eyes.

Calder’s vision blurred as he looked up at her, and he touched her smooth cheek with an index finger. “So incredibly beautiful,” he marveled in a whisper, certain he would perish with the loss of her. He wasn’t sure, in fact, that he himself would exist at all, without the knowledge and memory of Maeve Tremayne.

Maeve smiled at him, the expression full of sweetness and sorrow, and then removed herself from his arms, from the warm tangle of the bedsheets. Once again she was wearing the soft, gauzy gown she had shed earlier to enter Calder’s embrace.

He gave a low, despairing cry and stretched out a hand to her, but between one heartbeat and the next, she vanished.

Calder wept, though he did not make a sound, well aware that Maeve had made up her mind to destroy their love, to tear it from the universe by its very roots.

For the first time in his life he wanted to die.

Perhaps, he thought later, when he’d composed himself a little, she had already begun the mysterious process that would erase her from his memory, and him from her own. Perhaps he would awaken the next morning, or the one after that, with no recollection of the beautiful vampire who haunted his soul, as well as his mind and body.

Even though he knew the transition itself would probably be painless, the prospect of it was the purest torture.

Calder tried to reason with himself. Undoubtedly he would simply go on with his life, treating his patients, perhaps meeting another woman, marrying, fathering a houseful of children. The war, God willing, was bound to end soon, and the sundered land would begin to mend itself into some new and better nation.

No, it wouldn’t be a bad existence, and he wouldn’t know the difference anyway, wouldn’t know what he was missing any more than the corpse of his father, still lying in a wash of candlelight in the parlor, could comprehend that life was going on without him.

Still, for all the dangers and all the terrible things he would see and probably do, Calder wanted to be with Maeve. And yes, he wanted to share her fantastic powers, too, but only because they would enable him to help his patients in ways that were impossible then. He could travel into the future, for instance, into the late twentieth century, the era to which the mystery of time had progressed, according to Maeve, and learn even more about the art of medicine than the miraculous textbooks had taught him. He would be able to bring that knowledge back to people who suffered, along with chemicals, pills, and serums that could kill pain without making the heart race the way morphine did. Vaccinations that would protect small children who in his own time were cruelly felled by maladies such as measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough . . .

He drifted off to sleep, and morning took him by surprise. Confused, uncertain if Maeve had come to him during the night or simply worked some trick of the mind on him and created the illusion of herself.

By rote, Calder washed and dressed and went downstairs to the dining room, but even as he filled his plate at the sideboard and went to the table, his thoughts were muddled. He was not aware of William’s presence until his brother spoke.

“Calder.”

William had taken a seat at the head of the table, but he wasn’t taking breakfast. A hot cup of coffee steamed before him, and he poured rum into the brew as Calder looked at him in cold silence.

William was flushed now, his eyes feverishly bright, like those of an animal approaching the last stages of rabies. “I think you should go away,” he said. “To Europe, perhaps, or maybe out West. I’m sure Papa left you enough money to make a new start.”

Calder pushed back his chair, dropped his fork to his china plate with a deliberate clatter, and stood. “You’ve waxed generous, all of the sudden, even reasonable. Why is that, William?”

His brother started to answer, choked on his own words, and began again. “I want to be fair, that’s all.” “You want to be fair,” Calder repeated softly in a marveling tone. “Of course you do. And General Lee wants to hand all of Dixie over to Mr. Lincoln, tied with Union-blue ribbons.” His voice hardened. “Damn it, do you take me for a fool? You’d murder me in my sleep if you thought you could get away with it!”

William closed his eyes tightly for a moment and swayed in his chair. He didn’t speak again as Calder turned and strode out of the room.

Valerian sat in the cool, dark dungeon, knees drawn up, back pressed to the dank stone wall behind him. Had his captor been anyone other than Lisette, he’d have escaped easily, but her power was as strong as it had ever been—perhaps stronger, in that peculiar way of diseased minds. It was her magic that held him; the chains and bars and heavy iron doors were just for show.

He sighed, ran one hand through his mane of chestnut- colored hair, and wondered what Maeve and the others were doing, two hundred years into the future in the nineteenth century. It was just possible, he thought with a scowl, that Maeve was glad he was out of the way or, worse, that she hadn’t even noticed that he was gone.

Valerian thrust himself to his feet, which were half buried in the fetid straw covering the floor. Rats and mice and a variety of other vermin populated the stuff, rustling and scurrying in the darkness.

“Lisette!” he shouted, his voice echoing in that enormous, lonely tomb of a place. “Damn you, show yourself!”

There was no answer, of course. Lisette had simply dropped him here, sometime in the middle of the seventeenth century, and it was entirely possible that she planned to let him rot. That would probably be a more effective, and more twisted, form of torture than anything else she could have devised.