Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (7 page)

Gabriel flashed Toussaint a scathing look, but turned a warm smile on Roxane. “What he said.”

Pity reflected in her eyes. Gabriel thought to protest her misplaced concern, but then, the charade must be maintained. Surely she thought him a vapid and utterly helpless swish.

A strange whisking noise stroked behind the outer wall. Gabriel pressed a palm to the wall and again exchanged curious looks with Toussaint. “She is an interesting study, yes?”

Suddenly the door swung inward and Roxane beckoned, “Come in, messieurs.”

They followed her into a wide sitting room, the walls lined in fading English paper that had seen better years—perhaps better centuries. Half a dozen thick cathedral candles placed upon the windowsill and hearth flickered.

A faded wool blanket had been pinned to the outer wall where Gabriel had heard the strange sound. As a tapestry? Or…to hide? He cautioned himself from tugging it free. A tufted chair and plain wood table furnished the room. A fieldstone hearth to his left snapped fire sparkles up the chimney.

“Settling in for the night?” He strode to the fire and spread out his palms. A scatter of chalk lines on the stone hearth took his interest. And there, next to a stack of ash wood, a piece of black cloth was draped over something. Bowls? He thought to lift the cloth, but felt Roxane’s stare upon his back.

Hands spread before the blaze, the cozy warmth settled his apprehensions.
This woman is not insane.
A simple home, though oddly decorated, did not lend to a tainted mind. Besides, he liked her all snuggled into that blossom of a robe. There was no reason whatsoever he should not seek the treasures she hid beneath the faded fabric. Perhaps Toussaint could wait out in the carriage?

“I do have an extra room. You’ve nothing to fear from me. Certainly your virtue will not be in danger. Toussaint will keep me in check.” The valet did not meet Gabriel’s glance. But the man’s knowing smirk was, fortunately, out of Roxane’s eyesight.

“Ah yes, the very same valet who keeps the lair of sensual delights in order for his master?”

Gabriel’s smugness fell. “Of course, you will bring along your maid.”

“I…” She shrugged a hand up the sleeve of the ruffled robe. “I have not had opportunity to employ a maid since arriving in Paris. If truth be told, it is unnecessary.”

“Astounding. How do you dress?”

“I am not of the society that was born to such expectations of servitude, such as yourself. And, much as you may find this remarkable to digest, we country women are perfectly capable of dressing ourselves.”

“She seemed terribly sad.” Gabriel drew his gaze up and down the dusty velvet curtains drawn before the window that looked over the stinking street. Such old things. Very little in the way of personal possessions. Not a figurine or portrait in sight. And there was the obvious, that her dress was years out of vogue.

But what were they discussing? Ah yes, the woman down the stairs. “Rather a contrast, her hair and clothing.”

“She only does it for the coin.”

“Does
it
?” He turned to Roxane. A flip of his lacy wrist splayed out a questioning hand. Yes, he’d mastered the fop’s flip. Just when Gabriel began to sneak up on Leo an extravagant gesture reeled him into the costume. “In what delicious wonders does the bewigged creature indulge?”

“Ninon is in debt after her mother’s expenses. The old woman is dreadfully ill. The coiffures pay her to experiment with new hairstyles.”

“I see. I have never before heard such a thing. To pay women to use their hair?”

“It is quite miserable. Being prodded and poked and curled and burned and powdered all the day. She’s a nasty burn on her ear from a careless barber. But it does pay well enough to keep her mother in laudanum.”

Gabriel nodded, and muttered
laudanum
under his breath. The word worked like a snake coiling in his gut, clenching and writhing. For accompanying that word always came addiction. An addiction to comfort.
I am in my comfort now. Mustn’t bother mama…

He glanced to Toussaint, who, companion that he was, nodded that “I understand” nod.

Realizing with a start that he’d pressed the nail of his forefinger deep into his palm, Gabriel shook out his hand and mentally shrugged off the dark thoughts. “So you’ll dress yourself then?”

“I don’t subscribe to malicious whispers. I know my truths, Leo. I hardly feel you will impose upon my kindness in any manner that will see me ruined. Nor would I allow such. If you’ll excuse me, messieurs, I’ll pack some things.” She strode from the room.

The woman certainly had a mind to her. Gabriel wasn’t sure how to take her bravado. She had no idea what she was walking into.

“Me?” Toussaint stabbed his chest with a thumb. “Handmaid to a woman? I don’t know how to lace and primp and do whatever else it is women require.”

Gabriel winced to think the valet did just that every day to him. “You’ll fare well enough, old man. It’s either you or leave Mademoiselle Desrues to me.”

“I thought you were excited for this adventure, Toussaint? You’ve opportunity to step beyond the mundane. You already play handmaid to a swish, what’s so different about dressing a woman?”

“Oh, my soul. Laces and boning and petticoats and—” He molded the air before him. “—curves.”

Gabriel smiled. Perhaps he would see to assisting the beauty himself. Pity to waste those curves on Toussaint.

Locking the door to her bed chamber, Roxane shrugged from the night robe and blew out the breath she had been holding since opening the door to discover Leo’s puppy dog pout.

