We didn’t leave until well past one in the morning, with a promise from Beatrix that Eloise was welcome anytime in the future, with or without me.
It was enough to make Eloise burst into tears of happiness, and my heart veritably melted as she pressed her wet face into my shoulder.
The drive back, Eloise chattered nonstop of the new books she found in Beatrix’s library, expressing disappointment that she hadn’t been allowed to spend the night amongst all the tomes.
“I really wouldn’t have minded,” she bemoaned. “There were plenty of comfortable sofas.”
“You can go back any day you want. But if I don’t bring you home, your mom is going to have my head on a stake.”
She giggled. “I suppose you’re right.”
When we arrived at her home, for whatever reason, I was loathed to leave her just then.
Even though we had technically spent the whole night together, we hadn’t been “together” and that knowledge rankled me a fair bit.
Not that I’d ever admit that I was jealous of a bunch of old, moldy books.
Instead of driving away, I walked Eloise back up the stairs and into the house, her hand securely in mine.
The house was sleeping, quiet as a tomb.
Eloise’s shoulders shook with silent mirth as we crept up the stairs to her bedroom, as furtive as thieves.
I could’ve taken her.
But…
While a small part of me was absolutely befuddled by my next course of action, I bent my head and captured her sweet lips with mine.
She moaned softly, almost melting in my arms.
My head spun as I drank her in, almost drunk on her delicious passion.
No.
I couldn’t.
I don’t know how I managed to pull away, but somehow I found the fortitude to take a step back, even though every fiber of my being ached to be pressed against her soft body.
“Good night, my beautiful princess.”
Blushing madly, she nodded and then slipped into her room, closing the door with a barely audible thud behind her.
She didn’t lock it.
But it was an invitation that I could not accept.
Without a human to hamper my movements, I descended the stairs silently and paused at the landing, my head tilted to one side, ears pricked.
Nothing.
Everyone was asleep.
Good.
A strange, almost sickly sensation roiled through my gut as I carefully went through each room, in search of something, anything to give to Jardin.
I had to.
There was something about Eloise that absolutely captivated me, haunted me, and the very knowledge that she affected me so strongly scared the bloody shit out of me.
I had to bring an end to this before she affected me further.
She was dangerous, and I had a tendency of running at the first sign of trouble.
I found what I had been looking for at the very end of the hallway.
The room was elegantly furnished with dark mahogany furniture and rich leather, very reminiscent of furnishings from a gentleman’s club.
And I mean a gentleman’s club from London that only admitted the rich and titled, not those cheap stripper joints that littered the strip malls of America.
Hah. Was that why they were called strip malls?
Stepping lightly on the balls of my feet, I proceeded to the large desk at the other side of the room and began to riffle through the drawers.
Account books, bills, maps.
All here.
And not even under lock and key!
Certainly, Madame Hart was still a neophyte when it came to the cutthroat (hah) world of blood.
It only took a few minutes to take pictures with my cell phone, taking special care with the blueprints of some of her warehouses, with the security system locations labeled so helpfully in the margins.
Something caught my attention, stilled my movement.
Was that a footstep?
Quickly, I replaced everything where I found it and sidled out of the room, keeping to the shadows as I emerged into the foyer.
And walked straight into Madame Hart herself.
Jesus fucking Christ!
If I’d been a cat, I would’ve jumped ten feet into the air, screeching like a banshee, my tail fluffed out.
As it was, I barely managed to retain my composure, hiding my sudden shock by running my hands down my front, as though bumping into her had wrinkled my clothes.
“Madame Hart. Good evening. I was just leaving.”
She crossed her arms and moved to block me from the front doors. “You.”
“Yes, me,” I said, injecting a note of impatience into my voice. It wasn’t hard to do. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“May I ask what you were doing in my home? Sneaking around like some common burglar?”
I drew myself up imperiously. It was easy to do; I’d seen Jardin do it a thousand times. “I’m no common burglar, Madame. I had brought your daughter back from a late night at a friend’s library. Perhaps you have heard of Lady Beatrix Houlihan? Anyway, I brought your daughter back, and just as I was leaving, I thought I’d heard a noise. Naturally, I went to investigate.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. Investigate. How very gallant of you.”
I clenched my jaw. “Are you accusing me of something?”
She took a step forward and stabbed a finger into my chest.
Her eyes were like chips of ice, cold and sharp enough to cut flesh.
“Leave, Mister de Charpentier. And stay the hell away from my daughter.”
Her emphasis on the word “Mister,” made my hackles rise. “Yes, well, I’m sorry I’m not one of the glittering throng that you seem so hellbent to satisfy. Too bad your daughter’s into a common-as-muck bloodsucker like me, huh?”
She recoiled visibly, a be-ringed, impeccably manicured hand resting against her expansive bosom.
“I beg your pardon?” Her voice rose as she looked at me as though I was a cockroach quivering its last seconds on the bottom of her expensive heels. “You think this is about your status in the vampire world?”
I blinked, feeling as though someone had just punched me in the gut. “It… isn’t?”
