Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (28 page)
Read Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) Online
Authors: Michele Hauf
“I know you would not.” A moment to linger in his truth. A lifetime to breathe his presence. It could not be. “But as your wife, would I be expected to allow you to go off in search of whores that you would pay to bite?”
“I—er… That’s not fair, Roxane.”
“Yes, it is.” Bending to pick up the emerald gown she pressed it to her breasts and turned to him. “If I don’t question now, it’ll be too late when the answers are given. I do love you. But could I really live with knowing that you embraced other women—”
“To survive!”
She nodded. Sighed. Why was she asking the tough questions? Why not rejoice, celebrate the love they shared and seal that by posting the banns?
“Well…” he thought about it, finger to lip. “I could bite only men?”
Roxane quirked a brow.
“Just a thought. I would do what I could to make it easy for you, but there are some sexual feelings involved.”
“I had guessed that.”
“I never did tell you how it felt when Anjou attacked me. Vulgar. And yet, he made me—”
“Want the bite?”
“Yes.”
You will be loved.
“I loved him for that moment.”
“That explains some things.” About Damian as well. “You were mumbling nonsense after the attack.”
“Shameful things.”
“Damian said much the same. I know that your female, er,
victims
would mean nothing to you but a means to an end. But we must face reality. I could unintentionally harm you, Gabriel.”
“So my pretty witch believes her blood to be so sweet as to be irresistible?”
“Do you honestly believe the blood hunger will always allow discretion?”
“Of course not.”
“You have shown me you are not as you appear on the outside. The lace is just a costume, a façade. You are a fine man, Gabriel.”
“Just not husband material?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You are frightened of marriage?”
“Not at all. I—”
“Say you will have me, please?”
She searched his face, finding genuine need in the depths of his dark eyes. So soft, so tender, utterly compelling. He wanted to be loved. A simple request. An honest desire.
But she, a vampire’s wife? And he, a witch’s husband. What a farce!
And yet, they both understood one another.
“I love you?” she murmured.
Gabriel tilted his head. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“If you think it can work, I want to give it a try.”
“I’ve witnessed more enthusiasm from a man riding the tumbrel to his end.”
“I’m sorry—”
A knock on the door drew both around. Roxane shrugged at Gabriel’s silent query. She tugged his plaid down and tucked it in at the waist. A terrible mess of fabric, but it did cover all the dangly bits. In turn he pulled the gown over her head.
“Who is it?” she called.
No answer.
Roxane opened the door, and her world became more complicated than she could ever imagine. “Father.”
The man she cared so little for stood in the doorway waiting to be invited in. As if only yesterday she had danced about his legs, begging to be swung by the arms in a circle. As if mother still lived. As if he had not fled their family a decade earlier.
Dressed in fine satin and looking a courtier for his white bagwig and red heels, Xavier Desrues had improved his couture since she last remembered him wearing a simple shirt and chamois breeches.
She felt the warmth of Gabriel’s hand slide down her back as she contemplated her options. She did not despise Xavier so much as to appreciate he had gifted her with this fine apartment. But this gift—and the city—had lured Damian to destruction.
No, that wasn’t right. Damian had found madness on his own. Xavier had nothing to do with the vampire Anjou’s attack.
“Roxane?” Gabriel whispered in her ear, nudging her to surface from her muddled thoughts.
“Father.” She signaled he enter with a bow of her head. “I had not expected your visit.”
“Apparently,” the man said as he eyed her gown—the hem was rumpled and crunched—and then he took a long look over Gabriel. “Won’t you introduce me to your companion?”
Clutching for some piece of fabric to cover her—hide her from the condemning eyes of her father—Roxane slipped her fingers through Gabriel’s warm hand and coaxed him around to her side. She winced to think what a sight they made. She in grandmother’s ancient gown and he in a tangled plaid and no shoes, with tousled hair.
“Father, this is Vicomte Gabriel Renan. Gabriel, my father, Xavier Desrues.”
“Ah, vicomte.” Xavier bowed curtly. “I believe I have heard of your reputation.”
“All of it earned, I’m sure,” Gabriel offered. “I have heard very little about you from your daughter.”
“To be expected. Neither did I say what information I have on you is favorable.”
Gabriel bristled. “I care little what you think of me, Monsieur Desrues.”
“Well then, let us cut through the surface niceties and get to the point, shall we? What the hell are you—a rake of the first water—doing in my daughter’s home dressed like a savage Scot?”
“It is not your concern, father.”
“Roxane.” Xavier’s jaw tensed, but his eyes remained gentle, submitting. Ever quiet in his control, she remembered futilely. To walk away from his family without warning had been the cruelest form of control. “I accept the fact that you despise everything about me. And I know you can never love me the way a daughter does her father. I’ve missed many years of your life, which I regret. But know this, I have never stopped loving you.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” Gabriel interjected.
“And I will know”—Xavier glared at the vicomte—“what one of Paris’s most infamous rakes is doing in your home with you dressed in—whatever that is—and he looking as though he’s tumbled from your bed!”
Gabriel splayed out his hands. “I have tumbled from your daughter’s bed.”
Xavier gripped the hilt of the rapier fastened at his hip.
“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.