An Ever Fixéd Mark (45 page)

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Authors: Jessie Olson

Tags: #romance, #vampire, #friendship, #suspense, #mystery, #personal growth, #reincarnation, #paranormal romance, #paranormal, #womens fiction, #boston, #running, #historical boston, #womens literature, #boston area

BOOK: An Ever Fixéd Mark
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*****

 

Lizzie was relieved Ben didn’t answer the
door. She rang the bell a second and third time, waiting ten
minutes after each attempt. She let herself in, unwinding her key
as she closed the door behind her. She set it on the table inside
the doorway and walked straight into the bedroom with her empty
bags. She filled them quickly, clearing off the shelves in the
closet. She grimaced as she realized the summer clothes were all
too small for her, but didn’t think it was reason to leave them
behind. She tossed out her toothbrush and gathered up all the
toiletries from the bathroom. She collected the books by the bed
and stuffed them into the top of her bag.

She didn’t take her time in that room. She
didn’t fear Ben would walk in. She deliberately took the day off
from work and came when she knew he wouldn’t be there. She wanted
him to come home and see the emptiness. That way he would know… he
would know she wanted it to be over.

She went to the kitchen. That room was more
hers than his. Even though he purchased all the dishes and
appliances. She used and cleaned them. She didn’t think she should
leave food in the refrigerator. He wouldn’t eat it. It would spoil.
She didn’t have that many hands. Nor did she wish to do him any
favors.

She brought her bags to the dining room,
noticing all the bottles of her favorite wine. He bought that for
her. So he wouldn’t be tempted to take her blood when he was
hungry. So she wouldn’t be coherent enough to understand his
deceit. Her eyes wandered over the drawers of the buffet. All that
beautiful, untouched china. The photograph of Maria buried under
silk napkins. Did he have anything of Lily in that house? Anything
he held onto to remind him of her?

Lizzie shook that from her
mind. She wasn’t going to think about Lily. Her mission was to
erase herself from Ben’s apartment. She went through most of the
rooms. She retraced her steps back down the hallway towards his
office. The blinds were drawn, leaving a shadowed light against the
bookshelves. So many beautiful books. She only read five, maybe six
of them… they were beautiful books. From the early
19
th
century… when Lily was alive. Without breath for another
thought, she went to them and started pulling volumes from their
resting place. She looked again at Keats and Shelly and was about
to replace Byron when she noticed the front page stuck to the
inside of the cover. It had gotten wet, making the pages wrinkled
and creating a sealant against the leather. With a little effort,
she pried open the page. There were a few lines scribbled in ink
that ran, but weren’t erased. She didn’t recognize the handwriting.
It was like letters she saw in the museum archives, an attention to
script that disappeared with the proliferation of keyboards. It
took some effort to decipher the blurred blue. It wasn’t Byron. It
was Shakespeare.

“Let me not to the
marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

L

Lizzie dropped the book in a loud thunk on
the floor. She reached down to retrieve it and saw it as though it
were under a half foot of water. She heard the footsteps in the
grass behind her and stood up to see Ben standing in the
doorway.

She saw the color of his cheeks and knew he
fed recently. “Elizabeth,” he startled her stare with his quiet
voice.

She recoiled against the bookshelf and
folded the book against her side. “What are you doing home? Aren’t
you supposed to be at the office?”

“I went to the clinic this morning. I
decided to take the rest of the day off,” he turned on the light
and made a step into the room. “I’m glad you are here.”

“I just came… to get my things,” she looked
away from him. “I didn’t want to see you.”

“You didn’t have to … I could have done that
for you,” he still looked at her.

“No.”

“Very well,” he lowered his eyes to her hand
and then up at the empty spot on the shelf. Could he tell what book
she held? Did it matter? She returned it to the empty spot, not
bothering to fill the uncomfortable silence with any conversation.
She walked to the door when she heard the alarm of her phone sound.
She pulled it from her pocket and felt her neck burn as she turned
off the sound.

