CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GISELLA
Stars decorated the sky when I awoke, clammy and cold. A breeze fluttered a hot wind against my naked skin. I closed my eyes, hoping to return to the nothingness of slumber, but sleep evaded me. After tossing for some time, my stomach convinced me to rise on my new schedule.
I dressed carelessly in a gown that had been laid out—Minette was running my life for now—rolled my hair into a bun and pinned it to the crown of my head. Fresh slippers were lined in neat rows by the door. The ones I destroyed the night before were nowhere in sight.
Averting my eyes from Sebastian’s room, situated across the hall from mine, I peered out of my door. Every inch of me craved him. Yesterday, I would have sought him out, regardless of the time of day, or if I would encounter him in his still state. Today, that option had been removed from me. I don’t know if he had even come home after the events of last night and somehow, the thought that I had evicted him from his own home made me feel worse.
Amy, what have you done to me?
My mind screamed the question into nothingness as I slipped a calm, brittle facade over my emotions, walking down the stairs at a sedate gait to find anyone at all.
I didn’t have to search for Charleton, though I knew the hour was late—this household didn’t run the usual hours and was too far from anywhere for anyone to care. He greeted me at the entrance to the dining room.
“Madame.” He dipped his head a little, a sign of respect I hadn’t earned. “I will have dinner made up for you.” He gestured to someone out of sight, and turned back to me, a half-smile on his face.
“Is he—” I stepped through the doorway, halting in the empty room.
Charleton frowned. “I believe the master is away, madame. Would you like to dine in the library, perhaps?”
I nodded, turning to conceal the tears that sprang to my eyes, and made my way back to the small library, refusing the memories of my last encounter with Sebastian in this room that sprang to the forefront of my mind.
I ate alone that night, and the night after.
By the third day after our argument, I managed to wake myself soon after dawn. My internal clock had been thrown out of sync by the alternating days and nights spent with my husband, but I missed the sunlight. Needing to do more than eat, and return to my bed, I sought some other form of occupation.
Minette flustered around me, but I waved her down.
“I’m glad to have any company at all,” I smiled. She dipped into a quick curtsey. “The estate—what other functions does it have?”
Minette stared at me in surprise. “None, madame.”
“None?”
She shook her head, curls bobbing around her heart-shaped face. “The estate provides…distance to the master, is all.”
“He uses it to hide here? No rents, no livestock? Plantation?”
“None.”
I raised my eyebrows. He let a place like this run into the ground because he was afraid of the people? “Well, I’m sure there can be some function that might be derived from the land.”
Alarm flared in her eyes. “He might not like that, ma’am.”
“He might not like a few things. Are there any neighbors?”
She shook her head, eyes widening. “The bayou community?”
I frowned. “Who are they?”
“Granny Smythe leads them. No one can visit.”
“No one?”
“No, madame.” She spun on the spot, collecting my nightclothes. “It is forbidden. There are...animals there.”
I smiled humorlessly. “More frightening than Sebastian?”
“Oh, much.” She looked at me, then seemed to realize what she’d said. “Madame, forgive me. I am so sorry?—”
“Minette. If you don’t start using my name, I’ll start doing my hair on my own.” I threw the threat out in a gentle tone but fixed her with a sharp eye, though we both knew I was joking. The corners of her mouth turned up as she bobbed another curtsey. “And stop doing that.”
The poor maid stood stock still. I laughed, unable to help the breach in etiquette, but I didn't care. She gave me a rueful smile, heading for the door, laundry collected in her thin arms.
Smiling to myself, I collected a book I’d been reading, ready to spend some time in the gardens, determined not to be afraid of the maze.
“Minette,” I called, halting the maid at the door. “Would you locate a small basket of food for me to take outside?”
The bemused maid bopped a half curtesy, turned bright red, and exited in a flurry of nightclothes.
“Could you chew any louder?”
“Would you like me to try?” I swiveled around to face Dolion. He gave me a slow grimace. “Does it hurt to move when you’re like this?” I gestured to his stone form. “Do your legs get tired, crouching there?”
“Does your mouth cease their insidious questions?” he groaned. “We’ve kept my existence secret for over a decade, and in the space of a week, you’ve risked that effort on a multitude of occasions.”
“Are you telling me you dislike my company?”
Dolion grinned. “Not at all. Expose away.” He yawned. “It’s a boring way to pass the time. Especially with no events to mark my passage.”
“You’re obsessed with time,” I pointed out, scattering crumbs on the surface of the water pooling around him. Ducks pecked at them, edging closer to me. I dropped the remainder of the roll at their feet. Feathers fluttered in the water, showering me in a spray of droplets as they attacked the bread in a flurry.
Dolion stopped pouring water when I arrived, and was happier to talk than bide his daylight hours in solitude. I hadn’t asked how the fountain function worked and didn’t ever intend to investigate his anatomy.
“You would be, too, if you watched days go by as a garden fixture.” He snorted derisively. Water splattered water, frightening the ducks. I grimaced. “You’re turning my fountain feral, petite lynx .”
Better than Sebastian’s preferred ‘little hellion’.
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” I fluttered my eyelashes at him. His bellowing laugh filled the garden, frightening the ducks, who sprinkled me with fountain water in their distress. “Dolion…I have a favor to ask.”
“That sentence has never meant good things.” He crouched back on his haunches.
