by Cora Zane
Frustrated, he poured a splash of blood wine into his glass then restoppered the bottle. Lifting the glass, he drank deeply, feeling the flare of heat from the wine and the blood restoring him. Out of breath, he lowered the cup and a gasp tore from his lungs. His heart thundering, he set the cup down and looked across the room at his desk.
Now he had Gisele to contend with. Already, it was beginning—the catty bickering among the women in his house. It was the very reason he had told Dominic he was not interested in reinstating a harem even to keep one Acolyte, although he had to admit now that Eleni was here, he couldn’t imagine sending her away.
He turned on his computer and when the welcome screen came up, he typed in his password. If Gisele was in the house, he couldn’t find her. Claudette had not seen her since the early evening, and he was willing to bet that was around the time she’d come into the dining room to tell him Eleni had banned her from her room. Frustrated also, because he’d wanted to make love to Eleni once more before the night began.
He picked up the phone on his desk, and pressed the speed dial for the kitchen. The line rang in his ear, and he watched as Claudette glanced back at the ringing phone, then upended the iron, leaving it on the ironing board as she crossed the room and picked up the line.
“Monsieur?” she answered.
“Claudette, you are busy, so I won’t keep you long. Did you send Gisele on an errand?”
“Non, Monsieur. I haven’t seen nor spoken to her yet tonight.”
“I see,” he said, his mouth drawing into a thin line. “Thank you. I will let you get back to your doings.”
He hung up the phone, and sat for a moment staring at the live feed. There could be no doubt. Gisele was not in the house. On a whim, he back tracked the video feed in the foyer, looking for her, and came across the moment he had walked downstairs an hour or so before.
Walking in and out of view of the camera, Gisele paced in the east hallway, outside the small parlor, and it appeared as though she was talking on her cell phone. When he came into view on the stairs, Gisele stopped pacing, pulled her hand down from her face and tucked something into her pocket—the phone. She came into the foyer, and he remembered that she had called out to him then.
There was no sound while skipping through the frames, but it didn’t matter, he vividly recalled the conversation. How furious she’d been! On the computer screen, he watched her storm across the room, her hands clenched into fists as she met him at the bottom of the stairs. Right away, judging by the proud jut of her chin and the gleam in her dark eyes, he had sensed that something was up. Out of breath, her face red, she dove right into an angry rant about Eleni. She’d spoken so fast her words ran together, a scathing five minute spew session about why he should never have allowed her in the house.
Of course, Gisele hadn’t told him why Eleni had banned her from the premiere suite, but he’d suspected a disagreement of some kind. He couldn’t guess what it had been about, but Eleni was…secretive. He could not think of a better term for it, and Gisele could be pushy. He should have corrected her behavior long ago, but she knew her limits with him, and he had not seen the need. Not with only himself, Claudette, and Henri in the house.
“Let us see where you have gone, hm?” he muttered to Gisele’s image on the screen as he fast forwarded through the footage.
Julian frowned as he continued to scan through the frames. When he left the room, she stared after him, chewing her nails. It seemed as though she didn’t know quite what to do. She glanced up the stairs, then toward the hallway leading back to his office. Wrapping her arms around herself, she walked over to the front door and paced.
For several frames, she lingered in the entryway, then out of nowhere, two beams of light passed over the stained glass insets along either side of the front door—headlights from a car pulling up the driveway.
Julian’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t realized anyone had stopped by.
As Gisele’s image climbed into the black car, he froze the recording, and with the touch of a few keys, he switched to the driveway camera and resumed watching the video from a new angle, rubbing his chin as he studied the luxury car.
The driver was indeterminable. It could have been anyone. It could have been one of her friends from the village, although he didn’t think so. A vampire possibly, since the windows were tinted, but if it was, he couldn’t imagine who it could be. He had introduced her to no one but Marguerite, and given their history together, it seemed highly unlikely she would go there. He tried to zoom in on the license plate, but the grainy resolution made the numbers and letters blow apart into anonymous gray pixels.
Frowning, Julian let out a deep breath and closed the replay window, bringing up the main security screen. He was usually so involved with the running of the vineyard he rarely paid attention to Gisele—where she went, and who she spent time with. From now on, he would have to keep closer tabs on her.
It was on his mind to go back through the footage to see the argument between Gisele and Eleni first hand, but no…for now, that was finished. As vital as it was to know what was going on in his household at all times, it wasn’t his intention to betray the trust or privacy of anyone living with him. No, the recordings would be there later, should he choose to go over them.
He moved the mouse, dragging his cursor across the screen to click the icon the he needed to turn off the display, but at the last second he hesitated. After the poor start to the evening, he couldn’t help himself. Instead of shutting down, he brought up the room by room display to look for Eleni. It was almost a compulsion, if for no other reason but to look at her face.
Julian frowned. For years, Marguerite had been telling him it had been too long since he had a woman of his own, and he was beginning to believe she was right. Eleni might have been in his house for less than two days, but already he couldn’t keep his mind off of her.
