“H-How?”
“Through scent. Have you never noticed?”
“Oh,” she breathed. Genevieve suddenly realized why she associated some vampires together in her mind, even though they did not lodge together. Scent. “How…?”
“Vampires in intimate relationships—that is, ones beyond casual coupling—exchange blood as well.”
She flinched and looked away. The ghost of the past she could not remember rose up. She whispered, “I don’t know that I can do that.”
“Not handsome enough for you, am I?”
Her head snapped up.
Only a step away now, Kendrick grinned at her. “You watch me when you think I don’t notice, Jenny.”
Her stomach swooped and decided to take roost in her throat.
He chuckled. “It’s all right. I watch you when I know you don’t notice, so fair’s fair.”
Vampires didn’t blush, so why was her face so hot? “Kendrick, I can’t marry you.”
“Will you think about my suggestion? That’s all I ask. And—here. It’s no bride gift, but I think you appreciate a good tale.” He sorted through the piles of books on the table and plucked one free. “This is one of my favorites, in the vein of Sir Walter Scott’s books. I think you would enjoy it.”
Genevieve took the book and stared down at the faded, green-cloth cover, worn at the corners like it had been much thumbed. She could still read the title in gold text:Wynnflaed’s Knight, by E.D. Saxon.
With shaking hands, she opened the cover to touch the dedication.
To My Daughter Jenny,
Who has always believed there is nothing a heroine cannot do.
Genevieve burst into tears.
Every sob she had held in the cage of her ribs for the last month escaped at once as she clutched the book to her chest. Her vision blurred, hot liquid spilling down her cheeks in a red river.
“Genevieve,” Kendrick said in helpless alarm, his arms encircling her. She pressed her face into his shirtfront to try to muffle the keening wail clawing its way out of her throat. But she couldn’t stop it. The wave of grief was crashing over her, pulling her into the undertow.
Her knees gave way.
Genevieve never hit the ground. Kendrick scooped her up, and for a second, she was airborne. Then she came to rest in a lap, still held in his embrace.
“Ah, Jenny,” he murmured in her ear, his hand coming up to cradle the back of her neck. “I never meant to make you weep.”
“It’s my book,” she gasped brokenly. “How did you know it was my book?”
“Yourbook?”
She clutched it tighter, curling around the book like it might disappear. The grief tore into her like a wild thing. “My father wrote it for me.”
ChapterSixteen
Genevieve’s father, Ezra Dryden, had been a man set on a life of scholarship. He had had a passion for history and the Old English language, and he’d set out to Oxford to earn his degree and enter the world of academia. He would translate old, moldering documents and write treatises and teach young men how to mind their þs and ðs.
Then he’d met Constance Thorne at a small chapel in Oxford and the course of his life had shifted.
She had been the only woman for him, and they’d fallen in love like lightning, like thunderbolts, as her father had declaimed to a young Genevieve many a night, narrating their love story. But he could not become an Oxford fellow if he’d followed his heart—Oxford professors were not allowed to marry. Dreams of recognition and success, or love?
Setting aside his dreams of research and scholarship, Ezra had taken up tutoring young men looking to enter Oxford or attending school and struggling with their studies, and had married Constance, though he’d made only enough for them to scrape by on the fringes of respectability. After a few years, when they realized that they had a child on the way—“Me!” a young Genevieve had always exclaimed—Ezra had taken a risk and used his background in history and language and his love of story to write a novel.
