William Read online

  WILLIAM

  A Sequel to Merrick

  By Claire Cray

  Copyright 2015 Claire Cray

  Smashwords Edition

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Note from the Author

  More Titles by Claire Cray

  CHAPTER ONE

  By July of 1800, I was supposed to be an immortal. Instead I was still just a drunk dandy sulking on the rooftop of my best friend’s tavern, watching dawn break over lower Manhattan with a half-empty bottle of port between my knees.

  Said friend was dozing peacefully beside me, hands laced behind his head, slim and handsome in his brown trousers and waistcoat, buttons undone and shirtsleeves exposed at some point during the muggy night we’d drunk away. The top edge of a book peeked out of his breast pocket. Plato, probably. I turned back to watch the light grow along the horizon.

  “You know, Will,” Jeremy mumbled, startling me. The shingles creaked as he shifted and propped himself up on his elbows to squint at me. "For a lad poised to dive into a sea of Italian tits, you’re still gloomy as all hell."

  I spared a wan smile and lifted the bottle to my lips. Hours before, I’d announced to Jeremy and the rest of our usual crew that I would soon set sail for Italy. As I’d told it, I was going in the employ of Silas Merrick, the mysterious man from upstate to whom I’d been briefly apprenticed the year before. There was a grain of truth in that, or as much as I could manage. After all, as far as anyone knew, Merrick was an old apothecary and healer, well respected among the people of the Hudson River Valley, who had been impressed enough by my manners and prospects to buy me out of my indenture and send me back home.

  Some assumptions were best left intact.

  Jeremy had been my friend for all the nineteen years I’d been in this world, and there had never been secrets between us. But of my current circumstances, he knew less than nothing. It was a shame to keep him in the dark, particularly since he was too smart not to know the score. Ever since I’d returned from my strange journey to the woodlands upstate nearly a year before, I’d been cryptic and distracted. I could see in his green eyes that my secrecy struck a bitter chord in him, but he remained my steadfast friend as always.

  It meant a great deal that he still cared enough to prod me when he’d long since grown tired of my riddles. How I wished I could hold fast to his friendship. How I wished, indeed, that I could tell him the truth of how and why I was due to leave, and that I would never return.

  But what was I supposed to say? I’ve fallen in love with a man, and I’m off to become a murderer?

  I grimaced and scrubbed my face with my hand, then took up the bottle for another long drink.

  Jeremy cocked his head, leaning over to get a better look at me as he rummaged in the pocket where he always kept his tobacco. "What's the matter with you?"

  “Nothin’. “

  "You miss me already?" Jeremy asked wanly, the words a bit muddled by the pipe between his lips. He struck a match and lit the bowl, puffing a few times with his eyes on the glowing tobacco, a furrow of concentration between his brows. Then, exhaling a plume of smoke, he met my eyes. "Is that it?"

  "I will miss you painfully," I said. Jeremy had been with me at every important moment in my life—even that night, nearly year before, when I was arrested after a night of idiotic mischief and sentenced to five years of servitude. But this time I was on my own.

  "Lacy, if you don't want to go, don't go."

  "It's not as simple as that."

  "Why the hell not?” he asked crossly. “What do you owe him?"

  I couldn't meet his gaze. The horizon was pale. The sky was the color of linen above the treetops of Staten Island.

  "If money’s the matter, to Hell with it. Now that this dump’s in my name I’ve got a coin or two to spare."

  My heart turned over slowly, aching, as I shook my head. How I'd taken him for granted before this all came about! It was a fine life I was to abandon for love, with a friend like him in it. “It’s not that I don’t want to go,” I said, and I meant it. Certainly, I meant it. And anyway, even if I hadn’t meant it, I’d already chosen my course. I was committed to it, despite the off-road being much longer than I’d expected. I was committed, despite having been abandoned to my thoughts all these months, despite the doubts and fears that had sprouted and run wild as weeds in my mind.