“That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if you leave here to meet him,” he
blockaded the door.

“You can’t keep me here.”

“I could,” his face was calm but his voice
indicated anger.

She put her phone back in her pocket and let
out a deep sigh, hoping to calm the rapid beat of her heart. “Ben,
please, let me go,” she hoped the crack in her voice didn’t make
her fear too obvious.

“Elizabeth,” he stepped closer and tried to
take hold of her hand. Lizzie jerked it back and crossed her arms
across her chest. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Me? Or Lily?”

“I lost Lily,” Ben turned his glance away
from her.

“You’ve lost me,” Lizzie clenched her jaw.
“You deceived me.”

“How?” Ben looked up at her. “I was honest
with you from the beginning about who I was.”

“Not about whom I was.”

“I told you. I don’t know if it is for me to
tell.”

“It is when it is part of who you are,”
Lizzie moved closer towards the door.

Ben pulled her back into the room. “Why were
you looking at that book?”

Lizzie saw the green glint in the reflection
of the moonlight. No, the artificial ceiling light. She shut her
eyes hearing the crickets buzz in the tall grasses. She rubbed her
forehead, but couldn’t stop the spinning sensation as the hum of
the crickets buzzed even louder in her ear before it all went
black.

“Here, drink this,” Ben offered a glass when
she opened her eyes. The water was cool. “Have you eaten
anything?”

“I don’t remember,” she muttered a lie she
knew he wouldn’t believe.

“It doesn’t matter,” he took the water glass
and replaced it with a stemmed goblet. “That will make you feel
better.”

Lizzie glanced at the clock noting the half
hour before noon as she took a sip of red wine. She wondered if he
was going to get her drunk to keep her there. Or if he was
indulging her bad habit to win her favor.

“What do you want to know?” he moved to the
other edge of the sofa. “I will be completely honest with you,
Elizabeth. You can still leave me. At least give yourself the
opportunity to know more than what Oliver told you or what you saw
in a dream.”

“This isn’t about Oliver.”

“Yes, it is about Oliver,” Ben pulled the
chair from behind the desk and placed it directly opposite her.

She took in a deep breath and let herself
drink the entire glass of wine. His mood was better than it would
have been had he not just come from a feeding. She saw the bright
look in his eye and wondered if she had an endorphin rush. Was it
simply a runner’s high or... she couldn’t bring herself to ask that
question. It was difficult enough to form her mouth around the
words pertaining to Lily. “You were Mr. Chester.”

“It was said I was Charlotte’s brother.”

“Paying flattering attention to Harriet
Fulton?” Lizzie felt a surge of protectiveness over the glassy eyed
portrait.

Ben looked toward the window briefly,
emitting an irreverent laugh. “I suppose you could call it that,”
the green slowly hardened to the gray.

“Why?”

“It was all part of the plan.”

“What plan?”

“The Fultons were already a distinguished
family of good fortune when I was a farmer in Lincoln. They never
gave up their loyalty to the British. Not during the Revolution and
not even when there was another war forty years later. Only by that
point, they had more money and more local authority. You know their
history. I don’t need to tell you all the details.”

Lizzie made her breaths quiet and calm. None
of these details were startling to her, but she felt a
protectiveness claw at her heart. It was as if Ben told her such
conniving details about Meg and Nora. “You wanted their money.”

“Well of course.”

“What was your plan?”

“Charlotte married Horace.”

“Then she killed him.”

“Yes.”

“And then you were going to marry Harriet?”
Lizzie felt very sad. A small part of her felt she should go to the
Fulton House immediately and tell someone.

“Yes.”

“Were you going to kill her, too?” Even with
his hard stare, he was unable to answer the question. She looked at
the empty wine glass and then his colorless eyes. “What were you
going to do to Peter?”

“Many young boys didn’t survive to
adulthood,” his voice had no expression whatsoever.

