Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 97
Yet the housekeeper was oddly unconcerned by Emma’s nakedness and unsurprised by her presence in this of all chambers. In fact, to Emma’s intense relief and mortification, she’d brought with her a fresh chemise and a morning gown.
“Good morning, miss.” She placed Emma’s habiliments upon the chest of drawers and lit the beeswax taper. “Will you break your fast in the dining room or shall I have your meal delivered to these apartments?”
Emma studied the cadaverous face for any sign of opprobrium. But if she was capable of any such strong emotion, the old housekeeper hid it well behind the familiar apathy of a dutiful servant.
“Thank you, Mrs. Skinner, I’ll take some chocolate in the library.”
“As you please. Shall I stay to help you dress, miss?”
It was one thing to bear the unnerving presence of a revenant, but quite another to do so in the altogether whilst cloistered in a darkened room. “That shan’t be necessary.”
“Very good.”
“Is Lord Winterly in his Library?” Emma threw apart the heavy brocade to admit whatever feeble light there was at the window, but when she turned around to receive her answer, it was to find that the vampyre had already made quick work of escaping the light. “Slippery creature,” she muttered.
Once appropriately attired, Emma took one last look at the looming bed and the votive blood she’d so willingly sacrificed thereon. With a hard smile and a candle in hand, she withdrew into the hallway where the daylight dared not trespass.
As she navigated the lonely hallways and galleries, Emma contemplated the perpetual darkness that pervaded the castle. Even when the sun was not obscured by leaden skies, the warmth of daylight never found its way into the secret walls of Winterthurse. The conservatory was the only light place in the castle, but the inmates seldom ventured there.
Markus was not in the library, and she’d known that before she ever entered there, for her blood was quiet. Her heart was always more animated when he was nearby, as though the animal in her sensed the predator in him. A stab of fleeting disappointment settled in her belly as she moved towards the fireside. The prospect of being so much attached to the beast already was disconcerting.
The only sign that he had been there at all—knowing she would come—was the pulsing glow of embers in the fireplace, and the single rose that lay waiting for her atop the mantlepiece. Beneath it’s delicate thorns he’d placed what looked to her like a billet-doux that bore her name in straggling black ink. She cupped the head of the rose so that the stem dangled between two fingers, lest its fearsome claws steal what blood Markus had left to her. Emma brushed the black petals against her lips and drank of its tenebrous perfume. The candle was surrendered to the mantleshelf and the bloom placed beside it before she took up her letter and broke the wax seal.
Emma,—It is with keen impatience that I look forward to our next lively chess match. An affair of two hearts unfolding upon a stage of black and white, dark and light; the color of my heart’s ink ingrained upon the ivory pages of your life.
I claimed to see you best in the dark, wherein all earthly hearts are most corruptible, but I confess I found myself humbled in the shifting grey veil between shadow and light. In a fleeting moment, my guard was down and a luminous mortal gaze penetrated the deepest of the shadows o’er my unbeating heart. See you at dusk, my beauty. Yours eternally,
M.
There was no visible eye to observe her dawning blushes, only the peeking embers. Carrying the rose and the letter like two costly treasures, she moved towards the veiled window. As she had done in his chamber earlier, she parted the drapes to admit the solemn light so that it spilled over her upturned face; there was a certain austerity in its touch. She was not so naïve as to think that her delicious languor was anything but ephemeral. Sunlight bought with it a caveat and an urging for temperance and restraint. It was only at dusk that she felt unfettered. Well, she would just have to shut the light out as long as possible. And to that end, Emma quickly drew the drapes back together, unwilling to suffer the imposition of the sun’s censure.
It was then that Mrs. Skinner’s sudden eerie scratching obtruded against the door, and soon she was at the table beside the divan to deliver a breakfast tray. “A letter arrived for you this morning, miss.” She gestured a spindly white finger to the epistle resting beside Emma’s chocolate.
Emma gave a distracted nod of her head, far more interested in her lover’s whereabouts than her unexpected mail. “Where has your master gone?”
The wight eyed the window distrustfully, as though impatient to be away. “My master offered no explanations, miss, and I know better than to presume.” She moved swiftly to the door. “Will there be anything else?”
“I thank you, no,” said Emma, just as eager to be alone as the vampyre was to escape the glowing drapes.
The door closed swiftly behind the housekeeper, and the library became Emma’s private asylum once more. Sighing, she closed her gaze upon the room, and the moment her lashes brushed against her cheeks Winterly’s dark eyes opened themselves within her mind. All that had transpired last night replayed again.
“What do I taste like?” she’d asked him in the small hours, stroking his lips with indolent fingers.
“Ambrosial nectar,” he’d replied.
“And what, I wonder, do you taste of?” She’d mused aloud on the brink of sleep and couldn’t recall what, if anything, he’d answered back. Just the thought of that dreamless slumber was enough to tempt her back to somnolence. Soon she was asleep in the library.
The waning afternoon