  I was committed to it. I was. If Merrick could just get on with it…

  Jeremy scoffed suddenly, jarring me from my thoughts. “All right,” he said. “Enough fribble. I don’t like this business. I don’t like it at all. Least of all that old geezer.”

  “Bugger off,” I sighed blandly. “I’ve told you a hundred times he’s been nothing but kind to me.”

  "Yeah, yeah, and I’ve told you a hundred times you’ve been right miserable since you crossed his path. Or since he turned you loose, at least, and it makes no sense in the first place. You told us all he torched your indenture last fall after you served him for a month. So what’s this hold he has on you if you ain’t his apprentice anymore?”

  “He has no hold on me,” I argued, casting him a scowl to cover up my wariness. Damned if he wasn’t on a warpath tonight. I had always admired his insistence upon the truth, but if there was one thing I didn’t need to fall under scrutiny, it was the nature of my relationship with Merrick. “Look,” I said, “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. You know I always wanted to sail the Seven Seas and all that. And he’s a generous man. He’ll let me do my own business when I’m not assisting him. I’m glad to go with him.”

  “You don’t look glad.”

  “Well,” I stalled, holding out my hands, and once again skimmed close to the truth. “It’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? Not knowing when I’ll be back. Could be years.” Could be centuries, I thought, but I certainly couldn’t say that.

  Jeremy said nothing, but after a moment he gave a sigh and scooted down to sit flush beside me. He took the bottle from me and shook it lightly, frowning down at the opening as though pondering the many things he might say next. At last he said, “Will.”

  “What?”

  “If—” Jeremy shut his mouth before he got any further, grimacing faintly, and raised the bottle to his lips. After a long pause he spoke again, now with unusual delicacy. "Are you so...occupied with him?"

  My face went smooth. The emphasis on that one word was all he needed to get his real meaning across. Damn, damn, damn! I’d been so careful not to speak of Merrick often, not even to reveal that he’d come back to Manhattan with me last fall. Leave it to Jeremy to figure it out, anyway. “Bloody Hell,” I muttered, lost for any other response.

  "You know I wouldn't judge you. It's..." His voice dropped to a murmur. "It's what they all suspect."

  "I might've bet," I muttered. My ears were burning.

  “Well,” Jeremy winced faintly. "Think about it, Lacy."

  "I’d rather not," I said crossly, but I had to admit there was room for the interpretation from the get-go. After all, half the boys I knew had been so initiated—not always kindly—during their
years as servants or apprentices. Anyway, none in our group were saints; and with my own reputation as a budding libertine, I knew there’d been jokes about my unexpected release from bondage. Put those charms to use, did you, Willy? Old man found you too distractin’, eh, Lacy? Get him with your big brown eyes?

  Scoundrels. They knew nothing about it!

  Jeremy took the bottle back. "Sorry, Will." he said quietly.

  "No," I said, and with a sudden burst of pride, I added, "It's true."

  The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. For all I loved Merrick, I was not yet free of shame. But why bother hiding anymore? I'd be gone soon enough—no one I knew would ever see me to judge me again. And if Jeremy remembered me differently now, well, all the better, I supposed. Less reason to wonder why I’d up and gone.

  "It doesn’t matter to me, Will,” Jeremy said. “I’m just tryin’ to make sense of it.”

  I looked sharply at him, then blinked at the skyline in confusion. Well, Hell. That was a better reaction than I’d mustered when I’d first realized my own inclinations. Where was Jeremy when I was all tied in knots, terrified of the lust I felt for the “old” apothecary? Criminy. I was all the more sorry I would have to lose such a friend.

  Not that he was completely at ease with it. “But ain’t he old, and all? Don’t you want a woman to marry? I just don’t like…"

  Old. I almost laughed at that, remembering my own shock when I’d finally struck a match to get my first glimpse of Merrick’s face. Of course, by that time I had already fallen under his spell. But that was yet another thing I couldn’t explain to Jeremy. Rubbing my eyes, I looked at the horizon again, which was turning orange and pink. “Don’t like what?”

