Chapter 16 #2
“Or, we could not,” Etienne said. Kendrick correctly read that response as, “Get your own damn wedding.”
“I only put the question to her tonight, Addie; Miss Dryden must think about it. She may refuse me,” Kendrick said gently.
Addie frowned at him. “Good grief, why?”
Kendrick laughed. “Thank you for your vote of confidence.”
She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Maybe if you didn’t walk around in bloody shirts…”
“Time for bed,” Etienne said, steering Addie towards the tunnels. “With your leave, Kendrick, we shall make use of the rooms below instead of venturing out. I believe dawn is in a few minutes.”
“Feel free. And if you can spot who maintains the rooms, let me know,” Kendrick said.
Before retiring himself, he picked up his second-favorite E.D.
Saxon novel, Eardwulf of the Vale, from the table in the library.
It, too, contained a shocking proposal of marriage—but in this tale, it had been the plucky girl from the Highlands offering a handfast ceremony to the stranger come among them in return for his protection.
Why had he suggested marriage? He smiled ruefully down at the book in his hand. It had seemed like the logical choice at the time to give Genevieve what she wanted most and give the Ossuary what it needed. But would she accept it? Would she accept him?
It would depend on how offended she was that he had acted like a barbarian instead of a gentleman and mentioned marital relations.
He hadn’t missed how her face had frozen.
But it had been true, and something they would need to consider.
No vampire worth their fangs would miss what was or was not being exchanged.
A relationship could be disguised without one or the other, but not both.
Blood left a stamp on a body. That was why vampires—most, anyway—did not regularly drink from opium eaters, or any constantly inebriated humans, or those with blood sicknesses.
Beyond taste, it left a miasma on a body, even secondhand.
Regular blood drinking from the same person forged a scent connection.
She may well say no, the pessimist in him prodded as he carried the book with him to his rest. She is under no obligation to trot out her demons on your say-so.
The thought unaccountably depressed Kendrick. He had found himself willing to slay any number of demons and foes for her upon seeing her tears.
Brought low by a woman’s weeping. He was not too proud to admit it. He could not think of a time in the last century he had felt so helpless.
Kendrick shut the door to his room and lay down on his bed as the sun crept above the horizon.
Thumbing through the pages of the book, Kendrick contemplated what kind of man the author had been, to pen such stories that reached out through time to touch a man who had walked similar roads.
What kind of woman was Genevieve, to have been raised on such tales?
Maybe that was what had drawn him to her.
She seemed to breathe a different kind of air than the rest of the Ossuary—when they had to breathe.
When he looked at Genevieve, he could smell the morning mist and picture the way the sun glinted off the dewy heather.
He could picture the landscape the way it had been long, long ago.
Ossuary rulers, to his memory, had never shared power. A Master’s consort might have supported him in exchange for status and prestige—but they had never been equals.
Maybe they could re-learn a lesson from humanity. What better start could there be for the vampires of London?
As long as Genevieve did not find him too bad a bargain, of course.
“I don’t know what to do,” Genevieve whispered, having bared all to Elspeth in the privacy of their bolt hole. Sparrow was already asleep. “Elspeth, he wants it to be a real marriage.”
Elspeth’s eyes flicked up from the lace she was attempting to tat by one struggling candle in the few minutes before dawn. “You know that if every man was like Bacchus and Laurent, no woman would marry,” she said carefully. “But they do, all the time.”
“Is it all men, or all vampires?” Genevieve muttered.
Elspeth hummed in the back of her throat.
Genevieve pensively twisted a short lock of hair around one finger. “No, you’re right. I’m being silly. Nothing in his character has shown that Kendrick would hurt me.”
“It’s not silly,” Elspeth said gently.
“I have attacks of panic. Nightmares. I flinch when people touch me. How could I handle marriage and all the intimacy that entails?”
“You’ve really never…” Elspeth asked hesitantly. “Not since?”
Genevieve shook her head.
Twenty years as vampire had gleaned an insight into how human societal rules loosened in the dark. While some, like Gisela, sought a partner for power and status, others only wanted comfort and companionship amidst the pain, whether it be a brief liaison or a more long-standing relationship.
But Genevieve had survived by going unnoticed.
“It would be an obstacle,” Elspeth said carefully. “But I thought you liked him.”
Genevieve buried her head in her hands. “That’s the other part of the problem.”
“Well, he is right about one thing,” Elspeth said. “You would have real power to make a difference.”
“Because a man gave it to me.”
“Because he is inviting you to be his equal in all things—which is something Rupert never did for Gisela, as much as she wanted it. Kendrick would give you that—and his protection.”
Genevieve made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “Protection.”
Elspeth’s mouth pursed in disapproval. “Genevieve, we both would have given our fangs for protection five or ten years ago; don’t deny it.”
Genevieve couldn’t. I am safely free of Bacchus, but Elspeth is not free of her maker. It is not an unreasonable wish. “No, of course you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think a man would talk down to you as the wife of…what are we calling him?”
“King of the Ossuary? That sounds pretentious.” Genevieve gnawed at her lip. “He did offer to kill Bacchus, when we first met. And then looked very pleased he was already dead.” If I married him, I could extend the safety he grants me to others.
“There you go.” After a moment, Elspeth said, “Marriage is a contract, you know. Don’t be afraid to lay down your own terms for him as well.”
“What will he think about that?” she muttered. Think she was more of a scold than previously believed?
“Ask him and you’ll find out,” Elspeth said placidly. “He did not strike me as a man who was unreasonable.”
As the pull of the day sent lethargy through their bones, Elspeth blew out the candle and they curled up in their cloaks to sleep the day away.
The allure of sleep’s oblivion did not take Genevieve right away, however. She stared sightlessly up into the dark, fighting the pull.
Why her? There were others better suited for the consort of the Ossuary.
Like—well, not Gisela, who had tried to kill him and liked power for its own sake.
Definitely not someone like Winnie, who was too young and had too many selfish impulses.
Elspeth would have been an ideal candidate, with her calm and rational listening ear, but she wanted Robbie.
Which was good, because the thought of Kendrick and Elspeth was enough to make Genevieve’s throat tighten with… something like envy.
Of every woman with whom he could have suggested an alliance, he had seen her.
He watches me when I don’t notice.
She pulled her cloak over her head, recalling his quip: “Not handsome enough to tempt you, am I?”
That was not the issue. Not at all.
But that’s all it is, she told herself firmly. Interest. Liking. An…attraction. He doesn’t love me. And I don’t love him! But would a marriage with common goals be enough?
A real marriage.
When contemplating a theoretical union, she had never imagined anything otherwise when she had been human. It was only after becoming a vampire, and after her body had begun to flinch without input from her conscious mind, that she had written off any such future.
If she agreed, she would have to tell him. No, untrue. Regardless of what she decided, in order to explain her reasoning, she would have to tell him. All that she remembered, at least.
But if she said yes, she could do all that she longed to do, without asking for permission or relaying her wishes through him and depending on Kendrick to implement her ideas. She could give others hope—what she had been denied.
And she’d be married to a man who sent shivers up her arms.
Genevieve wrapped the cloak tighter around herself, her head pillowed on her father’s book about a heroine who ventured out into the wide world and gained a knight champion.
She had always wanted a hero. But heroes only lived between the pages of books, men larger than life who did what was right. Was she looking for something that did not exist?
As the inexorable pull of the sun drew her into slumber, it struck her at last what she had found so strange about their meeting in the library.
She had not flinched as he had held her and comforted her. Not once.
What terms would she ask for?