Free Blood to Blood by Elaine Bergstrom

quick wire to her asking that she meet him at the station. The following morning he packed a traveling bag and caught the first train west.
    When Mina received the telegram, she immediately realized the turn their conversation would take. In a house the size of hers, privacy was nearly impossible. Working side by side with Essie on setting up the house, Mina realized how rare their camaraderie was. And though Essie would undoubtedly learn part of the vampires' story someday, she hardly needed to hear it all so soon, and thinking her employer mad, or worse, resign. So Mina suggested that the woman take a few days off to visit a cousin in Plymouth whom she had not seen for the year she had nursed Mrs. Proctor.
    Mina walked into town with Essie, seeing her off on the northbound coach as if they were friends, not mistress and servant. She had just enough time for a quick cup of tea at a little cafe near the station before Arthur's train pulled in.
    He was easy to spot, with his fair hair seeming to glow in the precious rays of midmorning sun breaking through the interminable British mists. When he reached her, he dropped his small satchel and gave her a long hug, smiling while she rearranged the jade green bonnet that had gone askew from his exuberant greeting.
    "I only saw you for a few hours while you were in London and have been missing your company ever since. Has it only been two weeks?" he asked as he linked her arm in his and patted her hand. "It's an unnaturally lovely day. Is your house too far away to walk?"
    "A bit of a hike. Nothing I don't do often."
    "Then let's walk. Are there places you need to stop along the way?"
    "A number of them. I'm glad you asked, since I could use your advice. If you had come just a week later, you would not have seen the house as it was when Gance was alive."
    "You're changing it?" he asked, his shock half serious, as if the museum to licentiousness must remain completely intact.
    "Expanding it is a better term. It's more of a cottage than a house. And scarcely big enough for one, let alone my servant and occasional guests."
    "If space is a problem, I could stay with the Westernas."
    "There's absolutely no need. Essie and I have been making do. I've given her a couple of days off so we can catch up on things."
    She took him to the job site of a carpenter she was thinking of hiring, to a woodworker's shop, a seamstress to get fabric swatches for draperies for the new rooms. He offered advice when asked, seeming just as content to watch her excitement as she planned her addition.
    When they were close to her home, he suggested that they stop for an early dinner.
    They chose a place he knew well, one that served excellent Cornish hens and brewed its own ale. They were midway through dinner before she realized that his gaity was strained, and probably had been since his arrival.
    She reached across the table and rested her hand on his, a gesture that she hoped would reveal what she felt in her heart but did not have the words to say.
    "There's not an hour that passes…" he said and looked away. When he turned back to her, his expression seemed almost merry again, as if he had shrugged off Lucy's memory one more time. He ordered them each a snifter of brandy, drank his fast and ordered another.
    It was early evening when they reached the cottage, all the magnificent shades of the late summer walkway muted by the dusk. She led him up the walk and inside without speaking, as if it were a museum, then took him through the back doors and into the garden.
    "Gance said this was his favorite place," Mina told him after he'd taken it all in.
    "No wonder. All the flowers, and the huge bare windows that expose your life to the world, even if the world is filled only with roses and delphiniums. Not at all like the shutters and draperies of polite society. I've grown to hate those velvet cages."
    "So have I," she said. Then added, "Damn them all."
    She poured them both a drink—sherry for her, scotch and