“Don’t play fucking dumb.” Coming from her perfectly made-up lips, the curse sounded doubly vulgar. “This has nothing to do with your status. I don’t give two craps about that. What I do care about is your association with my literal rival, Benedict Jardin.”
“Ah.”
For a moment, I considered lying, but one look into her narrowed eyes told me it would have been a futile attempt at best.
I settled with a shrug, because what else could I do without making the matter worse?
“There are times when one cannot choose their owners.”
She leaned in close enough for me to smell her heady perfume. “Yes, well, I would suggest you look into another line of work, Mister de Charpentier. And even if you do, don’t you ever think of coming back. Not if you want to keep your head. When Lady Yeats told me that the vampire who had been courting my daughter right under my nose was working on behalf of my biggest competition, I thought surely no one would have the gall to try such a thing.”
Damn that Lady Yeats for ratting on me, though I supposed I should have expected it, eventually. And what an annoying woman Madame Hart was being.
And yet, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny prick of admiration for this tiger of a woman.
Eloise was a lot like her mother, maybe more than she cared to admit.
I bowed low at the waist. “Very well, Madame Hart. Never again shall I darken your doorstep.”
And that was not a lie. I had the information Jardin would need to cripple her operations.
But Eloise.
I ached as I realized I didn’t want the charade to end.
Eleven
Eloise
I sat in front of my vanity mirror and hummed to myself as I comb
ed out my hair. It was frizzy from all the running around Lady Houlihan’s home I had done all evening. I stifled a giggle as I realized my cheeks were flushed. I'd already changed out of my jeans and t-shirt and into a pink silk robe. A band of fabric tied it snugly against my body. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
Was there anything Arden couldn't do? I had been wary of him at first, but he had more than proven me wrong at this point. The way he could read my mind and take me on the adventures that everyone else turned their noses up at. The way we could talk for hours on end without running out of things to say. The way he kissed me like I was a delicate rose…
My daydreaming was interrupted as my door swung open violently, hitting the wall and bouncing back. I jumped and dropped my comb on the floor, turning to face my mother. Her face was just as rosy as mine, but I could gather it was not for a similar reason. She looked even angrier than when she had burst in a few weeks earlier to harp on me about sneaking into that first ball.
She paused and took a deep breath; her hand going up to her forehead as she visibly tried to calm herself. She leaned against my dresser for support and looked at me with a pained expression.
"Eloise... this is why I didn't want you involved in any of this..."
I shook my head, confused by what she meant. I hadn't done anything wrong this time. Or, at least, not that I was aware of. "Mother, what's wrong?"
Her eyes turned to daggers, but I didn't think they were pointed at me. She was enraged, thinking of someone else. "Arden is not who you have been led to believe he is."
I rolled my eyes. "Mother, we've talked about this. You have to trust me now to decide who I want to date. I know he’s just some investor, but-"
She stormed forward and grabbed both of my arms, shaking me like a rag doll. "An investor? I wish he were! And I would trust you to make those choices if everyone else was honest."
I pushed her off of me and stood so that she couldn't look down at me. We were going to be equals in this discussion. But I was intrigued by what she was saying. How could she have found fault with Arden? He had been nothing but a gentleman on our outings. Was there a rumor going around that she was going to try and use against him? And what did she mean about him not being an investor for a wealthy client?
"Explain, mother."
She didn't like being ordered, but she took the chance to speak, anyway. "He had always looked familiar to me, but I could never place where I knew him from. But today, when I saw him drop you off, I remembered. He had accompanied Benedict Jardin a few months ago as his bodyguard at a ribbon cutting ceremony downtown."
I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at the ground as I tried to comprehend what she was implying. Jardin was one of the rival blood traders that plagued my mother's business. He was probably one of her fiercest competitors, as he had been in the trade longer than she had. And some vampires could not let go of the fact that my mother was a woman. Some just had to do their dealings with a man, those sexist pigs.
If Arden had been with him as a bodyguard nonetheless, then that meant Arden was in his employ. And the odds were that he still was, even while he courted me. My blood was beginning to boil, but I kept it at bay as I thought of Arden's warm smile and infectious laugh. Was there any way that he could have been playing me the whole time? There couldn't have been.
"Maybe he’s both? Maybe he does two jobs at the same time? Or even if he only works for Jardin, that doesn’t mean he isn’t sincerely interested in me, right?" My voice wavered and cracked. It was like I was trying more to convince myself more so than my mother.
She shook her head. "Jardin would use you to his advantage, make no mistake. Whether it be to get information about me or to use you as a bargaining chip, I wouldn't know. He tried to send someone once to pursue Madge, but I put a stop to that. He sent someone I wouldn't so easily recognize this time."
I was pacing back and forth across my room. There were too many pieces of information to take in at once. It was starting to make my head hurt. I glanced at my mother, a tear forming in my eye. "How can we know for sure? Have you considered that maybe someone might actually love your daughter and not have the intention to use her?"
