Fateful (27 page)

Overwhelmed, Danielle threw her arms around
his neck and kissed him. Ethan returned the embrace, however, the
pain that caused reminded Danielle of her injuries, and she
whimpered against his lips. Ethan loosened his arms immediately.
“Are you hurt?”

“No more than before,” she said breathlessly.
She heaved for more air and then fell back into the soft
pillows.

“This does put a damper on things. I had
planned to start teaching you the dances this afternoon.
Unfortunately, that will have to wait until you’re healed.”

“Do you happen to have any of that magical
fairy juice?” she asked, as she remembered how it had worked to
heal her.

Ethan laughed. “Sorry, we don’t keep that on
hand in the refrigerator.”

“They should market that stuff. They could
make a fortune.”

He laughed again, but harder this time and
she realized what a silly comment she’d made. Of course the fairies
couldn’t reveal something like that to the whole of society, there
would be riots.

“Don’t worry, you’ll feel much better in a
few days.” Looking at the clock, Ethan frowned and then said, “The
afternoon has slipped away from us. I need to get you back home.”
He nudged the box aside, replaced her shoes and then helped her to
standing.

Chapter 15

Dark Visits

Danielle didn’t move much in her sleep,
mainly because pain shot through her injuries whenever she did. By
early morning, however, she’d forgotten about her bruised up side
and tried to roll onto it out of habit. Grimacing, she moaned and
returned to her back.

“Are you okay, Danielle?”

She knew that masculine British voice, but
hadn’t expected to hear it in her bedroom, especially before
sunrise. Her sleepy eyes opened to see Ethan sitting in the chair
next to her fireplace. “How long have you been there?” she asked
groggily.

“A few hours,” he sat forward, smiling
smugly. “Are you all right?” he repeated.

“Yeah, sort of … It seems I’m still quite
tender. Why are you here?”

“I had to make certain you were all right,
and I had to prove I could be near you for long periods of time
safely before this ball.”

“And how did that go?” she asked, leaning up
onto her left side so she could see him better.

“Perfectly,” he announced, sounding
triumphant.

“What about the others?”

“We’ve been over this. I’ll make sure nothing
happens so you don’t need to worry. Now come closer. While I felt
like things went okay at that dance club I met you briefly at, I
need to see if I can handle you that close for an entire evening of
dancing.” He held his arms out to her and curled his fingers
up.

Danielle was stiff from sleep and bruises but
sat up anyway. It seemed she didn’t care the sun was still
sleeping; his waiting arms were far too inviting to turn down.

Quickly she tried to smooth her bed-hair,
which she imagined must look terrible, but it also appeared he
didn’t mind. Standing, she took a of couple steps, but frowned
because the suddenly unstable floor teetered beneath her feet.
Ethan caught her before she beat herself up further on the hardwood
flooring. His reflexes were still working at supernatural speed and
so was his strength, she realized painfully as he bumped her raw
bruises in the rescue.

Ethan took her to the bed and set her on his
lap. She knew she’d alarmed him as he started in with the
concussion-symptom-questioning. His lilt remained kind and
soothing, although he was starting to remind her of a doctor again.
“Feeling dizzy?”

“Yes.” How could she deny it? He was a
witness.

“Headache?”

“Who wouldn’t after banging their head like I
did?”

“Double vision?” He held up three fingers.
“How many do you see?”

“Just three,” she groaned. “Why do you have
to do this again?

“Feeling groggy?”

“Yes, but I just barely woke up! That doesn’t
count right now.”

“Nauseated?”

“No! Ethan, seriously I’m fine.”

“I need to make sure. Let me see your
pupils,” he requested like a physician. And with that—he used up
the rest of her tolerance.

“No. The sun isn’t up and I don’t want to
fight your magic right now,” she ground out, feeling stubborn.

Ethan placed one hand on her face, forcing
her to look up. She closed her eyes tightly.

“Danielle Darcey!” he said, his tone
reproachful now. “Do I need to put you over my knee?”

