Page 57 of Bought for Blood

Stop it. Go inside and eat the bread.

He played poker with me and let me win. The staff love him. He pays their pensions and for their children’s schooling. He has a cat, for God’s sake. You can’t have a cat and be bad.

Unless you’re a Bond villain.

I shake my head and walk to my room. I’m warm, I’m fed, I’m surrounded by luxury. What’s to complain about?

And who knows…

He might even keep me alive for twenty years.

Chapter 21

Bastien

Yves is waiting outside my door when I rise for the evening, which means something has already happened without me.

“The mademoiselle requests your company,” he says, before I can ask what became of the dinner I ordered. “In the kitchen. She’d like you to come down when you’re ready, rather than go to the dining room.”

“Would like, or told you to say she’d like?”

“The second, my lord. Word for word, if you want it repeated.”

I don’t. I go down.

Serenity’s at the long table with Maximilian near her feet and flour on one wrist. Marthe stands over her shoulder, saying something about the water wanting a full boil before the vegetables go in. Her hair is tied back with a strip of ribbon, and she’s in a yellow sundress with no business being worn in winter.There’s color in her face that didn’t come from any fire in this kitchen.

She looks up and smiles as I walk in, and my stride falters for a second.

“You’ve been outside,” I say.

“The garden.” She looks back down at the pot. “The small one off the building. I was out there this afternoon.”

“You could have told someone. Freezing in a garden isn’t the ending I had in mind for you.”

“I wasn’t cold.” She glances at me again. “I don’t get cold the way I used to. Small mercies.”

Marthe straightens at the stove and looks over at me.

“She wanted to cook, my lord. I wasn’t about to stop her.” Back to the pot. “It’s a good stew. Better than anything I’d have managed tonight.”

“My grandmother’s recipe,” Serenity says. “More or less. I’m guessing at two of the herbs. I was much younger the last time I watched her make it.”

“Then it’s your recipe now.”

“I suppose it is.”

We sit at the small table by the window; her choice, apparently, made before I came down. I watch her eat. I haven’t chewed a mouthful of anything in a long time, but I could watch her doing it for hours. The woman eats like a starving wolf. Probably because she is one.

“It’s good,” I say when she pauses for a breath.

“How would you know?” She wrinkles her nose at me. “You don’t eat.”

“Yes, but I can watch you. And you’re eating it with your whole face.” I reach forward and wipe a splash of sauce off her chin with my thumb. Her cheeks go pink. Pinker than the garden made them.

“Do you remember your last meal? As a human?” she asks, and the question unbalances me because nobody has ever asked.

“Queue de Bœuf Braisée au Vin de Bordeaux,” I say after a moment. “Paired with a very good red. Perhaps too much of that, since it led to my untimely…transition.”