Home > The Book of Life(10)

The Book of Life(10)
Author: Deborah Harkness

   There was a grain of truth in the remark, and an ocean of pain behind it.

   “I should get back to Diana.” Matthew rocked to his feet and rested his hand on Fernando’s shoulder for a brief moment before turning to leave.

   “Waiting will not make it any easier to tell Marcus and Hamish about the blood rage, my friend,” Fernando warned, stopping him.

   “I thought after all these years my secret was safe,” Matthew said.

   “Secrets, like the dead, do not always stay buried,” Fernando said sadly. “Tell them. Soon.”


* * *

   Matthew returned to his tower more agitated than when he’d left.

   Ysabeau frowned at the sight of him.

   “Thank you for watching Diana, Maman,” he said, kissing Ysabeau’s cheek.

   “And you, my son?” Ysabeau put her palm to his cheek, searching as Fernando had for signs of blood rage. “Should I be watching over you instead?”

   “I’m fine. Truly,” Matthew said.

   “Of course,” Ysabeau replied. This phrase meant many things in his mother’s private lexicon. What it never meant was that she agreed with you. “I will be in my room if you need me.”

   When the sound of his mother’s quiet footfalls had faded, Matthew flung wide the windows and pulled his chair close to the open casement. He drank in the intense summer scents of catchfly and the last of the gillyflowers. The sound of Diana’s even breathing upstairs blended into the other night songs that only vampires could hear—the clack of stag beetles locking horns as they competed for females, the loirs’ wheezing as they ran across the battlements, the high-pitched squeaks of the death’s-head hawkmoth, the scrabbling of pine martens climbing the trees. Based on the grunts and snuffles Matthew heard in the garden, Gallowglass had been no more successful catching the wild boar uprooting Marthe’s vegetables than he had been in catching Corra.

   Normally Matthew relished this quiet hour equidistant from midnight and dawn when the owls had stopped their hooting and even the most disciplined early risers had not yet peeled back the bedcovers. Tonight not even the familiar scents and sounds of home could work their magic.

   Only one thing could.

   Matthew climbed the stairs to the tower’s top floor. There he looked down at Diana’s sleeping form. He smoothed her hair, smiling when his wife instinctively pressed her skull deeper into his waiting hand. Impossible as it was, they fit: vampire and witch, man and woman, husband and wife. The hard fist around his heart loosened a few precious millimeters.

   Silently Matthew shucked off his clothes and slid into bed. The sheets were tangled around Diana’s legs, and he pulled the linen free, settling it over their bodies. Matthew tucked his knees behind Diana’s and drew her hips back into his. He drank in the soft, pleasing scent of her—honey and chamomile and willow sap—and feathered a kiss against her bright hair.

   After only a few breaths, Matthew’s heart calmed and his restlessness seeped away as Diana provided the peace that was eluding him. Here, within the circle of his arms, was all that he had ever wanted. A wife. Children. A family of his own. He let the powerful rightness that he always felt in Diana’s presence sink into his soul.

   “Matthew?” Diana asked sleepily.

   “I’m here,” he murmured against her ear, holding her closer. “Go back to sleep. The sun hasn’t risen yet.”

   Instead Diana turned to face him, burrowing into his neck.

   “What is it, mon coeur?” Matthew frowned and pulled back to study her expression. Her skin was puffy and red from the crying, and the fine lines around her eyes were deepened by worry and grief. It destroyed him to see her this way. “Tell me,” he said gently.

   “There’s no point. No one can fix it,” she said sadly.

   Matthew smiled. “At least let me try.”

   “Can you make time stand still?” Diana whispered after a moment of hesitation. “Just for a little while?”

   Matthew was an ancient vampire, not a timewalking witch. But he was also a man, and he knew of one way to achieve this magical feat. His head told him that it was too soon after Emily’s death, but his body sent other, more persuasive messages.

   He lowered his mouth deliberately, giving Diana time to push him away. Instead she threaded her fingers through his cropped hair, returning his kiss with an intensity that stole his breath.

   Her fine linen shift had traveled with them from the past, and though practically transparent, it was still a barrier between their flesh. He lifted the cloth, exposing the soft swell of her belly where his children grew, the curve of her breasts that every day ripened with fertile promise. They had not made love since London, and Matthew noticed the additional tightness of Diana’s abdomen—a sign that the babies were continuing to develop—as well as the heightened blood flow to her breasts and her sex.

   He took his fill of her with his eyes, his fingers, his mouth. But instead of being sated, his hunger for her only increased. Matthew lowered Diana back onto the bed and trailed kisses down her body until he reached the hidden places only he knew. Her hands tried to press his mouth more firmly against her, and he nipped her thigh in a silent reproach.

   Once Diana began to fight his control in earnest, demanding softly that he take her, Matthew turned her in his arms and drew one cool hand down her spine.

   “You wanted time to stand still,” he reminded her.

   “It has,” Diana insisted, pressing against him in invitation.

   “Then why are you rushing me?” Matthew traced the star-shaped scar between her shoulder blades and the crescent moon that swooped from one side of her ribs to the other. He frowned. There was a shadow on her lower back. It was deep within her skin, a pearly gray outline that looked a bit like a firedrake, its jaws biting into the crescent moon above, the wings covering Diana’s rib cage, and a tail that disappeared around her hips.

   “Why have you stopped?” Diana pushed her hair out of her eyes and craned her neck over her shoulder. “I want time to stand still—not you.”

   “There’s something on your back.” Matthew traced the firedrake’s wings.

   “You mean something else?” she asked with a nervous laugh. She still worried that her healed wounds were blemishes.

   “With your other scars, it reminds me of a painting in Mary Sidney’s laboratory, the one of the firedrake capturing the moon in its mouth.” He wondered if it would be visible to others or if only his vampire eyes could detect it. “It’s beautiful. Another sign of your courage.”

   “You told me I was reckless,” Diana said breathlessly as his mouth descended to the dragon’s head.

   “You are.” Matthew traced the swirling path of the dragon’s tail with his lips and tongue. His mouth drifted lower, deeper. “It drives me crazy.”

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