Beneath the Skin (9 page)

He had cream in his coffee. A whole boatload of it and I felt real resentment burn my throat like acid.

As I glared at him, he pushed half the eggs, a third of the country ham and two slices of toast onto my plate. My croissant was buried under the avalanche.

The food smelled surprisingly good, which made me twice as resentful.

“Eat.” He waved his fork at my plate.

He looked up and gestured to a white-coated waiter who swerved across the room to

stand at our table.

“Can we have some orange juice and cream?” Murphy asked in perfect French, which

galled me, because it was much better than mine. I was beginning to hate this man, even though he’d stuck up for me. Maybe that was precisely why I was beginning to hate him because now I owed him.

“I don’t want orange juice,” I said just to be spiteful. I spoke in French to prove he wasn’t the only person at this table who could speak the language.

The waiter brought it, anyway. I refused to believe it was my accent. It was Murphy.

Alpha male bastard fuck.

I did, however, fall upon the cream and poured at least half the pitcher into my coffee. It was lukewarm by that point and the cream didn’t help that, but it tasted better and I drank it in two swallows.

Murphy fell to consuming the food on his plate. I mostly moved mine around with my

fork, but I did eat one whole slice of toast and part of a piece of the country ham. I also drank the orange juice before I remembered I said I hadn’t wanted it.

Aside from a brief grin, Murphy didn’t say anything, which was good for him, because there was enough juice left in my glass to throw in his face.

“Ready to run the gauntlet this morning?” He set his fork down on his plate, looking almost surprised to see how empty it was. He pulled his coffee cup toward him. The spoon rattled on the saucer and a little bit of coffee sloshed over the rim. It was the color of those caramel crèmes that came in plastic-wrapped cubes when I was a little girl. I used to use them to pull out my loose teeth. Anything just a little bit wiggly came right out when stuck to one of those suckers. I could almost taste the sugar-coated blood in my mouth just looking at his cup.

“I’m hoping I can just sit here all day and they’ve forgotten about me,” I muttered as I debated whether I wanted another piece of toast. I did want more coffee. Murphy saw me looking at my cup and did that thing with his hand again so the waiter appeared like magic. I could never get them to respond to me that quickly.

“More coffee please. And orange juice.” He winked at me and I ignored him.

“They aren’t going to forget about you, Constance.”

“No shit.”

“Well, has a night’s rest done you any good? Are you actually going to defend yourself today, or you are going to rely on me like you did yesterday?” He took a swallow of his coffee and I wanted to reach out and knock it out of his hand so it splashed all over his cashmere sweater. Why the hell was he wearing a cashmere sweater, anyway? It was a crewneck. Dark brown. I had always had a thing for crewneck sweaters. They were sexy, especially if the man didn’t wear another shirt underneath it just like Murphy wore it and...

I made myself look at the fountains, and the searing sunlight nearly blinded me, which drove all thoughts of considering Murphy as anything approaching sexy right the hell out of my head--which was exactly what I wanted.

The mind was a strange and stupid place sometimes. Here I was in big, huge trouble and I all I could think about was how sexy crewneck sweaters were. Defense mechanism my ass. I was a goddamned idiot.

“You don’t have to defend me today. You didn’t have to defend me yesterday, either.” I huffed then had to shut up because the waiter returned with orange juice and a carafe of hot coffee.

I drummed my fingers in an impatient rhythm on the white table top until the waiter was gone before I snapped, “I don’t even know why you’re sitting here.”

“Maybe I felt sorry for you.” He shrugged with a malicious gleam to his dark eyes.

“Oh, fuck you, I don’t need...” Real anger burned hot in my gut, even if it were misplaced and directed against the wrong person, and he just sat there with that grin, pleased to have provoked me. That’s when the Advisor, Angelique, came up to our table.

I clamped my lips shut around the words I had been about to scream. My face was

flushed and my pulse rate rocketed off the charts.

“They’ll be ready for you in five minutes,” she announced as if the top of my head were not about to split open so hot lava could spew all over the place.

She walked away, her hips swaying in a tight gray skirt with a chic Parisian ruffled hem.

