Time Without End (The Black Rose Chronicles) (20 page)

Daisy felt the blood drain from her face, and she raised one hand to her mouth. “Oh, God,” she murmured. “Nadine—Freddy—that poor little baby—”

Valerian gripped her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. “They have guardian angels, Daisy,” he said quickly to stem her panic. “Especially the child. But angels are single-minded creatures, almost wholly absorbed in the adoration of their Creator. Sometimes they miss things.”

“Oh, great,” Daisy muttered.

“You’ve got to leave here now, tonight,” Valerian insisted.

She glanced toward the doorway to the hall. Just beyond it, Nadine and Freddy lay sleeping peacefully in their bed. “I can’t just abandon Nadine,” she argued frantically. “What would she think if she woke up and found me gone? She’s counting on me to help her—she’s about to
give birth,
for heaven’s sake!”

“That’s easy,” Valerian said. He was already pulling her to her feet, finding her discarded clothes unerringly in the dark, tugging the garments onto her body, over the bulky long johns, as if she were a child. “I’ll simply remove all memory of your arrival from both their minds.”

“That’s crazy,” Daisy protested and he closed her suitcase and shoved it at her. “You can’t actually do that, can you?”

“I can,” Valerian said, “and I have. Tonight your sister dreamed you came for a visit. In the morning she’ll feel a little wistful and wonder how you are and if you’re taking good care of yourself.”

He pushed her out the door, closed it quietly behind them, and ushered her straight to the car.

“What about Freddy?”

“Same thing. ‘Strange,’ they’ll say, ‘that we both dreamed about Daisy. Do you suppose it means anything?’”

Daisy was pressed into the driver’s seat. “Won’t they hear the motor?”

“They might,” Valerian said, relaxing at last, “but they’ll just think it’s one of the neighbors’ cars.”

“But—”

“Just drive, Daisy.”

‘Terrific. After all this, I don’t even get to travel by broomstick?”

She could see his face clearly in the moonlight, and his expression was downright reproving. “That was beneath you, Daisy,” he said. “Just go home before I lose my patience.”

“Okay, genius, I will. It’s not like Super-ghoul would think of looking for me
there
of all places. And what happens if you lose your patience?”

“Leave,” Valerian said evenly, “before you find out.”

With a sigh Daisy started the engine, backed out of Freddy and Nadine’s driveway, and headed back in the general direction of Las Vegas.

Valerian

Colefield Hall, 1457

Elisabeth let out a bloodcurdling shriek, not of fear but of fury, as I ripped away the last of her clothes—no better than rotted rags, they were—and hoisted her off her kicking feet and into the brimming tub before the fire.

“This is foul treatment, sir!” she shrilled, hammering at my chest with her fists and splashing enough water over the sides—and down the front of my breeches—to fill the long-empty moat outside. “And it weren’t no part of our bargain, neither! Don’t you know I could catch me death? And you don’t care, neither, do you, you bloody mother-loving—”

“In the name of whatever deity you worship, Elisabeth,” I said through my teeth, “stop this mewling and thrashing, or I swear I’ll take you to the nearest nunnery and leave you there to rot!”

She fell silent, and I felt pity for her, seeing the look in her eyes, but I wasn’t fool enough to show it. She’d have been raising the roof again in a trice, the little imp.

“That’s better,” I said with what would have been a heartfelt sigh, had I been a mortal man. “You’ve been laboring under a delusion, my dear. Being clean is a most desirable state.”

Elisabeth’s expression was one of pure bafflement, and I realized, with both tender amusement and weariness, that she hadn’t grasped my meaning at all.

I tried again. “No one has ever died from taking a bath,” I assured her quietly. I scrubbed her from head to foot, for it was plain that she hadn’t the vaguest idea how to scrub herself, then wrapped her in a blanket.

She knelt in obedient silence by the fire while I sat in the hearth chair, gently combing the tangles from her copper-gold hair.

