An Ever Fixéd Mark (20 page)

“There is no place I’d rather be,” he said
softly.

“I hope Nora and Mark are this happy,”
Lizzie admired the sky’s lightening shade of lavender.

“They looked happy. It was a happy day. Even
Meghan was in good spirits.”

“Yes,” Lizzie was relieved to see that
Alec’s late night arrival brought Meg back to her better mood.
Lizzie unfolded his hands to intertwine his fingers with hers. The
marks on her left wrist faded to two subtle pink dots. “Do you
remember your wedding?”

She felt his fingers loosen their grip
around hers. Lizzie felt ashamed. She always avoided being
obsessive about weddings and marriage. She wasn’t one of those
females who only thought of men in terms of an engagement ring. She
didn’t want that from him. But, as the business of Nora’s wedding
slipped away with the waves, the unfinished conversation from the
night before ebbed back into her mind.

“
Elizabeth,” he began
quietly.

“I’m sorry. That was an inappropriate
question,” Lizzie let go of his hands and sat up. She looked at him
quickly and saw the struggle for words in his eyes. She looked back
at the horizon and began removing the pins from her flattened
curls. She rested her palms on the sand and listened to the waves
recede from the shore. She was tired and upset with herself. She
blinked her eyes to prevent them from betraying herself too
much.

Ben sat up slowly and pulled her hair behind
her shoulders. “Elizabeth,” he whispered softly, making the ocean
breeze chill her even more. Lizzie didn’t respond but clutched some
sand in her palms. “I want you to know who I was before. But that
young man is not … he is dead, Lizzie. He was impulsive and
reckless and much more selfish.”

“You said you loved her. You were sad when
she died,” Lizzie relaxed her hold of the sand.

Ben smoothed down the hair he held in his
hands. “I imagine it is a comfort to you to know that I have had
women in my life who were more to me than a source.”

Lizzie looked at him hastily. She hated that
cold word. “That’s not what I meant by asking,” she looked away,
annoyed with herself for ruining her happy moment. She couldn’t
stop the impulse of her next question. “How many women were… more
than just a source?”

“I stayed with the one who changed me for
some time. It wasn’t love. She was exciting and introduced me to my
new way of life. She took me to Europe. I enjoyed her company. She
liked mine… until she found another distraction. But we were
friends and business partners. She taught me a great deal about
being what I am … and about women.”

“Do you miss her?” Lizzie swallowed
nervously.

“I do. Although when she died we weren’t
friendly,” Ben looked down at the sand.

“Did Oliver come between you?”

Ben looked up in surprise. “Why would you
ask that?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed because you
said she changed him after you… and you get so strange when you
talk about him.”

“A variety of things came between us,” Ben
looked towards the horizon that was slowly edging to yellow. Lizzie
noticed his fingers curled tightly against his palm. “She enjoyed
the power too much. She didn’t value… she did not have a pleasant
end, I’m sad to say. I think she deserved it.”

“Oh.”

Ben let out a slow breath. He relaxed his
fingers and turned back to Lizzie. He saw the unrelenting curiosity
in her eyes. “Like you Elizabeth, I find it difficult to let myself
love someone.”

Lizzie felt a chill over her bare shoulders.
She never expressed that feeling to him. But anyone paying
attention to her would understand that. She didn’t fight her eyes
and let the tears confirm his honesty.

“That doesn’t mean that I never did or never
will again,” he interrupted Lizzie from her melancholy. She lifted
her palm from the sand and wiped her cheek with the back of her
hand.

“You said that you almost married,” she
swallowed, unable to look at him completely, “for love.”

“Before I went to Princeton, there was a
woman. Her name was Maria.”

“Did you leave her to go to medical
school?”

“She left me.”

“How long was she with you?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“That’s… these days that’s a long time.”

“It was a long time then.”

“The 1890’s?” Lizzie did the math in her
head. “Was she a vampire?”

“No,” Lizzie saw him swallow hard.

