Born to Bite (5 page)

However, before she could ask any questions of the man who might be either her life mate, a murderer, or both, he’d greeted her with a quiet “My room is the master bedroom at the back of the house upstairs, but there are four guest rooms upstairs as well. Take whichever one you want. I need to go check on Bessy and her calf and attend to a few chores. I’ll see you when you get up tomorrow. Good night.”

Armand had then slipped past her and out of the house before she could even murmur a quiet thank-you. Eshe had stared after him with amazement, finding the situation rather anticlimactic after her moments of worry, but then had heaved her breath out on a sigh, collected her bag, and gone above stairs to check out the guest rooms. Each of them was nice, but Eshe’s favorite had been the rose-colored room next to the master bedroom. She’d dropped her bag on the bed and then gone to poke through Armand’s room while she had the chance.

Her poking hadn’t turned up anything of use. There hadn’t been any handy-dandy little diary with a written confession of terrible deeds, or bloody weapons that might have been used to behead past wives. In fact, there hadn’t even been pictures or portraits of his wives or from the past. The room had held a bed, a chair by the fire, a bookshelf full of books both old and new, and a closet full of clothes. The en suite bathroom hadn’t been any more helpful. She’d left the master bedroom knowing no more about the man than what brand of aftershave and toothpaste he used.

Eshe had wandered the house after that, noting the absence of knickknacks and memorabilia. It seemed Armand wasn’t the sentimental sort. There was nothing of his past life or wives in the house. Only the office held anything that told her the man had family. It hadn’t been anything out in the open. As with the rest of the rooms in the house, this one had no visible photos or portraits that suggested there was anyone in the world he cared for, but after picking the lock on the large bottom drawer of his desk, she’d found a collection of photo albums and a box that held miniature portraits. The portraits had been older, from before the invention of photography. They had been paintings of three women she presumed were his life mate and wives, and then of his children. She recognized both Nicholas and Thomas, whom she’d met through her position as hunter, and guessed that the daughter was Jeanne Louise, his daughter by his last wife, Rosamund.

The albums themselves had held much more recent images, one had held pictures of his eldest son, Nicholas, and his wife, Annie, both looking happy at various functions, their wedding, on picnics, and so on. Then there had been an album dedicated to Thomas with newer photos of his wedding to Inez in Portugal. The last album had been of Jeanne Louise, following her from her knobby-kneed youth, through her graduation from the university, and then at various family functions.

Eshe had found that discovery somewhat reassuring. She had been told that Armand had cut all ties with his children and the rest of the family after his last wife’s death a century ago and had never even seen his daughter, Jeanne Louise, since dropping her on his sister-in-law Marguerite’s doorstep after the death of the girl’s mother, Rosamund. Those albums suggested, however, that while he hadn’t seen her in person, he’d been keeping up with her life and what she was doing, and he did care about the girl. The fact that he’d hidden those albums away, however, was rather curious. The man lived alone. There was no reason she could think of to hide them anyway.

Pondering the matter, Eshe had locked the albums away back safely in their drawer, and then slid out of the room to await Armand’s return, her mind full of questions. She’d waited for him to return to the house until just before dawn, pacing his living room like a caged tiger until she couldn’t stand it anymore and had finally gone out in search of him. She’d found the barn that held his dairy cows, a couple of pigs and goats, but he hadn’t been there. She’d then gone through the other barns searching a good-sized one that held horses, and a henhouse full of sleeping chickens that had started stirring before she determined he wasn’t there and closed the door on the incredible stench coming from inside, and then she’d checked the last barn to find it held a tractor, a riding lawn mower, and various other farm equipment but no sign of Armand.

Eshe had given up after that and made her way back to the house as the sun began to crest the horizon. Tired, she’d sought out her room and got ready for bed, thinking she would start fresh in the evening. However, tired as she’d been, sleep had not been easy to claim or keep. It was bloody noisy in the country. She often heard people comment on how noisy the city was and how blissfully quiet the country was in comparison, but she would have a couple of choice words on the subject in future. They were full of crap. Her apartment in the city was soundproofed, her sleep never disturbed by the sounds of traffic or city life. The same wasn’t true out here. While there wasn’t much in the way of traffic on this rural road, there were a gazillion other sounds instead; the deep thrum of passing trains in the distance, the chatter and song of birds, the chirps of crickets…She’d had the devil of a time getting to sleep and staying there.