At last she turned and looked up at me, letting the blanket fall away, revealing her exquisite, creamy body with a combination of shyness and pride.

“Will you have me now?” she asked.

I could not help myself; I reached out to touch her damp hair, her smooth, fire-warmed cheek. “Not yet, love.”

“But I am a—a whore. You paid for me.”

“You are not a whore. You are a princess. And if I paid for you, then I have the right to decide when to take you to my bed. Is that not so?”

The perfect column of her neck moved slightly as she swallowed. No sound came from her lips.

I pulled the blanket around her again and raised her to her feet. “Are you afraid?” I asked, holding her in my arms because I could not resist doing so. Not after loving her, wanting her, mourning for her for so many long, empty years.

Elisabeth nodded.

“Don’t be,” I whispered. “Because I would sooner destroy myself than do anything to hurt you. All I want is to look after you—”

“I’m not a fine lady, like you’re used to,” she murmured. “Is that why you don’t want me?”

I laid an index finger to her nose, remembering so many things we had done together, things I knew she could not recall. “But I do want you,” I said softly. “I want you desperately.”

“Then, why—?”

I bent to kiss her lips, but only lightly. Only briefly. “We have time,” I told her.

She trembled against me. “Well, I can’t stay away from the Horse and Horn forever, you know,” she protested, drawing back in my embrace. “There be those who’ll be asking after me. I’ve got to look out for me lads, or some other girl will have them—”

An unholy rage surged through me at the thought of her giving herself to another man, whether for love or for money.

I caught her chin in my hand, perhaps a touch too roughly at first, and immediately relaxed my hold. Still, I knew from the fear that rose in her eyes that I had hurt her a little, and that she had not missed the look of fury I had been unable to disguise.

I closed my eyes for a moment, cursing myself for a rash, intemperate fool.

“I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Her lower lip quivered as she gazed up at me. “I’m not that other girl—the one you used to know. I’m just plain Betsey Saxon, who lifts her skirts for them what can pay.”

I should have listened to her. It might have saved us both so much pain.

Instead, I turned furiously away. “Don’t ever say that again,” I rasped, and she made no other attempt to reason with me for the rest of that night.

CHAPTER
10

Elisabeth Saxon

Colefield Hall, 1457

Elisabeth lay alone and puzzled in Valerian’s enormous bed, watching the firelight flicker across the ceiling. It was unheard of for a man to offer coins and then not take his pleasure, and she was troubled. Perhaps the gentleman did not think her fetching—the idea nettled her sorely—or perhaps she just wasn’t fine enough for the likes of him.

Well, come the morrow, she’d take her bag of gold—it was tucked safely away beneath her pillow—and go straight back to the Horse and Horn. There were men there what appreciated a sweet-natured woman, and they wouldn’t try to drown her in hot water or bum her eyes out with soap, neither.

She stretched, enjoying the feeling of the clean, smooth sheets against her bare skin, and sighed. She’d known a queer sense of recognition, when Valerian had entered the inn, as if she remembered him from somewhere beyond the reach of her memory, but she’d worked out why he’d seemed familiar. He was the living specter of a figure in a painting she’d seen, up in London Town, when she was a girl of eight.

Her father was still alive back then, and they’d gone to the city, the pair of them, hoping to sell off a cartload of cabbage in one of the marketplaces. They’d done well and shared an eel pie to celebrate, but as they started back toward home, a storm had come up, washing the cobbled streets and stinking gutters with rain.

They’d left the cart and pony in the mews and taken refuge inside a vast church, where there were paintings on the walls, and statues all about, and what seemed like thousands of candles. The place was empty, except for a priest and two or three old women kneeling in prayer, and as Elisabeth looked about, she marveled at the grandeur of it all.

The biggest painting loomed on the rear wall of the sanctuary, and Elisabeth’s father, cap in hand, had told her in a whisper that it represented die aftermath of the great battle between God’s angels and those who followed Lucifer. They’d been tussling on and off ever since, the good sorts and the bad, by his reckoning.

