“No.”
“Yes,” Col said again. “Shit, Nardo, you’re the one who’s keeping all those statistics. Haven’t you noticed they’re more active in the spring and summer?” He turned to Hope. “He got his skull first, but Dov and I have been at this longer. Oh, and sorry about the ‘shit’.”
She waved the apology away. “It’s okay. I’ve given up. You’re all heathens.” She’d made them fill the jar three times over and had passed the proceeds along to St. Stephen’s, where Canaan said the priests were taking good care of the poor.
“Finally,” Dov sighed. “It took you long enough to figure it out. My tongue’s been bleeding for weeks what with biting it all the time.”
“Poor baby.” Grace said with mock sympathy and then made a rolling gesture with her hand at Col. “Spring? Demons? Hope and I are waiting.”
Col looked at a loss. He frowned at Dov. “See, jackass, you made me lose my thought.”
“If you lost your thought it’s because somebody flushed, Shit-for-brains.”
“Boys!”
“Okay, okay. I got it now. Mom says that Hell may be all fire and brimstone, but the otherworld is cold and dank.” At Dov’s snort, Col jabbed him with his elbow. “That’s the word she used. Dank. It’s a real word, isn’t it?” He looked to Hope and at her nod he continued, “Okay then. Doesn’t hurt to improve your vocabulary,” and to Grace and Hope, “She thinks they like the warmth of spring and by summer it’s hot and dry.”
Canaan nodded. “My sister could be right. We had a major battle at the New Year, but it does seem like there’s usually more action in good weather.”
“It always seemed that way to me,” Uncle Otto agreed, “Though I never thought of it in terms of weather. It was more like it’s spring and a young demon’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of murder and mayhem.”
“I get that one!” Hope said excitedly, “It’s Tennyson!”
Everyone, including Uncle Otto stared at her.
“I’m sor…” she started to say and then changed her mind when she saw Grace move. “Don’t pinch me. I meant, you all say things or make gestures and I don’t know what they mean. Stop it, Dov. I know what that one means. I lived with Lenny. I mean gestures like this.” She made a gun of her thumb and index finger and held it by her face. “I laugh because you look so funny, but I don’t know who James Bond is.”
“He’s a…”
“No,” she interrupted. “It will ruin your joke if you have to stop and explain. I understand that much. Only this time I understood the reference. It’s the poet, Tennyson. You know, ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love.’”
“Well I’ll be,” Uncle Otto nodded his head. “I’ve said those words a hundred times and never knew where they came from.”
“You’re talking Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Right?”
Now everyone was staring at Dov and Hope liked it better that way.
He grinned sheepishly. “I remember the name because of this time in school when the teacher was making us do this poetry sh…tuff and I heard her say Lord Tennyson and I got all excited ‘cause I thought he was a Guardian and I asked her what House he served. She didn’t take it well. I had to do a punishment report. A thousand words on some dumb poet. You remember that Col?”
“It’s hard to remember every moronic thing you’ve done. Now, can we get back to how I’m right and Nardo’s wrong?”
Nardo raised his hand. “I concede and I bow to your greater experience. I’ll look into it. And Hope, you and I need to get together and figure out how to make some sales.”
“Holy shit!” Dov jumped up excitedly. “Are we going into the sex toy business? Can I help?”
Hope slumped to the table and buried her face in her hands. “Does everyone know everything?” she muttered to Grace.
“Pretty much. It’s hard to keep a secret in this House.”
Chapter 15
Hope stared at the sugar bowl that sat across the table. Concentrating all her will on the little yellow pot, she raised her hand and pointed her fingers at it. The bowl began to shudder, its lid shivering in its seat. She took a deep breath to steady her shaking fingers and moved her hand slightly to the left. The bowl moved at the direction of her hand. Again she moved her hand, this time to the right. The bowl and its lid flew off the table in two separate directions to crash against the cabinets to either side of the room. The two pieces shattered into six.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Hope covered her face with her hands.
“Stop being sorry and help me pick up the pieces.” Grace was already on her knees. “After the hurricane of plastic containers, I thought something heavier might work better. Guess I was wrong.” She ginned at Hope now gathering pieces of lid. “At least it was empty.”
“And now useless,” Hope sighed, “I’m hopeless. I’ll never get it and I don’t know why you two bother.”
Manon shook her head. “You are not hopeless. You have never been hopeless. You have more control now than you did a few weeks ago. You are simply not mature enough. It will come.”
Hope rose and brushed at the skirt of her dress. “I’ve been ‘mature’ for quite a while now. Some might even call it matronly. Where I come from, ‘old maid’ is the term they use when they think I can’t hear them.”
“Stop it,” Manon snapped. She rapped the tabletop with her open palm. “I will here no more of this. It has become tiresome. Your face is beautiful. Your body…” Manon stood and ran her hands down her sides from her breasts to her hips, “…is much the same as mine and no one has ever called this matronly.”
Hope had to agree. You wouldn’t say Manon was tall. Statuesque was the more appropriate word. Voluptuous came to mind long before large. Matronly? When Grace first explained that Daughters of Man were blessed with longevity and mating, the Paenitentian form of marriage, multiplied that blessing, Hope was thinking in decades. She was stunned to learn that Grace was talking about centuries. Three of them in Manon’s case. The older woman should have personified matronly in the extreme. She didn’t.
