She nodded.
“I can’t help your neighbor. The risk is too great. But I could help the boy.”
“It has to be both.”
William gave her a hard look. “I’m not wasting my precious vintage collection on an old woman. I will, however, give something to him to save his life. But I won’t risk healing him completely.”
Raven contemplated her options, which were limited.
William’s expression began to shift. She worried he’d change his mind.
“All right.” Her shoulders slumped.
He walked toward her, his shoes crunching over the broken glass.
“You’d give up your life, your position at the gallery, in exchange for helping that ridiculous boy? He barely knows you.”
A single tear trailed down her cheek.
“I don’t want to see him die, knowing I could have done something to stop it.”
William huffed in exasperation. “He isn’t worthy of you. You said yourself he never noticed you until your appearance changed.”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You were never going to let me go. At least now, something good will come of it.”
He took her face in his hands.
“Do you understand what you are offering me?”
She closed her eyes. “Yes.”
For what seemed like a long time, he didn’t move.
“You shame me,” he murmured.
Her eyelids opened.
He brushed his lips across hers. “It’s been a long time since I felt shame.”
Uncertainty flashed across his features and Raven began to worry he’d retract his offer.
Impulsively, she reached up to kiss him.
He was surprised by her action, but welcomed it, his closed mouth moving over hers, unwilling to break their connection.
When he took over the kiss, she felt off balance, her hands gripping his biceps for support.
He propelled her backward, almost waltzing her across the room, until her back was against a bookshelf. And still he kept his lips on hers.
His hand slipped between her head and the shelf, cradling her. Protecting her.
She felt the movement for what it was and opened her mouth.
Instantly, his tongue began to play with her lips. He tasted and licked at an unhurried pace, but did not venture inside.
He trailed her jaw with his thumb, as he kissed and teased, tempting her to reciprocate.
She slipped her tongue into his mouth and he gently stroked it with his own, a deep sigh emanating from his chest.
He tasted different. His mouth was cool against her tongue, his movements leisurely but purposeful.
When she retreated, he kissed her lightly once again and pressed his forehead to hers.
He waited for her to open her eyes before he spoke. “Do you know how rare self-sacrifice is? How magnificent you are?”
Raven bowed her head. She was selling herself into slavery, not saving the world.
He toyed with her hair. “Spend the day enjoying my art collection. I’ll try to rejoin you tonight.”
She kept her eyes on the floor.
He kissed her once more before exiting the room.
Raven heard the door open and close.
She collapsed on the lowest rung of the staircase and placed her face in her hands. Her black hair fell forward, partially covering her arms and flowing over the shoulders of her raspberry-colored sundress.
She did not cry. But her heart ached.
She pushed aside thoughts of herself and her fate to think about her neighbor, Lidia.
She loved her. And she was very, very sick.
Raven exhaled in anguish.
Chapter Twenty-six
William took three steps outside the library and realized he’d forgotten the letter Ambrogio had delivered earlier. He returned to the library to retrieve it.
As soon as he entered the room, he saw Cassita huddled on the staircase, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. She was crying.
Something twisted in his chest.
No doubt she was overwrought. She’d said herself that she’d left America and come to Florence in order to find happiness. She’d told him she’d found happiness here.
Now she was giving up that happiness and the work that delighted her so he would save the lives of her friends. And he wouldn’t agree even to that. He’d promised only to help the boy.
The sensation in his chest increased, feeling a great deal like pain.
It was a foreign feeling.
He picked up the letter and put it in his jacket pocket, with the intention of leaving her to her tears. His gaze dropped to the floor, alighting on two items resting a short distance away: her simple white cardigan and his handkerchief.
The cardigan was no longer pristine. Like his handkerchief, droplets of vampyre blood blackened its appearance.
His eyes traveled from the cardigan to its owner, who was huddled into a defensive ball.
He found that the sight of her in that posture displeased him. Greatly.
It had been a long time since he’d concerned himself with the feelings of a human being. Because of the nature of vampyric transformation, many of his human feelings and memories were gone.
But he remembered loss. He remembered the pain that accompanied anxiety for someone you loved, even though he’d not loved anyone for centuries. Truthfully, he believed himself and his kind incapable of love.
Although he wasn’t practiced in empathy, he felt it at that moment, watching the beautiful, brave Cassita weep for her friends. And perhaps, for herself.
More than that, he was able to discern the central aspect of her character.
Cassita was a protector.
She was the kind of person who cared so deeply for others—even homeless men and neighbors—that she would do anything to help them, including sacrificing herself.
He hadn’t recognized this quality in her before but as soon as the thought occurred to him, he knew it to be true. He also knew that this trait of her character went very deep, to the core of her being.
In this respect, as in several others, she resembled the young woman whose image he kept carefully concealed in his desk. He’d failed her, many, many years ago, and she’d paid the ultimate price.
His regret and anger over what had happened to her were what propelled him to make an exception and save Cassita’s life. Now he’d taken the wounded lark and manipulated what made her noble and good, and for what? For his own selfish purposes? For sexual intercourse?
He looked down at the white cardigan she’d used to try to stem his bleeding and despised the blood that fouled it. She’d come to his aid, knowing he was a vampyre. Now she sat in his library, crying, because he’d forced her to trade herself for her friends’ lives.