“Why not?” Phoebe demanded.
“Because I have something you will never again possess,” Fran?oise said, her voice dropping to a confiding hiss, “a treasure that no amount of money can buy nor time secure.”
Phoebe leaned forward, eager to know what this treasure was. It couldn’t be long life—Phoebe had that now.
Fran?oise, like most taciturn individuals, enjoyed having an attentive audience. She had also mastered the art of the dramatic pause. She picked up her bottle of lavender water and spritzed a pillowcase with it. Then she wielded the hot iron with the same quick expertise with which she did everything else in the house.
Phoebe waited, as unusually patient as Fran?oise was unusually forthcoming.
“Freedom,” Fran?oise said at last. She took up another pillowcase and let her words sink in.
“No one pays any attention to me,” Fran?oise continued. “I can do as I please. Live, die, work, rest, fall in love—and out of it, too. Everybody is watching you, waiting for you to fail. Wondering if you will succeed. Come August, you’ll have Milord Marcus back in your bed, but you’ll have the eyes of the Congregation on you, too. After word spreads of your engagement, every vampire on earth will be curious about you. You’ll never have a moment’s peace or freedom in your life—which, God willing, will be long.”
Phoebe stopped her nervous shifting, and the room was so quiet that even a warmblood could have heard a pin drop.
“But you need not worry.” Fran?oise folded the smooth pillowcase into a sharp-edged rectangle before taking another damp one from the basket. “You will not have liberty, but you will succeed at your job—because I will be doing my job, protecting you from those who would do you harm.”
“Excuse me?” This was news to Phoebe.
“All newly reborn vampires need someone like me to take care of them—and older ones, too, when they are in society. I dressed Madame Ysabeau, and Miladies Freyja and Verin.” Fran?oise took no notice of Phoebe’s startled reaction. “I took care of Milady Stasia back in the winter of 802, when she was taken ill with the ennui and would not leave her house, not even to hunt.”
Fran?oise finished her pillowcase and took up a sheet. The hot iron hissed and spit against the damp cloth. Phoebe held her breath. This was more ancient de Clermont history than she had ever heard before, and she did not wish to interrupt.
“I attended on madame when she was in the past with Sieur Matthew, and made sure she did not come to harm when he was about town on business. I kept house for Milady Johanna after Milord Godfrey died in the wars, when she was in a rage and wished to die. I have cooked and cleaned for Sieur Baldwin, and helped Alain take care of Sieur Philippe when he came home from the Nazis a broken man.”
Fran?oise fixed her dark eyes on Phoebe. “Aren’t you glad now that this is the life I chose: taking care of this family? Because without me, you would be eaten up, spit out, and ground under the heels of every vampire you meet, and Milord Marcus with you.”
Phoebe wasn’t glad, precisely, although the more Fran?oise spoke the more grateful she was for the advice the woman was delivering. And she still couldn’t understand why anyone with her full faculties—which Fran?oise obviously possessed—would choose to look after other people. Phoebe supposed it wasn’t dissimilar to Marcus’s choice of medicine, but he’d gone to years and years of schooling for that and it seemed somehow more worthy than Fran?oise’s path.
The more she considered Fran?oise’s question, however, the less sure Phoebe was of her answer.
Fran?oise’s mouth began to curve upward in a slow, deliberate smile.
For the first time since becoming a vampire, Phoebe felt an unmistakable flush of pride. Somehow, simply by keeping silent, she had earned Fran?oise’s approval. And it mattered to her a great deal more than she might have expected.
Phoebe handed Fran?oise the lump of sheet that was uppermost in the basket.
“What’s ‘ennui’?” Phoebe asked.
Fran?oise’s smile widened. “It’s a type of sickness—not so dangerous as Sieur Matthew’s blood rage, you understand, but it can be deadly.”
“Does Stasia still have it?” Phoebe settled back onto her stool, watching Fran?oise’s movements and taking in how she managed the lengths of damp linen without letting them drag on the floor. The two of them would be spending a lot of time together. If housekeeping was important to Fran?oise, Phoebe should at least try to discover why.
“Middle-aged white women,” Miriam said as she entered Fran?oise’s territory.
“What about them?” Phoebe asked, confused.
“They were sample eighty-three—the one you claimed to like second only to cat’s blood,” Miriam explained.
“Oh.” Phoebe blinked.
“We’ll get you some more. Fran?oise will have it on hand—but you have to ask for it. Specifically. Unless you do, you’ll have nothing but the cat to feed from,” Miriam said.
Whatever was the point of that? Phoebe wondered. Couldn’t she just say, “I’m hungry,” and rummage through the fridge?
Fran?oise, however, seemed to understand what was going on. She nodded. Phoebe would learn later why this ridiculous rule was being imposed.
“The cat will be sufficient, thank you, Miriam,” Phoebe said stiffly. She simply couldn’t imagine being in such need that she would utter the words “give me the blood of a middle-aged white woman.”
“We’ll see,” Miriam said with a smile. “Come. It’s time for you to learn how to write.”
“I know how to write,” Phoebe said, sounding cross.
“Yes, but we’d like you to do it without setting the paper on fire with excessive friction or carving up the desk.” Miriam crooked her finger in a way that made Phoebe shiver.
For the first time in her life, Phoebe left the kitchen reluctantly. It seemed a place of comfort and safe harbor now, with Fran?oise and the laundry, the clean glasses, and the hiss of the iron. Upstairs there was nothing but peril and whatever fresh tests her sadistic vampire schoolmistresses could devise.
As the baize-covered door to the kitchen swung shut behind her, Phoebe finally arrived at the answer to Fran?oise’s question.
“Yes. I’m glad.” Phoebe was back in the kitchen before she had fully formulated a plan to return. Miriam and Freyja were right: thinking of where she wanted to be really was sufficient cause to get her there.
“I thought so. Go now. Don’t keep your maker waiting,” Fran?oise advised, brandishing the heavy iron in the direction of the door as though it weighed no more than a feather.
Phoebe returned to Miriam’s side. As the baize door flapped its way closed, she heard the strangest sound, something between a cough and a chortle.
It was Fran?oise—and she was laughing.
14
A Life of Trouble
25 MAY
“Sit. Stay. Wait.” My son’s piping voice carried through the open window, uttering a stream of nonsense that exactly imitated the instructions I gave Hector and Fallon every time we attempted to get back into the house without my getting knocked over. The kitchen door creaked open. There was a pause. “Wait. Stay. Okay.”
Apollo bounded into the room, looking extremely pleased with himself—but not nearly as proud as Philip, who toddled after him holding Fallon’s dog leash, hand in hand with Matthew.
Alarmingly, Fallon’s leather lead was not attached to the griffin.
“Mommy!” Philip hurled himself at my legs. Apollo joined in the embrace, wrapping his wings around us both, cooing with delight.
“Did you have a nice walk?” I smoothed down Philip’s hair, which was inclined to stand straight up at the slightest breeze.
“Very nice.” Matthew gave me a lingering kiss. “You taste of almonds.”