by Michele Hauf
“Father, no!”
“I have also just proposed marriage to her,” Gabriel continued. “I love your daughter, Monsieur Desrues. Please accept my apologies for our appearance. Though certainly, I am to understand, Roxane would have never expected your visit.”
Xavier lifted his chin, his eyes not leaving Gabriel’s. Roxane could feel the heat simmer between the two of them. She sensed that if she put her hand between their line of sight it would ignite.
“You plan to marry this rake?” Xavier asked her, not hiding his obvious contempt for the vicomte.
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel bristled. “You don’t know?”
“You have only just asked.”
Lifted from his spell of anger, her father directed a much softer gaze at Roxane. “Forgive me, sweet one.”
She lowered her head at the moniker. Distant memories rushed back at his favorite nickname for her. “Another dance with papa, sweet one?” Once upon a time they had been so happy.
Why had he abandoned them? Did he not understand, no matter his reasons, the pain could never be justified? The loss without answer. The constant questions. Had he at least given a reason before walking away her soul would be all of one piece now.
Now Roxane felt her connection to Gabriel deepen. She squeezed his hand. They had both been abandoned.
“It is your life to live,” Xavier finally said. “I will not ask further. Though I would request you find a robe.”
“Certainly.”
Thankful for a reprieve, Roxane rushed to her bedroom, followed closely by Gabriel. A moment to breathe, to regroup and accept that her father was here, looking exactly the same as he had the day he left—if that was possible. His hair had always been short and spare, and acorn color. Green eyes, like mother’s had been. And a soft smile that seemed harder to find now. It was as if he had not aged a single day.
Shrugging her arms into the tattered blue duster, she turned and found herself in Gabriel’s arms. “I’m sorry, I had not expected him.”
He kissed her on the nose. The touch lifted her from the abyss of tense confusion.
“Let me adjust your plaid.” She spun under his arm and tugged at the long ells of fabric.
“He doesn’t look so terrible.”
“My father is not a terrible person. It’s hard to explain.”
“He abandoned you when you needed a father most.”
“Yes.”
“He broke your mother’s heart.”
“Completely.”
“He led your brother to Paris, and ultimately, to madness.”
“Father was not to blame for Damian’s attack.”
“Exactly.”
She found herself in Gabriel’s gaze. Not condemning, but compassionate. They were two alike. And yet, two who stood at very opposite sides of what could and could not be. “Can you forgive me the lack of compassion for your own abandonment?”
“Neither of us were taught compassion by our parents.”
“My mother did,” Roxane said. “But after father left, well, she did not live long after that.”
The threat of tears was imminent. So much to contend with. Gabriel, her lover. Gabriel, her supposed enemy. Damian, a lost soul. And now, her father—a dangerous hit to her bruised heart. “I’ve been through so much emotionally these past few months.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, you do.” For all she yet had not learned of Gabriel’s bruised heart, she did know their pain was similar. “When my world first fell to tatters about me, I had my brother to comfort me. What did you do, all by yourself?”
“There was Toussaint. That man has caught me in more than a few sudden hugs—he initiating, of course. I’ll be damned that the man always knows when I need that silent comfort. He has seen much.”
“Mercy, what a mess we two are,” she said on a silly trill that tried to grasp mirth, but could only touch devastation. “My father waits.”
“Will you be able to face him?”
She nodded. “You won’t leave me with him?”
“Of course not. I am yours to beckon, my brazen little witch. Just pull the draperies, or your father will find it odd if I wear my spectacles indoors.”
Roxane immediately pulled the curtains shut. Only then did Xavier turn and face the twosome who stood before the glowing ash in the hearth.
“I had come to see if Damian might like to attend the theatre with me this evening,” Xavier said. “Is he about?”
“Er—” Thought of confession frightened her as much as having her father in her home did. “Actually, Damian has been out the entire night. I’m not sure if he’ll return until late this evening.” She’d never lied to her father. But Xavier did not deserve to know, not yet. Not until she could find a way to make everything right. “You expect to walk back into our lives as if nothing is amiss?”
“Is there a better way to retie a loosened past?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I’ve never abandoned my family!” Roxane bowed her head. What had she expected of the man? She needed time to sort her thoughts.
“I have my reasons. Yet I cannot explain them.”
“When will you?”
“Sooner rather than later?” Gabriel challenged Xavier.
“Yes, soon. I promise. When I can sit down with both you and Damian.”
“Damian is not here. He’s…in love.” She winced at the lie.
Xavier whistled. “Both my children in love? How splendid. Is she lovely?”
Roxane shrugged. “Of course.”
“Titled?”
She swept a look to Gabriel.
“It is rumored,” Gabriel offered with the same painful expression that held Roxane in check.
