Первородные: Восхождение

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

REBEKAH WASN’T SURE if she felt like crying or killing as she stalked past the drab tents of the army encampment. She wouldn’t do either, having more self-control than Klaus gave her credit for. She had to handle this little problem diplomatically, or she was not the asset her family needed her be. Klaus might as well dagger her and be done with it.

So instead of giving in to her baser instincts and massacring the lot of them, Rebekah had decided to rededicate herself to the task at hand. She had fed in more than one alley last night, replenishing her strength and gathering her focus. It wasn’t safe to try and co-opt the army as she had once planned, but she couldn’t simply walk away.

Eric knew about vampires, and he’d accepted her presence too easily—he had to be searching for a deeper truth about her. His innocent questions and idle comments replayed themselves in her mind. He might have decided to keep her within arms’ reach while he studied her, probing for weaknesses. Perhaps staking the werewolf had been nothing but a test of her resolve. But she was now determined to steer him off of his path in order to keep her family safe.

The soldiers were still laboring night and day to rebuild the damage the werewolves had caused. None of them seemed to notice her slipping into her tent, where she should have been all along.

She barely had time to make herself at home when she heard the sound of a throat clearing outside the walls. Crossing the piled carpets, she pulled open the flaps of her tent to see who waited outside.

Eric started forward when he saw her, gesturing for his guard to hang back. A clean white bandage, much smaller than the last one, circled his head at a rakish angle. Now that he was out of danger, the reminder of his battle scar made him look tougher, more rugged. The change was attractive, she noticed in spite of herself.

“Madame,” he greeted her, as courteously as he could with his heart pounding so hard she could hear it. He was almost a foot taller than her, and he bent from his great height to kiss her hand. “Rebekah. I was becoming concerned about you. After your visit to the infirmary it was like you disappeared.” His heartbeat steadied, and she stepped backward invitingly, encouraging him to follow her inside. “I hope it was nothing I said....”

“I have been keeping to myself,” Rebekah improvised. The distance between them felt much more intimate within the low cloth walls, as if the shadows of the tent were pushing them together. “With so much going on, I did not want to be in the way.”

Eric’s lean face smiled in understanding. “I have heard that you were extremely brave during the rebels’ attack. It was also very selfless of you to visit with the wounded. But a battle is no minor thing, even for hardened soldiers. It shouldn’t have surprised me that you would need some time to recover.”

She couldn’t argue, no matter how ridiculous that sounded to her. She had killed more men on her own in a day than had died in that little skirmish. She certainly hadn’t huddled here, panicking like some weakling. “It took time to sink in,” she agreed, trying to sound numb rather than bored, “and I did not feel able to face anyone once it had.”

“I have just the thing to get it all off your mind,” Eric responded crisply. He leaned his torso through the flap and signaled to the two men outside. They passed him some kind of folded cloth and a basket, but the only thing she could focus on were the vervain flowers he held out to her. “These are for you,” he announced. “And I’d like to invite you for a ride out into the countryside to restore you to your former self. Our lunch is packed.”

This time it was the sound of her own heartbeat that pounded in her ears. Was he trying to test her? To see what the poisonous vervain would do to her? The purple spikes were mingled with other blooms, and a matching length of ribbon (where had he found purple ribbon out here?) tied them all together. He was holding out a bouquet and inviting her on an outing—what new, twisted plot was this?

She struggled to calm herself. Did he know some of the flowers would burn her? He might suspect so, or even hope. But if she was to outsmart him, the best thing she could do was to continue playing her part. Flowers and a picnic lunch in the countryside. Why not? If she refused them it would look terrible....Although if she touched them, the entire charade would be over.

Eric watched her curiously, but she couldn’t tell if it was with eagerness or concern. “I wanted to thank you,” he went on haltingly, as if her pause had made him nervous, “for your visit to my bedside. It must have been very difficult for you, but it was deeply moving to me.” His smile was absolutely winning. The easy flash of his teeth, the genuine happiness in his hazel eyes. In spite of herself, Rebekah was dazzled by this man all over again.

If she wanted to leave this camp without a slaughter, she would have to pull herself together. “I love the idea of a day away from this place,” she agreed, trying not to think about how appealing it sounded to spend the day with him. She was going along to avoid suspicion, after all. If she wanted to be alone with him, to see that smile meant only for her, to touch him...wouldn’t that only help to make her pretense more believable?

“These are lovely,” she smiled. “But when did an army captain have time to go flower-gathering?”

Eric had the grace to look a little abashed. “Fortunately, I have assistants who possess a wide variety of talents,” he explained, although whether he meant that one of his men had chosen the vicious weeds or run the camp for him while he performed the task she couldn’t be sure.

“How considerate.” She improvised, leaning forward carefully and pretending to smell the bouquet he still held. She caressed his arm through the rough sleeve of his uniform, hoping he would not notice that she only touched him and not the flowers. She knew that if their positions were reversed, she would not have noticed anything but the stroke of his fingers. “Would you put them in the pitcher there for me until we return? I cannot carry them while we ride.”

She could hear the unsteadiness of his breath. She thought she saw his eyes flicker briefly to the flowers before returning to hers, but she could not be sure. “Of course.” He recovered his composure and set the bouquet gently in the empty earthenware pitcher she had indicated. “Safe until our return.”

Without water, the flowers would wither in the heat of the day, and in the meantime, she could work on prying out every bit of information that she possibly could, free from distractions. And if she enjoyed his company while she did it, she could hardly help that. She would kill him if she had to, but her feelings in the meantime were no one’s business but her own.