And now there was that damned vacuum cleaner to contend with, she thought, and glowered at the door as the sound grew louder, suggesting it hadn’t been right outside her room at first but now was.

The country definitely was not a quiet place, Eshe decided grimly as something banged against the base of the door several times. Growling deep in her throat, she threw the blankets and sheets aside and slid out of bed to stomp to the door. Tired as she was, Eshe was in a fine dudgeon, and all wound up to blast Armand for his inconsideration in waking her, but was brought up short when she dragged the door open and found a round little mortal woman about to bang her door again with the head of a vacuum cleaner.

“Oh dear!” the woman exclaimed, stopping just short of running the vacuum over Eshe’s bare feet when they appeared in place of the door. “I’m sorry! Did I wake you?”

Eshe stared at the woman rather blankly as she quickly shut off the vacuum she’d been running over what seemed obvious to Eshe was a perfectly clean carpet. The vacuuming hadn’t been necessary. The woman had just been trying to “rouse Mr. Argeneau’s guest,” she read from her mind. It seemed her presence was such an oddity the woman had been waiting impatiently all day for her to make an appearance and finally gave in to the urge to bring that about herself…with the vacuum. And the woman was glad she had, Eshe read from her mind as the woman thought that the guest was quite a looker, and she couldn’t wait to tell the girls at the beauty parlor when she went in for her weekly wash and rinse. Oh, the girls would all be aflutter when they heard the elusive bachelor Armand Argeneau had himself a beauty in his house. Perhaps there were wedding bells in the future.

Sighing, Eshe stopped focusing on the woman’s thoughts and shifted her attention to her eager expression, only then becoming aware that while she had been reading her mind, the woman had been giving her the once-over. Eshe grimaced and glanced down at the overlarge T-shirt she’d brought to sleep in. While it covered everything that was important, it wasn’t exactly how she would have chosen to be dressed to meet the housekeeper.

“I
am
sorry if I woke you,” the woman said with a good job at feigning regret. “Mr. Argeneau did say you got in late last night and would probably sleep the day away. I guess I just wasn’t thinking when I started to vacuum.”

Eshe just managed not to snort at the words, but forced a smile to her lips. “That’s all right, I—Did you say Armand spoke to you? He’s already up and about then?”

“Oh my, yes, he was up when I got here, which is unusual for him. But I suppose what with Paul having to leave so unexpectedly to tend to family matters, he had to see to the animals himself today. Poor man. I do hope he finds a replacement for Paul soon. Managing the farm and writing his daily article for the newspaper will wear him out in no time if he doesn’t.”

“Writing his daily article for the newspaper?” Eshe asked with a start. Lucian hadn’t mentioned that to her. He’d only said Armand was a farmer.

“Yes, dear.” The woman beamed as proudly as if she were his mother. “Didn’t you know? He’s our own little celebrity in town. He writes a daily interest article. Everyone just loves it. I gather writing runs in the family. He has a nephew who writes novels, you know, but Armand says he has enough trouble coming up with things for his little daily article and can’t imagine ever writing a book, but he’s a fine writer,” she assured her, and then said almost apologetically, “Mind you, he’s a bit eccentric, writing at night and sleeping during the day, and really, from what I can tell, he doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird fed, but then Doris tells me most writers are a little different than the rest of us, and she would know. She did read that book on the life of Hemingway…or was it Hemingway? It may have been someone else,” she admitted with a frown, and then waved that away and said, “I can’t remember now but I do recall he was a hell-raiser whoever she read about. Why, he was into drugs, and sex, and…Well, fortunately, our young Armand doesn’t do any of that.” She frowned at her own words and then said quickly, “Well, the drugs at least. I’m sure he likes sex as much as anyone else. Although we were all starting to wonder since he never has ladies around or invites any of the local girls out or anything. Doris is positive he’s gay and has a ‘friend’ in the city that he sneaks off to visit, but now I can tell her about you and she’ll just have to shut up about that,” she announced with satisfaction.

