The Burning (23 page)

She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. That is my curse. It isn’t just that I know
some
things about people. I know it all.”

“All?”

“Well, since you are so old and have had so much experience I can’t quite encompass everything yet. There are gaps.
But I know about the blood.
The blood is the life
for your kind.”

He turned away, ashamed. His voice drifted out of the darkness. “Will you tell Fladgate?”

“Why would I indulge their petty superstition?” He turned slowly back toward her. He was examining her, looking for signs of revulsion. That gave her hope. “I know what kind of man you are, and the experiences that made you. You grew up at Mirso Monastery, and fought in the Wars of the Roses. What hardships you endured on your Chinese expedition! I know the Mayans worshiped you as a god, and what you tried to do with Beatrix and . . . Asharti.”

“Then you know my crimes.” She had never heard a voice so bleak. “I am weak.”

“Hmm,” she mused. “You forget generous, loyal, idealistic.”

“Weaknesses,” he said bitterly. “No more. I have expunged them. I have one task now.”

She did not say that his idealism and his generosity still lurked inside him, no matter how hard he tried to deny them. “Redemption is a worthy goal . . .”

He paced in the darkness beyond the light. “God, you must know about—”

“What happened at the Treasury and Bucklands Lodge? You are sent to dispose of Kilkenny’s evil rogues. They threaten everything.”

“And the . . . training?” His voice was a choking rumble.

She furrowed her brow, thinking. “Training in weapons with Alfred the Great . . . ?”

She felt more than heard his breath of relief. He wavered just outside the circle of light.

She smiled. “Do you want me to be afraid of you? You will be disappointed.” Indeed, she felt . . . a kind of kinship. Did he not get some sense of her in return? But he was unconscious at the time. “If I am not frightened of you, can you not overcome your fear of me?”

His eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. Then he raised his brows and smiled ruefully. “Ah, you may be only a girl, but someone who knows everything about you? More frightening than a mere monster. You . . .” He cleared his throat. “You cannot read minds, can you?”

She shook her head. He would be afraid of that. “It isn’t like that. If I touch you, I get your past experiences, your feelings about them. It’s rather overwhelming. But I don’t know what you’re thinking now.” There, she had told him. But if she was going to tell the truth, it might as well be all of it. “I suppose knowing so much about a person makes it easier to guess, though. Sometimes I could finish my uncle’s sentences for him.” That made them sound like an old married couple or two elderly spinsters. But that was what it was like, to know another person that well.

He looked taken aback. Still, after a hesitation, he stepped back into the light. “That’s why you went into the coma, isn’t it? You got all two thousand years.”

She couldn’t suppress a smile. “You were a bit of a surprise.”

She thought she saw an answering smile in his eyes. Then he sobered. “How do you live with that kind of knowledge about everybody?”

“Badly.” She sighed. “I can never touch a m—” She stopped herself. “I can’t touch people,” she corrected. “I wonder if the lack of physical contact has made me cold.”

“You? Cold? No.” A wistful look washed over his features. “But I know what it is like. Touch has become . . . difficult for me as well.”

She chuckled. “Then what could be safer for us than someone who shares our aversion?”

He examined her face. Those unfathomable brown eyes—who would guess they could soften with affection? A flash of all the loves he had experienced lanced through her. Beautiful women, brilliant women, cruel women, and innocent
women—he had loved them all. A shudder passed through her.
What am I thinking, to ask a man like this to . . . what?
What did she want of him? She looked at her hands, gathering her courage.

“Sometimes I think I will go mad if I cannot maintain some connection with the world. When . . . if my uncle dies there will be no one left who . . . accepts.” That might be the definition of a friend. She faltered and clutched the edge of the quilt. “Who better to accept than one who is as strange as I am?” She saw his look of doubt. “We could . . . talk, even if only for a little while.” She had asked too much!

“When Kilkenny comes, I will go to meet him.” The voice had iron in it.

“I know.” He thought it would be the death of him, or his salvation. “And until then?”

“I . . . I can spare some time.” He cleared his throat. “Waiting is difficult.”

“You could have the use of my library. Books pass the time.”

He glanced around him, looking for another topic. “A nice collection. Yours?”

“Books are my friends.” That sounded idiotic. “I saw you with a book when I first woke.”

He looked at his hands and nodded. Then he pulled the wing chair into the circle of light and sat, gingerly, on the edge of the seat, as though he was about to rise and go at any moment. She couldn’t help thinking that he was a wild animal she was coaxing to come closer.

“You can tell me about your favorite authors.” She shrugged, lifting her brow. “Let’s see. Lao-tzu, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. Confucius. You like Ch’u Yuan. Ovid—not Martial, I note. Antarah ibn Shaddad, Wang Wei, Bharavabhuti, and Li Po of course.” Someone who knew everything about you could be convenient, too. She could show him that.

He looked startled. “Have . . . have you read them?”

“Well, the Romans, of course. And the Greeks, but only in translation. My Greek isn’t good enough for reading the originals. I realize now they weren’t very good translations.”

“Then . . . then you read them through me?” His voice was hard. It was as though he was probing a wound as he explored just how much she knew about him.

“No, no,” she assured him. “I only have your impressions of them.”

“Oh. That’s good.” He wasn’t sure of that.

