A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [189]
“I didn’t interfere, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said hastily. “The kill was yours.” Maybe such things mattered to vampires.
Matthew shuddered. “I don’t keep score.” He dragged his eyes from the stag and rose to his feet in one of those smooth movements that marked him unmistakably as a vampire. A long, slender hand reached down. “Come. You’re cold kneeling on the ground.”
I placed my hand in his and stood, wondering who would get rid of the stag’s carcass. Some combination of Georges and Marthe would be involved. Rakasa was contentedly eating grass, unconcerned by the dead animal lying so close. Unaccountably, I was ravenous.
Rakasa, I called silently. She looked up and walked over.
“Do you mind if I eat?” I asked hesitantly, unsure what Matthew’s reaction would be.
His mouth twitched. “No. Given what you’ve seen today, the least I can do is watch you have a sandwich.”
“There’s no difference, Matthew.” I undid the buckle on Rakasa’s saddlebag and said a silent word of thanks. Marthe, bless her, had packed cheese sandwiches. The worst of my hunger checked, I brushed the crumbs from my hands.
Matthew was watching me like a hawk. “Do you mind?” he asked quietly.
“Mind what?” I’d already told him I didn’t mind about the deer.
“Blanca and Lucas. That I was married and had a child once, so long ago.”
I was jealous of Blanca, but Matthew wouldn’t understand how or why. I gathered my thoughts and emotions and tried to sort them into something that was both true and would make sense to him.
“I don’t mind one moment of love that you’ve shared with any creature, living or dead,” I said emphatically, “so long as you want to be with me right at this moment.”
“Just at this moment?” he asked, his eyebrow arching up into a question mark.
“This is the only moment that matters.” It all seemed so simple. “No one who has lived as long as you have comes without a past, Matthew. You weren’t a monk, and I don’t expect you to have no regrets about who you’ve lost along the way. How could you not have been loved before, when I love you so much?”
Matthew gathered me to his heart. I went eagerly, glad that the day’s hunting had not ended in disaster and that his anger was fading. It still smoldered—it was evident in a lingering tightness in his face and shoulders—but it no longer threatened to engulf us. He cupped my chin in his long fingers and tilted my face up to his.
“Would you mind very much if I kissed you?” Matthew glanced away for a moment when he asked.
“Of course not.” I stood on tiptoes so that my mouth was closer to his. Still, he hesitated, so I reached up and clasped my hands behind his neck. “Don’t be idiotic. Kiss me.”
He did, briefly but firmly. The final traces of blood were still on his lips, but it was neither frightening nor unpleasant. It was just Matthew.
“You know there won’t be any children between us,” he said while he held me close, our faces nearly touching. “Vampires can’t father children the traditional way. Do you mind that?”
“There’s more than one way to make a child.” Children were not something I’d thought about before. “Ysabeau made you, and you belong to her no less than Lucas belonged to you and Blanca. And there are a lot of children in the world who don’t have parents.” I remembered the moment when Sarah and Em told me mine were gone and never coming back. “We could take them in—a whole coven of them, if we wanted to.”
“I haven’t made a vampire for years,” he said. “I can still manage it, but I hope you don’t intend that we have a large family.”
“My family has doubled in the past three weeks, with you, Marthe, and Ysabeau added. I don’t know how much more family I can take.”
“You need to add one more to that number.”
My eyes widened. “There are more of you?”
“Oh, there are always more,” he said drily. “Vampire genealogies are much more complicated than witch genealogies, after all. We have blood relations on three sides, not just two. But this is a member of the family that you’ve already met.”