“Yes,” Eshe said a bit faintly, amazed that the mortal had managed to babble all that without pausing for breath. Dear Lord.

“Well now, I’ll just put this away,” the woman announced, bending to unplug the vacuum from a socket right beside Eshe’s bedroom door. “You’ll want to dress, and I’ll go down and see about getting you something for breakfast. Why, you must be starved. You missed breakfast and it’s well past lunch. I’ll fix you something nice and we can chat while you eat.”

Eshe watched wide-eyed as the little woman bustled off and then shook her head and closed the door to begin getting dressed as the woman had suggested. It didn’t seem likely she would get back to sleep anyway, and if Armand was up it meant she could hopefully find him and get in some of the questions she’d wanted to ask last night. She intended to get him to talk today about his wives and how they’d died. Lucian had merely told her their deaths all appeared to be accidents, but hadn’t explained what kind of accidents, and it seemed to her that it would be pertinent. She just needed to figure a way to slide such questions into a conversation without raising Armand’s suspicions about the real reason she was there.
No problem, right?
she thought dryly as she pulled on her leather pants from the night before.

Eshe had her pants only half on when the realization sank in that Armand’s housekeeper had said she would go make her some breakfast. She didn’t eat, but that wasn’t what made her freeze with her pants still only half on. It was the fact that making breakfast no doubt included the woman looking in the refrigerator. A refrigerator she distinctly recalled stacking bags of blood in last night.

Cursing, Eshe yanked her pants the rest of the way up and hurried for the door without even bothering to do them up. Eager to get to the woman before she saw the blood, Eshe practically flew up the hall and then down the stairs and up the hall to the kitchen. She arrived in the kitchen door to find Armand’s housekeeper bent over peering into the refrigerator and poking around inside. Eshe was about to take control of the woman’s mind when the housekeeper straightened and stepped away to set a carton of eggs and some bacon on the island, leaving a clear view of the open refrigerator and the food stacked inside. There was no blood.

“Oh my, you must be hungry, dear, to rush down here like that,” the housekeeper said, drawing Eshe’s gaze away from the refrigerator to find the housekeeper smiling at her widely from the other side of the island. “My goodness, you didn’t even brush your hair. Well, sit yourself at the table and I’ll fetch you a coffee and some toast to tide you over until I can get these eggs and bacon cooked for you.”

“Eggs and bacon?” Eshe murmured, running her fingers through her short hair to bring it to some kind of order as she moved closer to the fridge to get a better look inside. Nope. There was no blood in there at all.

“I can understand your surprise,” the housekeeper said with a laugh as she bumped the refrigerator door closed with her hip on her way past to retrieve a loaf of bread from the counter beside the toaster. “If you looked in the refrigerator last night you must have been horrified at how little there was in there. As I said, Mr. Argeneau doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird fed, but when he told me that he had a houseguest, I hopped in the car and ran over to the market to pick up some food for you.”

And to gossip to everyone about a woman in the house, Eshe read from her mind with wry amusement.

“Oh my, I’ve just realized I didn’t introduce myself,” the woman said with vexation as she dropped a couple of slices of bread in the toaster. She pushed the button down to begin the toasting and then turned to hold her hand out toward Eshe. “I’m Mrs. Ramsey, dear. Enid Ramsey.”

“Eshe d’Aureus,” she murmured, clasping her hand briefly and wondering where the blood had gotten to.

“D’Aureus,” Mrs. Ramsey echoed with a smile. “What an interesting name. What does it mean?”

“Gold,” Eshe answered automatically.

“Like your eyes, they’re gold. They even seem to shine like gold when the light hits them just right. Very pretty, dear. Striking.”

“Thank you,” Eshe murmured, and turned to make her way to the table as an excuse to keep her from looking at her eyes too long or hard. Like those of all immortals, Eshe’s eyes captured and reflected the light for better night vision. It made hunting at night much easier. Her father, Castor d’Aureus, had had golden eyes and so had been called Castor the Gold when he’d fled Atlantis with the others. He’d passed those eyes on to his children, though most of them had dark flecks in them, inherited from their mother, she supposed.