She opened her eyes immediately at the
threat. His impish grin told her that was exactly why he said what
he did. The trick worked perfectly for him.

“You wouldn’t dare!” she said abashed and
bemused at the same time.

“No, of course not … but I see your pupils
are fine,” he said through an annoyingly smug smile, then pulled
his eyes from hers.

Danielle was only able to forgive him for
being Dr. Deveroux because he’d finally dropped the issue—even
after she’d experienced a few more nights of pain where he’d
watched her with a look of worry on his shadow hidden face. But the
injuries were healing. Slowly.

The next night when Danielle was in bed, she
heard her window sliding open. She rolled to watch Ethan stepping
in over the sill lithely like a thief. He’d been consistent about
coming to her each night, preparing for the ball, but mostly he’d
arrived while she was sleeping and left before she’d awoken.

“Hi,” she said, surprised to see him while
she was still conscious. Some nights she’d only known he’d come
because he’d left a gift behind, like a single flower, or a box of
chocolates, or even a cupcake.

“Hi, Danielle,” he said. “Are you ready to
spend more time together with our eyes closed?”

Closed, but awake then? “Yes.”

He sat down on the bed next to her, but
didn’t let her see his eyes. She missed that. In ordinary
conversations eye contact was crucial. So it seemed odd to converse
with Ethan without something that was generally taken for
granted.

“Good. The date is nearing and I need to make
certain we are prepared.”

“When is the ball? You never told me.”

“It’s in four days. When your bruises have
healed enough I want to start teaching you the dances. We don’t
have much time left, but the dances are very simple.”

“Okay.”

Ethan glanced at her carefully from under his
lashes while he reached out and took her hand into his. “The dances
from that era have very minimal physical contact, but we do have to
touch hands, while we avoid eye and breath interaction, of
course.”

“Right.”

He turned her hand over and began tracing
patterns into her palm. She adored him when he did things like
that, and smiled. Focusing on the designs he drew, she let her eyes
slide shut.

But remembering a conversation she’d had with
Uncle Nick when she told him about the ball at Beon’s, her eyes
opened. “My uncle wants to invite Beon and Sophia over for
tea.”

His eyebrow lifted. “They want to make sure
we behave while we’re together,” he said, now spelling her name on
her hand. It wasn’t a question but a statement.

“Yeah, pretty much.” She shuddered because
what he was doing caused a trickle of chills to dance around her
spine.

“And how do your parents feel about us? I’m
guessing you’ve told them by now,” he asked seeming uninterested in
his own words as he matched her hand with his to compare the
size.

Thinking back to the conversation she’d had
just yesterday, she said, “Yeah, my mother knows, and she’ll tell
my father. Naturally they don’t like it. They don’t want me
involved with a guy from here. They want me to come back when I’m
done with school.”

“I’m sorry, but your parents can’t keep you
forever.” A cunning little smirk lifted one side of his mouth as he
slowly lifted her hand to his lips. “Maybe I’ll just kidnap you.
Would you be terribly opposed to that?” he asked seductively as he
pressed his open mouth to her palm and expelled his wickedly
tempting but forbidden breath against her skin.

“Stop that! How much self-control do you
think I have?” she exclaimed in a whisper, then dropped back onto
the bed and kicked one foot against the mattress like she was in
agony. And in a strange way she was because she desperately wanted
to lick his breath right off and eat it.

“Danielle, do you want to go back?” he asked
as he revisited the miscellaneous patterns he’d started with.

She leaned up to look at him again, only
seeing the side of his face. “Are you kidding?”

“I want to hear it.”

“Of course not! Ethan, I want you to keep
me.” She watched the smile return to his mouth at her words.

He turned to face her, but only opened his
eyes to thin slits. “Good,” he said as he began new designs on the
back of her hand. She bit her lip and closed her eyes again. He
managed to make the simple act of touching her hand much too
emotionally powerful.

To her relief, Ethan stayed in her chair most
of the night, but left before the sun was up. She woke up to find
him gone.

