A Dance in Blood Velvet (45 page)

You poor fool
, Charlotte thought.
All you’ll get from him is a sweet smile and a graceful refusal.
Then, with a shiver, she wondered if Stefan, Andreas or Katerina might feed on Lady Tremayne before the evening was out.

While she ignored Karl, she felt him watching her. The temptation to glance at him was overwhelming. She resisted, but still his eyes scorched darkly into her. Turning hot, she edged away to the satellite group forming around Stefan and Niklas.

Shielded by others, she glanced back and saw a Roman emperor leading Emerald Tremayne onto the dance floor. The band was beginning a slow waltz. She could just see Karl; he was excusing himself from the group, moving away. Where was he going?

To Charlotte’s surprise, he was coming towards her. The group parted to let him through. She saw the dismissive coolness of Katerina’s expression as he said, “Miss Kessler, may I have this dance?”

Charlotte felt like refusing, but could not. He led her onto the floor, slid one hand around her waist and twined his fingers with hers. They looked at each other; no word was spoken. They were both holding back. His eyes and face were a distracting veil over his thoughts; she dared not let their beauty slide through her guard. She was thinking,
Has he dismissed me forever, because of Violette and Katerina? Is this a polite goodbye? Or is he saying nothing because he’s not sure of me, either?

After a time, he said, “Can we stop pretending now, Charlotte?”

“Meeting at this party was not a good idea,” she said flatly.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Stefan didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“He meant well.” His tone was off-hand. Her fears welled up and she felt dangerously close to crying. More than ever she tried to make her eyes blank and cold.

Yet as they danced, something happened. She avoided his gaze, looking over his shoulder at other couples. But how lovely Karl’s hands felt. Nothing more deliciously sensual. And he was holding her closer with every step.

“Charlotte, look at me,” he said. “You really are not aware of it, are you?”

“Aware of what?”

“The effect you have, all in white, with your hair loose.” Now Karl was gazing at her as he always had, his irises deep amber lamps. His intensity left her defenceless... because he was bewitched by her, too. Useless, pretending to be reserved or cold to each other.

Then she understood, if she hadn’t known all along. Their passion for each other could never be divided among others.

“I think I have some idea,” she said, and he smiled.

Artifice fell away. Charlotte found herself smiling back at him. Ah, the contour of his shoulders under the black velvet; the touch of his fingers on hers. The soft near-black chestnut of his hair, light sheening the strands with blood-red... His eyelids swept down, his long lashes dark against his cheeks as he looked at her throat. Desire. She turned hot and cold like the human she’d once been; a girl too nervous even to dance with him.

Charlotte sensed people watching them; Stefan with approval, Katerina and Lady Tremayne with mild disgust. She didn’t care.
Let their jealousy eat them; they can never know how we really feel!

As the music ended, Karl kissed her on the mouth, long and passionately, as if they were alone. Charlotte heard Emerald - a few feet away - gasp with shock. For all she knew, they’d only met an hour before!

Karl and Charlotte looked at each other, sharing the joke. “And your conduct in public is usually impeccable,” she said.

“We should go somewhere more private, don’t you agree?”

They moved through the crowd and slipped discreetly through some French doors. Outside, they found a lovely, intimate garden, divided by hedges and trellis into separate arbours. It was a town garden, not large, but curtains of foliage made it seem dense and endless. Karl and Charlotte walked slowly through the maze, hand in hand, letting the clear air and the subtle colours of night wrap round them. Each arbour had its own ambience; some were spacious, with a statue or fountain as a focus; others were tiny, swathed in clematis, climbing roses, wisteria. Plenty of places for lovers to hide.
Guests must love this garden,
Charlotte thought, although the air was too cold for more than a few courting couples to be outside. None turned to look as Karl and Charlotte passed.

In the furthest corner, they found a small bower, hidden by ivy and climbing roses. There was a wall-fountain, a stone bench, a bank of moss sloping into a tiny pocket of wild garden. They sat on the bench, but it seemed the cool breeze blew distance between them, and Charlotte became nervous.

“I sometimes wondered if we’d ever see each other again,” she said.

“I knew we would. I only wondered if you wanted to.”

