Demon of Mine (22 page)

It was clear that by ‘one of us’, he
meant that he’d exchanged her humanity for the immortal status the
Remingtons all shared.

Mrs. Remington exhaled slowly, her
gaze sweeping over her son and his bride, resting on the gold band
that gleamed from Elsie’s left hand. “Of all the impulsive things
you’ve done – of all the things you’ve sprung upon your father and
me – this is by far the most shocking and perplexing.”

“
I am not in the habit of
springing things upon you, unless arriving for visits unannounced
is enough to constitute a reputation for impulsivity.”

“
Regardless, I hope that
the next thing you’ll surprise me with is an explanation of why you
have eloped with my best maid.”

Damon’s touch against the small of
Elsie’s back became firmer, even possessive. “I am of an age to
marry, and my fortune is well established. There was no reason why
I should have remained a bachelor the rest of my life, if only the
right woman could be found. Elsie is that woman.”

“
I am interested to know
what particular qualities led you to determine that my maid was the
ideal candidate for marriage.” There was an edge to Mrs.
Remington’s voice, which was otherwise admirably
controlled.

“
She was dying,” Damon
replied, with a sharp edge to match his mother’s, “if that means
anything to you. It occurred to me that I could save her life by
changing her. You know the conditions for transformation. I brought
her into the family by making her my wife.”

“
So you bound yourself to
this girl for the rest of your immortal lives because you’d taken
pity on her?”

“
No.” Damon stroked the
small of Elsie’s back in a calming gesture that no one could see.
Whether he meant it to soothe her or himself was unclear. “I wanted
her, and I wished to have a wife. The urgency of her condition gave
me the motivation to take initiative I might otherwise have never
realized.”

“
I see,” Mrs. Remington
said flatly, her eyes glittering, her gaze deadlocked with Damon’s.
“And did you ever stop to consider how the decision you made so
easily would affect the family?”

“
I see no harm in adding
one more to our number. Keeping such an enormous secret among just
four people is dreadfully stifling.”

“
There are consequences to
your actions, Damon!” Mrs. Remington’s voice finally rose as she
stood, her skirts rustling. “It is not up to you to take the fate
of the family into your own careless hands.”

Damon’s hand tensed against Elsie’s
back. “On the contrary, mother – who I choose to marry is indeed up
to me. It is the only significant choice in my life that was not
set in stone for me, and I do not regret exercising the right that
was ultimately mine, whatever alternatives you and father might
have had in mind.”

What Mrs. Remington did then could
only be described as bristling. As a competent and favored maid,
Elsie had rarely been on the receiving end of anything other than
mild and rare reprimands from her mistress. But that kind woman
seemed to be gone, replaced by a glaring force to be reckoned with.
Though standing in silent witness to an argument over herself was
intensely awkward, Elsie did not envy Damon the necessity of
justifying their marriage to his mother. She herself had no idea
what she could possibly say to convince Mrs. Remington that she was
a worthy wife for his son. After all, she brought nothing to the
union besides her body and her love. While those things were enough
for Damon, they could hardly be expected to satisfy his
parents.

“
Elsie, I don’t wish to
subject you to this. Go to the kitchen and have the cook make you a
cup of that herbal tea for your headache.” Damon was exerting a
gentle pressure against her back before she knew it, guiding her
from the room. “I’ll come for you in a little while,” he promised,
leaving her alone in the corridor.

The thick door blocked all but the
lowest of sounds, leaving Elsie with only the dull buzz of heated
but indiscernible conversation to keep her company in the empty
hall. No doubt the overly sturdy door had been chosen on purpose
and had shielded many a secret conversation from servants’ ears.
Feeling like a drab housemaid again, she turned and began to drift
down the hall. She might as well do as Damon had told her. It
seemed that the only place left for her in her home of seven years
was where he wanted her to be.

