Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
“We should have a ball,” she told Kendrick the next night.
“A ball?”
“Or at the very least, a party,” she said. “There’s nothing people like more than a party. It could be a New Year’s ball!”
Kendrick watched her carefully. “Not a Christmas ball?”
Genevieve swallowed, and a brief flash of pain crossed her face.
So, he had not been imagining things. Although she had been forging ahead with her plans and changes, his wife had grown quieter and more pensive as the month had progressed, averting her eyes from carolers on street corners and holiday shop window decorations.
Kendrick added, “Though you’re right, a New Year’s ball would signal a new start for all of us.”
She nodded. “It would be a fine thing to do—we could invite everyone, not just people of a certain set. And it would continue the Ossuary improvements—give custom to the seamstresses and tailors. I’m sure there are people with musical talents—we could find them instruments, pay them to perform.”
“That sounds grand.”
“We don’t need refreshments—of any kind,” she said darkly.
“I heard about some of Rupert’s entertainments.
We can make it clear that this will be different.
We could even invite people who are farther away, who might not have heard your proclamations, like your friends in Ireland.
We could include it in the invitations!”
Kendrick doubted Salem would come, but he acknowledged that it was possible.
After some further discussion about the ball, he asked gently, “What would you like for Christmas?”
Genevieve’s eyes flicked away from his. “This is enough. This is more than I ever hoped for.”
“This is all things you wanted for the Ossuary. What do you, my wife, want for Christmas? It can be anything.”
“What I want I can’t have,” she finally said.
“Tell me, anyway,” he prompted.
She pleated her skirts. “I had thought I knew how my life would go. I was content to be a spinster, once I realized what was happening. I was all right with it. I wanted to look after my father. I wanted to be there, even though I feared him aging, feared watching it happen and being unable to do anything about it. And then I was denied both things, after all,” she whispered.
“I never closed that chapter of my life. I never got to say goodbye of my own volition. And there isn’t anything I have from it—none of my mother’s teacups or samplers, none of my father’s letter openers—not even a single pen wiper. Nothing, save your books.”
Kendrick said, “You may have all of them. Whichever is missing, I’ll buy you.”
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him. “It means so much. But there is a lack there—in my past. I suppose that’s why I have such—trouble with Christmas.”
Inwardly, he thought, How long has it been since you have had a Christmas, Genevieve? And how can I, old fool that I am, see that it comes for you? But all he said was, “Would you like to do some small things, then? For the children?”
She bit her lip. “Oh, yes, we can purchase presents for the children. They might never have had gifts before.” She thought about it. “Maybe a little greenery?”
“We can manage a little greenery,” he assured her. We can manage so much more, if you’ll only let me, Genevieve. But he had to remind himself to go slow. Healing came slowly and at its own pace.
But they’d have a little Christmas in the meantime.
The two older women watched Genevieve and Kendrick with birdlike intensity from their chairs beside the fire.
Both gray-haired and thin, one knitted while the other embroidered on an embroidery hoop.
Otherwise, they looked exactly the same.
Twins. They were draped with several shawls, as if to keep off the night’s winter chill.
But they did not need them. They were vampires, after all.
“It’s about time,” Miss Dolores Connors said over her knitting. “We’ve been waiting this age for a visit from the new master.” She cast a speculative glance at Genevieve. “And you, my girl? Who are your people?”
“I’m from Oxford originally—”
“No, no. Your bloodline.”
Genevieve’s mouth thinned. “Cuthbert.”
“Oh, yes, we knew him.” Miss Hattie Connors chortled. “He was from Preminger, was he not?”
“Quite so, quite so.”
“Too much wildness in the blood in that line. You’re not wild, though, are you?” It was a rhetorical question. “But you do the proper thing. Rupert, that upstart, never did the proper thing. We told Gisela she was backing the wrong horse, but did she listen?”
The two sisters wagged their heads solemnly. “She should have set her cap for that other lad—Salem, wasn’t it?”
Beside Genevieve, Kendrick stirred. To Genevieve’s practiced eye, he looked like he was trying not to laugh. “How is Gisela related to you, ma’am?”
The old woman cackled. “In more ways than one!” She rang the bell on the side table and the human woman who had admitted Genevieve and Kendrick to the small terrace house reappeared. She looked about forty, with hair beginning to show a few strands of silver, but she kept herself well.
