Unbitten

Unbitten

Copyright © 2012 Valerie du Sange

Published by Fanny Bancroft Books, Inc.

Unbitten
is a work of fiction. References to real
people, establishments, organizations, or locations are
intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are
used fictitiously. The characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious and not to be construed as real.
Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.

This book contains content that may not be suitable for
readers under 18.

Cover by Keith Damiani.

cover photograph of château by stéfan.
stéfan’s photostream

I would like to thank all of you so much for your
encouragement, your perspicacious criticism, and
especially, your honesty: Martin Bass, Ivy Hackenberry
Cramer, Heidi Eckstein, Michelle Damiani, and Deana
Whitaker Greenberg.

For your brilliance in formatting and other arcane computer
matters, thank you Steve Greenberg.

For special kinds of help, big thanks to Jutta and to Penny
Norford.

For that smokin’ cover, deep gratitude to Keith
Damiani.

This book is dedicated to Katherine M.,

my patron saint.

She went for a walk after dinner, like she always did. She
was not about to let that man turn her into a scared little
bunny.

You could call Jo a lot of things, but “bunny”?
No. “Bunny” was so far down the list as not to
be on it at all.

Please, did he really think she would fall for that line
about being a
vampire?

Really?

The night was the coldest so far. The wind was up and she
wished she’d worn a hat–her hair was blowing
all over the place and her ears were freezing. It was
making such a racket, not quite howling but occasionally
screeching, that Jo did not hear the crunching of the
gravel, the footsteps on the path behind her. She was so
busy telling herself how brave she was, that she failed to
be scared at a moment when fear would have served her very
well.

Sometimes bunnies have it right.

The Marquis Henri de la Motte took his brother by the arm
and pulled. Up several flights of stairs, down a long
corridor, and up a stone circular staircase to a room that
jutted out over the moat, with a fine view of the pond and
the swans. Up where no guests could hear what he had to
say.

“David! You have got to get ahold of yourself! We
will lose the Château if you keep this up! You cannot
drink from every paying guest we have, or pretty soon we
will have no more guests at all!” Henri was usually
the calmer brother, the easy-going Marquis, the responsible
vampire. But this afternoon he exploded, raising his voice
and shoving David in the shoulder.

David took a step back in response to the shove, but he was
smiling. He made the step back seem like a bit of ballet,
as though the brothers were playing a game, having a little
sport before being called to dinner.

No question that the brothers were impressive physically.
Both powerful, nimble, and athletic. David was the younger,
extroverted brother, who loved to show off and attract as
much attention as possible. And Henri was a scientist, a
man with ambitions–quieter, deeper, more
reserved–not really a man to run a hotel, not at all.

David turned away from Henri and looked out at the swans,
and in the emerald pasture behind the lake, the horses.
“Look,” he said, gesturing. “See how
inviting it looks now, with the landscaping done.
We’ve got more bookings than we’ve ever had
before, thanks to me.”

“I don’t dispute that,” said Henri.
“But night after night, these poor guests–that
jolly English couple who came on Tuesday, with the rosy
cheeks and blond hair!”

“Very, very tasty!” laughed David.
“There’s something about that northern European
flavor I especially like. Blondes,” he said,
“are the absolute tastiest. And they are unbelievably
hot,” he said, with a smirk.

Now Henri turned away. “You’re
disgusting,” he said.

“You’re self-hating,” answered David.
“Vampires love to bite, they love to drink, they love
to fuck. You? What do you like to do? Read and go for walks
in the woods? Play in your
lab
?”
David’s voice rose as he spoke, and crueler thoughts
tumbled into his head but he held them back. Henri was his
brother, after all, and David needed him.

Although Henri did not have much to do with the running of
the Château or the
chambre d’hote
, he
was a stabilizing influence on his brother. A modern
influence. He wanted to figure out how vampires could live
in the new millenium–live without constantly risking
their lives by attacking human women and getting caught, by
continuing with the old ways, the medieval ways.
Henri’s method of working on this was by inventing
various products in his lab that he hoped would give
vampires more freedom once they were widely available. He
left the work of the Château and the
Château’s business up to David.

Sometimes David felt a little like a show horse, like his
purpose was to attract attention and prance around while
Henri fiddled around on secret projects, while his
parents–oh, don’t even get him started on his
parents, those wizened creaking heaps who almost never came
out of the basement–anyway, that English woman had
been a bit of delicious last night and he wasn’t
sorry for it. He remembered for a second how he had brushed
the woman’s blonde hair off her neck before plunging
his teeth into her soft rosy flesh, and felt himself get
hard just thinking about it. It was going to be difficult
to wait until tonight, when that new couple arrived and he
could see what was on the evening’s menu.

That is, if Henri would lighten the hell up.

“I’m asking you to back off a little,”
Henri said, in a conciliatory tone. “Of course
I’m not saying don’t have a snack from time to
time, I’m not saying you have to go straight to
synthetics and that’s it. And you’re doing an
admirable job of having a light drink and not killing
anybody. I know that takes self-control.”

Henri had learned over the years–around two hundred
or so–that the best way to get David to listen to him
was not to react to his insults and to slather on the
flattery.

“You’ve been careful to do a brainwipe before
you leave them?” he asked.

“Of course,” David said, sounding bored.

“And the husbands–you’ve left them
alone?”

David just rolled his eyes.

“And the new bandages I created, how are they working
out?”

“When that English lass came down to breakfast, did
you see any problem?” David said, his voice full of
annoyance. His brother was making him feel like a little
boy taking orders, and he chafed at it.

“Just…keep the risks in mind,” Henri
continued. “Our family has kept this secret for seven
hundred years. You don’t want to be the la Motte who
gives the game away. If any of these women goes home and
starts talking, we could have slayers breathing down our
necks like that.” Henri snapped his fingers under
David’s nose.

“And not only that. It would be easy to
get…carried away. To suck just a moment too long. To
kill somebody.
”

“Right,” said David, nodding, but managing with
his tone to show Henri that he worried too much, even as he
was appearing to agree with what Henri was saying.
“I’m not going to drink anyone out,
that’s not my thing. Death is skeevy.” He
shuddered a little and made a face.

“Listen,” he added. “When’s that
American girl getting here? There are some show trials
early next month and I want her in the saddle.”

“That American girl is an expense we should not be
taking on,” Henri said.

“This business works because middle-class people from
around the world live their terribly mundane lives and they
want, just for a week or even a night or two, to pretend
they’re part of the nobility. Nothing says nobility
like show horses, dear brother.” And with that, David
gave a snort and was through the door and gone.

Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed to Jo as though
the Air France airplane food was a little bit better than
the airplane food she was used to. Not that she had had
that much experience with flying or comparing one airline
to another–she only flew when one of her rich clients
paid for the ticket–but as she dove into her packaged
meal with gusto, she told herself that the oddly-shaped
hunk of chicken drowning in a pasty sauce was not that bad.

Across the aisle, a man was watching her out of the corner
of his eye. He was amused by Jo’s obvious enthusiasm,
and he laughed out loud when she was working so hard to cut
her chicken that her knife snapped in two and a chunk of
plastic came sailing into his lap.

“So sorry!” she said, looking around for more
napkins, sure that the sauce had done something
unforgivable to the man’s suit.

He dabbed at the spot with his own napkin, after dipping it
into the club soda he was drinking. “It’s no
problem, really,” he said kindly. They got to
talking, and before long, he had shifted over to the empty
seat next to Jo, and found out that she had never been to
France before, that she had a new job showing horses for a
Marquis, and that she was going to be living at the
Château Gagnon for the immediate future.