CHAPTER NINE
GISELLA
I woke alone. The bed was cold, the sun was up, and I was starving. Two days of faire l’amour with your new husband will do that. I shifted beneath the heavy quilt, shivering. My feet pressed around to find the brick, but there wasn’t one. Sighing, I sat upright, swinging my legs around.
The room swung with me.
I gripped the edges of my bed, waiting for it to slow. I needed food. Sebastian hadn’t taken blood from me last night; at least, not that I remembered. Had he? I tried to think back but lost myself in the pleasure of the moment until I couldn't concentrate on anything else. When I found myself in my bed once more, my thighs were slick with arousal. I didn't need to touch myself to know that. As the floor resumed its usual stasis, a pair of black booted feet appeared next to my naked ones.
“Madame, you’ll need to eat.” Minette propped my shoulders, pushing me back to rest against pillows she fluffed behind me, drawing the sheet up over the swell of my breast in a matron-like fashion.
The tiny woman moved with speed. I settled though the room began to spin again. A hot cup of coffee was pushed into my hands.
I guzzled the sharp liquid, warmth spreading through me from the inside and out, where I clung to the mug with a death grip.
“Sebastian—is he?”
Minette’s fussing halted, her face closing down.
“He’ll be sleeping, madame. He will rise with the night. As usual.”
“He can’t wake through the day at all?” I frowned, thinking back to my first day when I’d seen him in the hall, and then the ballroom.
“He can, about an hour after sunrise. But he doesn’t often, not usually.” Her gaze held mine for a moment, then she resumed her fussing, piling plates around me.
“I can’t eat all this. It’s far too much,” I protested, still attached to my cup. She refilled it, and I smiled, grateful.
“Of course, you will. After all, he took a lot.”
He took what? I frowned, thinking back, but the nights were a blur.
Your blood, Gella. What I took from you.
“Oh,” I said aloud, still vague. I peered at Minette, but the maid didn’t seem to have heard him. For now, his voice spoke inside my head alone. Perhaps Charleton was the staff member he chose to terrorize in that manner. She returned my smile with thin lips.
I choose to scare Charleton on occasion. A…hobby of mine.
“That’s not a nice hobby. Poor man,” I muttered under my breath.
Minette frowned at me. “Madame?”
“Nothing.” I waved her away, my awkwardness returning along with my embarrassment. She frowned again and retreated, leaving me with a clutch of food and a cup filled to the brim.
Guilt washed over me. Inside my head, Sebastian laughed.
“Don’t laugh. They put up with enough from you,” I snapped tartly. I had the impression of his disapproval before Sebastian’s presence disappeared, and I was left to myself.
By the time I sampled most of the plates, plus refilled my coffee for the umpteenth time, I knew I had to get up or risk sleeping through the day. As much as I wanted to see Sebastian again, I didn’t want to replicate his nocturnal habits. Sunlight was still important to me, though I experienced a wave of guilt at sampling its warm pleasures alone.
Is that why you’re so cold?
The wayward thought took up residence in my head, but I didn't believe that was his reasoning for not seeing sunlight. Maybe his library would hold more information on the topic. But right now, that wasn’t where I wanted to be.
Shifting everything from my bed to the floor, I stood, waiting for the room to start spinning again, but the one thing that dropped was my overfull bladder. As I relieved myself, I made a note to thank Minette—she’d known exactly what to do for me.
How many others had she helped? Was there a string of women he fed from, or did he prey on the staff alone? I shuddered at the thought of him as he was last night with me, with another woman—frankly, with anyone else at all.
I waited for his snarky comment as I dressed. Minette had laid out a gorgeous pale-green day dress for me that matched my complexion to perfection. I fingered the scalloped hem, waiting for a response but my headspace remained my own.
I’ve upset him.
Deeply.
And in turn, that upset me, too.
I wandered through the halls of the upper floor, conspicuously absent of life in any form. No flock of servants assaulted me today. Even the bugs didn’t bother me here. The questions I should have asked my husband began to bombard me, instead.
Why wasn’t I afraid of him? Why had I adapted to this life, to a man I’d met days before? My God, I didn’t even know what day it was .
Why was I not more homesick? I loved France, missed my father, broken man he was. This place seemed so different, though I had been outside for very little time.
Eventually, I found myself pacing the gallery. Sebastian’s many faces stared at me through centuries worth of time. How old was he? They must have all been painted before he had relocated—ahh, yet another question to ask my absentee partner.
Why, why, why?
I was never going to be able to hold a significant conversation with him at this rate.
I wandered to the far end of the gallery where the portraits began to show the passage of time. Though my husband still appeared the same, paint crinkled at the aged edges, dust heavy on the frame as though no one dared to clean it, lest it dissipates beneath their hands.