I caught Murphy looking at her ass and he saw me catch him. He winked and I tried really hard not to think about how much I wanted to kill him.

“You don’t have to come,” I said instead. I knew I was being ungracious and belligerent, considering he’d stuck up for me the night before. But I hadn’t asked him to and I had no idea what crazy reasons he had for doing what he’d done. They couldn’t have all been because he was a nice guy and doing me a good turn. Balls to that.

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this show for anything, Constance. Besides, I’m

waiting with bated breath to find out what Allerton really wants. You wait, he’ll tip his hand today. I’ve come this far, I want to see how it ends.”

“Allerton?” I blinked at him, pretending I didn’t know what he meant, but he just

grinned. He got to his feet, because it would take us the rest of the five minutes to find the goddamn room again. I thought I knew where it was in conjunction to the ballroom but the chateau was huge. It had taken me nearly fifteen goddamn minutes to find the ballroom from my bedroom this morning. And that was after asking directions twice.

“Bring your coffee.” He picked up his cup.

“No way. I almost pissed my pants yesterday, I’m not about to set myself up for a repeat performance,” I declared and he laughed, the bastard.

The same monochrome gray, black and white room. The same uncomfortable antique

furniture. The same fire burned in the grate. The same people sat in the same places all staring at me as if I knew anything at all.

All I knew was I wished I’d brought my damn coffee. I could smell Murphy’s and it

drove me crazy.

Councilor Celine Ducharme was dressed in olive green. It made her look a little like a very skinny, washed-out pea. Her shoes were nice, though. Christian Louboutin. Brown snakeskin peep-toes. In addition to crewneck sweaters, I had a thing for shoes. I might wear the same pair of jeans for an entire week, but I never wore the same pair of shoes two days running. I had to draw the line somewhere, didn’t I? Of course I couldn’t afford Louboutin shoes, at least not the real ones. I had a few pairs of knock-offs though--one really fabulous pair of black gladiator sandals with four-inch stiletto heels that were hell to walk on but worth the pain.

Nobody could tell the difference except me, and with a short black skirt, I was hell on heels. In a good way.

“What are you smirking at?” Ducharme pounced on me as if I did something illegal when really all I did was stare lustfully at her Louboutin peep-toes.

“I like your shoes, Councilor,” I said, because where else could I go, and was cheered a little bit when Murphy choked on his damn coffee.

Ducharme’s scowl turned into a sleek smile.

“They are nice, aren’t they? New. I just bought them on the rue--” She brought herself up short and a bad-tempered gleam entered her eyes.

Allerton sat behind his steepled fingers but I swore I saw his shoulders shake.

The autopsy results were--surprise, surprise--inconclusive. They proved nothing but negatives. Rudi didn’t have any pre-existing medical conditions. He had not been shot, stabbed or bludgeoned. He hadn’t fallen and hit his head earlier in the day and walked around a living dead man for a few hours before succumbing to the fatal blow. He hadn’t had an aneurysm or stroke. His heart had simply failed to keep beating and his lungs had stopped pumping air. The closest they could say was he might have ingested something poisonous but undetectable.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, that only happens in over-the-top far-fetched murder mysteries written by obnoxious English spinsters in the latter stages of menopause,” Murphy complained with a derisive smile. “Undetectable poison my ass!”

Ducharme turned her beady brown eyes upon him with total disgust.

“Nevertheless,
monsieur
, that is what we are working with here, and again I ask you to stop swearing at me. I find it extremely offensive.”

“I am not the most offensive thing in this room by a long shot, Councilor,” Murphy shot back.

“I am not satisfied, either. I cannot help but believe Ms. Newcastle is at the bottom of this somehow. I beg of you, Constance, confess now and it will go well for you. Better than it will if we find out the truth and you kept it from us.” Councilor Ducharme turned to me and I looked back at her but didn’t say anything.

The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour and I wondered how many more damn

times I’d hear the wretched thing before I was able to leave the room.

“I want to go home,” I heard myself say. There was a definite tremor in my voice that made them all look at me, most of them trying to mask their pity, which I didn’t want or need.