“Well, now you know,” she said. “I always did.”

Karl stroked her cheek, gazing seriously at her; she was trembling, couldn’t stop herself.

He said, “I went to
Swan Lake.”

She was startled. “You didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you come and sit with me?”

“I didn’t say which performance I saw.”

“But I’ve been at every one! I never knew you were there.”

Slight sadness touched his mouth. “And that’s why I didn’t come to you.”

“But I wish you had! Karl...” And Charlotte knew that she could not mention Violette. If he thought she only wanted to see him to discuss Violette -!

“I still can’t entirely forgive you for not coming with Katti and me.” He spoke with a touch of humour, but meant it, she knew.

“Have you anything to tell me?” she asked softly.

“A great deal.” Karl began to tell her about Benedict, vampires rescued from the
Weisskalt,
the fire at Lancelyn’s house and the confrontation... And although Charlotte listened with interest, and it was bliss simply to be with him, none of it answered her question.

“But,” she said, hardly able to force out the name, “Katerina...”

“What about her?”

“Karl, for heaven’s sake! Must I share you with her? Or are you about to tell me that you’ve abandoned me for her?”

Karl’s reaction, as usual, was infuriatingly minimal. “If that were the case, I would not be here now.”

“Well, why ever did you bring her? If a man comes to a rendezvous arm-in-arm with another woman, he can only be saying one thing. And pardon me, I’m not yet old or wise enough to rise above jealousy. I can’t bear to think of you making love to her while I wasn’t there...” Feeling tears in her eyes, she turned her head away.

Karl let out a soft breath. All the time he spoke, he stroked the long skeins of her hair. “We were playing games, you and I, when we met this evening. Both pretending not to mind what the other did. But it’s pointless, and only hurts us, because neither of us are game-players at heart. I have not made love to Katti. She’s offended that I refused, even though she has Andreas now. I brought her tonight, not to parade her as my lover, but to convince her that I still love
you
. No one else, ever. And I agree, these things shouldn’t matter to us, who are immortal and supernatural; but they do. They still do.”

“Oh, God.” Charlotte sighed. Her tears became those of relief. She could say nothing articulate;
I love you to distraction and I hate myself and I’ve missed you, forgive me, forgive me, please...
Only, “God.”

“Beloved, when will we know each other well enough to have absolute trust?” Karl sank his fingers through her hair and kissed her; and they both knew. Katerina didn’t matter, Violette was forgotten. There was only this.

Charlotte tipped back her head as Karl rested his lips on her neck; the gentlest, most loving of gestures, because he could have bitten her, and chose not to. She put one hand in his hair and held him lightly, feeling the moment whip through her, like a breath held too long.

Then, without another word, Karl took her hand and led her down into the wild garden. Under the foliage of birches and weeping cherries, she took off her dress and spread it on the moss-cushions, and they lay down together on its soft white folds. The night-chill, too cold for humans, was no more than a prickle on their flesh.

“How have we let so much time pass?” Charlotte whispered. Karl was removing his velvet coat, but she pulled him to her, still half-dressed. “Never mind that.”

Smiling, he did not protest.

An imperative fever took possession of them, humanly urgent, weirdly heightened by the dark sweetness of the garden. Like falling, like flying. Karl’s heat swept Charlotte into a pleasure so searing and convulsive that afterwards she was left shaking and almost too weak to move. Too drained to slide her canines into Karl’s neck, as she would usually have done... And she realised that Karl had not bitten her throat, either. For some hazy reason, she was glad.

They had no wish to go back into the house. They dressed, not speaking but kissing often; began to tidy each others’ dishevelled clothes and hair, then stopped and clutched each other - her head on his shoulder, his head resting on hers - under the dappled trees.

Leaving the garden through a side gate, Charlotte took Karl back to the hotel where she was staying with the Ballet Janacek.

There, on her bed in the big shadowy room, they made love again. More gentleness and passion this time, no sense of the hours passing. With snowflake delicacy they stroked each other’s gleaming bodies, feeding on beauty without ever taking a drop of blood.
This is almost too exquisite to bear,
Charlotte thought;
why does there have to be anything to life but this?