She imagined a fair haired woman in a dark
blue dress with ruffles and a tiny corseted waist. She felt a
twinge of jealousy, more than the mention of the one who changed
him. “Did she know you were a vampire?”

“Not at first,” he turned his gray green
eyes to her suddenly, as if looking for his own answer in her
reaction. “She worked in Oliver’s mill. She was his secretary.”

“Oliver’s mill?”

“He owned a wool mill in Raleigh, along the
Connecticut River.”

“Did you own a mill?”

“I was dabbling in some local government,
but Oliver decided to leave Raleigh. I took over the management,
making Maria my secretary.”

“She fell for her boss?”

“We were under a great deal of stress when
Oliver left. She was a good friend and comfort to me when I … well
had to pick up his mess.”

“Oliver wasn’t a good business manager?”

“Oliver has a different set of
priorities.”

Lizzie looked at her fingers in the sand.
“You were grateful to Maria for helping you.”

“It was more than gratitude. She surprised
me. I never expected to feel that way after…” Ben glanced briefly
at her and then back towards the ocean. “Maria was so very
different. She was a good worker. She had an eye for detail and
worked many long hours to make certain my office ran smoothly. She
was discreet.”

“She knew what you were?”

“Maria’s family was from Italy. She was a
Catholic. Innocent … but clever enough to know that I was not… that
there was something unusual about Oliver and me. She confronted me
about it. I was already in love with her and couldn’t make myself
lie. I told her. Like I told you.”

“Did she offer you her veins?” Lizzie
struggled to keep the snarl out of her voice.

“She ran away,” Ben cleared his throat. “I
never found out what she did in those two years. I imagine she was
nursing her father, who was very ill. When he died she came back.
She didn’t have anyone else. There was no one left to judge her for
being with me.”

“She loved you.”

“In spite of herself,” Ben said almost
inaudibly. “I was too in love with her to see her sorrow.”

Lizzie felt another twinge of jealousy as
the sound of the waves took the place of his conversation. “Why
didn’t you marry her? Wasn’t marriage more important then?”

“She wouldn’t marry me. I asked her. We left
Raleigh. I bought a house in upstate New York. We lived like man
and wife. She used my name. Everyone in town thought we were
married. We couldn’t have children. Sometimes I think she didn’t
want to get married so she could leave.”

“When did she leave?”

“She was happy at first. We were both happy.
I invested in the local store and made a modest living. She kept
the house and was active in the community. After a few years, she
became depressed. She stopped eating. She stayed in her room for
days. She wouldn’t talk to me. She was miserable because I wasn’t
growing old while she was. She was jealous of young women who came
to the store. Then I found out about Coldbrook. Do you know about
the springs they used to have?”

“No,” Lizzie was startled by the shift of
conversation.

“There were springs where
the state forest is now. They said the springs had healing powers.
People came from all over the country to stay in two big hotels. I
brought Maria there for a couple summers. She liked those waters.
She was happy again. We talked about buying a house in Coldbrook so
she could be there all year round. But the idea of living in
Coldbrook didn’t make her any happier. She drowned herself on her
47
^th
birthday.”

“Ben, I’m so sorry,” Lizzie gasped at the
ending to his story she did not expect.

“That’s when I decided to become a doctor. I
couldn’t help her. But I wanted to help… I wanted to stop being the
cause of so much woe and injury,” he shut his eyes and opened them
to look at the brilliant sky over the ocean.

Lizzie straightened out her knees and
decided she needed to stand. She felt the stiffness of her joints
from sitting on the sand for over an hour. Ben was at her side and
took her in his arms, resting his chin on her shoulders.

“Ben, can I ask you an awful question?” she
knew exhaustion eliminated her sense of tact.

“Yes, Elizabeth.”

“
Did you take her
blood?”

He stepped back from the embrace. “She
didn’t want to know about that part of me. She knew I fed, but
pretended for a long time that I wasn’t a vampire. She would cook
me dinner. I played along to make her happy. After the first summer
at the springs, she asked me to do it. I only did it once. She was
anemic from not eating. I think it made her more depressed. I think
she did it because she was jealous and afraid that I was going to
leave her.”

