Robbie said, “Every vampire is very pale.”
Elspeth tilted her head to the side, her brows furrowing. “I never saw him. Did you?”
“No. Anna Komnene describes him in herAlexiad, and—never mind,” Genevieve muttered. “Ifthat’s who he was—you think Kendrick is older still?”
Robbie nodded. “He might be as old as the land’s henges or the White Horse.”
Elspeth murmured, “Surely not.”
“I’m not sure,” Genevieve whispered, thinking of his visage in the candlelight, the way he held his sword like a warrior of old. “I’m really not.”
“What are you going to do now?” Elspeth asked.
“Do?” Genevieve repeated, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Why must Idoanything?”
“Well, he knows who you are now,” Elspeth said practically. “Will you speak to him again? Or will you just continue to slip clandestine notes into his bedroom?”
Genevieve made a face at her. “I regret telling you that. Why would I speak to him again?”
“To tell him what needs to be done with the Ossuary.”
Genevieve shook her head, her shoulders slumping. “You know as well as I do, Elspeth, that any suggestions from the Ossuary rabble on the proper governance of London’s vampires would be shot down immediately.”
“Yes, we know that,” Elspeth said cryptically, “but does he?”
“She did what?” Etienne laughed. “Incroyable! Called you onto the carpet like a governess dressing down a pupil. And resisted the famed Kendrick persuasion into the bargain.”
Kendrick frowned at him. “You don’t have to look so delighted about this.”
After Miss Dryden had left his rooms—she had clearly not wanted him following her, and he suspected she had used her talent once she’d been beyond his sight—he had decided to find Etienne instead of pacing the length of his room until dawn. Etienne had sent him the direction of the terrace house down a small, quiet lane that he had purchased. It was home to several families, Etienne had said, but the basement apartment would be for him and Addie. It was a good place for a vampire, small windows up high that could be easily curtained, and quiet. The basement was fairly empty at the moment, only a few chairs and a table in the main room that had belonged to a former occupant, but Etienne had told him Addie was choosing furnishings.
Some indefinable quality allowed women to transform a place from a building with a bed in it into a home. The addition of curtains and embroidered cushions on chairs and patterned rugs on the floor, some men would say. But it wasn’t just an accumulation of things. It was a kind of…softness. A shelter from the cold.
Now Etienne chuckled as he cleaned the lenses of his spectacles and replaced them on his nose. “You cannot deny that your mystery woman had a point.”
“Stop that; you don’t even need those things,” Kendrick said in deep disgust. “Andwhatpoint?”
“You’ve had discussions with Dominic and with Addie and me about what to do about the state of London’s vampires, but the general populace doesn’t know that. All they have seen is one dramatic speech where you wiped Rupert’s crude ‘might makes right’ motto from the wall of the Ossuary, and then they heard of you offing assassins.” He shrugged.
Kendrick glowered. “I thought I had time to contemplate ruling. It’s been nine hundred years since I had anything to do with vampire politics. And now this…thiswomaninsists I upend the whole Ossuary right now.”
“We are very much prone to inertia,” Etienne acknowledged. “But all the more reason to listen to this—what is her name?”
“Miss Dryden.” Devil take it, what was her Christian name? He had never gotten it out of her.
In the span of only a few minutes, Miss Dryden had gone from wooden to deeply terrified to impassioned, and Kendrick would be lying if he said it didn’t fascinate him. But after seizing him by the collar, as if he were a small boy caught filching an apple, she had retreated within herself, her eyes fixed on her toes.
Because of some man who was dead now. Etienne would say it was primitive of him to feel viciously satisfied about that. So be it. His very bones were primitive, and surviving this long had earned him the right to own it.
Black didn’t suit her. She should have been in lovely raiment—a dark blue or ruby would suit her coloring, not freshly dyed crow-black, with threadbare cuffs and fraying bonnet ribbons and a hole in her glove. Her silhouette was out of date. All the women in the fashion plates and on the street wore artificial rumps and tails now, but her skirts were still cut in the old style to accommodate round layers of crinoline and hoops. Was the new color to cover the stains and signs of wear on an old gown? Or was it for mourning?
For whom does she mourn?Kendrick wondered, his hand clenching around his sword hilt.
“So, what was her suggestion?” Etienne asked, buffing a brass finger plate that, based on the entwined roses, led to a bedroom.
“She said…” Kendrick paused in sudden realization. “What she said sounded like the coronation oath of Edgar.”
“Qui diantre est Edgar?”