“Well, well.” Xavier paced to the hearth and toggled the pendulum of the brass clock that had not been wound since the night of Damian’s attack. He looked over the chalk markings, seeming unfazed. “This news fills me with joy. I insist the two of you—rather, both couples—accompany me to the theatre tonight. To celebrate?”
“But—”
Gabriel spoke over Roxane’s imminent protest. “We would be delighted, Monsieur Desrues. Though I cannot vouch that we will see Roxane’s brother before then. Love has a tendency to change the hours of the day to serve only desire.”
“Very well. I should be thankful one of my children is willing to rekindle our relationship.”
Roxane bristled at his suggestion. She wanted to scream, to shout, to stomp and pout. To rage at the man. To make him see her. Look at me, I have changed. I have survived! To make him feel the pain of loss she had felt so many years ago.
She had gotten over that loss. But now, with Xavier’s re-entrance into her life, the scab had been peeled away to reveal a seeping wound.
TWENTY-SIX
“He’s going to ask more about Damian. I should have never lied like that!”
“The truth would have only frightened him. Besides, I sense you want to help Damian before revealing to your father all that has gone on.”
“If that is possible.”
Gabriel stroked her hair and kissed the crown of her head. “Your brother and father are much alike, yes?”
“Very much.” She shed the robe and strode to the hearth to toe the remnants of the chalk circle. “They are both fops, living for the chase and women.”
“Sounds more rakish to me.”
“You and your definitions.”
“I thought we had gone beyond labels.”
“So had I.”
“Yet still you label your father and brother?”
Bending, she plucked up a stray flower petal and pressed it beneath her nose. Turning, she smiled with her memories. “Damian is the sweetest, most genuine man. He would throw himself before a cavalry to save a loved one.”
“And your father?”
“He was once a kind man, always laughing, playing with me. I followed him about the gardens as if a puppy dog. Damian would often yip teasingly at
me.” But for all the good, the darkness would never recede. “Father left my mother without explanation. She died because of him!”
“Roxane, don’t get upset. I know this is painful. But the man could not have been the cause of her death.”
“He was!”
“Tell me about it. Please?”
She sniffed and settled into his arms. “My mother drowned. I found her lying in the meadow surrounded by yellow coltsfoot and clutching the grimoire. She had bespelled herself, grandmother said.”
“I don’t understand. Did she fall into a lake, a pond? To have drowned?”
“After father left, she was not the same. Mother drew away from Damian and me. She cried constantly. I mean it—literally, her face was never dry. Grandmother said she had placed a spell upon her soul with her sadness. Doom nested in her being. She was a water witch; forged in water, she could only be destroyed by the like. She literally drowned in her own tears, Gabriel. It was horrible. She died of a broken heart.”
“Does your father know?”
“I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how he left our mother. He believes she drowned in the usual manner.”
“Do you think that is fair? Should not the man know? If he never explained his reason for leaving maybe he was forced?”
“He walked away of his free will.”
“According to the eyes of a child.”
“I was sixteen. Old enough to understand.”
Yes, old enough to know when one has gone beyond concern in the eyes of a parent. Adieu, Gabriel, we leave you with the house and your inheritance. A good life for you.
“When a man leaves should he not be obliged to, at the very least, offer parting words? I want to love him, Gabriel, truly I do. Because that is what you do—you love your parents unceasingly. But where is the sanity in such complete and utter abandonment?”
There was none. Xavier’s leaving could not be justified from this side of the coin. Roxane’s feelings were real and true and they touched Gabriel in that hollow core of his being. A part that rarely allowed in hope.
“So your mother was a witch?”
“Yes.”
“Did your father know that?”
“Yes, of course.” She sniffed back tears. “As well, he knew that I was.”
“Damian is not?”
“It doesn’t take with the men as easily as the women. Male witches are rare. I was born into my magic.”
“Perhaps the truth will bring out the unspoken secrets from Xavier.”
“What truth?”
“Of his leaving his family. It cannot be as simple as wanting to live in Paris. I do not accept that.”
“You’ve known the man less than five minutes and already you take his side?”
“I stand beside you, Roxane. Always.” So tender his gaze; a vampire’s gaze. Seductive and primal, yet genuinely touched by compassion. “But I sense that a decade of separation has widened the chasm between father and daughter. Did you ever ask him?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had opportunity. He chose to widen the distance with his indifference. And now look what I’ve done. To make him believe his son is in love with a duchess!”
“We did not specify her title.”
Roxane moaned miserably. His embrace did nothing to dispel the queasy roil in her gut. She wished she had a spell to erase the past twenty-four hours—no—for then she would erase the delicious lovemaking with her French Highlander.