A chill resonated from the surface of her
skin to the marrow of her bones. She never saw the vampire in Ben.
Even when he took her blood. But now, as he told this story, it
became very clear to her that there was a part of him that was cold
and dead to the world.

“But Peter did survive,” Lizzie argued the
history of her Saturday tours to herself. “He survived and had
children, who had children all the way down to Gerard Fulton.”

“The plan changed.”

“Lily.”


Lily was just a maid.
Neither of us suspected the maid would be an impediment. That a
girl… the bastard child of Margaret Fulton’s father would undo
everything.”

“How?”

“We both fell in love with her,” Ben turned
away.

“Enough to forsake the Fulton fortune?”

“In the end I would have given anything to
be with her.”

“Why? What was so special about Lily? She
laughed at you,” Lizzie said blankly. Ben jerked his head and
stared at her directly. He was eager for her to say something else.
She knew he wanted to test her memory. If it was her memory or just
something she repeated back from Oliver. “The white roses.”

“The white roses,” the calm in his voice
grew very quiet.


They were supposed to be
for Harriet,” Lizzie didn’t know if she should tell him the details
of that wine drenched dream. She ached to tell someone, to know
that it wasn’t just the coinage of a sick brain. “You followed her
into the garden.”

He offered a knowing look. She couldn’t tell
if it was amusement or disdain. “She was waiting in that garden…
probably waiting for Horace. I didn’t care. I followed her. I
assumed Lily was a… I thought she was an obedient servant who knew
how to keep quiet about dirty deeds. I had every intention of
taking her and her blood that night. Then she looked directly at me
and laughed without any concern at all.”

“Did you take her blood?”

“Not then.”

Lizzie shut her eyes, wondering if any more
thoughts that weren’t her own would suddenly surface. She opened
her eyes back at the glass in her hand and contemplated if more
wine would ease her into Lily’s conscious. It seemed important to
remember that detail. She couldn’t reconcile it to what she
remembered. There was nothing about vampires in those memories.
Just… two men between whom she felt herself divided now.

“What about Charlotte? When did she fall for
Lily? Did Lily laugh at her too?”

“You were right. If it wasn’t for me…
Charlotte would never have paid any attention to Lily,” he waited
again, as if she could add something to that part of the story.
“Charlotte realized I was distracted from our purpose. She
discovered I had the same interest as her husband. She sent me back
to France to get it out of my system. She went after Lily herself.
Her intention was to kill her, but she fell for Lily’s charm just
as easily as I did.”

“How?”

“I wasn’t there. I know Lily cared about
her. I know Lily liked… just as you do… the thrill of feeding. It
wasn’t just a physical … Lily saw herself as a monster because of
what Horace did to her. I think she saw something in Charlotte that
made her feel less horrible about herself. But then… Charlotte
killed Horace. Lily saw the ugly side of Charlotte and wanted
something else.”

“You?”

“She went to Oliver first.”

“But she wanted to protect Harriet… from
you.”

“Charlotte told her the plan. Charlotte
never believed she loved the Fultons, least of all Harriet. Harriet
treated her miserably. Maybe that was because Harriet knew how I
felt about Lily.”


Were you in love with
Lily?” Lizzie asked a question she couldn’t remember forming in her
mind.

“I thought she was just… I thought I could
get away from it in France…” Ben looked at the bookshelves. “I
never stopped thinking about her. How fearless she was. How she let
me…I knew I would see her when Charlotte summoned me back to marry
the daughter. I bought her presents. I bought her that volume of
Byron you were holding.”

Lizzie caught the wine glass as it fell out
of her hand onto her lap. “Did you woo Harriet?” Lizzie didn’t want
more details about the book. The book was on the shelf, with its
water smudged quotes scribbled on the inside cover. She would never
have to look at it again.

“I pretended to. I liked it because Lily had
to be the chaperone most of the time. I believed she had forgotten
me. I knew about her and Charlotte. I knew she was sneaking out
behind Charlotte’s back to see… Oliver.”

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