Shivering as the cool night air whispered across her bare flesh, she hastily wiggled into the dress she had previously worn. Tugging the laced stays to a comfortable fit, she bent her arms up and over her shoulders and tied them securely. A maid? Ha!

A mad scramble had hidden all from her visitors’ wondering gazes. But the man had almost lifted the cloth from the bowl of herbs sitting before the hearth.

Leo wanted to believe in what everyone else subscribed to: the normal, the surface, the valid. Asking him to believe in vampires was asking much. Yet how difficult could it be to believe when the man sported a bite on his neck?

She would give him time to accept. Though, not much time. He had but days. And she had less.

She had surpassed fragility and haplessness weeks ago. No longer did she cry herself to sleep, cursing herself for the trouble that had found Damian. Now, she was determined to make the world right for Damian. For if all went well, her bait would attract the vampire Anjou.

Eyeing the collection of candles that sat around the ancient grimoire her grandmother had gifted her, Roxane shook her head. Mustn’t risk it. Recall of the white chalk symbol traced on the limestone before Leo’s home sent a shiver through her. She’d avoided the marking easily enough. As well, the chalk marks she’d drawn out on her wall had swiftly been covered to prevent suspicion.

Clasping the vial of blood suspended around her neck, she nodded, decisive. She mustn’t risk revealing any more of her truth than necessary. Some truths could do more harm than good.

Roxane alighted from the carriage behind the two men. The moon was growing larger. She had perhaps three or four days to either capture Anjou or watch Leo go insane.

“Roxane?”

Leo stood waiting, his hand extended. Straight shoulders and proud stance. The handsome man pranked out in lace and powder intrigued her more than she thought possible. But she mustn’t subscribe to a rake’s attractions.

Bait. If you consider him anything more you will lose Damian for ever to the madness.

Glancing down, she spied the chalk circle Toussaint had drawn before the door. A portent to keep away witches.

“Mustn’t subscribe to my valet’s superstitions,” Leo offered.

“Still.” Drawing her skirts close to her legs, she stepped around the circle and over the threshold. “I’d hate to smear his artwork.”

Intuition told her he was in need of comfort, of an understanding soul. How easy it would be to give him what he needed. At the sacrifice of her needs. Because what if? What if he succumbed to madness? Or what if he did not succumb, but instead became a drinker of blood?

A shudder shook her shoulders.

The only other option was that Leo could surface unscathed.

Impossible. She had not witnessed such triumph, nor had she heard of it beyond what had been written in her grandmother’s grimoire, a book of knowledge passed on through the centuries, filled with practicalities, wisdom, and the occasional legend. Roxane’s bible, of a sort. Unfortunately of late, the section on vampires had become worn.

The brush of Leo’s fingers glided along her arm. When she had walked another step and his fingers had almost left her, she turned her wrist to catch his grip. Stopping, she turned to him. They stood palm to palm. No question in his eyes. No challenge in his pose. Defeated?

No. The man was determined. As was she.

Compelled by a part of her heart she wasn’t completely sure of, she touched the dark stubble on his chin. His sharp intake of breath tempted her closer. Here, alone by the man’s side, she felt his presence as a viable heat. One breath closer and she would snap to him, like a piece of metal being drawn to a magnet.

He made not a move to reciprocate her touch. But there, she scented faint cinnamon wafting from the fibers of his clothing—why, from his very being.

Pressing up onto her tiptoes, she leaned in and touched her lips to the mouth of a man she knew she mustn’t think of as anything but bait. He allowed the tender kiss without grasping her. Again, his breath mingled with hers and she closed her eyes as their mouths barely touched.

Snap
.

She’d been pulled to the magnet and now could not—did not want to—resist. For here, offering the man her trust with a kiss, Roxane felt the banshee screams of
Lutetia
subside, and all that remained was the soft pitter-patter of her heart.

“It is not in here!” Henri Anjou thrust aside the flimsy piece of paper that purported itself the literary gem of Paris society. More truths published, it raved. Plenty of gossip, as well. The obituaries listed no less than seventy-two people, none of them the illustrious
precieuse
Leo.

Following every attack Henri always placed his victim in the obituaries. It reassured him no minions had been created. As it was, there were enough baffle-headed lickspittles under his charge. Really, he could start a tribe, but the notion of organization, and having to look after that organization, bothered him.

The man had to be dead. Yesterday’s pages stated Leo had been absent from Mademoiselle de Vaine’s salon.

Perhaps the fop’s family sought to keep the man’s death quiet?

It was useless to hope. Henri knew without doubt that had he been allowed a few more moments with the man before being whacked across the back with a stick he could have ensured a finished job.

Such sweet elixir the man’s blood had been. He’d hated killing him the moment he’d begun. Of course, he hadn’t succeeded, had he?

“What is the trouble?” Xavier sauntered into the mist-blurred bathing room and kicked off his embroidered Chinese slippers.

Though a hazy cloud of steam, the man’s towel dropped onto the slate floor and he eased his way into the hot water across the sunken bathing pool from Henri.