My mother dropped to my bed and looked wounded. "Of course, that's a possibility. I want that for you, Eloise! But..."
"But what?" I crossed my arms, trying to be strong. I wouldn’t give up on Arden so easily. But my sister's words loomed in the back of my mind. Maybe he was just like the rest of them.
"I confronted him, El. Just now. He was slipping out of my office after dropping you home. He was probably trying to steal information from me."
I felt my heart shatter. Arden was the one good thing that had come from any of this. The one thing that made the lies and the horror all worth it. If even he was a lie, I didn’t think I could keep going. What was the point of the glitz and the glamour if it was all a facade for the dark and the vile?
My mother's voice dropped to a hushed whisper. "I'm so sorry, Eloise."
My arms uncrossed and dropped to my sides. "You just finished talking to him?"
She nodded her head, and without hesitation, I stormed out of my bedroom door. I raced down the staircase and through the double doors of the entrance without waiting for a servant to open them for me. Across the yard, I could see him, just barely. He was leaning against his car, just on the other side of the Hart property line. He was probably thinking or scheming or some combination of the two.
I screamed his name at the top of my lungs. The name that had been so sweet moments ago tasted bitter. He spun around with wide eyes and a pained expression. He realized mother had told me everything. Why hadn't he tried to come inside and reason with me and tell me he wasn't with me as part of his job? I finally got close enough, my chest heaving up and down quickly as I gasped for breath, both from storming across the large yard to catch up to him and from being enraged.
"Tell me it's not true. Arden... tell me..." My voice was shrill and bellowed unlike it ever had before.
Arden winced and looked down at his boots when he couldn't maintain eye contact with me. "I can't tell you that, Eloise..."
I couldn’t stop myself from choking on a sob. I had fallen for him so quickly and this was my punishment. I should have listened. To my mother. To Madge. I flew too close to the sun, and this was what it was like to get burned. He glanced back up at me, his eyes welling with his own tears. How dare he try to be the victim in this? I was the one hurting! This was my trauma!
"Eloise, I was told to get to know you better by my employer. I will confess to that."
I thrust my finger pointedly at him. "But you didn't confess to it. My mother had to catch you."
"I know, and I should have told you sooner. But hear me out."
"Why?" I screamed at him at the top of my lungs. I knew without a doubt that some of the servants were probably watching me from the windows or the front door. And I didn't care. Let them stare. I was laser-focused on the vampire in front of me. The one that I had started to trust, unlike anyone else outside of my family.
"Because I love you!" He screamed back at me. I was taken aback as the words pierced my heart. I wanted nothing more than for them to be true. But I shook my head as if to clear them from my mind. He saw my reaction and continued. "What we have may have started as an assignment, but that's not what it is now. I genuinely fell in love with you, Eloise. You see me in a way that no one else does, and I think you're an amazing, beautiful woman with a positive spirit that is so rare in this world."
I rubbed my arm against my leaking eyes and sniffled back the waterfalls that I knew would come the second I was back inside the mansion. "They're just words, Arden. I can't trust you now."
My voice trailed off, and I began to turn away from him. I was going to march myself right back inside and start the painful process of putting this all behind me. I felt his hand grab my arm and something inside me snapped. I swung around, my palm open and flat as it met his cheek with a resoundin
g smack. He recoiled and staggered back. It probably hadn't hurt him all that bad, being a vampire and all. But it sure did startle him. He rubbed his cheek and looked at me wide-eyed.
With a hiss that barely escaped through my clenched teeth, I warned him. "Don't ever try to talk to me again. I don't want to see you anymore."
The words were a lie. I wanted to see him. I wanted him to tell me that everything was okay and that it was all one big misunderstanding. I saw his lips open and close, and for a moment I thought my wish would be granted. But he decided against whatever he had thought to say, and his head hung in shame. I bit my lip hard enough that I tasted the coppery taste of blood, and I turned back around and marched into my home.
There was not a servant in sight when I got through the front doors, and I was grateful. They had probably turned tail and fled to the servant corridors the moment they saw my confrontation with Arden had come to an end. But it was for the better. I didn't want any of them to see my tear-stained face or hear my gut-wrenching, choking sobs as they escaped me. I considered slumping into a ball right there in the entryway, in front of the grand staircase, but there was somewhere else that beckoned to me.
I took the stairs sluggishly and ascended to the second floor. But I passed my bedroom door and continued down the hallway. Pushing open the large oak door, I stepped into my father's library. The smell of ancient books filled the air, and I breathed it in deeply. It had a calming effect. I made my way to one of the couches in the middle of the room and dropped onto it. The cushions enveloped me like a warm embrace, like a hug. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to imagine I was being held by my father, soothing me as I cried.
The door creaked open ever so slowly and my mother stepped into the library. She rarely ever came in there, and I always assumed it was because of the memories attached to it. But coming to my side at that moment was important enough for her to overcome those ghosts of her past. She pulled me up as she sat down next to me and placed my head back down in her lap. Her fingers gracefully and softly played with the strands of my hair as she cried with me.
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