Mina Part 16

"Are you always so hard on yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"That you would deny your own n.o.bility and your higher sentiments?"

"Ah, those!" He laughed. "I have them, but no more than any common man, which is to say that they are most untrustworthy.

Self-conceit is a higher emotion."

"Self-worth," she corrected.

"Tell me the difference, if you can. We'll discuss it over lunch."

"I'm sorry, I can't,"

"Then tell me on a walk to the hospital. I need a tour to be certain my money is well spent, and I cannot think of a finer person to give it to me."

"I've only been there once."

"Yet you call it a worthy venture and ask me for a thousand pounds."

"I believe in what they're doing, but I don't have the const.i.tution for nursing."

"Nonsense. Jonathan told me all about his fever. He said you nursed him through it. A regular Florence Nightingale, I believe he called you."

"He is not a child, Lord Gance. And he did not have an open wound or an amputation. Those poor children-victims of accidents and neglect. Wounded, delirious . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"b.l.o.o.d.y," Gance concluded, and saw from the sudden tightening of her expression that he had hit the mark exactly.

Walking dead. Good old Varney. He wanted to laugh. She stood and retrieved her leather satchel from beneath her chair. "I've taken up enough of your time," she said. "I'll leave the decision to you."

"I've already made it." He took an envelope from the desk drawer, walked to the door and handed it to her, "You didn't need to come for it. You even knew that, didn't you?" She didn't answer, which he expected, but she was not angry either. He'd hit the mark, all right. "Toying with me is a dangerous thing, Mrs. Harker. I suspect you already know that as well. I think the danger itself is what brought you here."

"I've had enough of danger," she replied, her eyes focused on the door. "May I please go?"

"My time has a price. Look at me. I mean it, look at me." She did.

"You cannot bring yourself to say yes to my proposal, yet you cannot say no either. What should I make of it, Mrs. Harker?

Should I a.s.sume the obvious and kiss you again?"

She still didn't answer, nor did she look away, though there was no invitation in her expression.

"Not here. Perhaps not ever. But I want you to trust me enough to come with me now for just a little while. Consider it an adventure, much like your one at Rules. I promise to be a gentleman."

"I recall your definition of gentleman far too well," Mina replied.

"I a.s.sumed you would," He reached for his hat and cane and led her through the door. "Mrs. Harker and I are going to lunch, then to the children's hospital," he said to the clerk. "Go home when you're finished."

They rode in silence. The leather bag full of photographs and information rested on her lap. They might have been on the way to a business lunch, with nothing to say to each other. Gance knew otherwise, and there would be time enough for words later.

He found that her presence excited him more than he'd expected. The determined set of her head, the delicate gloved hands folded and resting on the dark leather bag, the pale face above the soft fringe of black fur.When he was eleven, at an age before shame could destroy his sensuous nature, he had lost his innocence to a cousin eight years older. A quick afternoon away from adult supervision turned into long, exhausting nights. She found him an enthusiastic pupil for the months they lived under the same roof, then left him stranded with his wealth and his needs. He soon learned what wealth could buy. Discovering that each new conquest held all the pa.s.sion of his first time had been the greatest revelation of his life. The wonder that held had a sadder aspect as well. He would never marry. No woman who loved him would ever tolerate his infidelities, and he would never take a wife for convenience, not after seeing the effect of such a marriage on his mother.

The carriage pulled up in front of a high stone wall with an iron gate in the center. He unlocked it and led Mina through a small courtyard with a fountain. A second key took them into a stone cottage that could not have more than a few rooms.

Mina noticed the smell first, a blend of sweet pipe tobacco, sandalwood incense and old perfume. She stood in the shadows just inside the front door while Gance moved through the lower level of the house, opening draperies, letting in the light. When he'd finished, he sat on a black velvet divan close to the rear windows in the drawing room, his body no more than a shadow against the brilliant noon sunlight. He did not move or speak as Mina walked into the room. Instead, he acted as if she were some wild animal exploring the house, ready to bolt should he make a move toward her.