  "If he..." Jeremy sounded sad now. "If it's for the money and whatnot…if it’s not to your liking, Lacy."

  "No,” I said firmly, for despite my reluctance to cop to buggery, I couldn’t have anyone thinking Silas Merrick would exploit me that way, or that my affection had been bought. "He’s a good man. I respect him unconditionally."

  That was a bit much for Jeremy, perhaps, for he looked slightly taken aback. But at least his dudgeon had all but disappeared, even if it was replaced by an air of resignation. "Right, then,” he said at length, and ignoring the sunrise, he fixed his gloomy eyes on the rickety shingles between his feet. Just when I was about to crack a joke to cheer him up, he suddenly said, “My fault, anyhow.”

  “What do you mean it’s your fault?” I scoffed at the notion. But then Jeremy lifted his gaze toward the sunrise, and the awful look in his intelligent green eyes twisted my heart. “Jeremy,” I said, surprised.

  “It’s my fault you got sentenced in the first place. I left you there in the garden that night. I ran off when the night watch came.”

  “We were drunk as all Hell, you dolt. I was the idiot who crawled under a hedge for a nap. Nobody knew I was there.”

  “But I wondered where you were.” Jeremy shook his head as though disgusted with himself. “And I laughed along while those half-wits smashed the windows. You told me they’d get us in trouble, you remember that?”

  “I don’t remember having feet that night. Same as you, I reckon.”

  “If I’d listened you’d have never wound up in shackles in the first place. You did nothin’ wrong and your whole life got turned all upside-down because of it. You had that fine trade going, with the books and all, and now it’s all up for chance. It’s my fault and I’m bloody sorry, Will.”

  “No, my friend.” I slung an arm about his shoulders, jostling him gently. “No.”

  Jeremy let himself be jostled, the portrait of gloom. “Then you swear to me you’re all right with this, this Merrick business, and leavin’ with him.”

  “I swear,” I said easily.

  Jeremy pointed at my face, demanding my gaze. “Look me in the eye. ‘Cause if you’re not, I swear to Christ we’ll get you out of it.”

  I met his gaze as earnestly as I could, summoning every scrap of confidence left in my soul. “I swear, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy searched my eyes for one long moment, and then finally he gave a grudging nod. “Fine.” He took the bottle back.

  I exhaled a secret breath and let my arm fall from his shoulders.

  “When do you expect to leave, then?”

  “Wish I knew. Could be any day.” I squinted up at the pale cerulean sky, weary from my brain to my bones. “When he’s ready.”

  Whenever the Hell that would be.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I could have slept in my own bed back at my mother’s home, but instead I set off for Greenwich. Though I was stuck in that awful place between tired, drunk and hungover, the rooftop conversation was tumbling fitfully around in my skull, and I hoped the long walk would clear my head.

  Jeremy was right that my world had been turned upside-down. It wasn’t as if I never thought about what it’d be like if I hadn’t passed out under that damn hedge. But it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t blame him, or anyone else. I didn’t blame the wine we drank that night, or the wretches who joined our revelry and turned it into idiotic mischief. I didn’t blame whichever drunk among us had led us to the judge's rose garden, nor care who in particular had taken it upon himself to smash that parlor window.

  I didn’t blame the night watch, though they were the ones to drag me out from under the hedge, beat me to pulp and shackle me under the courthouse. Bastards, the lot of them, but they weren’t to blame for my circumstances now.

  I didn’t blame the judge who found me guilty of public intoxication, breaking and entering, trespassing, vandalism, and attempted burglary. A mockery of justice, to be sure, but I would have rotted in prison if he hadn’t commuted my sentence to a five-year apprenticeship. And so I certainly couldn’t blame him for placing me under the guardianship of Doctor Silas Merrick, an apothecary and healer of great renown who treated villagers from his cottage in the dark woodlands two days north of the city.

  And I didn’t blame Silas Merrick. No.

