She felt as though a heavy weight sat in her chest when she forced herself to admit just how wrong she’d been to trust Captain Moquet. She could no longer entertain her attraction to his relentless curiosity, not when it was such a clear threat to her. What if she’d been completely blinded by their chemistry, and he was using her much as she had intended to manipulate him?
She had to admit it was possible that Eric had never been interested in the human widow at all, and might have suspected Rebekah’s true nature all along. What if he was keeping her close in order to learn her weaknesses? Her hands shook as she picked up one cruel-looking artifact after the other, inspecting them for anything that might cause irreparable harm.
So far, the Mikaelsons had been both lucky and careful—rumors of vampires hadn’t spread from the Old World to the New. But Eric had recently arrived from France, and the truth was that he had never said much about why. What had really brought him to this distant swampland? Had he come to bring order to a lawless land for the greater glory of King Louis, or had he been sent to follow the trail of vampires?
Her eye fell on something she recognized, and she bent forward to pick it up. A small gold ring set with lapis lazuli hung on a chain that dangled from the corner of a silver mirror. The jewelry was twin to the one on her own finger. There were only six daylight rings in the world, to the best of her knowledge, and they were treasured family heirlooms. Her family’s heirlooms. What was one doing here? Had it been enchanted, like the ones Esther had made, or was it just a copy?
One thing was certain: Eric’s interest in the occult was much less haphazard than he had let her believe. He wasn’t just after “unnatural fiends”; he knew exactly what he was searching for. And in spite of all the things he seemed to have gotten wrong so far, he was also getting some things dangerously right. The lapis ring might look like nothing but a pretty trinket, but it would not have been created—and it certainly would not have been here—unless it had been meant for the finger of a vampire.
She could imagine him turning it over in his calloused hands, studying it. She could picture him prowling around this room, trying to connect all of its pieces into a coherent picture. The way his eyebrows furrowed when he concentrated, the strong line of his shoulders beneath a thin white shirt...Rebekah clenched the ring in her fist, furious with herself.
It was obvious now that she didn’t really know him at all. That brooding strength, that concentrated power...she could not afford to be attracted to the very qualities that would make him an effective killer of her kind.
Of course this was Eric’s secret. Naturally Rebekah had gotten involved with the one man who was the most dangerous to her. It was the same mistake she had made over and over, and every time that she thought she’d learned to choose more wisely, she was proven wrong. It was as if her heart had some instinctual longing for misery and pain.
Gingerly, she put the ring back exactly as she found it and moved on, continuing her investigation.
On the far side of the chest she nearly tripped over something thicker than the piled carpets, and she looked down in surprise at what must be Eric’s bedroll. She had almost forgotten that this was also the place he slept. She would never have thought him to be the type of man who would find rest among such chaos and darkness. He was serious, yes, but she had never imagined him as morbid.
For a moment she could see his dark hair with its sprinkling of gray at the temples on the crisp white pillow below her, his thoughtful hazel eyes gazing into hers. Maybe there was some kind of misunderstanding; maybe Eric’s fascination with vampires wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe there was another explanation entirely, and they could make a fresh start with none of her lies and none of his....
She lowered herself down onto his blankets, wanting to see how it was that he woke up every morning. The mirrors and some of the crosses that ringed the walls glittered in the light that flickered through the tent, and the nearest chest was so close she could have reached up and touched some of the strange instruments within. Vampires were his first waking thought and the last thing on his mind as he fell asleep. Despite lying amongst sheets that smelled of him, and feeling the spot where his body lay every night, Rebekah had to admit that there was no question that Eric’s job was to hunt vampires, and everything else—the army, the city, the king’s law—was nothing but a smokescreen.
Rebekah rose onto her knees, preparing to leave and steal back to her own tent, when something incongruous caught her eye. There was something resting on the ground beside Eric’s bed. Picking it up, she saw that it was an intricate gold locket, left open to reveal a miniature portrait within.
The flaxen-haired woman it depicted was lovely, and Rebekah was surprised to feel hot jealousy rising in her throat. It might be Eric’s mother or his sister, she reminded herself. And it didn’t matter anyway, because Eric had been sent across an ocean to find and destroy her. If the woman in the portrait was his wife, then as far as Rebekah was concerned, she could keep him.
She realized she had stayed too long. There was no sound from Felix or the battle. Her expedition had given her a great deal to think about, and probably enough evidence to leave this place and report back to her brothers. She was, after all, surrounded by the army of a vampire hunter and shouldn’t risk any more spying when she was almost certainly being watched.
But she needed to know more. The evidence of Eric’s obsession was troubling, but there could be ugly consequences to assuming she knew what it meant. If she let her brothers get hurt because she did not want to believe...if she let Eric get hurt because she believed too easily...She could not accept either risk. She wouldn’t tell Elijah or Klaus what she’d found yet, but she owed it to them to investigate fully.
Rebekah smoothed the blankets and plumped the pillow, trying to angle the locket exactly as it had been—although perhaps a little farther away from the bedroll than she had found it. She slipped through the outer chamber and poked her head out of the tent to find Felix still waiting. At least that one thing had gone as expected.
“Felix,” she whispered, and he turned attentively. “We must return to my tent now,” she told him, ensnaring him again with the power of her voice. “Once I have gone inside, you will forget that we ever left. You will know only that you followed your captain’s orders and guarded me throughout the battle.”
“I always follow my orders,” Felix told her amiably, and she had no doubt that he meant it.
CHAPTER TEN
KLAUS KEPT TO the walls, watching the garden for the first sign of movement. Any stirring might be Vivianne...or it might be a pack of werewolves emerging from the mansion to tear him limb from limb. There was no shortage of lights and voices within the house, but outside nearly an hour had passed with nothing shifting except for the wind.
Klaus reread the note clutched in his left hand for the thousandth time. He was in the right place, and while he had arrived early, she was now late. Vivianne had asked to meet him here, in the garden behind the ballroom where they had first danced together, tonight. Now. Where was she?
Without his meaning to, his gaze drifted to the vine-covered walls where he had tried to conceal the body of the unfortunate serving girl he’d fed on that same night. Solomon Navarro had learned of that little incident all too quickly, and Vivianne had seen evidence of it herself. If she was setting him up for revenge, she could hardly have chosen a better spot...but he didn’t believe that. He was sure he’d reached her the other night—he had felt the softening of her cool, skeptical exterior. She had wanted to believe him.