With the draperies pulled back, nothing marred the winter light or the view of a gentle slope ending at the Exe River.

Frozen stalks of rosebushes poked through the snow just outside the windows, giving promises of spring. Mina could see the high wall stretching all around the property, a.s.suring privacy for every act that went on inside of it.

And she could see the opulence of her surroundings. In the days when she had stayed with the Westerna family she had lived among such splendor. Her feet had walked on Indian carpets this thick before, her hands had rested on pieces of Murano crystal to rival the colorful collection arranged on the shelves of the carved oak sideboard. But she had never seen a room so bare of silly clutter, or so tastefully arranged. A person in this room was not lost among the draperies and knickknacks or folding oriental screens. A person made this room complete.

She walked through it into a slate-floored solarium, overgrown with palms and flowering plants. In its center was an iron table on which a Limoges tea service waited for use.

A separate door led to a small kitchen, suitable for nothing more than heating water or an occasional light meal. She went upstairs.

The second floor had two large rooms-a bathroom with brilliantly colored mosaic tile on the floor and walls, and a raised tub close to the lace-covered window. The single bedroom had divans, a round dining table made for two and a bed to rival any in Westminster, though Mina doubted Victoria would allow anything so exotic in her palace.

Its four square posts were intricately carved with flowers and vines. They supported a flat canopy draped in wine-colored satin, its underside a mosaic design in mirrored tiles.

Gance was seducing her with what he owned, and with the temple to pleasure that he had created. Then she glimpsed something at odds with the rest of the room-a portrait above the marble stones of the fireplace.

It was a portrait of a woman of late middle age, yet the beauty in her face gave evidence of having increased over time. Her green eyes were round with a curious blend of amus.e.m.e.nt and wisdom, her lips were large and sensual, slightly upturned and parted as if she were about to make some witty remark to the artist for whom she posed. The drape over her shoulders hung low in the front so that only the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered. She was a buxom woman. Mina thought that she would have been pleasant, jolly, the sort of hostess who charmed everyone. All this was portrayed so perfectly in her face. The portrait's background was of this room-the fireplace itself, the single carved post of the bed beside her.

Mina was conscious of the sound of Gance's feet on the stairs, of his soft entrance into the room. "Your mistress?" she asked him without turning.

"My father's," he replied. "No, I never lay with her, except in the sense that a child may sleep with his mother and dream of something more exciting."

"You knew her," Mina asked incredulously.

"Quite well. She died a year after my father. I was fourteen years old."

"How did she die?"

"Though my father willed her use of this house and funds to provide for it, his death left her alone. By then she was older and far larger than in the portrait. With her beauty and his love both gone, she died of loneliness."

He paused to let her comment. When she did not, he went on, "The house was willed to me, maintained by a separate fund managed by my uncle until I turned sixteen. It has been in use ever since."

She understood what he meant. It was foolish to remain here, when nothing would come of it. "Thank you for a most interesting afternoon. May we go now?" she asked and walked past him toward the door.

"Did you notice that when we left my office, I took pains that the hired driver never saw your face? No one will ever know, Mrs.

Harker. Whatever we do here, no one will ever know. And when it is over, there will be no regrets."

"I doubt that. Now I would like to leave."

"Very well, Mrs. Harker."

She turned and faced him. "Why do you keep calling me that?" she demanded.

"To remind you of who you love and who you are. To remind you of how your husband kisses you . . . how he loves you. To remind you that you are here for one simple reason, you are a woman who knows that regret is a far sadder emotion than guilt."

"I am strong enough to survive it," she retorted and started down the stairs.

"Mina!" The first use of her Christian name made her hesitate, then continue on more slowly.

"Mina, when I kissed you that night, I knew that everything I surmised about you was true. You are my equal in pa.s.sion as well as intelligence. Don't turn away from what you were meant to be."

