"Nice try," Clay said with a sharp smile. "But you're not pushing me away. I reckon you're stuck with both of us. It's about time that you were the smart one and stopped resisting it."
"She should be yours alone," Vellum told him, his expression hard.
Clay squeezed the reins. "It's not up to me. She's made her choice."
"I could drive her back into your arms. You'd have what you wanted, and so would I: Mariel safe."
"Didn't know vampires were so self-sacrificing," Clay said sarcastically. Vellum's offer tempted, but only for a moment. "You can't change the way we feel. Or the way you feel, for that matter. So just accept that you're saddled with us."
He listened to Vellum mutter an expletive.
"I meant what I said," Clay went on as he checked to see that Mariel was on her way back to them through the scrub and trees. "I could be your backup in this. Mariel will kill me if something happens to you."
"So you're only looking out for yourself?" Vellum asked with a hint of wryness.
"Damn straight, I am." Clay faced him again. "I'll go with you. We'll settle this quickly and get on with our lives."
Vellum smiled, and Clay was sure what his answer would be. Right up until he said, "No."
11
"Tell me what your life was like in Everton Fort," Vellum asked one night, less than a week later.
Mariel exchanged a quick, fond smile with Clay. "It was wonderful."
With a stick, Vellum drew patterns in the dirt before the fire pit. His eyes glowed like coals. "Why was it wonderful? Indulge me with the details."
"Well," she began, as she thought back to their brief time there, "Clay pampered me in every way he could. He booked us the nicest room in the nicest inn. He took me out to the most delicious dinners every night. We went to shows. He bought me so many dresses—"
"None of which she now wears," Clay said with a chuckle.
"At your request," she reminded him archly. "But besides all of that, it was nice to relax and know that Beaufort had met justice and we were safe."
"I imagine most people would have been satisfied with such a life."
Mariel frowned slightly. "That's true. And I'm not saying I didn't appreciate everything we had there. I did."
"Clay seems to have done his utmost to impress you," Vellum noted.
"Because she deserves it," Clay said easily.
"You both do." Vellum tossed the stick into the fire. "I hope you realize that you will never again enjoy that lifestyle while you are with me. By aligning yourself with me you have thrown away all semblance of a comfortable life. You will never again be accepted by your friends and family. From now on you will be outcasts just as I am."
"We talked about it." Mariel held the vampire's gaze. "We knew what would happen when we came for you."
"Did you truly? What kind of life will this be? Do you intend to make your home with me in Shadow Valley Territory? Live amongst the vampires, knowing that they'll follow your every move obsessively because they hunger to drink your blood? Or will we live here, where your presence by my side makes you just as guilty for every vampire crime committed in Mountain Sky? Either option, Mariel, promises death."
"Lots of things promise death," she told him evenly. "But not so many things promise happiness. Or pleasure. Those things are rarer. We came for those."
"Sentimental fools," he muttered, but his voice lacked rancor. The stiff line of his shoulders visibly softened.
Sensing that Vellum had given up attempting to drive them off, Mariel reached for Clay's hand and held it.
"Would you like to hear about the very first time that Clay attempted to help me pick out a dress?" Her voice held laughter as she recalled the memory. Beside her, Clay muttered beneath his breath.
Black vampire eyes lifted to her, glanced at their linked hands, then rose again to her face. Vellum slowly grinned.
"It sounds amusing at the expense of our dear Marshal. I would love to hear every detail."
Clay sighed. "Of course you would."
So Mariel related a story from a life they would never know as a trio, and if Vellum was jealous, nothing in his handsome, smiling face revealed it.
"I may have looked like a buffoon," Clay said when she finished, "but I reckon I did as well as any man could have under the circumstances."
Vellum seemed intrigued by that. "You believe men have no business knowing about women's fashions?"
"How could I have?"
"You've had previous lovers. A mother. Perhaps a sister? Your ignorance is your own."
Mariel hid a smile behind her hand as Clay made a sound indicating his annoyance.
"And what do you know about women's fashions?" he challenged the vampire.
Vellum shrugged casually. "I know that the thickest fabric is the most tiresome to wash but will endure the longest. I know that the wrong color gingham can make a woman too pale, and that smaller flower patterns are more flattering than larger ones. I know that lace is beautiful but can chafe against bare skin. I know that too many buttons can make a man go mad."
He said the last with a faraway look, as though he were remembering that effort.
"Were you ever married, Vellum?" Mariel asked gently.