Chapter Eight
“I suppose you plan to hide yourself away in here all night?”
Eleni looked up from her laptop and found Julian standing there, watching her from opposite side of the small patio table. Still peevish with him for their earlier argument, she sat straighter and pushed her dark rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose. “The thought had occurred to me, yes.”
The central fountain gurgled continually, the white noise soothing. In fact, Eleni found everything about this room comforting—the flagstone floors and bamboo rushes, the maze of hot house jungle plants. It gave her the illusion of being hidden and safe. If she could not have privacy in her own suite, she could have it here without worry. She’d been sitting in here for hours, working on a digital art project for her online gallery, and until Julian came along, not one person had come into the room to disturb her.
He strode forward and held out a glass of wine for her. “You were not at dinner.” The sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up, revealing muscular arms with many glossy scars. They did nothing to distract from his handsomeness, but she did not take the drink.
She turned her attention back to her laptop. “I had Claudette bring a tray to me in here.”
“Convenient, I suppose,” he said as he set the wine down on the table next to her laptop. “But a lonely choice for us both.”
“Lonely is better than being fussed at,” Eleni said, and turned her attention back to her computer.
“Ah. You are still angry with me.” The amusement in his voice set her off.
“And I shouldn’t be?” she asked in a chilly voice. She knew he baited her, but she couldn’t help herself. He had her attention now. She took off her glasses and set them on the table then looked up at him.
“You’ve told me frankly about the rules of the house,” she said, forcing herself to keep her tone level. “I can accept that. Whatever you want to think about me, I’m not a troublemaker. I’m not here because I disrespected my former Biter. I was good to Rubio, and I was loyal to him, even when I knew he wasn’t loyal to me. Still, I did whatever he asked of
me, even to the detriment of my own health. If that makes me a disgrace, then what can I say?” She shrugged, then abruptly reached out and shut the lid of her laptop.
“The thing is,” she continued, “when Dominic told me he was sending me to France to get the council off my back, I didn’t expect you to love me, or even be loyal to me. I still don’t. I’m not the young fool I once was. If anything, I’d want you to be honest with me, and that’s what I’m putting to you now. I want to hear it from you directly, Julian. What is your relationship with Gisele? Is she your lover? Because I get the feeling she’s used to special treatment.” She sat back, searched his guarded expression. “Whatever you say, I will believe you, and I won’t bring it up to you again. But, as your protégé—your première, if that is what I truly am to you, then I deserve to know. And I’d rather hear the explanation from you, than from her.”
The question seemed to take him aback. Once he had a moment to let her words sink in, he blew out a breath, and smoothed a hand over his hair. Eleni crossed her arms and waited while he pulled out one of the chairs so he could sit down.
“Gisele is not, and has never been, my lover. Rest assured, that is true.” He sighed. “Perhaps she does receive special treatment. For that, I am to blame. She grew up here, in this house, after all.”
“She was a born here?”
“Oh, no, no…” Frowning, he shook his head. “She was born in the village, although she might as well have been born here. Her mother had worked in my household as a trusted servant for probably fifteen years. Gisele’s mother was named Aline-Marie, and she came to work for me when she herself was fairly young.”
“Where is she now—the mother?”
“She’s buried outside of Ville Cleménce in the cemetery of a little church. I was sad to hear that she had died. Aline-Marie was a trusted servant, you understand? Her familial line went back some hundred and fifty years. She was a good girl. Reliable.” A slight frown troubled his features, and his eyes took on a faraway look. “I have never forbidden my staff from taking lovers, and I knew Aline-Marie began seeing a carpenter, a man in the village named Hugo Gespar, not long after she took up residence with me. He was a good deal older than her, but that did not stop her from falling madly in love with him. One night in late spring, she came to my office and told me she intended to leave her position in my home, because she wished to marry her lover—this Hugo. I granted her that right, and at her request, I planned to write to the council to remove her name from servitude.”
Eleni gaped at him. “She actually asked you to do that? To sever her familial line?” She’d never heard of a servant requesting such a thing. It took generations of loyal service to a vampire household for a bloodline to be considered worthy of such an honor.
“What could I do? Change her mind? She loved him. Nothing else mattered to her but Hugo.” Julian shrugged. “She told me she never intended to return to a servant’s life, so why would she need to remain under the umbrella of security my household provided, especially when Hugo was there to provide for her? Too, I think she didn’t want her children to be labeled as servants. In the end, who knows what she was thinking? I never asked her.” He looked away toward the glass wall and beyond it, to the black, lightless infinity behind the house. “I fully intended to see to her wishes, but it was a hard year for the vineyard. I was busy with so many things and never got around to writing to the council in Paris to have her branch of the Gespar line stricken from the book of names.”
Frowning, Eleni reached for the glass of wine. “What happened then?”
