My Immortal (11 page)

“Have your guests returned to town?”

“Yes.” Damien stared at me, clearly curious. His eyes ran
up and down over me, the dim light from the house casting a shadow over his face. “You are looking rather well this evening, Marie.”

It was enough of a triumph to bolster me, to coax a smile to my lips. “I thank you most kindly.”

“Do you?” He sounded faintly amused. He drew on his cigar and blew smoke over the fountain in a pungent cloud, his attention shifting from me back to the water.

That was it. Nothing but a cursory inspection of me, then…disinterest.

“I have missed you of late,” I said with a boldness born of desperation. The burn, the ache inside of me demanded that I proceed, desired and clamored for his touch, his experience, his understanding of me as a woman.

But he merely laughed at me, a soft, deep rumble in his chest, the sound rolling over me, more terrible than a slap, more shocking than a slice to tender flesh.

“What is it that you want, Marie? More gowns? More pin money? No, that is not what you desire. Do you wish to return to France? That I cannot allow. There is trouble stirring in France, you know, and it is not a good time for you to abandon me and our marriage.”

“That is not what I want. I want you to…to return to me,” I whispered, throat tight, cheeks burning.

“In your bed? Is that what you mean?” Damien smiled, a cool, harsh smile. “I am shocked, my dear.”

I said nothing. I could not. I merely stood there, heart racing, breath rushing in and out, and waited.

“Ah, I understand. This is because you wish for a child, yes? While I would like that too, I find myself displeased with you of late. I believe before we resume proper spousal relations, you owe me a most pretty apology for your unpleasant behavior.”

Do you see what he was doing? The humiliation he was putting upon me? I believe he enjoyed my discomfort, and the position of power he held over me.

If I had been myself, the woman you raised, who had a firm understanding of right and wrong, a solid grip on her convictions, I should have walked away then and allowed him to wallow in his dyspeptic and cruel emotions. I did not.

All the vices that claim and coax and cajole us into sin were working upon me, and I was willing to debase myself in order to achieve my goal. I did not know it then, but at that moment I lost myself.

“I am sorry, Damien, if I have displeased you. That has never been my intention and I will try to be a more satisfying wife.”

His eyebrow rose. He noticed the emphasis I put on a particular word. “That was not so hard, was it? And I accept your apology.”

I could not prevent a sigh of relief.

But then he continued. “However, I will not return to your chamber tonight or any other night. If you wish a babe, you will come to
my
chamber.” His voice was relaxed and even, but his eyes glittered sharply, his jaw stiff. “You will come to me, and you will climb into my bed and you will tell me exactly what it is you want. Then I shall be pleased to give it to you.”

My mouth moved, but no sound came out. I was shocked, appalled, frightened. If it had taken all my courage to come out into the garden dressed as if for dinner, how could I ever presume to go to his chamber?

“No? You don’t wish to? Well, that is somewhat disappointing.”

He reached out and drew his finger along my décolleté. The touch made me shiver, my nipples hardening with a foreign discomfort.

“You look rather fetching tonight. Your maid has worked wonders with you.”

I confess I was offended. “She has done nothing. I have simply regained my appetite.”

“Oh, I see I have pricked your pride.” Damien leaned
closer, tilting my chin up. “How interesting to know that vanity exists within you after all. Come upstairs and show me that you have regained, or rather developed for the first time, all of your appetites.”

It could have been a tender touch. I wanted it to be. I wanted him to assure me that all was well between us. That if I came to him, we would start afresh, and have a true and sacred marriage. There was no such reassurance, of course. No smiles, no promises, no loving embrace.

Instead he moved away from me, crushing out his cigar with his boot. “I won’t wait for you but I will be in my chamber. Do as you please, Marie. You always do.”

Marley followed behind Damien in her rental car and wondered if she’d lost her everlovin’ mind.

Yes, Damien lived in the
pigeonnier
, and she would be staying in the main house, but who was she kidding? Just the two of them until Saturday? She might as well strip naked now and save them both the aggravation of her futile resistance.

She hadn’t had sex in five years. Even then, it had been a brief, less than stellar performance by her high school crush, whom she’d run into at the park. All those years of daydreaming over Brian in sophomore algebra could have been spent more productively if only she could have had a glimpse into the future and known he was a sexual dud.

But maybe she was the dud. That was a very real possibility.

If Damien was a dud, she’d eat her skirt, one flower at a time. He looked like he could bring women to orgasm just by suggesting it.

That was part of the reason she’d clung to her rental car. She needed a way out, fast, if being around Damien for the next few days had her in over her head, which she suspected it would. She also had the niggling little fear at the back of her mind that she was being stupid, that she had no reason to trust him. But she always managed to wrestle that fear into submission by reminding herself that he’d had ample opportunity to take advantage of her, sleep with her, dismember her and toss her in the swamp the night before when she’d been half-dressed and drugged. If his motives were evil, she’d have been dead already.

Cheerful thought.

