Born to Bite (10 page)

Armand smiled faintly. “Rosamund was a different kettle of fish altogether. Like Althea, she was young in age for an immortal, but that’s where any resemblance between the two ends. Rosamund was much more mature, wise beyond her years.”

“Was she?” Eshe asked, and was surprised at the harsh sound of her own voice. It suggested a jealousy that was unexpected…and she wasn’t the only one to notice. Armand raised a surprised eyebrow and peered at her in question, but she just shook her head. “Sorry, go on. Rosamund was wise beyond her years…How?”

He hesitated, but then apparently decided to continue and said, “Rosamund had a plan.”

“And what was that? To get herself pregnant and make you marry her like Althea did?”

“Oh no. She didn’t trick me into marrying her,” he assured her. “First you should understand that we were friends for quite a while before we married and had Jeanne Louise. She was a smart girl, fun to talk to, always with an opinion on this or that, and as I say, she had a plan. She knew it could be centuries before she met a proper life mate and she had every intention of going out and finding one, but she didn’t want to wait centuries to have a baby. She wanted one while she was young.”

“She did, did she?” Eshe asked dryly. “And I gather you weren’t averse to having a child either?”

Armand shrugged unapologetically. “It had been more than a century since Althea had died. Thomas was grown and always off exploring somewhere, and I missed having a family.”

“So you married and had Jeanne Louise.”

He nodded, a smile curving his lips. “Jeanne Louise was a beautiful baby.”

“And Rosamund?” Eshe prompted.

Armand’s smile faded. “Jeanne Louise was born in February. Five months later in July, Rosamund died.”

“Fire?” she asked.

Armand shook his head. “She was decapitated when the wagon she was driving careened off the road and turned over in a ditch.”

Several questions occurred to Eshe. The first was, “Was anyone with her?”

“Jeanne Louise, but she was thrown clear when the carriage rolled off the road and into the ditch. She wasn’t even hurt. Apparently the blankets she was wrapped in cushioned her landing.”

“Where was Rosamund headed?”

“Into town, I think.” Armand frowned and then admitted, “She spent a lot of time away from the farm after Jeanne Louise was born. She’d pack the baby up and head out when I left for the barn. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I was busy on the farm and we still had to hunt to feed, and I just assumed that was what she was doing, but after she died…”

“After she died…?” Eshe prompted.

Armand shook his head. “I found out that there were a lot of times when she didn’t get back until just before I did at dawn. In fact, most nights she was gone the entire night.”

“It wouldn’t have taken that long to hunt up a meal,” Eshe murmured thoughtfully. She considered his troubled expression and then asked, “Do you think she was having affairs like Althea?”

He appeared startled by the question. “Rosamund? No, I don’t think so.”

“You never read her mind?” Eshe asked with surprise.

Armand shook his head firmly. “I tried not to. Marriage is tough enough without intruding on each other’s private thoughts so we had a deal to try not to do that.”

Eshe nodded slowly, but pointed out, “So you can’t be sure she too didn’t have affairs.”

He sighed wearily. “No, I can’t, and I suppose that would explain what she might have been doing. I just wouldn’t have thought she’d have felt she had to keep that from me. We had a solid agreement that it was all right if she wanted to.”

Eshe considered his expression. He didn’t appear hurt or angry at the idea that Rosamund might have been having affairs, merely somewhat startled at the possibility. He also hadn’t appeared upset by Althea’s affairs, but then they hadn’t been life mates. She supposed that meant she could discount the possibility of his having killed his wives in a jealous rage. At least wives two and three.

“And Susanna?” she asked now, and when he glanced at her with confusion, asked, “How did she die exactly? I know it was a fire, but—”

“Oh,” he said on a sigh. “It was a stable fire shortly after Nicholas was born. The family still lived in England then, and as a baron I had to make the occasional trip to court. I had put it off that year until after the birth, but the day after Nicholas came squalling into the world, I kissed Susanna and the baby and headed out. I returned as quickly as I could; still it was nearly two weeks before I rode back into the bailey. She had been dead a week by then.”

