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Mal gave his man a scowl. “Not a whole lot right now. It’s about as still as she is on the outside.” And that bothered him almost as much as her physical stillness bothered Kohana. The fact the big Indian had chosen to sit here, watching over her instead of hauling her like a sack of grain back into the compound’s secure perimeter, said volumes about how the little Irish flower had wormed her way into all their hearts.
Mal realized he’d seen more than a hundred and twenty summers now. It was interesting, how he always thought of it that way. There were four seasons, but it was the summer that always marked a year. Perhaps because it was the peak of growth and change, and held the promise of fall and winter endings behind its warmth and stability. Like her. It was the sadness and happiness together, how she twisted them together so tightly inside herself, that made her such a fascinating creature of both light and shadow.
He could certainly probe her mind much more deeply to find out what she was thinking, but that curious blankness made him proceed cautiously. He’d reserve that right for when the information could not be obtained by the courtesy of simply asking.
When she’d first come to the island, Kohana had told her the truth. Mal didn’t use the marks to pry that often. They were for communication. But since he’d third-marked her, the times he’d stepped into her mind, he’d found himself not wanting to leave, a desire unexpected and unprecedented. He was different from other vampires, and he’d wanted to keep it that way. He’d told himself he had no need of a servant. And he’d been lying to himself. Maybe in a lot of ways, for a long time.
He moved across the field. She seemed impossibly fragile and small to him, sitting out here. If there were any cats about, which there weren’t, he thought they might be more likely to view her as a cub than a meal. Her back was straight, though, chin up, her resilience in danger of cracking her right down the middle, like a clay pot.
He stopped behind her. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”
She nodded, one quick jerk of her head. When she spoke, her voice seemed hollow, as if she were deep in a cave. “You know, when I was a little girl, about the only thing useful my mum ever told me was that we could wish for things all we wanted, but not to ever expect them to happen. That life had its own plans for us, and we needed to accept and adjust to that, not spill our hearts away on nonsense that was never going to be. But . . . it was such a simple dream. I thought it would be okay.”
As his brow creased, she swallowed noisily. “I mean, was it so much to ask, marrying a man who was like me? He liked being Dev’s backup as station manager. He could have done it all his life. I saw myself as his wife, working in Lady Danny’s house, maybe even taking over for Mrs. Pritchett as head housekeeper when she decided to retire to her little house in Darwin with her daughter.”
Her voice became louder, yet more unsteady. “Willis and I would have a couple babies, a boy and a girl. They’d grow up on the station, and Dev would teach them things, the same as we would, and maybe they’d even get schooled and go on to be something a bit better than us. She might be a schoolteacher, or a nurse in a hospital. He could run a pub, be a businessman. I thought about that for Willis and me. We could run one of those hotel and pub things, where I handled the hotel and he handled the pub; then we’d pass it on to our son. And we’d have the money to give our daughter a beautiful wedding when she found a good man who worked hard and could take care of her. It seemed like such a small dream. Why would God care if I had that for myself or not?”
Pushing away irrational jealousy, Malachi moved around her, settled on his heels where he could put a hand on her knee and see her face. It was tear-streaked, of course. He’d heard it in her voice, trying to hold strong and yet quavering like grass helpless to the wind’s desires. Her blue eyes shifted to his face. Instead of meeting his gaze, she roved over his features, and then surprised him by reaching out and laying her hand on his brow. Her slim, chapped fingers spread out over his cheekbone and the bridge of his nose, tracing them.
“You’re so handsome. I don’t care what the world says about white people needing to stay pure. There’s not much pure about any of us, whatever our color. But I didn’t really understand the men who took up with black women. They seemed like they came from such different places, you know? How could it possibly make sense, beyond just a matter of lust? But they had children, and I knew they loved one another, some of them. But you, since I’ve come here . . .”
She dropped her hand to his shoulder, and those fingers curled into his shirt, held on fiercely as her eyes closed and her face hardened against an emotion that was fairly eating her.
“Elisa, tell me what’s the matter and we’ll fix it.”
A half sob burst out of her, raw and painful. She rose as if she was intending to dash away from him, but he caught her arm. When she struggled against him, he simply swung her up in his arms and took her place on the ground, settling her in his lap even as she thrashed.
