His lust, quiescent with her for weeks now, flooded him, and he shoved her to the floor, tearing at her skirts and at his own clothing, stifling her protests with his lips, plunging his tongue into her mouth as he plunged his body into hers, grimly, again and again, without respite, until he finally collapsed on top of her, pinning her to the floor beneath him. He could feel her shivering under him, taste the tears on her lips. He started to pull away from her, wondering what had possessed him, how he could explain to her what he could not explain to himself, but she caught him, pulling him close again. “No, Hal, no.” He tried to find the words, and she hushed him, laying her slender fingers across his lips. “I know, my love. I know.”
“I love you, Libby,” he said. “Whatever I say or do, I do love you, and someday, God willing, I shall prove it.”
Jehan and Rhys appeared at the quay promptly at dawn, supporting Kryštof ’s slumping body between them. He reeked of brandy and of wine, and Richard looked on in disgust. The seamen nudged each other and smirked as they made their way on board. The first mate stepped forward with a grin.
“Well, where d’you want him?” Jehan growled. He found this pretense distasteful, an affront to the dignity of his master, and thus to his own, but the ruse was tried and true, giving the vampire a perfect excuse for staying below decks. No one expected a man in a drunken stupor to be up and roaming about. “Gentry! Drinkin’ and whorin’ all night, and most likely puking all day,” he grumbled, as the first mate showed them to the tiny cabin they would occupy on the crossing.
“Aye, drunk as a lord! Well, and wouldn’t we all be if we had the chinks,” the mate laughed, and left them.
“It’s not you who’ll be cleanin’ up after him!” Jehan snapped, and watched the retreating man’s back shake with laughter. They cast off not long after. Jehan, denied his wolf ’s shape for the voyage, and no kind of a sailor in either form, gritted his teeth and settled in to wait out the journey.
Chapter 21
“I am not pleased, Christopher.” Geoffrey’s voice was cold, but not so cold as my blood upon hearing his words. I said nothing, waiting for him to continue. I did not have to wait long. “I have taken back your custody,” he continued, “and not just because you have come here to Paris. Nicolas is clearly unable to provide the sort of discipline that your circumstances require; I am not. But neither am I unreasonable, and I understand your need for a measure of privacy. The gatehouse here is well appointed—you will keep your household there, unless, or until, you abuse this trust. For tonight, you will stay here, with me.” Richard watched all this in silence, and watched me led from the room like an errant child bound for punishment. His expression was unreadable.
Richard was able to suppress his hostility and revulsion to women through sheer force of will, but found that sudden encounters would still leave him shaking and sick; his very beauty attracted exactly the sort of attention that he could least tolerate. We settled in, and Richard continued trying to teach me, now with slate and chalk, to read and write, with but indifferent success.
My household being too small to support my need for blood, not long after our arrival I had taken to prowling the Paris streets, both to accommodate my needs and to allay the growing temptation to take Richard. One dark night, about a month into our stay, I saw someone I knew.
Poley, with his mincing steps and faded finery, crossed a pool of lantern light and vanished in the dark, unaware that he was no longer alone. He had stumbled up the steps to his mean lodgings, was fumbling with the lock, when I quietly said almost in his ear, “Allow me,” and pulled the heavy key from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He whispered my name as he recognized my voice, and knew that a dead man stood beside him in the darkness. He stood paralyzed just inside the door as I crossed the room to the meager fire and lit the candles with a spill from the dirty mantel. The soft light revealed his thoughts as it revealed my features: those of a stranger, or at least I didn’t