Forever Young The Beginning (72 page)

***

The journey to Madrid was punctuated
by two wild days for Aimee. The group all agreed that she needed
that time to relieve the pressure of appearing always as the
perfect child

The night of the performance in
Madrid, Ian and the others sat in the box reserved for them by
Roberto Rodriguez, owner of El Banco de Rodriguez. Marie and Sophia
were back stage with Celeste and Aimee, both of whom were eager to
perform. As always, this was a prelude to the scheduled opera. Once
again Marie warned Aimee about controlling her eyes so that they
wouldn’t glow. Little Aimee smiled and said “I’ll keep my
eye-lights off.”

They performed and took the place by
storm, blowing kisses to the audience as the curtain came down. The
theater had to raise the curtain twice because the audience
wouldn’t stop applauding.

Afterward, they all dined at a
well-favored Inn. Roberto Rodriguez had come to the performance
with his wife and met them there and paid for everything. While
they were there, a king’s messenger came and delivered a message to
Celeste herself. It was a request to come perform for King Charles
III and his family before departing from Madrid. Celeste’s hands
flew to her cheeks as she smiled broadly. She turned to Aimee and
told her. Aimee’s eyes widened and her hands flew to her cheeks as
she squirmed in her chair and said “Oh my! Oh my! May we Aunt
Marie? May we Ian?”

Ian and Marie both chuckled, looking
at each other and at Henri. Then they nodded to each other and Ian
said “Of course you may, little one. If not, I should fear that the
King might throw us all in jail.”

Within two days they were in
the private residence quarters of the palace itself, assembled to
hear the two perform. Ian remembered the room well, having passed
through it late one night while stealing two paintings. The two
girls completely captivated the royal family and their retinue.
During the performance Ian was thinking
here we’ve made history again, this time with seven vampires
being in the presence of the Royal Family of Spain.

Afterward they were invited to stay
and dine with the royal family. The King’s wife Maria had died
years before of tuberculosis. His eldest daughter, Esmeralda, was
most friendly and chatted a long time with both girls and with the
ladies. The king wanted to hear all about the encounter with the
Pirates so Ian gave them a mostly accurate version of it and he did
add that he had fallen in love with Alandra and that the incident
had begun the chain of events that resulted in their eventual
marriage. The King was hanging on every detail of the pirate
episode while Esmeralda was hanging on every part of the developing
romance between the tall Scot and his beautiful wife.

Esmeralda had married and then was
widowed so she listened carefully to every word of the budding
romance between the two over the days at sea. Both were interested
in the storm because they’d heard of how bad it was and remembered
it even though it was years ago. The king commented that he also
heard of an astute lady in Barcelona who knew tax law so well that
she had helped seamen and merchants in Barcelona successfully press
prior claims for tax relief. He winked at Alandra when he said
that, and she blushed prettily. Ian concluded that the King of
Spain was a far warmer, more approachable monarch than Louis of
France or George of England. He knew from talking with Henri that
he’d initiated far-reaching reforms in Spain already.

It didn’t hurt at all that
Alandra was known to the Royal Family as the daughter of their
Ambassador to France as well as director of
Barcelona House
. Esmeralda desired
for a niece of theirs to be sent there to be examined by the
doctors in Barcelona. Alandra obliged and said that the girl would
be examined when she arrived, and that she would stay with them or
with her own Father and Mother while in Barcelona.

After speaking with Princess
Esmeralda, Alandra came to Ian and said “The princess compliments
you on your excellent command of the Spanish language.”

Leaning close to Alandra Ian spoke
softly saying “She should have seen and heard my Spanish when I was
a bald-headed drunken man in Barcelona one day, fighting a duel
with Carlos Chavez.”

Alandra snapped open her fan to
conceal her laughter then, shaking her head in disbelief. “Whatever
am I going to do with you, Mr. McCloud?”

“
I have a few ideas, but we
can’t discuss them now.” he said as he allowed his eyes to glow
slightly. Both of them laughed then as she blushed a
bit.

Before they departed from the palace,
they were introduced to several ministers. Alandra greeted her two
uncles and embraced them warmly and introduced each to her husband
and to everyone in her party. No sooner had they done that then the
chief prosecutor for the crown, Enrique Chavez approached. Ian was
anxious then, wondering if somehow the prosecutor would recognize
him from their one encounter. His fears were unfounded as Chavez
fawned on all of them equally and was most pleasant. Ian and
Alandra exchanged glances and smiles after he had met Ian and had
not recognized him. She nodded knowingly and smiled at Ian in
response to him winking at her.

After the Chavez had gone away Alandra
had turned to Ian and said in a low voice “Did you notice that he
had a part of the little finger of one hand missing?” Ian replied
“Why yes, Lady McCloud. In fact, I was there when he lost it.” She
snapped open her fan immediately to conceal her laughter and only
the widening of her beautiful eyes, her raised eyebrows, and her
shaking shoulders gave away that she was laughing so very hard. In
a low voice she leaned toward him a bit and laughingly said “Ian,
you devil! You could have at least told me about that before
now!”

“
What? And miss seeing you
react this way? You should have seen your face just now!” He said
with a bright smile as he allowed his eyes to glow just a tiny bit,
winking at her once more. She blushed and letting her fan down she
threw her head back and laughed out loud. Across the room Princess
Esmeralda saw the two of them and thought
I’ve never seen two people more in love than those
two.

The newly-appointed Chief Deputy of
King’s Gendarmes Claude Rousseau looked around his spacious office.
It had a large bay window with as good a view as his former office
when he was one of three Assistant Deputies. He had to admit that
the Laforges had made good their promise to see to his regular
promotions. Here he was now living in Paris and only one office
lower than the head of all of the King’s Gendarmerie of France. He
now had two daughters and a son. Congratulatory birthday letters
with gifts arrived on their birthdays each year. He had no doubt
that the Laforges were well aware of much of his personal
life.