She could have easily made
her way to the kitchen with her eyes closed. Instead, she kept them
open, wary for any signs of approaching servants. Before, she’d
delighted in the fact that the Remingtons kept such a large staff,
that there were so many other servants for her to socialize with.
Now, she dreaded encountering even one of them. Being
with
Damon felt right,
but being Mrs. Damon Remington felt more wrong each time someone
looked at her askance. She dreaded the incredulous stares, the
unspoken questions. Fighting a queasy feeling and the remnants of
her headache, she had to force herself to enter the
kitchen.

It was bustling with activity; even
more than usual, it seemed, though perhaps Elsie’s new desire to
avoid the staff made it seem as if there were more of them than
there should have been. As she stood in the doorway, being greeted
by a wave of stifling heat, the servants turned one by one to look
at her. At first their expressions were polite. Then recognition
flickered in their eyes, and one or two of the younger girls failed
to stifle exclamations of shock. “Can I help you?” the cook asked,
turning her back on a large ham in need of garnishing.

Instead of inciting Elsie’s hunger,
the aroma of glazed meat only made her feel dizzy as she thought
how strange it was that she had no appetite for it. “I came for a
cup of tea,” she half-sighed. “The herbal brew that Miss Remington
uses for her headaches.”

Though the cook looked unsure of how
exactly to treat the woman she knew had been a housemaid only a
week ago, she took a quick look at Elsie’s fine gown and wedding
ring and seemed to decide on extreme caution. Without hesitation,
she delegated the task of making the tea to one of the half a dozen
younger women who filled the kitchen, leaving Elsie to wait
awkwardly by the door while they all worked.

When at last the tea had finished
steeping and been handed to her in a generously proportioned
porcelain cup, Elsie could stand the tension no longer. Murmuring
her thanks for the drink, she slipped quickly from the kitchen and
out into the hall again.

The house had never seemed so
enormous. Before, she’d always navigated the long halls and large
rooms with purpose. Now, she had no idea where to go. When the
beginning notes of a lively melody drifted down the corridor to
her, it seemed to be a stroke of luck. Cradling the teacup in her
palms, she strolled toward the room on the far right that housed
the piano, wondering who might be playing it. Lucinda was well
known for her love the instrument as well as her talent, but she
was back in Hertfordshire.

Like Lucinda, the player was a young
woman – or at least, her slender figure seemed to belong to one.
Elsie stood in the airy room’s arching entrance, finally taking the
first sip of her tea. A few dark red curls tumbled down the
pianist’s snow-white neck, artfully excluded from the complicated
coiffure that secured the rest of her hair at the top of her head.
Her gown was a bold shade of burgundy. Perhaps Elsie had gauged her
age wrong – perhaps she was an older, if remarkably trim,
matron.

This second notion was quickly
dispelled when the woman turned, revealing a pale, diamond-shaped
face set with hazel eyes. She looked to be less than
five-and-twenty. “’Ello,” she said, stilling her fingers on the
ivory keys. “You must be Lucinda.” Her French accent was heavy,
almost as if she wished she weren’t speaking English at all. She
continued before Elsie could so much as lower her teacup. “I know
we ‘avent seen each other for years, but I remember that you play
zee piano. What do you think of my new song? I composed it myself.”
She began playing again, leaving no chance for Elsie to explain
that she was not Lucinda. Several minutes passed before the music
stopped.

“
Pardon me, but who are
you?” Elsie asked. She’d worked in the house for seven years, and
she didn’t recall the young French beauty ever paying a visit. What
was she doing alone in the music room?

The girl broke into a
brief, insincere-sounding titter. “Forgive me. I thought you knew I
would be coming. I am
Véronique Renard.” The expectant smile she donned as she
introduced herself didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“
Ah,” Elsie said, trying to
think of something she could say to hide the fact that the name
meant nothing to her. “Will you be visiting for long?”

Véronique
smiled again, her eyes glittering in a strange, almost cold way.
“Yes, a very long time. I plan to stay here until zee wedding, and
afterwards too, of course.”

“
The wedding?” Whoever this Véronique Renard was, she certainly
seemed better informed on local happenings than Elsie. Hardly any
time had passed since she’d put away her housemaid’s apron for
good, though it sometimes seemed as if it had been an eternity. Had
she really missed out on so much?