She decided not to tell him what his impressions told her about him. He revered truth and defying tyranny (surprising for one so bent on a mission given him by the Eldest), and more surprising still, he believed in the forgiveness of Saint Augustine, just not for himself. She liked the man who could love those particular books. And what of the Chinese poets? In them, he admired tranquility, yearned for it. Hard, for a man with a mission like his to yearn for tranquility.

“I’d like to read the Chinese poets. Would a library in London have their work?”

He gave a half-chuckle. “No. Your powers are failing you.”

She concentrated. What did he mean? “Oh. They’re from the seven hundreds—Tang dynasty? And . . . and your copies were destroyed when the peasants burned your palace in India.”

He took a breath. Each new demonstration of her knowledge would be frightening. “The last copies are in the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City in Peking.”

“I have never been to Peking.” She sighed. “Nor am I ever likely to go. In fact, I really haven’t been anywhere. You’re very lucky in that.”

“Everywhere is the same after a while. People are alike, and you take yourself with you.”

“I would love a chance to discover that.”

He smiled. It was such a tiny smile one would have
missed it if one were not looking carefully. “You have your books. They can take you places.”

“Not the same,” she said, though she had lied to Erich and said it was. “One sees things only through the author’s eyes. All one’s impressions are borrowed. I can sometimes feel other times and other lives through the things I touch, but that is still reality once removed. I want my own reality.”

“Reality is overrated.” He chewed that marvelous lower lip thoughtfully. “Still, it might be well for you to set yourself up in London.”

“I could not leave my uncle.” That might not be an issue for long and they both knew it.

“Not right away, of course,” he added hastily. “But life in a less restricted society would be good for you. These people here are too provincial to appreciate you.”

“You mean they know too much about me.” She chuckled. Then she sighed. “For someone like me travel . . . living in London . . . well, it’s just impossible.”

“You hire a companion. Take Mrs. Simpson with you and Polsham, Jennings. A fashionable house in town . . . a select society . . .”

“And how would I avoid people touching me?” she challenged.

“You will be an eccentric,” he declared, that wisp of a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. “Wear gloves at all times and declare that touching others is simply too unrefined for your tastes. You will become all the rage.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle as she shook her head. “You make it seem so easy.”

“It is.”

She grew serious. “For someone courageous like you. But not for me.” She looked around at the darkened room. “I couldn’t leave my nursery. I can touch things here and not be . . . assaulted by everyone who’s ever touched them.”

He bowed his head and looked at his hands. “This is a refuge for you.”

“You understand the need for refuge.”

“Yes.”

Sadness flickered in his eyes and was gone—now that she knew what to look for, she could see the tiny display of emotion. Was that all he had left after everything he had experienced?

“You have had much pain in your life,” she whispered. “You deserve peace.”

“No I don’t, not yet.” The hard edge was back in his voice. His eyes looked as though he was far away. He really believed that he didn’t deserve refuge. He didn’t think he deserved kindness from another, either. That was why he couldn’t believe she had tried to bandage him when she saw him so wounded. What must it be like to hold yourself in such contempt? He came to himself with a start and peered at her. “You are tired.”

She was. She was bone-tired. But she didn’t want him to go. “Not really.”

He raised his brows. “I’m going to read one of your books here in this comfortable chair. You are going to sleep.”

Her eyes
were
heavy. She could hardly hold her head up. “You won’t go, will you?”

“At dawn. If you wake in the night, I’ll be here.”

“And you’ll come again?”

“If I can.”

“Perhaps I’ll sleep just for an hour.” She smiled and scooted down in her bed and drew up the quilt. “I have several language books. You could learn Italian.”

“You’re slipping. I already know Italian.”

“Oh, yes . . .” Her eyes were so heavy. “I had forgot . . .”

Twelve

Stephan watched her eyes close. She’d sleep the night through, of course. That was good. She needed sleep after her experience. At least Van Helsing would not come creeping up the stairs in the night. If he did, Stephan could send him to the right about. And Stephan was out of the way of the runner. He would enjoy reading and watching her sleep. Enjoy . . . he hadn’t said that word in years, let alone experienced anything like enjoyment.

Did he really enjoy being around her? The fact that she knew so much about him was unnerving. The fact that she seemed to accept what she knew was, frankly, entirely implausible. Maybe she didn’t know it all. He’d have to test her. She didn’t appear to remember his time in training in Mirso. That was a God-sent favor. He wouldn’t like to think that such an innocent . . . Still, she might know about other liaisons he had indulged in over the years. She said she knew about Beatrix and Asharti, and certainly part of his relationship with them had been physical. With Asharti it was only physical—a part of his mentoring program. He had been
trying to show her that sexual relations could be tender and filled with mutual giving. It was obviously a lesson she had not learned. Another of his failures. With Beatrix the sexual relationship was secondary to the love he felt. She had loved him too, at first. But then she’d grown out of it. First loves never lasted, especially between an innocent and one who had seen and done everything.

He watched Miss Van Helsing sleeping. She looked like an angel, so white, so innocent. She thought he deserved peace. That was her own kindness coloring her vision of him. He didn’t. If he completed his mission he might earn forgiveness, but not kindness. When had anyone ever been generous to him, kind?