In The Face Of Death (46 page)

“Perhaps not,” he conceded. “But it hasn’t touched your face.”

“It touches my soul,” she said seriously.

He nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “I know. I can see it. I can feel it, as well.”

“Does that trouble you?” she asked, watching his belt drop to the floor. “Tell me: does it?”

“It shouldn’t,” he admitted. “And your youth should not bother me, but it does. And I am a fool for it.”

At last he had said it. She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “Why? Why does it bother you?”

He shrugged and drew her close against him. “It’s nothing. Megrims, or nerves, probably.” His smile was sudden and fierce. “Nothing to concern us now.”

She let herself warm to him, but a reservation niggled at the back of her mind, and she could not wholly silence it as she opened his lips with her own, and felt his probing tongue on hers. It was the same quest he had pursued with her from the first, and for once she was truly glad of it.

When he drew back, he was breathless. “I haven’t much nitre paper with me,” he said, making an effort to fill his lungs with new air. His features showed more embarrassment than fear. “I didn’t want this to happen, not now.”

“I have something for that,” she said, and drew a vial from the pocket of her peignoir. “I assumed you might want this, whether you needed it or not.” She handed it to him, a tentative gesture that showed her doubts as much as her angled brows.

“Yes.” He took it, scowling at it. “I don’t know. I have thought all my life that there should be a way not to endure this . . . intrusion.” He moved back with an apologetic hitch to his shoulders. “It will go better for us if I have a little of this first.” He reached for the ewer on his night stand and filled the glass set beside it. “Five drops, do I remember correctly?”

“Five or six,” she said. “When you have an attack, then take half the vial, directly.” She studied him as he drank the water. “I have a full supply for you, for when you leave. You may take it with you.”

“What admirable foresight.” He set the glass aside. “No doubt I should be grateful and thank you for this, but right now, all I want to do is—”

“Curse?” she suggested. “Declaim? Protest?”

This time his smile was rueful. “Something like that. How can you endure such a surly fellow as I am? But thank God fasting you do.” He opened his arms to her, his robe falling open. “Come here, girl.”

She went into his arms, and this time it felt that she was at last home after a long voyage. His flesh, until then oddly unfamiliar, warmed to her, and she found the places where they balanced against one another—he, tall and lean and angular, more elbows and shoulders than deep chest—she, small and voluptuous, all curves and rounded muscles—their separate textures of clothes and skin and senses and soul complimenting one another.

“What is this spell you have over me?” he asked her, his long fingers busy with loosening her hair from its casual knot.

“No spell. It is the bond between us. I wish you would believe it exists. It works as much on me as on you. For as long as I am alive, I will have the bond with you.” She smiled up at him and waited to see what he would do. There were many desires within him, all in conflict, and she did not want to trigger any more disputes between them.

He was combing her hair with his hand, letting the dark strands slide along his palm. “I always forget how the light plays yellow on your hair.”

She did not know why she shivered when he said that, but covered it by saying, “You may be comfortable here, but the bed is warmer.”

He stared down at her. “You’re never cold.” He looked truly shocked. “In the worst San Francisco fog, you did not get cold.”

“Perhaps, but now I would like to be comfortable.” She slid her arms around him under his robe. “We would both enjoy it more.”

“So we might,” he said in sudden compliance. “Though I’d like to leave the lamps burning. I want to see you.”

“Do you?” This surprised her; she found it disquieting. “Why?”

“Humor me, my love. Unless the light will bother you?” He saw her shake her head; satisfied, he went to the side of the bed, flung back the covers and sat down, watching her as she came to stand in front of him. “I have all my memories. How am I going to know if they are right if I don’t see you?” He looked at her peignoir, and asked in sudden wistfulness, “Will you let me take that infernal thing off you?” His face softened again, and there was something very like grief in his steel-colored eyes. “I don’t mean it isn’t lovely, all soft and promising to the touch”—his hands trailed down the elaborate ruffles—“and enough to drive any sane man mad, but what I long for is
you.”

