Page 78 of Under Her Protection

"Vivienne."

"Thirty."

"No."

"Thirty minutes, Mademoiselle Cole."

"What for."

Vivienne permitted her mouth the quarter-inch smirk.

"You will see."

---

She walked Leo up the stairs.

Not to the bedroom. Past the bedroom, down the corridor, to a room Leo had walked once in the first week and had not entered since. It had been described to her in the staff notes as the small study. It was not, today, a study. It had a long low cushioned bench along one wall that Leo had, on her original walk-through, clocked as an antique daybed. On the low walnut table next to the daybed was a small brown glass bottle. Next to the bottle was a single folded grey towel.

Leo stopped in the doorway.

"Vivienne."

"Take off your clothes."

"Vivienne."

"On the bench, on your stomach. Mademoiselle Cole. If you please."

"This is not."

"I know what this is not."

"I am on duty."

"Beaumont has the gate, and the rotation is in the courtyard, and Avery is on the phone in thirty seconds if any sensor in this house changes colour, and you have a thirty minute break.”

"Vivienne."

"Clothes off, please. Shoulder rig on the chair. Earpiece on the little table. Face down."

Leo held her eyes for four counts.

Vivienne's mouth widened from the almost-smile into something fuller, which Leo had seen once, in Colette's room at Maison Noire on the first night five weeks ago, and had not, since, forgotten.

Leo stripped.

She set the shoulder rig on the chair. She set the earpiece on the little table. She took her clothes off and folded them in a pile on the chair, because training, and she lay face down on the grey towel Vivienne had, at some point before her, laid along the daybed. She put her cheek against the folded edge of the towel. The old pale scar at her collarbone was pressed against a piece of fabric that belonged to Vivienne Strauss.

Vivienne lit a small grey candle on the walnut table.

She rolled up her sleeves above the elbow.

She took the small brown glass bottle and put a quantity of oil into her palm. The oil was warm because the bottle had been warming all morning on a low radiator. Leo could have asked her how she knew to warm the oil. She did not ask her. Her jaw, against the towel, set hard anyway.

Vivienne knelt beside the daybed. She put her hand, flat, slick, at the small of Leo's back.

Leo closed her eyes.