“Please can I just go home now? I didn’t kill Rudi. I don’t know what happened to him. One minute he told me my hands were cold, and the next he was dead, but I didn’t do it. Just let me go home and I’ll never come to a Great Gathering again. Ever.”

The thought of sleeping in that tiny, cramped little box of a room for another night made me feel as if I were going to scream and never stop. The room we were in was small too. Too small for all of us crowded into it.

“Your hands were cold?” Ducharme questioned as if I had confessed something.

“From the water. The water bottles were on ice when the grandmother handed them to

me. His hands were cold too, but I didn’t care. I was going to bond with him. I was going to let myself fall in love with him, because I was tired of being alone without anybody, but I don’t care now. I don’t care. I’d rather be alone. I just want to go home. I don’t like it here anymore.”

“This is going nowhere.” When Murphy’s gaze met mine, I saw the pity there and the

anger. “Let her go, Councilor. You can’t prove anything and you know it.”

“But that’s just it. I can’t let her go. I’m afraid I will need to keep her in indefinite detention until I am satisfied.”

“Indefinite detention? What does that mean?” Murphy barked.

“Well,
monsieur
, English may be my second language, but I know it is your first and I believe we both understand to perfection what indefinite detention means. It means she stays with me until I know the truth.”

“With you?” Murphy’s lips peeled back in a silent snarl. “You’re going to lock her up? Is there a dungeon in this damn place?”

Ducharme let out a trill of derisive laughter.

“You mock yourself at me,” she accused, still laughing. “I will do nothing so barbaric. I simply won’t let her leave. I can always use another servant. She can do my laundry. Shine my shoes. Make herself useful, but she will be supervised always.”

The pulse in Murphy’s neck throbbed visibly. The rest of him was frozen as if he were a statue with a working circulatory system.

“You’re going to sit there and let this happen?” Murphy came to life then and swung accusingly toward Allerton. His Irish brogue was very much in evidence. “You’ve sat there all morning with nothing to say for yourself, but surely you’ve got something to say. You can’t let her do this. You’re on the Council too. You can’t let her do this. She’s Pack, damn you.”

“Councilor Ducharme is the highest-ranking Council member here at this Gathering. I can’t override her,” Allerton said with real regret. He gripped the arms of his chair until his fingers turned white. He and Murphy stared at each for a long moment, both Alpha males, although Murphy was sorely outclassed and outranked.

Because he knew he outclassed and outranked Murphy, Allerton broke eye contact so he could look at Ducharme. They were more equally matched.

“What you object to is the fact that Constance is alone? Unsupervised?”

Ducharme tilted her head to the side as she contemplated his words.

“For the most part, yes,” she agreed. She flicked a speck of lint from her olive-green skirt and smiled to herself.

“But if she had someone to watch over her,” said Allerton in a reasonable tone of voice,

“such as a bond mate, perhaps? Then you would be satisfied?”

At the words
bond mate
Murphy looked up at the pale-gray ceiling and shook his head.

He shot me a knowing look and I shook my own head.

“Possibly, yes,” Ducharme mused. She looked at Murphy and the most malicious grin

ghosted across her lips.

“If I bond with her, you won’t keep her as your indentured servant?” Murphy put it on the table and I winced. “You’d let her do that?”

“Let her do it?” the Councilor scoffed with a mocking laugh. “I would positively

encourage it. Enjoy it. My only regret,
monsieur
, would be that when it came time for your own little fatal accident, I would not have the pleasure of telling you to your face I told you so.”

The blood slammed to Murphy’s cheeks. He’d shaved this morning and his skin was

smooth. I remembered the feel of his beard beneath my fingers and saw Rudi’s body convulsing.

For a moment, I thought I might be sick.

“I’m almost tempted to do this so I can tell you I told you so, you little...” Murphy stopped himself from insulting her. Just. But Ducharme only laughed.

“Almost? That’s what I thought. Constance, come with me, I’ll put you to work right now. I have so many things that need doing, you understand.”

“I didn’t say no yet, goddamnit,” growled Murphy.

I really thought I was going to throw up. My stomach did hideous things that made me wish the bathroom was a lot closer.