The eerie reality of the picture fascinated Elisabeth. The sky was filled with angels that appeared to fly, wings fluttering gracefully, while below their dangling, snow- white feet, amidst leaping flames, hideous demons thrust their pitchforks upward and leered in defiance.

On an outcropping of rock, well below heaven, but not quite in hell, or so it had seemed to Elisabeth, stood a magnificent figure, gazing up at the angels with a look of such sorrow and yearning that she’d wanted to weep for him. “Who is that?” she’d whispered and would have touched the image with a small, dirty finger if her father hadn’t grasped her hand to stop her.

A monk had crept up behind them, leathershod feet moving soundlessly over the cold stone floor, and it was he who answered Elisabeth’s question. “That, my child, is Lucifer—once God’s favorite angel.”

“Why does he look so sad?” she’d asked.

The monk spoke briskly and without compassion. “He knows that he is forever damned. As are all who willfully disobey God. Have a thought for the well-being of your soul, or you also will know the wrath of heaven.” Elisabeth had shuddered and moved a little closer to her father, who had put an arm about her shoulders. He had often remarked, in the privacy of their poor hovel in the outmost edge of the village of Lower Bilby, that kinder gods had once ruled in England, before the Christians came, bringing their devil with them.

Now, lying in a warm bed, with her belly full of good food, Elisabeth realized only too well why the master of this grand house had seemed familiar.

He looked exactly like that beautiful, solemn being in the church painting.

She shivered and pulled the covers up under her chin. “Don’t be a dunce, Betsey Saxon,” she murmured to herself. “The master’s a strange one, I’ll give you that, but he’s no more than a man.”

A shadow moved next to the window, took on solidity and shape. “Ah,” said that cultured, resonant voice she had come to recognize. “But I am ‘more than a man,’ Elisabeth. So much more.”

Valerian.

Elisabeth’s heart thundered; indeed its beat seemed to reverberate into every part of her body, but she couldn’t rightly say she was afraid. “Where did you come from?” she demanded. “You wasn’t here a minute ago.”

He laughed, and the sound, rich and masculine, moved over Elisabeth like an intangible caress. “No, I wasn’t,” he said. He took the candle from its pewter stick, carried it over to the hearth, and squatted to touch the wick to the embers.

Thin, golden light gilded his face, his hair, and the fine, strange cut of his clothes as he crossed the room again. He stood at the foot of her bed, holding the tallow at chest height, seemingly unaware of the hot wax dropping onto the flesh of his hand. In the candle’s glow, and the silver wash of the moon, it seemed he’d been sculpted from alabaster or ivory, like the statues in that London church.

“I just wish you’d make up your mind, that’s all,” Elisabeth said. “About whether you want a tumble or not, I mean.”

Something moved in the exquisite, shadowy face at her words. Some fleeting emotion she supposed was better left unrecognized.

“Must you speak like a common trollop?” he asked after a moment’s silence.

Elisabeth sat bolt upright in bed, and it never occurred to her to cover her full breasts. Modesty had no place in her life; she survived by enticing men with coppers to spend. And she had not been unhappy or ashamed, for she’d only done what she must.

Her cheeks were as hot as the last coals tumbling through the grate. “That’s what I am, sir. Who else would I talk like now, besides me own self?”

Valerian looked as though she’d struck him, then he whirled suddenly and flung the candle into the fireplace. The tallow melted and caught fire before he turned to face her again.

“I can’t bear it,” he murmured, rubbing his temples with a thumb and forefinger. “This is worse than if I’d never found you at all.”

Elisabeth felt a sudden, sweeping sympathy for him, just as she had for that lonely fellow in the painting, standing on the very brink of hell. Rising onto her knees, she made her way to the end of the bed. “For tonight,” she said softly, “I can try to pretend that I’m her. I ain’t been around so many ladies as some others might have been, but I think if I just kept quiet—”