I took a breath. “I want you to take me to see Granny Smythe.”
Stone eyebrows rose so high, I thought they might crawl over his bald dome. “Why do you want to see Granny Smythe?”
“So you’ll take me to see her?”
“Not yet.”
I waited. The eyebrow arched again, and I gave in. “She might know something about Amy.”
“Amy. Oh, petite lynx , do not go down that path.”
I chewed my lip, looking down at my hands. “It’s all right.”
“But you’ll go without me, won’t you? And who will take you?”
“Minette has been there. I think.”
“You endanger your maid in this.”
I nodded. “Yes. It’s selfish. I’m sorry. But I need answers, for both of us.” I made small fists with my hands and stood. “Thank you for listening. You won’t tell him?”
Dolion’s head cocked to the side. “He is but a fool for avoiding you in this. I will take you. Tomorrow.”
My heart leapt. “You will? Thank you?—”
“On one provision.”
“That sentence never precedes anything good,” I smiled as I tossed his words back at him, lessening their sting, but the gargoyle maintained his grotesque appearance.
“We tell him.” Dolion's expression remained fierce as I opened my mouth to object, but he held up a hand. “Afterwards.”
I closed my mouth. “Well, better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
“I’ll meet you at the jetty before the sun rises. Please warn your maid of me. Screaming sets some mineral inside me reverberating. It is most disconcerting.”
“It’s freezing. What does he look like?” Minette held aside half a weeping tree for me to pass. “That path.” She indicated a swamp ash laden fork to our right.
The jetty was set back quite a way from the house. We walked for an hour, and I began to understand how large the estate was.
“He’ll be stone, I think, when you see him.”
“How does he move? How does he eat?” Far from being afraid, Minette was inquisitive about the stone man.
Perhaps it came from being a maid in a vampyre’s household. Her questions continued the entire journey. I began to understand how Dolion must feel as I threw query after query his way and promised myself I wouldn't beleaguer him with questions again.
“I’m not sure how his body works.” I stepped over a slippery patch on the path and grabbed her hand to help her across.
“You didn’t ask?”
“I...didn’t want to know.” I blinked at the admission.
Sebastian’s words ran around my head as if he was still speaking to me, though I hadn’t heard nor seen him since the night I’d been lost in the maze and met Dolion. Unease grew in my stomach.
If I had the answers to give him, perhaps he would return to me? Dolion saw him, spoke to him. Surely, he would listen to his friend. I stepped around a moss-covered rock, halting as undergrowth around us on both sides waved in the non-existent air. This was a mistake. I turned to see both sides of the pathway, gripping Minette’s hand tightly.
“I shouldn’t have brought you,” I whispered.
“I wanted to be here, madame.”
A crack to my right turned both our heads. Shadows swayed in the pre-dawn light, dark and featureless. One broke away from the rest, shifting closer.
I swallowed, then peered forward. “Dolion?”
His face broke into a grin, and I launched myself forward, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “Who else?”
“Cheeky bastard,” I threw the half compliment at him, then remembered too late I’d learned it from Amy.
Drawing back, I noted his skin was soft, despite still appearing like stone. His hands tightened around mine.
“Should you not introduce us?” His gaze fixed behind me.
I stepped back. “Of course. Minette, Dolion. He is—” I stopped, flustered.
“ Une souris .” He bowed.
Minette stared. “Monsieur,” she whispered, bobbing, never taking her eyes from him.
I looked between the two of them, but it was as if I wasn’t there, at all. I sent a quick apology toward the house at James, knowing that after this moment, his courtship with Minette may as we never have existed at all. After a moment I coughed and stepped back—right into the water.
Sinking to my knees with a cry, I flapped, swiveling around for anything to grasp. My knees encased in mud, I couldn’t move them, but continued to sink at an alarming rate. Spotting the jetty, I launched towards it, flailing.
My fingertips hit jagged edges of old wood but failed to grip anything substantial. The water closed around my chest when large hands grabbed both my arms and yanked me unceremoniously from the sludge with a disgusting slurping sound.
Mud puddled around me as Dolion deposited me on the jetty.
“Tuck your legs away,” he advised, staring into the swirling sludge.
I slipped my mud-clad feet beneath me, peering into the churning water. A pair of eyes rose from the swirling mess, then another. I stared, knowing what I was seeing but unable to look away.
“Are those?—”
“Yes,” Dolion helped Minette into the boat, murmuring something to her in French that I couldn’t hear.
He held out his hand to me as I rose gingerly, my mud-laden skirts sticking to my legs. Sigh, I hoisted them around my knees, stepping down into the small boat, conscious of the many eyes on us.
“This is safe?” I heard the doubt in my own voice.
Dolion jumped into the boat, rocking it. Water sloshed either side of the too-small craft, and I began to doubt my own sanity at the request to take us where I knew Sebastian would object.
Something beneath the waterline bumped the side of the boat. Minette squeaked, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her head against my back. My gaze narrowed as Dolion withdrew a long pole encrusted with mud at one end from the side of the jetty.
I glared at the stone man. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“Fun, though.”
“Indeed.”
Silence fell as he lifted the pole. We skimmed across the surface for a time in silence, until light began to filter through the overhanging foliage, a golden glow lancing through long strands of moss that dangled over the water.
The bayou waters stilled around us; a mask of serenity cast over the many eyes that observed our passing.