Could she get through this evening sandwiched between the father she did not understand and her new vampire lover?
“Tell me your thoughts.”
“I am thinking I am heading straight to Hades for my lies to father, and for taking up with a vampire.”
“This coming from a witch? Are we not both destined for hell?”
“We are not evil, Gabriel.”
Turning, she retrieved the heavy grimoire and returned to Gabriel. They settled onto the chair and together paged through the book, scanning the ink-drawn pictures and touching the fragments of raven’s feather and dried nettle and various bits of broken glass and torn fabric.
Roxane read the words her grandmother had written, “The vampire sacrifices his mortal soul for immortality.”
“I see,” he whispered.
“I know your heart, Gabriel. You are a fine, good man, that is all that matters.”
“Sure.”
So little belief in that one word. It was a horrible truth to learn. There was no way to make it any less by detouring him from reality.
“Is he like me, your brother? A man without a soul, or is it that we still have souls only they are dark now?”
“I believe he still has one, tormented as it is.”
“So why would you want to rescue your brother by darkening his soul?”
Roxane gaped, closed her mouth, and said, “You make it sound twisted. I only want to help him. I have struggled with this decision, Gabriel. Would not a dark soul be far better than madness?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Damian has his lucid moments.”
“Who is to say madness is not the very definition of an evil soul? Those men I saw in Bicêtre, their eyes did not possess life.”
“Yours do.”
“We will help your brother get back the light in his eyes.” He embraced her and kissed her forehead. “We can bring him to my home. Toussaint can help watch him.”
Gabriel looked out the window. Certainly drinking blood had been a finer trade for madness. But would such a hunger eventually drive him toward the same madness Damian Desrues lived?
After waiting an hour at the theatre, Roxane decided Xavier would not show. Just as well. She had no desire to face him after the lies she had conjured. Until truths could be spoken, she preferred her father to remain at a distance.
Gabriel had suggested they go for a walk. Just the thing to clear their minds and settle their tensions.
She had not before been to the Tuileries. Always Damian would remind her they had not the courtly presence to secure pass through the gates. Though she had known Damian dreamed of strolling the militant hedgerows as much as she. A framed print of the garden held a place of honor on the hearth in their country parish.
Now she fluttered her fingers across the stiff boxwood. Perfect planes shaped the shrubs into exact angles, curves and arabesques. Her skirts dusted the grass, sweet with fragrant midnight dew. The scents stirred in her wake reminded of home.
The night guard had recognized Gabriel—as Leo—immediately, and admitted them. Roxane was thrilled to find they had the entire garden to themselves. Though she could not determine Gabriel’s mood. He hadn’t spoken more than a few words during their walk. It was as if his thoughts were a star’s journey away. Certainly, with good reason.
The oil lanterns dotting the stone paths burned low and put out an acrid scent. Spinning in the aisle of a curved hedgerow, she lifted her arms and tilted back her head. The moon was not in sight for the clouds. Perhaps that was the bitterness that kept Gabriel at a distance and lingering in the grotto on the other side of the double broderie. He ran his palms over the tops of the boxwood, counting, an absent distraction.
She would let him stew.
Life had once been simple. Unfettered by worry, by wanton greed or fear. Lilac, roses, and rosemary surrounded the parish. A garden of simples hugged the east side, while a potagerie paralleled the south.
Roxane gulped in deep breaths of the verdant air.
Loosening the tight laces that crossed down the front of the red velvet bodice—her nicest for the theatre—her lungs expanded and rejoiced at the freedom. The night breeze kissing the bare mounds of her breasts felt exquisite. Her nipples tingled and hardened.
Plunging to her knees, her skirts spreading in a ruby wave about her, she pressed her fingers into the grass. Cool dew licked at her wrists. Scent of the untainted, the pure and unspoilable, enticed her to lean forward to brush her lips across the grass tips.
Not a spell, but a form of wishcraft that required exquisite timing and determination. It will come to pass.
A black shadow grew across the bejeweled grass. Roxane turned and rolled onto her back, smiling up at Gabriel.
“Do you know, there are eighteen boxwood shrubs down this aisle, and a matching eighteen across the way? One-hundred and twenty-two lindens line the pond back there. And the stones, I should really look into their numbers…” He turned and started toward the stones.
Roxane grabbed his ankle. “Come, sit by me. We’ll count the stones later.”
“But…” She tugged and he relented, sitting by her and trailing a finger through her hair. “Remember Toussaint’s net? We vampires like to count, to our detriment. Did your brother go mad from the hunger before the moon reached her fullness?”
“No, the madness accompanied the arrival of the full moon.” She twined her fingers into his. That brought him down to lie on his side facing her. “Do you hunger now?”
