Vampire, Interrupted (13 page)

Both
of them.

She was eating. He was eating. She couldn’t read his mind. Could he read hers?

Marguerite didn’t know, but she did know that Jean Claude hadn’t eaten when he’d met her. He hadn’t displayed that sign of having met a true lifemate. Not that she would have recognized it as a sign at the time. She’d been mortal then, a simple servant in a large and rich castle, completely ignorant that there were immortals walking among them, beings who fed on blood, were stronger and faster and could survive long, long lives while non-immortals dropped around them.

Wincing as she recalled her naivety, Marguerite slid into a long black satin nightgown and moved to the window seat, settling herself there to peer out over London. She really hadn’t known much of anything when she’d met Jean Claude. She’d barely been fifteen; young and impressionable and easily swept off her feet by a simple smile from the handsome warrior on horseback. She’d thought her infatuation was love, and had been foolish enough to equate his desire with his loving her as well. She hadn’t known until much later that she looked so like his long-dead and well-mourned lifemate that he’d been driven to sweep her off her feet, claim her as his own, and turn her. By then it was far too late to change anything.

But, in all the seven hundred years of their miserable union, Marguerite hadn’t
ever
seen Jean Claude eat as Julius had.

Marguerite was almost afraid to consider what this might mean. Perhaps the man made himself eat all the time. Some immortals did, usually the men wishing to
keep up their muscle mass. Her own son Lucern had always eaten for just that reason, though he’d taken little pleasure in it until meeting his lifemate Kate. Perhaps Julius was the same way. But Marguerite knew that—despite her fears—in her heart of hearts she was hoping that wasn’t the case. She was hoping that she too could find what her children had found and experience what life with a real lifemate was like. The idea of having a true and proper mate to love and care for you and share the burden of this long, sorrow-filled life made her heart ache. Surely she had paid for such happiness in advance with all the misery Jean Claude had dealt out to her? Surely she deserved some happiness too?

As much as Marguerite ached for it however, she was reluctant to risk another relationship that might turn out like the one she’d had with Jean Claude. One would think it wouldn’t be a concern; that no immortal would willingly bind to someone who was not a true lifemate, but it had happened. Hers was not the only such match where a naïve mortal was lured into a life-long binding to an immortal who could and did control them. She’d even heard of it happening between immortals, who should know better but—weary of being alone—settled for a union with a non-lifemate. They were usually temporary relationships, however, because it was rare for one immortal to be able to control another as wholly as Jean Claude had controlled her, and they were usually able to break free. Marguerite thought his power over her must have come from the fact that he had turned her, though she would never know the truth.

Whatever the case, while she was attracted to and
was coming to like Julius Notte very much, if he wasn’t a lifemate, she wouldn’t accept such a relationship, a temporary affair that would eventually go wrong when the stronger one could no longer resist and tried to dominate the other. The truth was she wanted an equal partner such as her children had…which meant she should probably avoid being alone with Julius for now. If he hadn’t been able to read her, she was quite sure he would have said something, so either he could read her or he hadn’t yet tried.

Either way, it seemed better to avoid being alone with him as much as possible until she knew whether he could read her or not. She already liked the man more than anyone else she’d met in her long life, and she was attracted to him as well. She could be very badly hurt if it turned out he could read her.

Marguerite came to that decision before finally dropping off to sleep curled up in the window seat of her room. She awoke a few short hours later to pounding on her door.

Gritty-eyed and exhausted from lack of both sleep and blood, Marguerite uncurled from the window seat and stumbled to answer it.

“Marguerite!” Tiny cried. “Everyone is waiting in the lobby for you. Julius is checking us out this very minute and you aren’t even dressed yet!”

She could just make out his scowl through her sleep encrusted eyes and grimaced in response. Honestly, why was it men were always so grumpy? Or was it just her who seemed to bring about this exasperation?

“Move, woman,” he ordered, turning her from the door and pushing her across the room to the en suite bathroom. “You shower, I’ll get your clothes.”

