“Your ring is beautiful,” he said suddenly, and she startled to see him gazing intently at the hand that still pressed his own. “That sort of stone is rare in the colonies, is it not?”
Rarer than he knew, but one of the few in existence was in his tent and she could not possibly explain the presence of its twin on her finger.
She shifted her hand so that just a sliver of the stone was visible and half of the metalwork around it was hidden. Perhaps he only thought it looked faintly familiar, or perhaps he hadn’t even connected it with the one he possessed. After all, he’d sustained some sort of head wound, and obviously had been given generous amounts of laudanum. He wasn’t thinking clearly.
She pulled her hand gently from his and folded it in her lap. “A trinket,” she answered airily. “A gift from my mother when I was a girl. I think it’s a piece of glass—she never said.”
Eric paused with the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip, as if he was trying to think of how to keep her by his side. She found herself longing to be drawn out, to be seen and touched. She imagined the feel and taste of his mouth against hers. But the pain or the drugs had dulled his usually sharp mind, and the silence stretched out between them. The groans and whimpers of the injured men around them filled her ears, seeming to grow louder until she could no longer stand it.
“You must be tired.” She realized it abruptly, jumping to her feet and smoothing the sheet that covered Eric’s strong, lean torso. “I came to see that you were well, but I should not have strained you by talking so long.”
“It is no strain to speak with you,” he disagreed, and his hands clutched at the sheet, as if they were searching for hers. “You must visit me again. Your company will improve my health faster than any doctor.”
Rebekah’s answering smile was immediate and genuine, in spite of her endless questions and misgivings. The one thing that she knew to be true was that she felt at home with Eric, and that he felt the same. The happy, loving, normal life she had always longed for lay before her on a folding cot in a stinking infirmary, surrounded by men who might die. And yet, he might have been sent by her father to murder her. Rebekah expected nothing less from cruel fate.
She always chose the wrong man at the wrong time. She would fall in love, making it too late to undo her mistake. “I will return,” she agreed, not knowing if she spoke the truth. She stood and shook out her skirt, trying not to notice the way he watched the motion of her hands. “Rest now.”
Then she strode from the tent, ignoring the groans of the wounded men as she went. She was no visiting angel who would sit by their bedsides as they lay dying. She was death herself, and she had business of her own to attend to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KLAUS STUMBLED AGAINST the doorframe, cursing the long flight of stairs that led to his hotel room. Loudly. He had not been drinking, and yet he felt drunk. Over the last couple of days, he’d managed to steal a few hours with Vivianne, and the time they spent together was more potent than any liquor.
She’d not yet agreed to call off her farce of an engagement, nor would she promise to forgo the ceremony that would make her a full werewolf. But since their first clandestine meeting in the Navarros’ garden, it’d become clear that she was not willing to give up Klaus, either. Every time he came to her, she lit up as if from within. Even blood could not bring him the same satisfaction, the same fullness, as the planes of her perfect face when she angled it up toward his.
But it was a different face that waited in the dim shadows of his hotel room—soft sweeps of peaches and cream rather than Vivianne’s sharp, contrasting angles. Klaus felt his lip curl into a snarl. “Sister,” he greeted her as politely as he could, under the circumstances. “I would have sworn this was my room.”
“I would have sworn you were too drunk to know the difference,” Rebekah retorted casually. She lounged comfortably on his tasseled bedding, her eyes on some scrap of paper in her hand.
“I am surprised you even remembered which hotel we live in,” he sniped back, stepping forward to get a better look at the paper. It seemed familiar, although it was hard to be sure. Pointedly, he didn’t close the door behind him. He wanted her to understand that she was free to leave just as soon as she liked. Sooner, even. “Haven’t you enlisted in the French army by now?”
Rebekah looked up at him, the rage in her eyes visible even in the gloom. “And whom have you joined forces with?” she snarled contemptuously, shaking the page in her hand as if it should have made the answer obvious. “You certainly aren’t working with our family anymore.”
Klaus lit a candle, holding his hand around the tiny flame to shield it until it could catch. The room warmed into shades of gold and green, with heavy walnut furniture scattered across an intricately patterned rug. The extra light also showed Rebekah’s temper, but he still couldn’t see what was written on the other side of the paper. Klaus felt a twinge of frustration, but was not about to admit any weakness.
“I hardly think you’re in a position to say what I’m doing or whom with,” he told her coldly after he had set the candle down on a table, “considering how long it’s been since you’ve bothered to check in. Where is this human army you were supposed to be securing for us, Rebekah? Have you won their allegiance to our cause or just wasted your time whoring around with a few of the prettier officers?”
Rebekah leaped from the bed and slapped him hard across the cheek. “Have you lost your mind?” she shouted, and Klaus could hear agitated voices complaining from nearby rooms. Rebekah didn’t seem to care as she shoved the bit of paper closer to his face. “Explain this,” she demanded, at an absolutely unreasonable volume, considering the hour. The sun was not yet up, and neither were most of the hotel’s guests. At least when Elijah secured them a home they could fight in peace.
Klaus’s eyes focused on the paper, and he felt a rage rising within him that would drown out his sister’s like the ocean swallowing a single drop of rain. The long, sloping handwriting on the page was immediately, intimately familiar to him, and his mind raced with all of the private, practically sacred things Rebekah might have read. She had no right. “That belongs to me,” he reminded her, his voice a low, warning growl. “Show some sense for once in your interminable life. Set it down, and go.”
“Sense!” she snorted, tossing the letter on the bed as if Vivianne’s thoughts and words were trash. The note in which she’d invited Klaus to their first meeting was the most important treasure he had in his possession, and Rebekah simply threw it aside. “Tell me all about sense, brother. Tell me all about how your torrid affair with that child is really just a plot, and not a total betrayal of our kind. Tell me what sweet nothings you whispered in her ear to seduce her into marrying that goddamned wolf like she was supposed to do all along!”
“My affairs are none of your business,” Klaus argued. “That cursed alliance between the witches and the werewolves was never what you and Elijah thought. You should thank me for interfering, and you would if you weren’t so blinded by your own stupid optimism.”
“My ‘optimism’ doesn’t apply to anything done or said by you,” Rebekah spat viciously. “You’ve been a walking disaster for one century after another. I’ve given up on expecting you to ever stop and think before you bring the walls down around our ears, but surely even you can see how incredibly predictable your behavior is by now. Life gets too easy, and you get bored. Things go smoothly, and you do everything in your power to ruin them.”