The passion in his voice was more determined than she had anticipated, and she was reassured by it. “If it would please you,” she said quietly.

He had undone the first six buttons when he stopped and looked around as if he feared interruption. “Leonetto isn’t going to know about this, is he? Won’t there be talk?”

“Not if we both say nothing, and I was not planning on boasting,” she answered. “And before you ask, the servants are gone to bed. They would not gossip in any case.” Saint-Germain, she knew, would not tolerate it. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I am not a novice at this, Tecumseh. And I learned from a master.”

“So you keep telling me,” he said, resuming his efforts with the buttons. “Why, in the name of all that’s holy, does this have so many of these damned things?”

“Fashion,” she answered at once. “And to prolong the suspense.”

“Fine state of affairs,” he muttered as he at last got the final button free. He tugged at the sleeves of the peignoir and tossed it aside as he pulled her into his arms. “This is better.”

“What about your robe?” she asked, half teasing as she lay across his chest. It was now her turn to feel breathless.

He half-rose and wrestled his way out of the thing, wadding it hastily into a ball and flinging it across the room. “There. Gone.” He stretched out on his back, dragging her with him, atop him. His mouth was unexpectedly gentle on hers, but persistent, and his hands began to make unhurried sallies over her back, down her flanks. He was willing to take his time. “It has been so long, I want to know all of you. I don’t . . .” his words were lost in another, long, searching kiss.

Some time later she broke away from his kisses, but only to excite him more fully, her lips and tongue drawing more pleasure from him than he had ever permitted before. As she widened her explorations, he propped himself against the pillows and reveled in all she did, half-watching her, half-lost in the flood of voluptuousness, his lower lip caught between his teeth so that he would not cry out. When she slowly straddled him, he uttered a long, shivering sigh, then drew her down far enough to nuzzle and caress her breasts with his hands and lips as he let her set the pace for them both, to be transfixed with ecstatic spasms, head flung back, as her mouth brushed his throat.

When he came to himself again, she was lying beside him, her leg over his, her head on his shoulder, her eyes half-closed. “I can never remember how
.
. . enormous the feelings are.” He spoke softly, more to himself than to her, and more in wonder than disappointment.

“They are what you are capable of—” she whispered. “I cannot summon what is not within you.”

“What I don’t understand is how you find it,” he confessed, more affection in his demeanor than she could recall encountering. “What made you look in the first place?”

“You did,” she said seriously, her eyes fully open now, and set on his. ‘When we first met, you reached out to me, for me. I don’t know any other way to explain it to you.”

He rolled onto his side, toward her, then stared over her shoulder toward the dying fire; when he spoke his voice was soft and abstracted. “I’ll believe you, for your sake, but
.
. . .” He ran his hand along her side, then drew the covers up higher. “I feel the chill these days. I didn’t used to, that I can remember.”

“It’s cozy, all wrapped up together,” she said, snuggling nearer to him.

“And not a cannon or rifle being fired,” he marveled. “For two years after the end of the war, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I had heard guns somewhere. It doesn’t happen very often any more. I won’t disturb you, I promise.” He kissed her brow. “It’s hard to imagine you went through all that. You look too young to have been there.”

She felt a pang of loneliness somewhere deep within. “And I was like this in San Francisco, and in Egypt, when you were a child in Ohio, learning to read. And I was as I am now when your parents were children.” She touched his face, letting her hand rest against his short beard. “And I will be like this a century from now, if I escape the True Death.”

“Breaking the spine or burning or destroying the nervous system. That’s how it happens, isn’t that what you told me?” he said lightly.

“Embalming will probably do it as well, or so Saint-Germain thinks,” she replied.

He was silent for a short while. “I’m going to Egypt, you know.”

“It is a fascinating place,” she said neutrally.

“So you have told me. I will see for myself now.” He rolled onto his back once more, and made sure she was lying as near to him as possible. “What are you doing with that bore, Leonetto?” He directed his distracted gaze up at the ceiling.

“He came to me, with questions about you and Grant, among others. He knew of my books.” His crisp chest hair pressed into her cheek, oddly reassuring. She moved to kiss the place on his neck where a little blood still remained. “At least he brought you to me.”