She had quick visions of the Countess Karina in her eternal state dealing with him, of the women Jonathan had drawn so sensuously devouring Gance together. She pictured him stretched across the damp stone floor of their chamber, his blood red against his ivory skin. This vision was hardly different from the dream she'd had of Jonathan, but now the thought held no horror.

Instead it aroused her more than this house, Gance's presence, his challenge.

Yes, she wanted him. But if he would not take her, nothing would happen, nothing at all. She walked slowly down the stairs, her gloved hand brus.h.i.+ng the polished handrail as her bare one might brush ...

"Mina! Have the courage to be joyful. To live."

He started after her. Once he touched her, she would yield. If she did not display that weakness to him, he would never know.

She turned and met him halfway.

As she kissed him, she was amazed at how warm he was, he with the winter complexion and the frost-colored hair. They went downstairs. She left her coat and fur m.u.f.f with the satchel and followed him into the solarium, where he left her alone in the sunlight and went to brew them tea. When he had brought it to her and poured their cups, he began slowly to undress, stopping from time to time to sip his tea. By the time she'd finished, he was naked in a light that revealed every part of him, every tiny flaw. Though he must certainly have been conscious of this, his body revealed no excitement. She suspected that, on a dare, he might shed his clothes anywhere and remain as casually at ease.

She had never seen Jonathan naked, not even by candlelight. There was always a nights.h.i.+rt covering his chest, always blankets over his body. No, she was not brave, only carefully adventurous. Had she been brave, the demands she made would have been to her husband and she would have had no need for the pa.s.sion of a stranger. If the weeks after their marriage had been normal ones, she might have done so gladly. Not now.

She was thinking of Jonathan when Gance left her and went upstairs.

Mina followed, halting in the entranceway. The door had a simple bolt. Even now, he left her no lat.i.tude for self-deceit. Yes, these hours were what she wanted. Almost wearily, as if the decision itself had sapped all her strength, she followed Gance upstairs.

He had closed the curtains, red satin like the bedcovers and canopy, and the room was bathed in deep red. She thought she would have to undress herself, but apparently she had done enough to prove her resolve.

Millicent was napping when Mina returned home, so Mina did not have to deal with the suspicious woman's scrutiny. She stole upstairs, removing her clothing far more quickly than Gance had done and prepared a bath. When all traces of the afternoon had been washed away, she slipped on a wool dressing gown, pulled her little journal from its hiding place and began to write.

I tried not to think at all as he undressed me. Yet I could not help but feel that, though he had made it clear that I was in control, I had lost my senses somehow. Still the desire seemed so perfectly right.

As he unfastened the tiny b.u.t.tons down the back of my blouse, I felt his fingers brus.h.i.+ng my flesh, their touch spreading a warmth through me that I understood all too well.

But last time I had felt such pa.s.sion I had been entranced and the excitement had all the focus of an unwilling dream.

Now my partner was no vampire, no threat to my life or, though it sounds strange to say it, my salvation.

I moaned when he touched me, kissed him eagerly when he walked around me to slip the lace and linen fabric from my shoulders. He moved to the skirt, the slips, the corset, the tips of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s hardening when he slipped back the top of my chemise and kissed them.

I now stood in chemise and shoes and .stockings, and though I had forgotten it, I saw in the mirror beside the bed that my bonnet was still an my head, my hair still piled beneath it. The incongruity of the scene was not lost on me. I looked like a trollop purchased for a night of pleasure. The thought seemed so fitting that I smiled as I raised my hands to untie my hat.

He caught them, lowered them and undid the straps and pins himself, working so quickly that I started when my hair fell around my shoulders. His hands followed it, moving the white cotton straps of the chemise off my shoulders, in y b.r.e.a.s.t.s, my hips. Then he was on his knees in front of me, ordering me to raise one leg then another.

He ran a finger down the outside of my calf and pushed me backward so I was sitting on the edge of the bed. He unb.u.t.toned my boots and removed them, the silk stockings slowly, one at a time, his fingers moving down the outside of my legs, then up the bare center, pus.h.i.+ng them apart so his thumbs could press against my s.e.x, reminding me for a moment of what was to come.