With her snow white hair still soft and shining, her skin unblemished and wrinkle free, and her elegant bearing and body, Manon was the antithesis of matronly.
“If men don’t see you as sexually alluring, it is because you do not see yourself as such. There is no sin in knowing yourself to be beautiful. All women are beautiful, each in her own way. It is something we should cherish. We were made to please men as they were made to please us. It has been so since our creation.” Manon softened her tone. “People have said cruel things to you through their own selfish motives or perhaps their own ignorance. These things are not true and you must believe them no longer. Now, go and get the broom and dustpan to clean up the rest of this mess. We have done enough for today. We will work again tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hope said quietly. It was easier for Manon to say the words than for Hope to believe them, but she would try.
When she’d left the room, Grace whispered, “I thought you were going to tell her about her virginity getting in the way of her power.”
“She is not ready to hear it.”
“I didn’t want to hear it either. Didn’t seem to stop you from telling me.”
“Not wanting to hear it and not being ready to are two different things,” laughed Manon and then she winked.
*****
Supper was over, the kitchen was put to rights and everyone seemed to have disappeared. Otto and Manon had left soon after the table was cleared. Grace and Canaan had retreated to their room for some ‘alone time’ as Grace had put it. The rest of the men had disappeared on some mysterious mission in the new addition to the House.
Hope was left alone and she hoped it wasn’t because of her behavior at supper. Nico hadn’t come down for dinner again and she was upset that no one seemed to care. She’d fiddled and paced and muttered for over an hour before deciding to do something about it.
She felt the las
t of the sugar dissolve as she stirred the milk in the pan and watched the dark swirls of chocolate powder turn the milk to creamy brown. The kettle boiled and she poured the steaming water into the pot to warm it before she refilled it with hot chocolate. Beside the pot, two china mugs sat ready on the tray next to a large glass plate holding two roast beef sandwiches and six of Grace’s sugar cookies. The cat watched her every move from its perch on a stool. She now knew its name was Buffy and she was convinced it was the same cat she’d seen at Lenny’s. But how that could be? The cat only seemed to travel between this place and Manon’s and never went missing.
“Someone needs to check on Nico,” she explained to the cat.
Buffy cocked her head, listening. Her ears twitched and she started to purr.
“With all the concern the members of this House show for each other, it doesn’t seem right that no one cares for Nico. Dov and Col say they’ve done their part by partnering with him on patrol. They say he was surly both nights, which I find hard to believe, and if someone wants to go up there and talk to him, that was fine by them, but they aren’t volunteering. Canaan shrugged it off and Nardo actually laughed. Broadbent smiles like a Cheshire cat and cryptically quotes Dante’s ‘Without hope we live in desire’, which tells me nothing and Manon and Grace obviously feel it isn’t their place.”
Hope tested the milk with her pinkie, eased the burn by sucking on it and removed the pan from the heat. After emptying the pot of its water, she poured the steaming milk. When the cat stood and meowed, she guiltily poured it a saucer of milk from the jug before she returned it to the refrigerator. The cat ignored the milk and meowed again.
Hope shrugged. “Then I don’t know what you want,” she said and continued her complaint. The cat sat. “Uncle Otto, who I’ve grown to like more and more each time I talk to him, is the only one who seems concerned, yet he refuses to help.” She’d forgotten napkins.
“He’s suffering,” Uncle Otto had said when they were alone together in the kitchen. “I’ve seen it before, experienced it myself. But if he won’t talk about the why of it, there’s nothing any of us can do.”
“Someone has to try,” she’d pleaded.
Uncle Otto smiled gently. “Why don’t you?”
“Me? I don’t know him. I’m not qualified to help anyone. I don’t know anything about my own world never mind yours.”
“Maybe that’s to your advantage. You don’t see him the way the Paenitentia do. You see the man.” Otto gave a little chuckle. “And the man sees you.”
“Sees me how, Uncle Otto? Give me some help here. If I wanted riddles, I’d go see the Professor.”
“Oh come now, my girl, you’re not blind. His eyes follow you when he thinks no one notices. He smiles when you speak and frowns when Broadbent makes you laugh. And why do you think he prowls the parlor at noon? He’s hoping you’ll stop by for another visit.”
Hope felt the flush rise to the roots of her hair. “Does everyone know?” Her color rose higher when Uncle Otto raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“It was accidental. I couldn’t sleep. He was kind to me. We talked. Nothing happened.” But she’d wished, oh how she’d wished… She shook her head. “This is nonsense. The twins have taken great joy in explaining Nico’s reputation. Even Nardo’s made sly comments.” She’d waved her hand to indicate her body. “I know what I look like, Uncle Otto, and I’m not what a man like Nico looks at twice. He’s been nice to me, that’s all. Like the rest of you.”
Otto laughed outright at that. “If I looked at you the way Nico does, Manon would have my head as well as the rest of my heart. You need to stand in front of a mirror and take a good look at yourself, Hope. You’re enough to make any man look twice. Nico likes what he sees, but in you, I think he sees more.”