Armand’s expression was stark for a moment as he recalled the painful loss, and Eshe waited patiently. His expression convinced her he had loved his Susanna. She didn’t begrudge him that. She had loved her Orion too and grieved his passing. It didn’t mean they both didn’t have enough love to welcome and embrace a new life mate.

Armand cleared his throat, the grief easing from his expression as he forced himself to continue more clinically. “It seems a fire started in the stable a week after I left. Susanna must have run in to try to save her mare. She loved that beast. It was a gift from me when we married. But the roof must have caved in while she was inside and a beam must have trapped her or…something,” he finished wearily.

“Another accident,” Eshe murmured.

“Yes,” he said grimly.

“And then there’s Annie,” she pointed out.

Armand glanced at her with a start. “Annie?”

“Nicholas’s wife. She was decapitated and then burned up in her car,” Eshe pointed out.

“Yes, but that was an accident,” Armand said at once.

Eshe raised an eyebrow. “So were your wives’ deaths…weren’t they?”

Six

Armand frowned briefly and then glanced to the
side and sat back, drawing her attention to the fact that their food had arrived. She sat back as well to make room for the waiter to set it down, but kept her gaze on Armand as the food was placed before them. Her bringing up Annie had obviously disturbed him. As if he had assumed all this time that her death had been an accident, but Eshe’s question had raised some doubt in him. His startled “That was an accident” was interesting, though. It could mean that he knew or suspected that his wives’ deaths weren’t the accidents they appeared to be, which would explain the way he had withdrawn from society and his family. Perhaps he was trying to shelter them and keep them safe and away from the danger that appeared to plague those who loved him.

Before Armand had told her how the women had died, Eshe might have suspected those words had been a slip and that he knew the deaths of his wives weren’t accidents because he’d caused them, but he hadn’t even been around when two of them had died. He’d been several days’ ride away at court when Susanna died in that fire, and Althea had been hours away in Toronto with her parents when she died in the hotel fire.

The knowledge made Eshe shake her head with bewilderment. She had no idea why Lucian had worried for even a moment that Armand might have been behind the deaths of his wives. She suspected it had to do with his twin brother, Jean Claude. The man had treated his family abominably and even broken their laws in taking the lives of mortals. Eshe knew Lucian suffered a great deal of guilt over his not having seen and put a stop to his brother’s bad behavior and supposed he was now determined not to repeat that mistake with Armand. She would be glad to be able to tell him that his brother couldn’t have been behind the deaths. However, this meant she now had to look elsewhere for answers.

Eshe tried to think where she should next look as she picked up her fork and knife and cut into the rare steak she’d ordered, but forgot the question and nearly moaned aloud at the burst of flavor in her mouth as she popped the first bite in. Damn, she’d forgotten how good food could be. Actually, Eshe acknowledged, it wasn’t that she’d forgotten, but that the food had begun to lose its flavor after Orion’s death, as if her taste buds had slowly died and left everything bland and uninteresting. She was definitely glad to have them back and working again, Eshe decided as she next tried a bite of the stuffed baked potato.

They ate in silence at first, Armand appearing slightly distracted, and Eshe herself busily trying to think where she should turn her attention and questions next. It seemed to her that whoever might be behind the deaths had been in Armand’s life a long time, and also had to be relatively close by. They were halfway through the meal when she finally asked, “So is there anyone else I should know about who comes to the farm besides Mrs. Ramsey?”

Armand was silent for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her question, but then he said, “Paul and Mrs. Ramsey were the only mortals who came around. Of course, Paul won’t be a problem now.”

“Will you replace him?” she asked curiously, thinking he’d had even less sleep than she that day as he took over the work Paul normally did. From what she could tell he hadn’t gone to bed at all.

“Not right away,” Armand decided, taking a sip of wine. He swallowed it and then added, “I’ll wait a couple weeks.”

Until she was gone, Eshe suspected. Lucian had told him she would be there for about two weeks, and she supposed he wanted to wait until she was gone to bring in a new mortal. There would be less chance of his discovering what they were that way. But it also meant he wasn’t yet thinking of her being in his life longer than that. The fact rather bothered her.