Damien came and opened her car door when she parked behind him in the driveway. He smiled at her and bent toward her. Marley backed up instinctively, then mentally groaned at her weird reaction when he pulled the button by her ankle to pop the trunk. He was just getting her luggage, and she’d been afraid he was going to put the moves on her in the Ford Taurus. Jesus, she needed to get a grip.

“So where are your parents?” she asked as she got out of the car and followed him around to the trunk. “Did they retire to a condo or something?” He couldn’t be more than thirty. His parents would be the right age for golf and traveling around the globe.

Damien lifted out her suitcase. “My parents have passed. My mother when I was a child, my father when I was twenty-four.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” No wonder he didn’t live in the big house. He truly was alone, and that overwhelming square footage must be a constant reminder.

“Don’t do that,” he said, cupping her cheek with his free hand.

“Do what?” she asked, amazed at how breathy she sounded. But there was something so inherently sensual about having a man’s large hand cover her face like that, and she felt so bad for him.

“Feel sorry for me. I can see that softness in your eyes, that pity. I don’t deserve it, Marley, I truly don’t. Save your compassion for someone else.”

He didn’t sound angry, just earnest. Marley shook her head. “Everyone deserves my compassion.”

“You should protect yourself more. Someone is going to take your goodness, that compassion, and they’re going to hurt you. They’re going to shred you, make a mockery out of your trust and kindness, and they will walk away without a single drop of guilt or shame, and leave you bleeding.”

His words were soft, but harsh, his fingers stroking over her skin. Marley shook her head again. “So I build steel armor around myself and never care about anyone? Never let anyone in? That sounds lonely as hell to me…I’d rather risk it.”

He jerked back and yanked her second bag out of the trunk.

“You’re not going to shred me, are you, Damien?” she asked, even as she was sure of the answer.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

Pushing the handle back down into the suitcase, Damien turned and slammed the trunk shut. “That doesn’t mean you won’t regret the day you met me.”

Marley slipped her purse back onto her shoulder and pulled up the suitcase handle before he could grab and carry both bags. She started rolling it over the gravel. “Oh, come on, don’t be so goth. You sound like you’re auditioning for vampire tour guide, all ominous and brooding.”

He glared at her, but there was amusement in his eyes, and he struggled to keep a smile off his face. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I know I can be difficult.”

“You’ve never seen a six-year-old lose his recess privileges. It’s ugly. I think I can handle you.” She hoped. Playing cat and mouse with Damien was a little different than handing out color-coded behavior cards to students. “Now show me the house, please. I didn’t have any time to look around last night.”

Because she’d been too busy taking her bikini top off for him.

“By the way, why do you call the
pigeonnier
the
pigeonnier
?”

“Because pigeons used to be kept there.”

“Oh.” Duh, Marley. “I guess I figured that, but I meant why did they need a whole building to keep pigeons? Did they eat them or what?”

“Back in France, in the Old Regime before the Republic, only landowners could own pigeons. So building an elaborate structure to house your pigeons was a sign of wealth and class. And yes, they were eaten.” Damien urged her to start walking again by pushing his hand lightly on the small of her back.

Marley marveled at the money, the heritage that belonged to Damien. Being just a nice, Midwestern, middle-class girl of unknown European ancestry, it was awe-inspiring to think about Damien’s lineage.

“Just to warn you,” he said, “there’s no working plumbing in the house.”

Marley stopped on the first step. “Then, uh, how do you bathe, et cetera?” It was the et cetera that really worried her. She didn’t hang with the idea of peeing behind a bush. Flush toilets were her friend. That alone was worth three hundred bucks a night back at the hotel.

“I turned the old kitchen into a bathroom because it was the easiest way to manage it without digging under the foundation of the main house. You’ll have to share it with me.” He took her suitcase from her slack hand and moved up the stairs to open the front door. “And it’s out the back door and across the garden, so you won’t be able to dash to the bathroom naked. Unless you really want to. I don’t mind.”

“Despite my secret yearnings to be a nudist colonist, I think I’ll be fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Hey, you know what I’ve been wondering?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t even imagine.”

“Why is the front door on the second floor? I mean, you have this big dramatic staircase that essentially leads to the second floor, which is really the first floor because you have all first-floor stuff on it, so what’s really on the first floor since you’re not using it like a first floor?” Okay, that made no sense. Marley stopped in the foyer and clamped her lips shut.

“When the house was built in 1777, the ground-level floor was used for storage only, in case the river flooded. Water could pass through the bottom floor and not damage the structure of the house or the furnishings. Later it was turned into the rooms I have now—the music room, a living area, a weight room.”

“You have a weight room?” Something about the image of Damien sweating with his shirt off did strange things to her insides.

“Yes. Feel free to use it.”

Marley snorted. “Do I look like I work out?” And even if she did, she would not do it in front of Damien. “But how do you work out without electricity?”

“I open the gallery doors. It lets plenty of light in.”

They were still standing in the foyer, and Marley realized Damien was patiently waiting for her to stop gawking at the chandelier and stop touching random candlesticks and the mirror over the nineteenth-century table. “Sorry. Just smack my hand if I touch something I shouldn’t.”