  It wasn’t Merrick's fault he was good and beautiful.

  It wasn’t his fault I had fallen in love with him.

  In fact—in fact!—it wasn’t his fault he was a vampire.

  It had been many weeks since I'd enjoyed the walk to the pastoral tranquility of Greenwich where Merrick had taken up residence last fall. After all, he was never there anymore. And since he’d made himself scarce, the half-hour journey had become my time to dwell on the recent past.

  Sometimes it seemed like only yesterday that I’d tumbled out of the constable's carriage and landed in the mud at Silas Merrick's feet, and other times it seemed like an eternity had passed since then. How frightful he had looked, covered from head to toe in that dark hooded robe! I had been told he was elderly and somewhat reclusive, not that he disguised himself as a damned wraith. Even my captors were spooked by the grim figure standing in the shadows, a flickering lantern in his hand and a black mare looming behind him. I was chilled to the bone when they left me there. The path to his cottage may as well have been a passage to the underworld.

  But my apprehensions unraveled soon enough. Master Merrick, though he exuded a quiet authority, was nothing less than cordial. From that first night, he treated me with simple respect, bidding me to take a bath before I stepped into his stone cottage. Looking back I could almost feel the cozy warmth of the plank shed, the washtub steaming on a little stone hearth; I could still smell the mingled fragrances of various herbs that hung in bundles from the walls and ceiling, of the soft soap infused with honey and pine. My senses were seduced.

  God help me, I nearly lost my mind in that damned cottage. The man aroused unsettling feelings from the very first night, even though for weeks I never glimpsed his face or figure, even though he professed to be an elderly man. Despite all that, despite his stoic solemnity, I was drawn to him like a fish on a line, and was lost every time he laid a gentle hand upon me. Oh, the confusion. I still cringed with remembered despair at the times my body had betray
ed me before his eyes.

  But that was then. And as for now—damn it all, when would he return? And when would the deed be done? Enough waiting! The decision had been made so long, so long ago. Why did he insist on dragging it out? Why not be done with it, and let me move on from the life I’d all but left behind already? Christ, let it be done!

  I sighed heavily, looking down to watch my own boots travel over the damp, packed earth of Greenwich Road. Merrick's understated home was in view at last, a wooden farm house in the clean Dutch style set back in a green pasture. The land was flush with beech and mayapple trees, their leaves eerily still on this damp and windless morning, and bearberries rambled all about the fence, heavy with blood-red fruit.

  Taking the key from my breast pocket, I entered the home and shuffled through the shadowy front hall, peeking into each dark room as I made my way to the kitchen in the back. Tired as I was, the damp heat had left me feeling smudged and sour and I was desperate for a bath. In some ghostly half-awake state I managed to pull the washtub to the pump and strip down for a healthy scrub.

  Clean and half-dressed in buckskins and a plain white shirt, I hauled myself wearily up the stairs to take a rest. Unlike Merrick I didn’t need to keep the heavy shades drawn against the daylight, but I’d done so anyway in the weeks since he’d made himself scarce. The dark was a simple comfort to me now as I slept the mornings away, sadder and more sluggish with each passing day.

  The matter was as simple as this: Merrick was a vampire whose will to live had faded, and there was but one way to keep him from wasting away. According to the strange laws of his strange nature, the only way to revive his tired spirit was to select a human to make into his vampire companion.

  I was that human. To his dismay.

  The sticky part of the whole affair was that Merrick did not want to turn me into a vampire. Oh, he had entertained the thought, had flirted with the prospect quite extensively. But when it came down to it, Merrick had a crisis of conscience and sent me away. And not only did he send me away, but! To preclude himself from crumbling under the temptation to take me for his own, the lunatic made plans to destroy himself. There was a method to the madness, admittedly, for once Merrick the Vampire chose me as his mate, there was no other way that Merrick the Kindly Apothecary could be sure he’d not see the thing through. And he was so determined not to rob me of my humanity, or what have you, that he was prepared to immolate himself.