“I lost track of Aline-Marie once she moved out. A few years later,” he said, his mouth drew down as he thought back, “perhaps it was a year and a half? Two years? Hugo came here and dropped off Gisele at my doorstep. She was just a baby, less than a year old. Hugo didn’t speak to me, of course, but he told Claudette that Aline-Marie had died in an accident, and that he couldn’t take care of the girl.”
Eleni shook her head. “Why did he bring her here, and not an orphanage?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps he assumed we knew her family. I don’t really know. As I said, I didn’t speak to him. It was Claudette who took the girl in. I didn’t approve at first, and even resented her being here. It seemed wrong to be raising another man’s child, but then it was also Aline-Marie’s child, so I allowed it. About six months later, a story cropped up in the newspaper about Hugo. The police had arrested him outside of Paris. It was reported that Aline-Marie had been killed in a car accident, but there were questions surrounding her death. Hugo was tried and convicted of killing his wife, whom he believed was having an affair. I think maybe he doubted Gisele was his child, but there is no mistake in my mind. Aline-Marie loved him too much to hurt him in that way.”
Eleni shuddered. “That’s awful.”
“Indeed,” Julian agreed with her. “The police came here later. They planned to take Gisele away. Claudette had grown attached to her by then. She was beside herself with grief. It made me look at Gisele in a new way. I felt sorry for her. She had no family, but came from a long line of trusted servants. Since I had not yet written to the council to remove her mother from servitude, I decided to leave her status intact. I figured Aline-Marie’s heritable title would at least give the child a life, a place to belong.”
“So, you raised her, then?” Eleni could see why Gisele might look at the chateau as her home, rather than being a live-in member of Julian’s serving staff.
Eyes dark with caution, he laughed. The low, throaty sound told her he had no desire to make such a claim. “I took very little part in her upbringing. I gave her shelter and paid her expenses, but I know nothing about children. When Gisele was a year old, I sent her to live with Marguerite. That way, Claudette could keep her position, and still visit the child. I thought it best to see her brought up among women, at least until she was of proper age to take her mother’s place in my household. And the women in her harem doted over the child. When she grew up, I sent her to boarding school, and then on to university. She came here during the holidays to be groomed for service. But that hardly matters. As you see, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to Gisele. I watched her grow up. I would not say she is so much like a daughter, but I compare her to a beloved niece.”
Eleni swallowed hard. She knew what it felt like to lose her mother, and to have her home disrupted. If not for her older sister, Anya, she would have been entirely alone. When Anya had taken her bows as a debutante into vampire society, Eleni had resented it—the suitors, her sister, the entire process. She had perceived it as a threat to their small family. She had nightmares that a vampire would fall in love with her sister, sponsor her, and take her away.
It was possible that Gisele looked at her as a similar threat. After all, she’d joined the household rather suddenly. While that still did not excuse her for the invasion of her privacy, she couldn’t help but soften toward her a little.
“Give it time. The two of you will become accustomed to each other.” The way he said it told her that he expected nothing less. He stood up then and walked around to her side of the table. “If you’re finished with whatever you’re doing, let’s go sit in front of the fire—maybe, watch TV?” His hand slid along her inner elbow, a gentle caress. “It’s been a tough start to the day, and I’m lonely for the company of my new protégé.”
Eleni hesitated. She knew it wasn’t smart to cave so easily, but how could she refuse when his voice softened in that way? All it took was one glance into his guarded eyes, and she sensed something vulnerable there, a hidden need for affection, that he would never openly admit.
Eleni sighed, and got up from the table. “Fine, just give me ten minutes to take my computer up to my room, and I’ll rejoin you downstairs.”
Julian picked up her hand and kissed it. “Agreed.”
Chapter Nine
“Marguerite, come in.” Eleni held the front door open for the vampiress while she entered the house. In those few moment
s, the frigid wind had swirled a good amount of snow onto the entryway rug, where it quickly melted. The vampiress stood at the edge of the rug and began shrugging out of her red woolen coat. “Whatever made you want to stand out front? Why didn’t you come in through the garage?”
“I thought about it, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone. There was the possibility I’d catch you while you were entertaining Julian,” the vampiress said as she handed her coat to Eleni, who dusted the melting snowflakes from the shoulders before hanging it in the entryway closet. “I figured if no one answered the door, you were indisposed.”
“No, not this early in the evening,” she said as she closed the closet door. “I was in the sunroom, writing an email to my sister—nothing that couldn’t wait.”
“Then I’m glad I decided to go ahead and visit.” Marguerite smoothed her hands along the sleeves of her silver, satin shirt. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this. It’s been a month since your arrival, and I was curious to see how you’re adjusting.”
“You’re always welcome here, Marguerite. I’m sure you know that.” It was the truth. Julian would never turn away his cousin.
Over the past few weeks, Eleni had come to realize how much Julian cared about the people around him—Marguerite, Claudette, and Henri. Gisele was still a sticky spot with her, but so far they had managed to avoid each other, and Eleni had decided early on she could live with that if they could keep their distance.