He came back the next evening and said he
hoped she was up for dancing. Her hip did ache, but she really
wanted to go to this ball, so she took some pain medication hoping
that helped.

Ethan brought an iPod player with headphones.
He gave Danielle the earpieces.

“But, how will you hear the music?”

“Super vampire hearing, remember,” he
answered patiently.

“Oh, right. Duh.”

His gleaming teeth flashed in the dark as he
chuckled.

They danced in her moonlit bedroom as
he taught her one of the most common figure dances of the era,
especially in England, the
cotillion
. He kept his intense eyes closed for
her, and warned her not to be tempted by his scent whenever they
stepped close to one another. That was the hardest part, resisting
a sniff of his essence. Danielle held her breath for those quick
seconds, then drew in air as they parted. She risked making herself
lightheaded.

Night after night, Ethan came back, and they
danced quietly in her room. She began to feel more comfortable
around him then, even with his powers as strong as they were. It
was still very tempting to breathe in his luscious fragrance,
though, and she didn’t think she would ever get used to resisting
that.

“You’re doing great, Danielle, how is your
hip feeling?” he asked in a hushed benevolent voice.

“It’s okay, I’ll survive,” she whispered, but
it was smarting at the moment.

“Time for bed, princess.” He didn’t call her
bluff verbally, but she knew why he was stopping.

He folded the covers down for her and tucked
her in. Her mother hadn’t done that since she was nine years old.
She kind of liked it.

Secretly wanting one little taste of his
yummy scent before he left, she pulled in air through her nose when
he kissed her on the forehead. When Ethan let out a soft ghostly
laugh as he dashed out the window into the black night, she
realized he knew what she’d done.

Despite the tiny ache in her hip, she slept
like a baby, and awoke feeling very refreshed the next morning. She
sat up and stretched, then noticed a folded up piece of paper on
her quilt. She opened it. It was from Ethan written in an
antique-looking calligraphy. He had the elegant handwriting from a
time when people used to care what their script looked like, and
when a quill and inkpot was used rather than a modern
ballpoint.

Dear Danielle,

I hope you slept well. You were pretty out
of it when I wrote this note for you. I want to pick you up today
at eleven-thirty. We need to practice with Max and Nadia. Sophia,
of course, has a lunch planned for you.

Love,

Ethan

She sniffed the paper to see if she could
smell him on it. Her eyes rounded when she noticed she could, and a
pixyish smile filled her lips as she lifted it back to her
nose.

Chapter 16

Shall We?

When they arrived at the mansion, Ethan asked
Nadia, “Where’s Max?”

“He’s setting up the sound system.”

They led her to a grand ballroom with tall
ceilings. The walls and ceiling were covered with ornately carved
moldings. Three huge crystal chandeliers hung in a row down the
center, and many windows dressed with heavy red velvet drapes lined
the front wall.

“Ethan, you never did give me a legitimate
tour of this place,” she complained.

“Guilty as charged. I promise we’ll do
a tour
after
we practice. But
right now it’s time for you to learn the
pavane
.” He pulled Danielle by the hand as he
walked backwards, facing her, to the center of the ballroom. A
princely smile danced on his face, and she was bemused a little too
quickly.

“Okay,” she replied, while wondering how she
would remember these dances while under an enchantment.

“Music please,” Ethan commanded and waited,
but nothing happened. “Hellooo? Max, the music please?” he
requested again. Danielle could see Max in one corner wrestling
with a tangle of cables connected to speakers.

“Patience, Ethan, I’m working on it,” Max
answered, sounding frustrated.

“Wait here one minute,” Ethan whispered with
a flippant grin on his lips. “Max is kind of technically
inept.”

“I heard that!” yelled Max.

Danielle giggled.

Nadia’s voice came drifting whimsically into
her ear. “Let’s hope they don’t start fighting, I might have to
pull you out of here for your own safety.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Sometimes they even pull swords on each
other. Old habits,” she said with a graceful wave of her hand.