Eshe took a sip of her own wine and forced her mind back to the job at hand, asking, “What about immortals? You must have visitors on occasion. Old friends you’ve known since England, or new ones you’ve made here? Mrs. Ramsey mentioned an Agnes and John?”

Armand nodded as he cut into his own steak. “Agnes and John come around once in a while, usually once a week or so to see how I am and check in.”

“Check in?” she asked curiously.

He smiled wryly. “I’m the only family they have. They were Susanna’s brother and sister, mortal like she was until they were turned. The rest of their family has long passed on, and of course Susanna is gone as well. So I’m all they have.”

“How were they turned?” Eshe asked with surprise, and then her eyes widened with alarm. “You didn’t turn them, did you?”

“No, of course not,” Armand said with a laugh. “Brother or not, Lucian would have had my head had I gone against our laws.”

“Oh.” Eshe let out a relieved breath, but asked with confusion, “So did they turn out to be life mates for other immortals?”

“No.” Armand shook his head on a sigh and set his knife and fork down to pick up his wine. After taking a drink, he explained, “Susanna was very fond of her brother and sister. She, not unnaturally, didn’t want to leave them behind, and introduced them to every un-attached immortal who attended our wedding, hoping they would turn out to be life mates for one of them. But, of course, we were a lot more spread out then. There were very few who were close enough to attend.”

Eshe nodded in acknowledgment. Before the advent of blood banks they had been forced to feed off mortals. Essentially, they’d had to bite their friends and neighbors or servants and peasants. Having too many of their kind in an area had meant more mortals in that area being fed on and had raised the risk of discovery. To avoid that, they had spread out across the land, allowing only one or two immortals to a good-sized area. It was how her father, Castor, had ended up in Africa and met her mother, his life mate.

“I didn’t stop her from trying to find them mates,” Armand continued. “I knew it wasn’t likely, but felt sure that in time she’d resign herself to losing them to death.”

“But she didn’t,” Eshe guessed.

Armand shook his head. “She didn’t really get the chance to. Shortly after we were married, her sister, Agnes, became ill. I suspect now that it was leukemia, but it hadn’t been named back then. Susanna got word of her illness and traveled to the convent to visit her.”

“Convent?” Eshe interrupted with surprise.

“Yes. She was a nun,” he explained quietly.

She felt her eyebrows rise at the knowledge that Susanna had been trying to find an immortal life mate for her sister the nun but merely gestured for him to continue.

“The convent wasn’t far from our home and I expected her back by dawn, but it was the next night before she returned with a vibrantly healthy Agnes in tow.”

“She turned her?” Eshe guessed solemnly.

Armand nodded with a grimace. “I had told her our laws about each only turning one and having only one child every hundred years and so on, and rather than watch helplessly as her sister died, she used her one turn to save Agnes.”

Eshe nodded silently. Most immortals saved their one turn to turn a mortal who was a life mate. However, Susanna already had a life mate, and obviously hadn’t considered that he might die and she might need that turn someday to turn another life mate in the future. Fortunately for her, that day had never come. Or perhaps it was unfortunate for her, since the only reason it hadn’t come was that she’d died first. Pushing that thought aside, Eshe asked, “And John?”

“About a month after Susanna brought Agnes home, John arrived. He’d gotten word that Agnes had left the convent and came to see what that was about. He was angry at first, and it took some extra persuasion to calm him.”

Eshe could tell by Armand’s expression that what he meant by “extra persuasion” was that he’d calmed the man using their special abilities. They had several of them. Immortals could read the minds of mortals, as well as of immortals if they weren’t guarded, but they could also wipe the memories of mortals or put thoughts or even new memories in their minds.

“He stayed about a week,” Armand continued. “And then the day before he was supposed to leave we all went on a hunt, and he took a terrible tumble from his horse. He broke his neck. I don’t think he would have survived the night if Agnes hadn’t used her one turn on him.”

“I see,” Eshe murmured, thinking that while the woman probably hadn’t considered it at the time, she’d made a huge sacrifice. But then so had Susanna when she’d turned Agnes, and indeed, as it turned out, so had Armand when he’d turned Susanna. While he had gained a life mate by turning her, he hadn’t gotten to enjoy her for long before he’d lost her.