“Did you want to leave her?”

“No. Not even when she stayed in her room
for days and days.”

“You really loved her.”

“I did. I do.”

Lizzie made a short smile of empathy. She
bent down to brush the dried sand off her knees. She didn’t know
what to say. She was fascinated to know about him, about his life
one hundred years ago. It was almost as though it was a different
person who lived that life. How could the Ben who was her classmate
at Springs be a mill owner in Raleigh during the 1890’s? He knew
about parts of Coldbrook that were long buried under seventy year
old trees. And yet the sadness in his eyes made it real and
present. She felt her own grief to know there was such unhappiness
in his life. She caught herself gawking at him as she let these
thoughts go through her mind. She shook her head quickly and looked
about for her abandoned shoes.

Ben found the shoes and winked playfully.
“Do you want to go back to the room? Or do you want to get
breakfast?”

“I am tired…” Lizzie realized she had been
in her dress for almost twenty hours. “Ben?”

“Mm hmm?”

“Thank you for telling me,” she touched his
shoulder lightly. “It does … I am sorry that she was so unhappy.
But I am glad that you... loved her.”

Ben put his arm around her shoulder and
started walking back to the hotel. He paused and turned her into
him quickly. “I love you, Elizabeth.”

“Ben,” she felt panic freeze her limbs and
feared her knees would succumb to her exhaustion.

He took hold of her and kissed her
passionately. Before she had a second to notice, he lifted her into
his arms and was carrying her back to the hotel. Lizzie couldn’t
find the words to express the swirl of emotion inside of her. She
let the quiet of the dawn speak it for her.

Chapter
Fifteen

Lizzie unwrapped her cottage cheese and
stirred it as she settled back into her chair. She had broken her
rule about eating at her desk lately. She didn’t want to risk
running into any nurses from the donor bank. She hadn’t given in
four months. She gave Polly a lame excuse that she was low on her
iron. It was a lie. She was taking Ben’s advice about vitamins and
supplements. She wanted her blood to be healthy and better than
anything he could get at the clinic. It prompted her to get up and
run before the summer sun warmed the earth too much. It made her
anxious for the next Saturday when her eight weeks would be up.

She wondered briefly if it was wrong to want
it so badly. The first time she was hardly aware of what she
offered him. She was confused and tired and desperate to believe
that he wasn’t some delusional freak. Maybe she was still confused
and unaware of a danger to which she should pay attention. But Ben
was… he said he loved her. She couldn’t imagine he would let her do
anything that was a danger to herself.

She logged into Facebook to check the status
of her friends. There was nothing from Ben, whom Lizzie realized,
really didn’t care for the social networking scene. Nora signed in
from Scotland to say she was enjoying the hikes and pubs with her
new husband. Sara uploaded the latest pictures of six month old
Josie. Meg vented a new tirade against editing.

Lizzie couldn’t come up with something
clever or interesting to add for her own status. She didn’t really
care anyway, knowing Ben wasn’t going to be reading it. Meg and
Nora both knew she was on cloud nine. She didn’t really need the
other 109 people on her list to know that. She debated changing her
status from single… but decided she didn’t want to prompt the
comments Davis and Andrew would leave on her wall.

Lizzie logged off as she scooped out the
last of her cottage cheese. She fingered the slices of apple and
switched her screen over to Google. She stared at the cursor for a
few seconds before deciding to type “vampire clinic.”

She rolled her eyes at herself for being so
ridiculous. She saw links for role-playing and fan sites for novels
and movies. Nothing remotely legitimate. She added Ben’s name to
the search words. All it managed to do was pull up the sites with
members by the name of Ben. She clicked on one that teased her with
the words “blood donor.’” But the screen just showed a bunch of
pale faced Goth girls with stage blood dripping out of the corner
of their mouths.

Lizzie jumped as the door to the office
opened. She quickly switched her screen, lest Richard should see
the half naked women on her screen. “Good afternoon Lizzie,” her
boss closed the door. “It’s hot out there.”