So much for the idiots and their crap about vampires.
Even as quietly as Noelle was moving, he heard her come in. Being honest, the man really did seem to have preternatural senses. He turned his head and gazed at her for a while, his face as expressionless as it usually was.
Noelle did her best to ignore the scrutiny. She dipped her fingers in the basin, made the sign of the cross, and went to a pew some distance away from Drugeth. As far distant as she could get, in fact, allowing for the tiny size of the church.
She concentrated on her own prayers, and was pleased that she managed that pretty well. At least until the end, when she found herself fumbling because she was waiting for Drugeth to leave. There was no way she was going to leave with him.
Finally, he left. She waited perhaps five minutes before leaving herself.
Not that it did her any good. She discovered him waiting for her outside.
It would be silly to avoid him. So, she came up and nodded a greeting.
"I am told you are a devout Catholic," he said. "Have even contemplated taking holy vows."
"Ah . . ." She looked away, caught off balance by the unexpected question. "Yes, sort of. It's something I've thought about for years, off and on. Even though everybody who knows me says I'd make a lousy nun. Well, not that, exactly. They think I'd wind up very unhappy with the choice."
He said nothing. She was pretty sure that was because he didn't want to seem as if he were crowding her.
"What do you think?" she asked suddenly. And then found herself caught even more off balance by her own question—what are you doing, you ninny?—than she had been by his.
"I think that decision, unlike many others, is one that only the person involved can make. We are all—those of us who are Catholic, for a certainty—obliged to follow the teachings of the church involving matters of conscience. But not even the church presumes to tell a man or a woman if they should take holy vows."
He smiled, in that gentle, half-melancholy and half-irenic way he had. "I grant you, for noble families and royal ones more so, that decision is often tightly circumscribed, even sometimes forced outright. Still, I will hold to the principle."
"You have no opinion?"
"I would not put in that way. Let us say I do not presume to advise. That is not quite the same thing as having no opinion."
He seemed on the verge of adding something. His lips even started to part open. But, then, he closed them firmly and just shook his head.
"I should speak no further on the matter. May I escort you back to the camp?"
Silly to refuse that offer, as well, so she nodded.
They said nothing on the way. By the time they reached the camp, though, Noelle was in a quiet fury.
Not at him, but herself. A decision she hadn't been able to make for years had somehow gotten made in that short walk of no more than two hundred yards. She knew it as surely as she knew anything.
Damn her impudent soul, Denise was waiting for her with that same aggravating grin.
"Yeah, right. Enemy of the state. Is he as cute in church as everywhere else?"
"Vampire, remember?" Noelle half-snarled at her. "As if a vampire would enter holy ground!"
Denise's grin didn't so much as flicker. "You're dodging the question. Nice try."
"What he is, is the most exasperating man I've ever met."
"Wow." Denise shook her head, the grin vanishing completely. "You've got it bad, girl."
Chapter 12. The Date
The Bohemian Border, near Cheb
A little after noon, three and a half days later, Drugeth called a halt and ordered a rest. The last stretch before they reached Cheb was going to be very difficult, and they couldn't afford to lose the last wagon due to someone's fatigue. The other one had broken a wheel two days earlier, and they'd lost two hours repacking the surviving wagon with the items that were too bulky or heavy to be loaded on pack horses. By then, fortunately, they had several of those. Foreseeing the likelihood that at least one of the wagons would not survive the trek across the Fichtelgebirge, Janos had purchased pack animals at any of the small villages they'd passed through which had one they were willing to sell.
They needed to stop, anyway, because it was time to release Noelle Stull and her companions. By now, Janos was sure that Noelle had figured out that his escape route was taking them into Bohemia. He wasn't concerned about that, in itself, because by the time she could return to a town that had a radio with which she could alert the USE authorities, his expedition would have long since left Cheb and would probably already be reentering the USE farther south. The main thing was that he didn't want her to realize that Austria had suborned the commander of the Cheb garrison.