Page 38 of Time's Fool

Then he laughed, genuinely and unrestrainedly, making a passing servant start in surprise. And Gillian to catch her breath, for he was ridiculously handsome when he laughed. Of course, to her he was so anyway.

He had a head of dark brown curls and a matching goatee, white, straight teeth and a hint of a dimple in his right cheek, but only when he smiled. Dark eyes sparkled under expressive brows that should have looked too heavy for his face, but somehow didn’t. A single, gold earring resided in one ear, and a ruby ring—heavy gold with an excellent stone—winked from his hand.

He spent money on his clothes, too, although that was probably because his lady—the Lady, as it happened—demanded it. When you were a master vampire to one of the consuls of the European Senate, you did not go around in rags. Although you did, apparently, not mind wrinkles in the velvet of your doublet or what looked like a smudge of mustard on the fine lace of your sleeve.

Gillian sighed and tucked the offending bit under his cuff for him, hoping that no one would notice. “What a fine pair we are,” she said, smoothing down the coat. “You look like you just staggered in from a tavern and I am in my oldest dress. At least I remembered to leave my apron at home!”

“You look beautiful in anything,” Kit assured her, catching her hand, which had lingered perhaps a bit too long on the fine muscles of his chest. He turned it over and kissed the wrist, just over the pulse point. And, like her, he lingered a bit as well, making her heart race, and she knew he could feel it.

He was a vampire, after all.

But it was often easy to forget, as he had none of their cold severity. Not that that was true of all of them, she thought, remembering Kenric and Bahram, her new bodyguards, who had not only done her laundry when asked, but had allowed Elinor to “help.” But most were distant, as if their eyes were seeing other places and people long dead. As if this world was merely a thin veil for them over another, and perhaps it was.

She couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be so old. And neither could Kit, who had “died” only two years ago, at age twenty-nine, when his Lady had decided that she needed a servant who understood the inner workings of the English court. He had already been a spy for Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s spymaster, and later for Lord Burghley, her chief minister, and had seemed the perfect choice.

But the Lady hadn’t wanted to wait a century or more for him to attain master status, if he did so at all. So, she had Pushed him, as it was called, thrusting enough power into him during the change either to make him a master immediately or to kill him. It hadn’t seemed to matter to her which.

And now Gillian was finally to meet the woman in question, the one who had given Kit an extremely fine ring as a present for not dying.

“Are you still trying to steal my ruby?” he asked playfully, seeing the direction of her gaze.

It was a fair question, as she had taken it before.

But this time, her thoughts had been going down a different path.

“I was wondering, is it like a wedding ring?” she asked, holding up his hand. “Are you bound to her by this?”

Kit looked faintly shocked, which cheered her slightly. “Her husband would be most startled to learn of it, if so,” he informed her.

“She is married then?”

“Yes, and for longer than this country has existed!”

Gillian felt her spine relax. “Interesting.”

“Is it?” He raised the hand that she had used to capture his to his lips, but this time, he didn’t kiss it. Just looked at her over the top of it. “Why is that, I wonder?”

Gillian suddenly found it hard to meet those dark eyes. “I just want to understand who I’m dealing with.”

“And don’t you know me by now?”

“I was talking about her—”

“Were you?”

He laughed again suddenly, and Gillian marveled how much an expression could change a man. When he was sober and impassive, he looked like half the men in London, just another harried type hurrying to fulfill his obligations. But when he laughed, oh, when he laughed . . .

She loved him a little more, every time.

“We’re going to be late,” she said, and pulled away, hurrying down the hall. She kept her gaze on the expensive oil paintings lining the walls as she did so, but didn’t really see them. She saw the last year, in a hundred flashes, most of which had involved the man following her.

In that time, he had helped her to get her house, her current position at court, and a new life for herself and her daughter when everything had seemed hopeless. This time last year, she’d been trying to flee the country, to get away from the Circle’s relentless persecution; now she was their rival. And it was all his doing.

But was that the point?

She wasn’t a fool; she knew that the Vampire Senate was using her to weaken the hold of the Circle over the queen, fearing their growing influence. But there had been so many moments when he hadn’t had to be there. So many times, when it had been just the two of them, drinking ale and eating fruit and nuts at the theater, or going to see the menagerie at the Tower and laughing at the monkeys, or listening to the fiddler at their favorite tavern, whilst drinking spiced wine well into the night.

Had it all been on orders?

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