Again, at the end, orgasm did not plunge her into the deeper lust for blood. She wanted to... but let the feeling go. And although Karl pressed his lips to her neck, he did not break the skin.

He lay across her, teeth just grazing her shoulder. When he lifted his head and gazed down at her, dark red hair falling into his eyes, he looked as shaken as she felt. He was no longer smiling. Neither was she.

“This is the danger, is it not,
liebchen?”
he said softly. “That desire can take us completely out of ourselves.”

“Completely into someone else,” she said. “Yes. Like feeding...”

“No, even more than that, because in taking blood you gain control; in sex you lose it. And to surrender our power like this is frightening...”

“To a vampire?” she said. But she knew exactly what he meant. “Still?”

“But I haven’t seen you for such a long time, Charlotte. The memories fade a little, so when we experience this again, the intensity is devastating. It can never lose its hold.”

“I remember the first time,” she said. “I was a girl, ridiculously innocent until you seduced me. I had no idea such feelings existed; not outside guilty dreams, at least. Then you showed me and, God, I didn’t know what had hit me. I have never been so terrified, discovering how it could take me over, mind, body and soul. Just that tiny word that could never be mentioned. Sex. Infatuation, passion, love...”

A faint smile lengthened Karl’s mouth. “I know. But let us be honest, neither of us was sorry, were we? And I tell you, it’s worse for a vampire, because we are not used to giving up our power in such an abandoned way.”

“I had a foolish thought, just now. I wished we were both human. I wish we didn’t have to hunt for blood to live. That we had no worse cause for guilt than the fact that we aren’t married. But these thoughts are an irrational weakness, aren’t they?”

“No, but they cause you pain,” said Karl. “And such pain can be dangerous. Sometimes I understand why Kristian forbade us from loving anyone but him and his God.”

Charlotte turned on her side, propped her head on one hand. “Well, which do you prefer, love or self-control? Would you leave me, rather than be a slave to passion?”

She asked idly, but regretted the question at once.
If you can’t bear the answer
, she thought,
never, ever ask
. She closed her eyes, felt Karl’s hand on her hip. Warm and divine his fingers felt, like silk.

“Now, I never said that, beloved. But I might be forgiven for wondering if you distanced yourself from me for the same reason?”

Charlotte thought of Violette and her heart sank. She shook her head. “It’s a lie,” she said, “this talk of self-sufficiency. We’re always in thrall to something. Someone.”

“The dancer?” said Karl.

“Don’t,” said Charlotte. She lay back, pulling him down. “Shh.”

His long, leanly muscular body pressed the length of hers, and she felt the two sharp points of his fangs puncture her veins... Her back arched with the stinging pleasure. No human terror, but still there was an acute thrust of disbelief that he was not human... delicious amazement that she was unhuman, too.

After a time, Karl curled his arm under her hair and drew her down to his throat. “Share the milk of Paradise,” he whispered.

Hours later, Charlotte saw dawn glimmering through the windows. Time to enter the Crystal Ring to rest. Lying here with Karl, she should have felt supremely happy, but could not. She hadn’t asked the question. She’d put it off all night in favour of pleasure, but it hung in the twilight, a great iron bell that must toll eventually.

While they bathed and dressed - Karl still in his black velvet - she was trying to summon courage to speak.
Now, before it’s too late!

“After the Crystal Ring,” he said, “I’m going back to Benedict. Will you come with me?”

“Karl...”

“It’s not an ultimatum, beloved. Stay here for now, if you wish. I only ask that we don’t spend months apart again.” He looked closely at her, concerned. “But be honest with me, and tell me what is troubling you.”

Ask him!
“I need your help.”

“Yes?” He looked wary, but resigned, as if he already knew.

“You’re going to say no, but please don’t, not at once. I want you to help me make Violette into a vampire.”

“Liebe Gott.”
He turned away from her. “I knew you were going to ask this.”

“How?” she cried.

“Instinct. Why else did you want to see me, after all these months?”

“Karl, don’t! I’m asking for your help. I could have asked someone else, and never told you at all. But I don’t want secrets. I want you to be part of it.”