Kiss Me Forever/Love Me Forever. Rosemary Laurey

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ watching Christopher through a haze of smoke.

      “Not the books. I found what we expected and a few more. She’s perfectly willing to sell. They’re getting valued and I offered to pay market price. It’s…” He looked across at Tom blowing smoke rings. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke those things.”

      “Worried about my health? Who introduced me to Walter Raleigh?”

      “Cut it out. I’m not in the mood for your humor.” He stared at the empty grate, angry at himself and his bad manners. “Tom,” he said at last, “I’m falling apart.”

      “That, I doubt,” Tom replied. “Seizing up seems more like it. If it’s not the books, what is it?”

      Christopher told him.

      “You fed from an unsuspecting human and now you’re riddled with angst. Why? Did you harm her? Did she resist? Does she feel violated?” Remembering the moonlit gleam in Dixie’s eyes and the smile on her sleeping face, Christopher shook his head. “Stop worrying. You fed. Survival demands that. When did you last feed?”

      “I didn’t feed. I tasted her. I never intended to feed. It happened.”

      “When did you last feed?” Tom repeated.

      Christopher leaned an elbow on the chair and dropped his forehead into his hand. “From a human—three years.”

      Tom’s eyebrows rose. “How do you manage?”

      A dry, unamused chuckle shook Christopher’s shoulders. “I live in the country. Lots of cows and horses and nice plump pigs.”

      Ash fell from Tom’s cigar as he shuddered. “And when did you last feed from one of your barnyard friends?”

      “A couple of weeks.”

      Tom whistled through his teeth. “By Abel and all who went before us, you’re a fool. You’ll weaken yourself. No wonder you fed from this human. It was need pure and simple.”

      “I didn’t feed,” Christopher growled, “I tasted.”

      “And she was willing? She never resisted?”

      His eyes stung as he shook his head, remembering her body molding against his in the dark and the warmth of her white neck, the scent of her skin, and the intoxicating richness of her lifeblood.

      Tom leaned over and thumped him on the knee. “That’s the answer, old man. Feed from her again. You need her strength. She’s willing. Why not? No harm done. She’ll go back to the States and tell her friends about this wonderful Englishman. Better be careful, though, or they’ll be coming over in droves to find a legendary English lover.”

      He wasn’t in the mood for Tom’s wit. He ground his heel into the Turkish carpet. “No good, Tom. An eternity of feeding wouldn’t satisfy my thirst.” In the silence, Christopher heard the clock tick on the mantle piece, a conversation across the street as guests left, and a taxi change gear at the corner and drive down Curzon Street.

      Tom’s eyes widened; horror froze the muscles of his face. “You’d mate with her? A mortal?”

      Christopher smiled, knowing the impossibility. “Mate? Mortals use another word.”

      “But you’re not mortal. Mortals betrayed and killed you. Feed from her. Let her strengthen you. But for Abel’s sake, Kit, never that!”

      Christopher shook his head. “Don’t fret so, Tom. I’ll stretch naked in the sun first. She’s safe. I’ve enough willpower for that.” If he didn’t walk with her in the dark and touch her in the moonlight.

      “Keep away then. Stay here in town until she leaves.”

      “No. I must go back for the books. Too many curious and mischievous parties in that village for those volumes to remain there.” He smiled at his friend. “You worry too much.”

      “Maybe. But the time of your revenance is close. Not two weeks away. That’s when you’re most vulnerable.”

      “As you have warned me every May for the last four hundred years and still I survive.”

      “More by luck than judgment.”

      “Luck has carried me this far.”

      Tom propped the stub of his cigar on a porcelain ashtray. “Dawn comes in two hours and the day is forecast to be sunny. Do you have strength to fly against the sun or will you stay?”

      He’d stay. The flight had drained him. He needed rest. Dixie was safe for the night and if the day was sunny, he couldn’t protect her even if he were in Bringham. “Your hospitality is always welcome, Tom.”

      The cleaners arrived as Dixie poured her second cup of coffee. Faced with a flurry of mops, moving furniture and warnings about wax on the floors, Dixie took her coffee outside into the sunshine. She found a perch on the crumbling wall that surrounded the flagstone terrace.

      Before she finished the cup, the garden called her. She’d given the house all her attention since she’d arrived; the only time she’d really spent in the garden had been traipsing around, half-blind in the night, or dallying with Christopher. She blushed at the memory. She’d had to wear a turtleneck this morning to hide a monumental hickey.

      She paced through ankle-deep lawns, grass-filled brick paths and rough gravel walks with creeping weeds. The dark shapes she’d hidden between with Christopher’s arm round her shoulders proved to be lilacs in need of pruning. The odd hummocks the intruder tripped on that first evening were untrimmed topiary boxwoods. Weeds choked a rock garden, and green scum covered an ornamental pond with a silent fountain.

      Dixie strolled down a rickety pergola overhung with wisteria and found her way through an arch in a yew hedge into a kitchen garden. A rickety tool shed leaned against the high brick wall, but what caught Dixie’s attention was a door in the wall. The old hinges rasped as Dixie grabbed the rusty knob. She had to use her shoulder to push the door. Two old ladies could never have opened this. Half open, the door jammed—but it was enough. Dixie walked into her hidden garden.

      And shivered.

      The garden appeared a perfect square about thirty or forty feet each way. High brick walls on all four sides shaded everywhere but the center. Wide stone paths ran along all four sides and across to meet in the center. A mossy stone bench stood against one wall but it looked too high and too wide for comfort. Some garden designer’s mistake, Dixie decided. Until she saw the crumbling pentagram carved in the wall above. What had she found?

      The garden seemed desolate and unwelcoming. On the stone paths, Dixie noticed marks and carvings like strange hieroglyphics. Some looked like zodiac signs, others indistinct letters and runes. Dixie followed the paths to the center where they met at a square of green she’d first thought was grass but now, she realized, was some herb or other. Rubbing the leaves between her fingers, she tried to place the smell and remembered the chamomile tea Gran used to drink.

      This must be centuries old. Didn’t chamomile lawns date from Tudor times? Impressed but still uneasy, Dixie looked around. About eight feet square, the lawn stood at the center of the garden. The sun must have shone on this patch for hundreds of years, but the thought didn’t give Dixie any thrill.

СКАЧАТЬ