Rebekah remembered to turn her daylight ring around just before Eric helped her onto her horse. The site he had in mind for their outing was about an hour’s ride away, through sun-dappled clearings and onto a grassy bluff overlooking the river. By the time Eric pulled up his horse, Rebekah found herself more relaxed and refreshed than she would have thought possible. No matter her real agenda—or his, for that matter—a day in the countryside with Eric Moquet was exactly what she needed.

He spread out the blanket with a flourish and set the basket in the center of it. Rebekah, whose appetite was already reasonably well sated from the night she had spent in town, picked politely at the cold lunch, biting a piece of cheese into smaller and smaller triangles and popping grapes against the top of her mouth.

There was wine and a tiny bottle of absinthe, and Eric imbibed freely—so freely that she began to wonder if he had really been intending to trap her with that toxic bouquet, after all. Would he be so careless if he truly thought he might be alone with a monster?

“I hated to be relieved of my duties these last few days,” he admitted idly, taking a pull from the flagon of wine. “I could hardly stand not knowing what was happening in my own command.”

“I know the feeling,” Rebekah said, leaning her head back to let the breeze cool her face. “I was once—sick—for a long time, and it was maddening to wake and realize that life had gone on without me.”

“I cannot imagine,” Eric replied, gazing at her. “I think that the world must have stopped turning without you fully present in it.”

Rebekah was not prone to blushing, but now she couldn’t help it. To hide how flustered she was, she jumped to her feet. “Will you walk with me for a bit?” she asked. “I think the wine is going to my head in this sun.” She had barely touched her glass, but he stood courteously and brushed the wrinkles from his clothing.

“I would be delighted to walk with you,” he replied formally, taking her arm. She had to look away from his mouth. His lips were somehow both soft and firm. She could imagine them on her throat, on the hollow above her hip bones...everywhere.

Rebekah kept her eyes on the sparkling skein of river below them as they made their way along the edge of the bluff. It seemed as though she changed her mind from one minute to the next: She simply couldn’t tell if he was hunting her, or courting her. She should be able to figure it out, after centuries of life. It was ridiculous that she still didn’t know the difference between a man who wanted to bed her and one who wanted to kill her. Yet here she was, with all the evidence pointing one way and all of her instincts pointing the other.

“Do you know who the men were, who attacked us?” she asked, turning the conversation back to her strategy.

Eric waved dismissively. “Rebels.” He shrugged. “Well-enough organized for what they were, but there was no sign that they were connected to any larger group. There are always malcontents when a lawless land submits to formal government. I expected nothing less, but we’re now closer to a safe, peaceful New Orleans.”

Rebekah wished that were true. Klaus was about to plunge the whole region into another chaotic civil war, and it would be one the army was not prepared to combat. Rebekah had once imagined the French soldiers as cannon fodder, as a horde of faceless, struggling bodies between her family and the other clans. She had to admit now that their leader had become something entirely different to her. “It is a city eager for peace,” she replied neutrally.

“Yes, and I want to protect other citizens from the fate that befell you,” he explained, avoiding her eyes.

She wondered if his awkwardness was due to conflicted feelings over her widowhood or any suspicions about her true identity. “That’s very noble,” she told him, because it was true either way.

They reached the first scattering of trees that signaled the thicker, wilder forest ahead. Enough sunlight shone through to nourish glossy green grass, and birds sang. Rebekah could feel the teeming life surrounding them, almost pressing in on them.

He walked so close to her that she could feel the heat of his skin. Suddenly, he grabbed her wrist, stopping her. Was he about to try and fight her? No...he was turning her to face him. He paused, muttered, “I hope you’ll forgive me,” and then he stepped even closer and pulled her in by her waist to kiss her.

It was light at first, questioning, and then his mouth found hers again with fresh urgency. He pressed against her until her back came up against the trunk of the oak tree whose branches spread above them. Then she pressed back, driving her body against his, knowing only that she could not be close enough to him.

Minutes or hours or days later he broke off their kiss, taking half a step back and holding her by her shoulders. “I have wanted to do that since the night we met,” he told her, his mouth curving into a satisfied smile. “I was just afraid it would be too soon. Then I saw you beside me in the infirmary, and I knew that I could not let you go.”

“I’m glad you did,” she whispered, wishing that he were kissing her again already. The wrongness of it—that he might be dangerous to her, that she should not risk trusting him, that Klaus would stake her if he knew how much she was enjoying this—made it even more appealing. Perhaps she had more in common with her brother than either of them would have thought. “It was...not too soon.”

“I know your loss is still recent,” he said, and she tried to find an expression somewhere between sad and vixenish. “But I also know that life is terribly, impossibly short. I have not felt this way since my...since—”

“Since Marion died,” she finished for him, wishing that she had never inadvertently pretended to share the same kind of loss as he had experienced. It felt like cheapening his grief somehow, to have faked her own.

“Since then,” he agreed, seeming relieved not to have to say it himself. “We are both alone in the world, Rebekah, and both living with the reminder that even those closest to us can be taken at any time. There is no time to waste.” She could see that there was more that he wanted to add, but he hesitated. She could still taste the sweetness of his mouth, and felt almost drunk off it.

“Do not waste any, then,” she urged him, realizing that she was not afraid of whatever he might say. He could tell her all about vampires, or even ask her if she was one. At that moment he could have said anything at all, and she would have accepted it.

“There is no time to waste,” he repeated softly, lifting a calloused thumb to trace her lips with an expression of wonderment on his face. “Whatever years or seconds or decades are left, I want to spend them with you. And so I hope you will understand that, and not simply assume I am mad, when I ask you to be my wife.”