“You can touch anything you want. I don’t believe the past should be carefully preserved as if the world has never moved forward. If I cared enough to take the time and spend the money, I would shock the purists and make this house a home by mixing antiques with comfortable contemporary furnishings.”

“You should. You could move back in.” Marley thought it would be an amazing thing to do, to restore the house to its former glory by appreciating the past while living in the present, and carefully blending the two.

“I don’t think it would be worth the effort. Now let me take you upstairs to the second floor where the bedrooms are.”

“You mean the third floor.” Marley followed Damien up the stairs.

“If you want to be that precise, sure. But my family has always called it the second floor. The floor with the bedrooms. Where you’ll be sleeping.”

She was not going to read anything into the way he phrased that. Glancing into the first room on her right, Marley was intrigued by the white shroud around the bed and the simplicity of the furnishings. It was less ornate than the room she had stayed in. “Can I have this room?” It would be embarrassing to walk into the room she’d been in last night with Damien. The poor man might have flashbacks of her thighs rolling around.

“If you want. But I should tell you this was the mourning room.”

Marley stopped just inside the doorway. She glanced at the cross on the dresser. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this is where dead bodies were laid out on the bed for mourning before burial.”

No thanks. A shiver rippled up her back. “Never mind. I’m sure you have another room I could use, right?”

“How about the one you were in last night?”

“Alright.” Damn it.

When they walked in, Marley tried not to blush. Instead, she threw her purse on the dresser and said, “Thanks for showing me around. I shouldn’t keep you. Have a good night.”

He frowned. “Let me show you the bathroom. And the refrigerator is in the
garçonnier
.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can find everything.”

“No, let me just give you a quick tour. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

She’d feel more comfortable if he’d leave her the hell alone, but Marley put on a smile and followed him down the stairs and out the back door. “What’s a
garçonnier
?”

“It’s the sleeping quarters for teenage boys, traditionally. Once a son turned fourteen he moved out of the big house, even though he took all his meals with the family.”

“Why did he get his own place?” Marley twisted her ankle on the gravel path and swore under her breath.

“To allow him to experience independence and to grow into manhood. Which I think means, in essence, allowing him freedom out from under the watchful eye of his mother to grow into manhood with the servant and slave girls.”

Of course. It always came down to the penis. “Or maybe it had something to do with the mother wanting his stinky feet out of the house. Have you ever smelled a fourteen-year-old boy? It’s not a pretty thing.”

Damien laughed. “Maybe. But I live here now and hopefully I don’t smell.” He opened the door to a white square building with a porch, fifty feet from the
pigeonnier
. “This is where I sleep, and I have a small kitchenette in here. I don’t really cook much so it’s not extensive.”

The building was small, though bigger than the
pigeonnier
, and it was decorated in a similar eclectic way, with a modern tubular bed and ornate, gilded portraits on the wall. The refrigerator was stainless steel and stood directly across from an antique mahogany armoire.

It struck Marley that if Damien had redone the kitchen as a bathroom, the
pigeonnier
as his office, and the
garçonnier
as his bedroom, he was avoiding living in the big house. It almost seemed like it would have been easier to convert the whole bottom floor of the big house into an apartment for him, instead of his hodgepodge of random buildings.

“I’m sorry everything is so inconvenient,” Damien said. “Maybe you should stay in here and I’ll sleep in the big house.”

Sleep on his sheets? Stare at his clothes hanging in the armoire? That was a seriously bad idea. “No, you don’t have to do that. It’s fine. I like the big house.”

“I have to work tomorrow during the day, I’m sorry to say, so I won’t be able to entertain you, but there is food. Feel free to come in here whenever you want. You should be able to fix yourself something for breakfast and lunch if that’s okay with you, or you can go to town, of course.” He pulled open the fridge to reveal some very clean shelves loaded with staples before he slammed it shut again. “Feel free to explore the big house, the attic, outside. Just don’t go into the swamp.”

“The swamp monster might get me?” He was amusing her. He looked actually nervous about having a guest. It was obvious that while he had his infamous parties with a certain regularity, he didn’t seem to have traditional houseguests.

“Either that or a gator.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “If you need anything just come over to the
pigeonnier
. At any time. My work is easily interruptible, and I want you to be comfortable. Though sometimes you might have to just poke around to find what you need…I don’t really pay attention to where the maids put things.”

“Damien, relax.” Marley pulled her ponytail tighter. “I’m an easy guest. And I’m used to taking care of myself. Everything will be fine.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “Good. It’s just, I’m not used to having anyone stay over. My wife was an excellent hostess, but I’m much more comfortable writing a check for the caterer and the cleaning crew.”

Hello. Marley barely heard a word past
wife
. “You were married? For how long?”

He winced. “Eighteen months. She hated this moldy plantation.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I think the house and the property are stunning.” Small consolation, but it was true.

“Thank you. I’m sorry she died too. Very, very sorry.”

“She died?” Marley was horrified. She had just assumed divorce. “When?”

“Two years after my father died.” Damien rubbed his hand over his jaw. “Just forget that I brought it up, alright? I didn’t mean to say anything in the first place and I can see what’s it’s doing…you’re getting that look again.”