He’d been contacted by the same
Monsieur Laforge a few times since. No appointment was made or
needed. They just seemed to meet by chance when dining both times.
He had also received some queries by letter, always with the
distinctive emblem on it. As promised, no seditious or unlawful act
had ever been proposed. It was mostly information that the Laforges
wanted, or an occasional recommendation to, or request from another
branch of government about some obscure thing or other.

It was easy and so far as he could
tell, it was harmless. He was most happy with the arrangement. His
wife and he now had a comfortable and spacious home in a posh
district of Paris which he had bought after he came to Paris as
Assistant Deputy. It was no mansion, but it was a far cry from how
they had lived in Marseille nonetheless. He had to conclude that it
had been his very great fortune to come to the attention of the
Laforges. They were getting to be known a little bit, it
seemed.

They sponsored a large orphanage near
Luxembourg it was rumored, and employed no small number of people
at a ceramics plant that they owned a piece of, and in fact was a
business that he had investigated at their request before they
bought a share of it. They were seemingly as well respected and
thought of as the Lafayettes of old. He had heard less of the
Lafayettes in recent years it seemed, but he remembered that he had
once met Henri himself after that incident at their orphanage. He
had been a most pleasant fellow, and had even gone out of his way
to let him know that some girls thought abducted had merely ran
away as children will sometimes do. That was a nice thing for such
a busy and well-known man to do, and he sometimes wondered what the
Lafayettes were doing these days since he rarely heard of them
anymore. He would have never dreamt that the Lafayettes and
Laforges were one and the same couple.

***

The entire entourage left the guest
quarters of the palace in Madrid and the same day had departed for
Portugal. They had arrived unannounced but soon Henri secured an
appointment with the banker whom Roberto had told Ian about. One
thing led to another and after an evening at his home as guests,
the man’s wife was so taken by Celeste’s singing and Aimee’s violin
playing that within a week, they had gotten permission for the two
to perform there.

The performance at the Lisbon opera
was received very well indeed. At long last Portugal had the
distinction of hosting the European Nightingale and her child
prodigy pianist. It was a memorable occasion and Ian did get a few
prickly alarms indicating that vampires in Lisbon liked the opera
as much as they did in other capitols of Europe. Aimee sang because
she already knew the Portuguese language. Being as she could play
the violin and sing so well she was easily as big a hit that night
as was Celeste. Being a vampire had given her voice a strength that
had made her a very strong singer, surprising every audience that
heard her.

The banker Ricardo signed and become a
partner with the Banque de Lafayette. The business part of the trip
had been as successful as the entertainment part.

It was decided that the family would
sail north to France at Biscay and take land transportation across
southern France to the chateau. Ian and Alandra wanted to sail
south through Gibraltar to visit with Roberto and Alicia on their
way home to Barcelona. They promised to come to the chateau after
they had been at Barcelona awhile. Aimee came to Ian and Alandra
when it came time to part. She hugged and kissed Alandra over and
over again and then climbed into Ian’s arms for a farewell, kissing
him repeatedly as he and Alandra told her truthfully how much they
would miss her and promised to join her at the chateau. As they
walked away Ian said “I love that child so, Alandra. I can’t
imagine life now without her. I look back now and count it a
blessing the day we found her.”

“
It was a blessing. She’s
the kind of daughter I’ve dreamt of. I couldn’t love her
more.”

They sailed through Gibraltar and on
to Almeria where they stayed for a week at the Rodriguez estate in
Almeria and then sailed to Barcelona.

***

As their ship plowed north through the
Atlantic toward Biscay, the love birds got a lot of time together
strolling about its deck. On one occasion, Liri turned to Mustafa
and said “Tell me how you came to be with this family.” Mustafa
gave her the story from his abduction in Morocco onward through his
rescue and adoption. He told her about witnessing the hanging of
the pirates, but left out details of the abuse he had
suffered.

Liri said “Henri and Marie are heads
of the family, but it seems that they defer to Ian a lot
too.”

“
Yes, Ian’s like an oldest
son to both of them, and they’re like a mother and father to him,
as they are to Louis and me. When they go to kill rogue vampires,
Ian is the leader in all things pertinent to that. They’d never
done that sort of thing before he came. It was after he came that a
pair of rogue vampires began to steal little girls from one of
Marie’s orphanages. That was what prompted the training you saw at
the old house near Paris. Ian wanted to train himself as best he
could when he was
imprinting
so he had Li brought to the chateau.

“
Why Li?”

He explained the story of Ian’s being
forced to become a vampire and of him voluntarily giving up ever
seeing the girl he fell in love with when they were all at sea
together.

“
Did anyone ever learn what
became of that girl?”

“
That girl was
Alandra.”

Her eyes widened. “No! Really? Now
that is a love story if there ever was one!”

Laughing at her enthusiasm for the
story he continued and related the story of Ian traveling to Spain
for Tom’s wedding to Celita and ending up marrying Alandra. He
concluded with saying “Cosette’s death made him even more
determined to take revenge anytime he encountered a coven of rogue
vampires. No one hates them more than he does.”

“
That is understandable. He
seems so gentle though, that I have a hard time imagining him doing
the things you described.”

“
The incident at the
orphanage in Marseille started the whole thing off, and our family
has since earned quite a reputation among their kind for our
ability in that regard.”

“
I can’t help but notice
that even in this regard you include yourself as part of their
family, Maurice.”