The other Miss Connors said, “Ana, do ask Gisela to join us if she is in the house.”
The woman replied, “Yes, Aunt Hattie,” and withdrew.
“Are you her aunt?” Kendrick asked.
“Many times great-aunt, but a lady never tells her age.” Hattie Connors wagged her finger at him slyly. “We are the family’s godmothers and benefactors! We invested in the ‘Change, you see! Right at the start!”
“Ana and Gisela are sisters, you know,” Miss Dolores said, her needles pausing their comforting click-clack.
“We erred with Gisela.” She and her twin sister shared a commiserating look.
“She was so beautiful as a little girl. She begged us to turn her so she could be young and beautiful forever. We forgot that with age comes maturity.”
Genevieve tried to turn the subject. “You didn’t approve of the previous master?”
Miss Hattie snorted. “He was younger than us! But liked to pretend he was older. Gathered a bunch of claptrap around him as treasures of a bygone era and surrounded himself with toadies. He liked being fawned over, not getting his hands dirty. And the master before him was ineffectual—it was all that woman, what was her name?”
“Renata,” Kendrick supplied.
“Yes, yes. Yet he kept power so long because he recognized that she was intelligent and smart, and he used his might to enforce what she dictated. Unfortunate that so much of what she decreed was regrettable and in support of her own desires. They kept power for quite some time—longer than we’ve been extant.
All and all, it’s been quite a while since the Ossuary has seen true change. ”
Miss Dolores sniffed. “Gisela thought she could steer that ship, and perhaps she did, but what good is a rudder when your ship has no oars or sails?”
She broke off as the door opened. Gisela stepped into the room, looking cool and svelte in a day dress of icy blue. When she saw Genevieve and Kendrick, she froze. Kendrick stood as she entered, and she curtseyed belatedly.
“Gisela, have you met the new master?” Miss Dolores inquired, making the introductions.
“Not in his new capacity,” Gisela said in an arid voice. “How do you do?”
Genevieve tried to get a hold of her temper. She did not want to be civil to the woman who had tried to kill Kendrick—or had at least plotted to do so. But that is the point of this night’s visit, she thought. We have won over all our friends. It is now time to treat with our enemies.
And of course she was thankful that Kendrick was the sort of person who cared to build bridges.
She was thankful he was willing to pursue other avenues to find Laurent and his ilk rather than just waiting for them to poke their heads out of their hidey-holes and hurt someone else.
She was grateful that he agreed with her that they needed to make a strong stand against despicable behavior in order for the Ossuary to be healthy.
She just didn’t like that his strategy included the woman who had orchestrated several knives aimed at his back.
Kendrick nodded. “We do very well, all things considered. Ladies, I wonder if you would mind if my wife and I have a private conversation with Miss Gisela. It will not take long.”
The two birdlike gazes sharpened into the eyes of a couple of falcons, but they said all that was correct and vacated the parlor room with the ease of women decades younger.
They would still be able to hear perfectly well if they chose to eavesdrop, but Genevieve had mentioned to Kendrick that this approach might be best, to give Gisela the veneer of privacy.
“Well,” Gisela said, taking one of the seats the women had vacated. “I’m honored, I’m sure. What brings you to our little corner of London? You would not have come all this way to speak to me.” The neighborhood was well off, but nothing like the vast townhouses and squares of Mayfair.
“Actually,” Genevieve said, setting her gloved hands in her lap, “we are visiting influential vampires within the confines of London to share our progress with the Ossuary and explain further our plans for the future. For instance, we have completed nearly seventy-five percent of the Ossuary’s census and will soon begin on the aboveground residents of London.
We have also begun several industries within the Ossuary. ”
“How nice.”
“It is,” Genevieve said, keeping a hold of her temper. “Very nice when we can give people something to live for.”
“Well, it is kind of you to think of me and pay a call, but I’m afraid I do not qualify as ‘influential.’” She smiled tightly. “Not anymore.”
Kendrick said, “We think you do.”
How did he look so at ease? All Genevieve’s concentration was put towards not glaring at Gisela. She had insisted to Kendrick when he had broached the idea, “But she tried to kill you! Multiple times!”
“I believe you, but it does need to be said that the instance where you heard her plotting, she was advocating for a different approach,” Kendrick had pointed out.