“
Of
course. My family eez eager to become established in London. I will
marry your brother as soon as possible, and remain with him ’ere in
the city afterward.”

The teacup
slipped in Elsie’s suddenly unsteady hands, slopping a little of
the scalding liquid over her fingers. She opened her mouth, but it
was too dry for speech, and she couldn’t think of what to say
anyway. Lucinda had only one brother – Damon.

“
You are leaving so soon?” Véronique pouted.

Elsie’s skirts
swished around her ankles as she hurried from the room. Droplets of
tea sloshed over the sides of her cup and splashed onto the floor,
but she hardly cared. All she could think about was escaping,
though to where, she didn’t know. Her blind trust in Damon’s word
had evaporated in a moment’s time, and with it her place in the
Remington household.

****

A knock at the door was the
second to last thing Elsie wanted to hear. The very last thing was
a female voice dripping with a ridiculously overplayed French
accent. Though the voice that sounded from the hall was distinctly
English, she couldn’t seem to stop
Véronique’s heartbreaking words from repeating
over and over again in her mind.

“
Is
anyone there?” someone called cautiously, knocking
again.

Elsie shot the
door a baleful glance, as if she could use the sheer force of her
will to drive away whoever stood on the other side. It was
undoubtedly one of the maids, probably making a round of the third
floor with a feather duster. If Elsie didn’t say anything, the maid
would enter and find her sulking by the bay window like the fool
she was. “This room is occupied,” she called out. “Please go
away.”

The door
creaked open slowly, admitting a mousy, mobcapped head. “There you
are!” the maid exclaimed. “Thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been
searching all over the house for you.”

“
Thank you Louise, but I’d rather be alone right now,” Elsie
said, trying to inject what dignity she could into her voice. The
fact that she was sitting on the cushioned bench in front of the
window with her knees folded against her chest and dried tears
glazing her cheeks made it difficult to do. Equally embarrassing
were the half a dozen novels strewn on the floor near her. She’d
pulled them from a shelf in the empty room and tried fruitlessly to
distract herself with the stories. Not even the most fanciful of
tales had enabled her to achieve any measure of success. Between
Véronique’s revelation and the sunlight, she was still utterly
miserable, and while her heart felt much worse for the wear, she
welcomed the throbbing headache the sunlight brought as a
distraction from the former torture.

“
Begging your pardon,” Louise replied, “but I have a message
for you from Master Damon, and I daren’t fail to deliver
it.”

Elsie hated
herself for the way her hope flared at the sound of Damon’s name,
even as her heart broke again. How could he have lied to her so
blatantly? She’d been a fool to believe him and an even bigger fool
to dismiss Jenny’s claim so quickly. Her heart surged with
repentant affection as she thought of her friend. It shamed her
that she’d imagined such wicked things about her. If she’d only
given Jenny’s words more weight, she might have saved herself this
agony of betrayal. “What is the message?”

“
He
says his father insisted that he join him in the city for a
business matter. He regrets not speaking with you personally, but
will return in a few hours. Meanwhile, I am to prepare you for
tonight’s party.”

“
Party?” Elsie said the word as if it were as foreign as
Damon’s wretched former-fiancé.

Louise nodded,
politely banishing Elsie’s ignorance. “The Remingtons are hosting
quite the event tonight, and I am to see that you’re prepared in
time.” She glanced toward the window, as if checking the position
of the sun. “We had better hurry.”

Sunset was far off, but as a former lady’s maid-in-training,
Elsie knew that now was the time to begin preparing. Or at least,
it would be if she planned to attend. She opened her mouth to
refuse, but a sudden thought stopped the words in her throat: Damon
would be at the event, and so would Véronique, presumably. She
couldn’t fathom why Damon had lied to her, but regardless of how
ridiculous she now felt claiming the title, she
was
his wife. She wasn’t going to sulk in an empty
bedroom on the third floor while everyone else carried on as if she
didn’t exist – which would probably be better for everyone if it
were true.