Again I tried to touch him; again he held my hands back and swung me sideways so I lay along the length of the bed.

"Am I to be only, used?" I asked.

"Used?" He did not smile as he raised my arms above my head and wrapped my fingers around the carved wood posts of the headboard. "Tell me if you are used when I am done."

At home with Jonathan, I would have considered myself ready for intercourse, but my pleasure had only begun. I don't remember how many times I let go of the wooden post, or how many times he returned my hands to that place above me.

There were moments when I wasn't even sure what his hands and lips were doing to me, only that my response was like nothing I had ever felt before, not even in the vampire's arms.

And I still had not touched him. It was as if his satisfaction hinged not on his release but my response, as if he proved his worth with my cries of pa.s.sion, my begging for him to please, please stop just for a moment so my body could rest.

He never did, and when I began arching my back, when my hands no longer obeyed him and buried themselves in his hair, trying to pull him up on me, he stopped only for a moment. "Used," he whispered and rolled me onto my stomach, pulled me up on my knees and entered from behind. One of his hands remained in the folds of my s.e.x, its skill, and his organ pounding inside me, keeping my pa.s.sion at its peak until my body no longer had the strength to respond.

And even then his hands continued their knowing a.s.sault, his lips still sucked the tips of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, demanding the last shreds of my pa.s.sion as Dracula had my blood.

What did I learn in the hours we spent in that room? That men purchase women for a reason. That I was not at all the civilized creature I had thought myself to be. Yet something was missing from that hour of l.u.s.t and rutting. Perhaps it was the color of the room, blood red in the afternoon sun, that made the longing for the taste of blood so strong in me.

We left together, the veil of my hat carefully in place. We traveled to his office as we had to the house, sitting across from one another in the carriage, never speaking, strangers once more. I knew then that, even had I not loved Jonathan with all my heart, I could never come to love the person who had given me such pleasure. The thought of how he had acquired his skill would always be a barrier between us. Yet if I believed that I would never be alone with him in that house again, I would have been saddened by the loss. I need what he gives me. The creature I have become demands it.

As if guessing my thoughts, he whispered as he left me, "The same day next week? I will meet you here at eleven." I nodded and he motioned the cab on. I had it drop me off at Winnie's so I could leave her the check I had collected for the hospital.

"Fifteen hundred pounds!" she exclaimed when she saw it. "We may have to name the new ward after him."

"Or the birthing rooms," I replied. I smiled while Winnie laughed, delighted at my wit. I felt a pang of betrayal as well.

Though I knew he would not mind my jest, he had taken great care to see that a child would not come from our union.

Why have I written of this afternoon at all, let alone in such terrible detail, risking the possibility that someday Jonathan or someone else might read this? I suppose I did it so that, in some feature time when our al fair is over, I can read my little journal as men read their erotic stories and bring back the pa.s.sion to share-perhaps with Jonathan, perhaps with another, or perhaps only for my self-satisfaction.

Yet there is so much I did not mention because I cannot put such word to paper. Hints of a few The way his bud y looked in the glaring sunlight. The pallor of his skin. The silver highlights of his hair and the softness as it brushed against my thighs.

The sound of my voice, coming it seemed from some other body, one that Mina Harker, wife to Jonathan, could never comprehend.

SEVENTEEN

In a manner totally at odds with her usual behavior, Winnie Beason had not gone to the hospital after receiving the mail on Tuesday. Though she had opened the envelope from London, the moment she saw the contents she had slipped the pages back into it and sent a note to Mina. Then she paced her parlor waiting for Mina to arrive so they could read the translation together.

Winnie had scarcely shut the parlor door for privacy when Mina fell into a chair and pulled the pages out. "So soon!" she exclaimed. "I thought they'd take weeks to translate." She glanced at the letter accompanying them. "Mr. Ujvari has sent part of the work. Shall I read his letter first?"