“Ah, well.” An unexpected yawn interrupted her words; shielding her mouth, Margaret became abruptly aware that her own body was more than ready for sleep. It was the natural dilemma of anyaffectionate human wife to a vampiric spouse; she rarely wished to miss her husband’s nightly waking hours, but despite her best attempts, her willpower had not yet become stern enough to dismiss sleep as a necessity.
She did take time to gather up her materials and carry them in her leather case back up to the bedchamber rather than leaving them spread out on the table, in case the nachzehrer proved vengeful and petty. Once she was safely back within her locked room, though, the sight of her husband’s unmoving form was too enticing to resist any longer.
With the sun still up, she had no fear of waking him, so she slid underneath his blanket with a sigh of relief and curled herself around his reassuringly solid body to fall into sleep with full security.
When her dreams were finally interrupted, it was by the thought of tea.
No, not just the thought: that was the scent ofgoodtea—her favorite tea!—undercut with smoky tones and with a delicate overlayer that?—
Her eyes flashed open, and she found her husband smiling as he leaned over her prone form, proffering a cup of steaming, milk-laced tea that was no dream but a gorgeous, inexplicable reality. Still half-caught in the foggy remnants of her sleep, she drew a long, delicious inhalation and nearly whimpered with yearning. “What—how?—?”
“You may recall I made you a promise when we first agreed to stay wed: I would neverlet you lack for proper tea.” Lord Riven gave an easy, rolling shrug as he placed the cup and its saucer on Margaret’s side table. “I took the precaution of purchasing a good supply in Paris. The tea you were served at our previous stops seemed perfectly serviceable, but I would have seen to your needs here before my morning sleep...if I hadn’t been so delightfully diverted by yourotherneeds at the time.”
“Ha.” Shuffling upwards in bed, Margaret lifted the cup to her lips to both quench her thirstandshield the blush she could feel rising on her cheeks. “Onlymy needs? Really?”
“What can I say?” There was a devilish gleam in his hazel eyes. “I’m always happy to assist my wife ineverythingshe desires.”
“Hmph.” Clearly, her husband had woken in a dangerously roguish mood...and unlike Margaret, Lord Riven had the outrageous luck of rising from his deathlike rest, each evening, with instant full awareness and none of the grogginess that inevitably plagued her. Rather than engage in verbal swordplay at such a disadvantage, she surrendered the small battle and focused on the tea that would soon break through her mental fog.
Her husband’s smile was knowing as he sat down beside her on the bed, resting one hand on her duvet-covered legs with warm familiarity. “I hear you had a run-in with Fräulein Leonie earlier today?”
Margaret frowned. “With whom?”
“The resident ghoul,” Lord Riven said calmly. “Sheclaims you cursed and threatened her in the most scandalous and shocking manner until she was forced to retreat to save her innocent ears from such terrifying blasphemy.”
“What?” Margaret lowered her cup to stare at him. “That is absolute nonsense!”
“I did presume so.” Her husband’s lips curled in maddeningly condescending amusement. “For one thing, the worst curseI’veever heard you use was remarkably tame, so?—”
“She claimed thatImenacedher?” Margaret demanded. “Shewas the one who threatened to ‘consume my flesh!’”
The amused smile vanished from Lord Riven’s face in an instant. “She didwhat?” he asked softly.
There were times when it could be forgotten that her husband was, in fact, an ancient and extremely dangerous vampire.
This was not one of them.
As Margaret took in the sudden, predatory stillness of his big body—braced and ready to lunge directly towards some violent action—she let out a heavy sigh and allowed her own righteous outrage to depart with her held breath. “It was all mere nonsense and posturing,” she assured him. “As I reminded her myself, centuries of data have proven that nachzehrer only ever ingestdeadflesh—thus why they tend to lurk about graveyards. As I am still fully alive, my flesh would hold no appeal—or use—for her.”
Lord Riven didn’t relax his stanceby so much as a fraction. “And how exactly did she react to that academic correction?”
“By sulking, mainly.” Margaret rolled her eyes. “Needless to say, I paid her no heed and simply went back to my work.”
“Of course you did.” Lines of pain formed around Lord Riven’s eyes as he closed them for a long moment. Then he let out a resigned sigh and met her gaze once more. “I suppose I can hardly pretend to be shocked that you refused to back down from vicious fangs and posturing. After all, you were recklessly fearless from the moment you met me.”
“Why wouldn’t I have been?” Margaret drained the last of her cup in one deeply pleasurable gulp. “You may have shown me your fangs a time or two, but youarea gentleman—and more significantly, you happened to require my continued existence for your own sake. I knew perfectly well that I was in no danger in that situation, either.”
“Long may that continue to be the case,” her husband murmured. Shaking his head, he rose with his usual fluid grace to retrieve the teapot for her next cup, along with a large clay plate covered in cold cuts of meat, cheese, and thickly sliced dark rye bread.
Margaret blinked at the display. “This looks remarkably palatable compared to last night’s offerings.”
“I spent some time in the kitchen with the kobold cook this time, getting to know him and the situation.”
“Of course you did,” Margaret echoed with fond exasperation.
When she’d first met her husband, he had been shrouded in metaphorical dustcloths for decades, forced by the inflexible demands of his honor to fulfil a binding oath and remain voluntarily trapped within the bounds of his own estate for centuries. Needless to say, he’d been reluctant to attach to any more mortals after losing all of his earlier companions to the cruelties of time. So, it had been a shock—and not a wholly welcome one—for her to realize in the months since he’d been freed that his newly-liberated and wide-ranging curiosity extended not only to the outer world he had always hoped to travel, but also, more bafflingly, to all of its noisy and squabbling occupants.
Margaret did of course understand that that quirk of his conferredsomebenefits. Left on her own in a crowded ballroom, she would be overwhelmed and defeated in scant minutes. In Paris, where her access to the archives had been maddeningly dependent upon social influence, she had seen firsthand the advantages of a husband who not only could butwouldmake conversation with strangers at any turn.