“Fellow’s impossible—worse than a reporter. All the way here: General Sherman this and General Sherman that.” He made his voice a reasonable imitation of Leonetto’s, accent and all. “Tell me, General Sherman, do you think you’ll have any influence over foreign affairs if President Grant asks you to be his Vice-President?” He laughed once, harshly. “I told him Sam Grant has better sense than that.”

Madelaine shifted her weight so that they were both more comfortable. “He is dreadful.”

“King Victor Emmanuel had better think twice if he intends to rely on Leonetto and his ilk for intelligence.” He turned his head toward her and the brusqueness left his voice. “I never thought I would see you again.”

“Don’t tell me you are surprised? I hoped we had settled that.” She could feel him begin to settle toward sleep, and she wondered if this badinage were a ploy he wanted to use to keep awake.

“If I could find you in the middle of war’s hell, I shouldn’t wonder at finding you in Italy.” He kissed her just above the bridge of her nose. “Though you are not Italian.”

“But my name: think of that, Tecumseh,” she protested, squirming upward so she could see his eyes more readily. “You know enough about French to cypher it out.”

“Madelaine?” he teased affectionately.

“De Montalia,” she corrected him.

“Means something like ‘of the Italian mountain’, as I recall. And if it were more French, it would end in an ‘e’ not an ‘a’. Are we going to sleep the whole night together?”

“If you like. Anamaria will say nothing.” She felt the tension in his shoulders ease. “We have tomorrow night, as well,” she reminded him.

He studied her face in silence. “How is it you do not age?” And before she could answer, he said, “I know what you have told me about those of your blood. Does that mean when I die, I will be restored to youth as well as life?”

She shook her head. “No. You will keep the appearance you have at the end of your life. And we do age, but very slowly. In another century, I will probably look all of twenty-five.”

“Then I had better hurry up and ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’ before I get any grayer.” He chuckled, but there was sadness and apprehension mixed with his amusement. “Won’t do to be an old man addling about, looking for inviting necks.”

“How can you say that?” she demanded of him. “When you have told me you have no wish to be a vampire.”

“Unless someone cuts off my head, burns my corpse, or drives a stake through my spine, I will be, for I cannot see any of my family doing those things, no matter how I ask. They think me odd enough as it is. And those who would like to do such things to me living will not be allowed to do it in death. So I had best resign myself to my fate.” He chuckled once. “Of course, they
will
embalm me, and if your information is right, that will be the end of that. No more avoiding death.”

“You speak as if death is the enemy,” said Madelaine with some apprehension.

“Well, isn’t it? How can it not be?” he asked, startled into greater wakefulness.

“Suffering is the enemy, not death,” she said quietly, and with such seriousness that he stared at her intently. “Death comes to all of us in time, even those of my blood. It is no more an enemy than birth is. But suffering, that is another matter.” She tried to subdue the memories which came over her, knowing that in this instance his were far worse; she clung to him.

“That’s
how you do it,” he said to her, his voice filled with amazement. “You are not frightened out of love by death.” He pressed her head onto his shoulder, his long fingers in her hair, his other big hand spread over her shoulder. “Where do you get the courage? To love in the face of death?”

She considered her answer, listening to his heart beat. “Because if there were no love, the suffering would be unendurable.”

His arms tightened around her and held her as he faded into sleep.

Rho, Lombardia, 15 March, 1872

I will present my last lecture in five weeks, and then I will turn my attention to leaving Lombardia. . . . At least the roads between here and France are said to be in good repair, and the railroad can carry most of my things the greater part of the way, saving time and money.

I have another telegram from Professor Leonetto, once again proclaiming Tecumseh’s travels a great triumph for him. He has informed me that he is planning to meet with “The Great General” in Switzerland, and has asked if I will accompany him . . . I have not yet made up my mind, for by the summer I will return to Montalia for a short while as I conclude plans for travel into Syria. I will have to learn when Tecumseh plans to be at Bern, and then decide.