“My point exactly. I’m more all over.”
“If that’s what you believe, nothing I say will change your mind, but it doesn’t change what you should do. If Nico has shown you care and kindness, can you do any less for him?”
Hope straightened her dress; a scoop neck affair Manon insisted wasn’t cut too low, and picked up the tray.
“Wish me luck,” she said to the cat.
Buffy closed her eyes and purred contentedly.
Hope climbed the stairs and walked the length of the hall to the door at the end. She knocked softly and waited, knocked harder and waited again. She’d almost lost her nerve when she remembered the twins saying there was a second door at the top of the stairs that opened into Nico’s rooms. By the time she reached the top, the plate and mugs were chattering on the tray. She used her toe to tap softly at the base of the door.
The door was immediately flung open.
“Goddammit…”
She was so startled, she lost her balance and it was only Nico’s left hand to her shoulder and right to the tray that saved her and his supper from tumbling backward down the stairs.
His initial curse was followed by another as with one continuous movement he swept her into the room and took the tray from her hands.
“Goddammit woman, you could have broken your neck!” he barked. He turned away and ran his fingers through his uncombed hair. His shoulders heaved before he turned back.
Hope was so shaken, she didn’t think before she snapped back. “I think you meant you could have broken my neck.”
“I meant what I said.”
“Then you’re wrong! I didn’t trip or stumble. I was waiting patiently on the step when you ripped open the door and lunged at me. You frightened me and why shouldn’t I be frightened? You looked like you were ready to kill. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was worried about you. I brought you some supper. A ‘No Thank you’ would have done the job.” She stamped her foot for emphasis.
A lamp fell over in the corner of the room. The glass on the table beside the chair cracked, the amber liquid seeping onto the wooden surface. She heard a series of thuds from the room beyond.
“Now look what you’ve made me do.”
Nico ignored the damage and stared at her. Her dark yellow dress clung tightly to her shoulders and arms, molded to her breasts and waist and flowed freely over her hips to fall just above her ankles. The flush of her anger colored the exposed tops of her breasts as they heaved beneath the golden fabric. A few auburn curls had escaped from the confines of the bun she still rolled tightly to the base of her neck and her eyes flashed with emerald fire. She was beautiful and all he wanted to do was pull her to him and kiss her.
“You have a mighty funny way of showing it,” she huffed. Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened. Her heart beat faster and a smile lit up her insides.
“Well,” she said quietly, “This is awkward.”
He saw her eyes light with that inner smile and her breasts rise and fall with short, quick breaths. He clenched his fists and held himself still, watching, unable to look away, as a small, shy smile played at the corners of her mouth and then her tongue darted out nervously to wet that lush lower lip and all strength and resolve left him.
He took the step forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and her lips tilted up to meet his crushing down. The taste of her, the smell of her, like roses in spring, overwhelmed the senses. His mouth couldn’t get enough of hers and his tongue probed between her lips until she parted them. Tentatively, she touched his tongue with her own and he felt her sharp intake of breath. He paused, afraid he’d frightened her with his ardor and then her arms were around him and their tongues were dancing together. Minutes passed, maybe hours before he finally broke the kiss and stepped back, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.
Her right hand went flat against the skin above her left breast as if holding her heart in place. She was staring at his chest and had a curious look on her face. Nico had a moment’s panic. He’d moved too fast or had he disappointed her.
“Oh my,” she breathed, “That wasn’t at all what I dreamed my first kiss would be like.”
His heart fell.
His heart was back in place and beating strongly when he laughed. “You rocked my world,” he said both as a correction and a statement of fact.
Hope laughed with him. “You certainly did,” she agreed and lifted her lips to be kissed again.
*****
Dov ducked his head around the edge of the door leading into the kitchen. When he spied Canaan and Grace sharing a single glass of wine he grinned and straightened.
“Mommy, can we go to bed now?”
“Yes, dear,” Grace laughed.
Dov motioned behind him and the others came trooping through.
“But,” Grace said before they could exit. She raised a finger in warning. “If I hear one off color comment, one snicker or snort, any sound at all that might disturb them,” she paused for effect, “You will all come begging forgiveness on your hands and knees before I ever cook a meal for you again.”
“Gee, Gracie,” Col grumbled, “You used to be fun.”
“I mean it,” she said, but she was smiling. “They will not know that we know and we will keep our speculations to ourselves.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No problem.”
“Right-ho.”
They made their way silently to their rooms.
Canaan wrapped his arms around his mate, her back to his chest. He nuzzled her ear. “So, what do you think is happening?”
“No speculating,” she said firmly. She wiggled her rear end. “Why don’t we go to bed, big boy? So I can demonstrate.”
Chapter 16
They kissed again and it was longer and lovelier than the first time. He kissed her throat, her ears, her eyes and Hope had never felt anything more wonderful. Suddenly he bent, one arm crooked behind her knees and she stiffened.
“You can’t. I’m too…” He kissed away her protest as he lifted her into his arms.
“We had this conversation the first time we met,” Nico said against her lips. “I can, you aren’t and I will.”
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