Marguerite paused abruptly in the bathroom door, suddenly wide awake and digging in her heels. “I’ll get my own clothes.”

“Marguerite,” he said with exasperation.

“You are not rifling through my panties,” she snapped.

“Oh.” Tiny stopped trying to push her at once. “Yeah. Okay, you get your clothes.”

Was she not now in a bad mood, she would have laughed at his sudden discomfort.

Shaking her head, she gestured to the door. “Out. I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes.”

Tiny hesitated and then grumbled, “You’d better be or we’ll miss our train.”

Marguerite waited until he left, then burst into action, rushing to her suitcase to snatch up clothes, then hurrying into the bathroom. She took the very first shower of her life, cursing when she got shampoo in her eyes, and then cursing again when she realized that she’d been so distracted the evening before that she’d never managed to call Bastien about the blood. Was it once again too early to call him? she’d muttered to herself with irritation as she ran a towel quickly over herself to dry the worst of the water, then stepped—still half wet—into her clothes.

She brushed her wet hair while throwing her nightgown and other items in her suitcase, threw the brush in last and zipped it up. She was ready. Or as ready as she had time to be, she supposed, applying lipstick as she dragged her suitcase out of the room and wheeled it to the elevator.

She stepped off the elevator to find Julius, Marcus, Christian, and Tiny waiting for her near the eleva
tor doors. The relief on their expressions when she stepped out made her feel guilty, but then she noticed that Dante and Tommaso were missing and began to frown.

“Where are the twins?” she asked, dragging her suitcase off the elevator.

“They’re on the way to the airport. There’s some business back home that needs tending,” Julius answered as he took the handle of her suitcase from her. Passing it to his son, he then caught her arm and urged her toward the doors to the street.

Julius already had two taxis waiting. They divided the luggage between the two and Marguerite, Tiny, and Julius rode in one, while Marcus and Christian followed in the other. Traffic wasn’t too bad by London standards, which was a good thing since even with that advantage, they arrived at King’s Cross just seconds before their train was to leave. A mad dash followed as they raced through the station to reach and board seconds before it pulled away.

Julius had booked the tickets, reserving two sets of table seats for their party of five. One table was a four-seater, the other, which was across the aisle, sat two. Julius explained this as he stowed the bigger suitcases on the rack. Marguerite followed as he then led the way up the aisle to their seats. He paused on reaching them, stowed a black overnight case overhead, and then slid into the nearest window seat of the grouping of four. However, when he then glanced at her expectantly, she—firm in her determination to distance herself a little from him until she knew which way the wind blew and whether he could read
her—took the far window seat of the two-seat table on the left so that they were kitty-corner to each other across the aisle.

She saw the surprise that flashed across Julius’s face, followed by disgruntlement. Much to her relief, however, he didn’t say anything. Tiny was directly behind Marguerite and—after a hesitation—moved to drop into the seat across from her, leaving Christian and Marcus to take the two seats opposite Julius.

Marguerite was at first satisfied with the arrangement, until she realized that Julius’s position seemed to put him exactly in her line of vision…and she seemed unable to keep from looking. Her gaze drifted over the man and she noted how the overhead light gleamed off his shiny black hair, how his features were almost noble, how deep and mysterious his eyes were, how soft and full his bottom lip looked in comparison to the thinner upper lip—That thought made her wonder what it would be like if he kissed her and she could almost picture it, his strong, nicely shaped hands gliding through her hair, pulling her face closer as his mouth descended—

“Something to eat or drink?”

Marguerite blinked and sat up abruptly as her view of Julius was suddenly blocked by a cart. Glancing up, she found herself staring at a redhead with a healthy sprinkling of freckles on her face that no amount of makeup would hide. Despite that, it didn’t detract from her attractiveness; her wide smile and sparkling eyes made up for it.

“I’ll have a sandwich, please,” Tiny said, drawing the woman’s attention.

Marguerite waited until Tiny had finished his purchases and when the woman then turned to her asked, “You don’t have anything to read, do you?”