Time, it seemed, was more fragile than the monster it held within.
Heavy drapes lined the windows right to the edge of the hall. What I thought was the end of the hall, until a sprinkle of gold caught my eye. A gilded edge peeked from beneath the drape. I drew it back with caution, not wanting to destroy any further art, but the hall continued a few steps into deep shadow.
Returning to the center of the gallery, I collected a small lamp from the opposite wall—one of many present in each room—and returned to the curtained end of the corridor. Foreboding filled me, but I pressed into the darkness, heedless of the lick of fear that flickered along my spine in a ghostly touch. Sebastian’s presence, something older than the man I knew, shrouded around me like a cloak, neither hot nor cold, but lacking in any sort of comfort.
I lifted the lamp to view the hidden portraits. Four descended into the dim light, ending in a dead-end, the final picture facing me but too dark to see. I started at the one to my left, working my way forward.
This painting was much like the others in the gallery. Sebastian stared back at me, his face younger than I had seen before. Rather than the roundness of boyhood or teen years, his face was all angles, lacking in fullness. His eyes set deep, widened, as though in panic.
He looked...starved.
I blinked, uncomfortable beneath the still gaze of his haunted eyes, and moved to the next portrait, lifting the lamp high. This painting was set in deep reds and blacks, his flesh stark, lifeless against the open collar of his shirt. His face drawn, he appeared the same age as in the prior painting.
But his eyes—those dark orbs that pinned me in place as he taught my body how to please his, those held a tinge of demonic red, piercing as though they tracked my every step. I blinked, backing up a pace, and collided with a very warm body.
The lamp tumbled from my fingers.
“Oh!”
A startled Charleton dived to catch it, landing on the plush carpet, the glass cupped in his pale hands.
“Nicely saved,” I observed, pressing my palms to my skirts. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But—you really shouldn’t be here.” He gripped my elbow in a tight grip, towing me around.
I shook myself free with a frown. “I wasn’t finished.” I reached for the lamp, but he pulled it away. “Charleton. The lamp, please.”
“It’s nearly luncheon. You must be famished.”
“I’m not. Minette overfed me at breakfast. I must thank the cook later.” My hand still held out for the lamp, I raised an encouraging eyebrow.
“And you haven’t seen the grounds. Let me take you on a tour.” Desperation entered his voice, which heightened my curiosity.
“The lamp.”
Charleton paused in his efforts, resignation drawing his features tight across his weary face. “Madame, I must insist…”
“Noted.”
This time, when I reached for the lamp, he let me take it. I nodded my thanks, unsmiling. Without overthinking it, I gripped the lamp tight and strode back to the end of the hall, halting before the portrait hanging at the end, facing me.
Light bloomed on something that should have remained hidden. I stepped back from the scarlet eyes that showed horror beyond measure in their depths. A scream lodged in my throat as I traced over Sebastian’s younger self. Thi s was what he had become when his humanity had…deserted him.
Red skin flayed raw captured a face more demonic than mortal, like something that should never have come to the surface had been released here, and seeing the light of day, crawled back into the darkness from where it had emerged. Thin flesh pressed to his bones, as though his body was dying but his mind refused to release him from this life. He was quite unrecognizable, except for the smile.
The twisted, ruined smile that was all Sebastian, and the man I knew.
A pair of eyes stared from behind his mangled face—eyes I knew quite well, had been on the ship with for months while we transited across the Atlantic from France to America. I stepped closer, peering into the shadow behind Sebastian’s death mask.
Amy’s sweet, perfect face stared back at me.
For the second time that morning, I dropped the lamp.
Are you satisfied, Gella? Are you frightened now?
Sebastian’s enraged voice echoed around the gallery. Hate emanated from the picture as heat pooled around my feet.
I screamed as hands grasped my shoulders, yanking me backward. Landing on my backside with an undignified thump, I watched Charton smother the lamp with his coat. He stamped at embers escaping the edges, though the carpet seemed disinclined to ignite, smoldering with faint wisps of smoke that rose from his charred jacket.
When the last flame died, Charleton hunched over his knees, propping himself up with his hands. He wiped a smoke-stained cuff over his brow, decorating his face reddened with exertion and soot.
“I’m so sorry, Charleton,” I whispered. “I should have listened to you.”
He swung toward me. Not an ounce of anger strained his face, though bone-deep exhaustion marked the hollows of his eyes.
The sole emotion he aimed at me was pity. And after seeing who my husband was, who he had been… I would take every ounce directed my way.
And his.
Though I knew he’d hate me forever for seeing him that way.