“Here, now, enough of that.” He shook her a bit, just to get her to mind, and felt alarm as she went limp, curling her hands into herself and her body into a ball in his embrace, as if guarding herself against his touch. “Elisa, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’m going to get very annoyed with you. You’ve been feeling better lately. What’s changed?”
Had she decided she didn’t want to stay? His gut wrenched at the thought. Had she decided she needed to go back to Australia and nurse her memory of Willis? A specter he was beginning to have some hard feelings toward, fair or not.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. Which is why it’s so awful, how I feel. I know you’re a vampire. I’m human. We agreed I’d be your full servant to help find the children a place. And then I’d probably go home to Danny. But things changed, and what you said the other day . . . I don’t know what it means, but a part of me really wanted to hear that.”
That cold knot in his gut loosened slightly, but not enough. There was a very large “but” in her words, and the suspense was fraying his nerves.
“A part of me wanted to go home, so badly. I miss the station. I miss my life there, but even if I go back, that life is gone. Because I’ll walk in the barn and remember . . . and Willis won’t be there.” She took a long pause, during which he heard the hitching shudder of her breath. “You won’t be there,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, relief filling him. But she wasn’t done.
“I keep thinking about you, the way you run with your cats, and wrestle with them. How you were when we were traveling. God help me, the things you can make me feel, the way my body is shameless when it comes to you. I didn’t understand it in Dev, the way he is with Danny, even when I saw hints of it. They whispered about it on the station, a big strong man like that, so in control of so many things, but he’ll do anything for her. Serve her any way she desires. The same as I’ll do for you.”
She straightened in his arms then, meeting his gaze, dashing away her tears with the back of her hand. “I know I’m supposed to be adult and mature, all sophisticated and not say these things straight out, but there it is. I’ve gone and fallen in love with a vampire, an Indian, and a man who’s all wrong for me. You won’t let me fuss over you and mend your shirts. You won’t come in from a long, hard day and eat my food and then fall asleep in your chair, your reading glasses slipping off your nose. You won’t sit there and snore while I darn your socks and think about how I need to trim your hair this week, because we’ll be going to the station social and you need to look nice for that. Will you?”
She gave him such a decided, accusatory glare, Malachi was at a loss how to respond. Then she pushed off his lap and stood, putting her arms akimbo. “But none of that means anything, none of what I want, because I’m carrying your baby.”
Bursting into tears again, she bolted away from him and ran.
Fortunately, because of his vampire speed, he was able to be slack-jawed for about thirty seconds and still catch up with her. The daft girl had run for the forest, rather than the house, and he was impressed to see he reached her almost at the same moment as Kohana. Using his crutch, the man had taken off after her as soon as he’d seen his employer sitting stock-still as if he’d been hit in the head by a large sledgehammer.
When Malachi overtook him, he veered off, slowing down to rub his abused single leg. It meant they had their privacy when Mal caught her about the waist. It overcame him then, realizing that he was holding not only her, but also their child, under the grip of his forearm. Great Spirit, he wasn’t sure any vampire had ever become a father this young. It brought its own worries, glorious and terrifying at once. Easing his grasp, he turned her, putting that away for now. But he didn’t put it away fast enough, because he was caught unprepared when she rammed her fist into his belly. As hard as any third-mark could do it.
While he was swearing, profusely, she looked shocked and dismayed by her own actions. However, instead of apologizing as he would have expected, she crossed her arms tightly over herself, forming a shell. “I shouldn’t have said all that. Stupid, stupid girl. I’ll go back to the house and pull myself together and then we can talk about it like reasonable people, when you’re ready. I don’t rightly know what to think of it myself yet, and maybe we need a couple days to decide how best to approach it. You will let us approach it, right?” Her gaze darted up to him, fear suffusing her features. She lowered her arms so they were coiled protectively over her abdomen. “I know this is your baby, but . . . I’m its mother. I’ll be its mother. Her, him, whoever it is. I will get some say in that, won’t I? I won’t be like some nanny that . . .”
“Elisa, hush.” Now that he was certain his internal organs hadn’t been ruptured, he took a firm hold of her shoulders. Though his mind was still reeling over all the implications of the past few minutes, this at least was something he could address. The little he’d heard of born vampires, those coming from a vampire and human servant pairing, was sadly similar to what she’d described. While the human was given some early parenting responsibility, the child would be vampire. As he or she grew, amid the vampire attitudes toward humans, the human parent was usually viewed as more of a servant than a parent by the time the child reached adolescence.