“There was a women’s magazine left on my seat, Marguerite,” Tiny said as the server shook her head apologetically.

“Thank you.” Marguerite accepted the magazine as the girl turned her attention to Julius and the others. She glanced over the cover, grimacing at blaring headlines that read,
“Lose Two Stone In Four Weeks Without Dieting!” “Health Worries—SOLVED!”
and
“100 Secret Sex Techniques To Drive Your Man Wild!”
That last one made her pause and she opened the magazine, flipping through to the page listed on the front. It had been a while. A refresher course couldn’t be bad. Not that she expected to have sex any time soon, Marguerite assured herself.

The sound of the cart moving on distracted her and she glanced up, finding herself looking at Julius again. He was saying something to Marcus, gesturing with his hands as he did, and she couldn’t help but notice how strong and nicely shaped they were.

Shaking her head, Marguerite forced her eyes back to the magazine in her hands, and managed to read a whole sentence before her gaze slid back to settle on Julius once more.

Really, this was just ridiculous. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the man.

Now that she felt sure he’d kept Christian’s mother’s identity a secret to protect him, her judgment had softened considerably. A good parent protected their child as much as possible and that was what he’d been doing. Even more impressive to her was that for
five hundred years Julius had allowed Christian to think he was simply being annoyingly autocratic, and had preferred Christian to be angry with him for not telling rather than cause him the pain that knowing his own mother hadn’t wanted him and had actually ordered him dead would bring.

Marguerite thought it a very caring thing to do. Most men would have happily revealed the truth and probably delighted in painting the mother a bitch while presenting themselves as the saintly parent who had saved them from her clutches and raised them with love. Instead, he had neither told the truth of the matter nor painted her as anything and Marguerite thought Christian had probably benefited from it.

Julius glanced up from the newspaper he was reading and Marguerite immediately looked away, groaning inwardly as she felt a blush creep up over her face. She was seven hundred years old, not a schoolgirl, for heaven’s sake. She had no business blushing. Next she’d be giggling and holding pajama parties.

“I should have picked the cheese and onion sandwich.”

“What?” Marguerite glanced at Tiny. He was making a face as he opened his sandwich and spread it out on the table between them.

At first, she didn’t think he’d answer. His concentration was on the serious business of scraping off the brown relish from his Ploughman’s sandwich, but then he sighed with disgust as he got the last of it off. Slapping the two parts of the first sandwich half together, he explained, “I don’t like this brown stuff they put on their ham sandwiches over here. I should have picked an onion and cheese sandwich.”

“Why didn’t you, then?” she asked with amusement.

“I wanted meat,” Tiny muttered.

“They had shrimp salad,” she pointed out.

“Shrimp is not meat,” he said with disgust and then added, “And who ever heard of putting shrimp on bread?”

Marguerite smiled faintly at the comment as she reached over to take one of his chips and popped it in her mouth. Salt and vinegar. Mmm. The flavor burst in her mouth, almost painful in its sharpness.

“Why didn’t you get something for yourself if you’re hungry?” he asked with disgruntlement.

“I don’t eat,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, right,” he said on a sigh.

Ignoring his ill-temper, she took another chip and popped it in her mouth. She then sat back in her seat and tried to concentrate on her magazine article. So far, she wasn’t seeing any new and wondrous techniques. It seemed nothing had changed much in that area in the more than two hundred years since she’d got pregnant with Lissianna. Good to know, she supposed.

“You look pale, Marguerite. When was the last time you fed?”

Marguerite glanced up with a start, cursing the blush that returned to her cheeks as she saw that Julius had stood and crossed to stand in the aisle beside her. There was a concerned look on his face.

She snapped her magazine closed before he could see what she was reading and answered honestly. “I ran out just before we started the drive to London the night before last.”

His eyes widened incredulously. “But you had a
cooler in the hotel. Dante brought it with your suitcase.”

“The cooler is empty. I was supposed to receive a delivery at the Dorchester but we left before it arrived. I never got around to calling Bastien last night,” she said with a shrug.