Night's Honor (16 page)

Her gaze fell to the place setting. The outside spoon was very slightly out of alignment, and she took her time adjusting it. Finally she had to make the grudging admission. “We haven't talked about Elven dining yet.”

“I see.” His gray-green gaze glittered as he looked at her. “What about Dark Fae formal dining customs?”

She rubbed her chin, her lips pursed. Then she shook her head.

“The Light Fae?”

“No,” she muttered.

“What about the Demonkind? I do not refer to the Djinn, who naturally do not need to eat and will adapt to the predominant social custom of the occasion, but to the other Demonkind who may be at table.”

Oh, for crying out loud. This was like some kind of modern version of
My Fair Lady
.

Only with Vampyres.

She made herself breathe evenly for a few moments. “You've made your point.”

“Have I? How fortuitous.” As he lounged back in his chair, all the subtle signs of aggravation disappeared. “Then perhaps we should get back to the task at hand, so that I can determine what you
have
learned before going on to teach you what you haven't.”

Okay, that went too far. One small part of her mind—the wary part, the sensible part—started to whisper,
Don't say it, don't say it
. . . .

But the rest of her was too exasperated to listen. She flung out her hands and opened her eyes wide. “Who says ‘fortuitous' these days?”

He just looked at her. The slanted angle of his mouth had returned, as well as the slight snap to his diction. “Apparently, I do. Now, if you are quite through, it might behoove you to remember that a successful attendant is nowhere near this argumentative with her patron.”

The devil took hold of her tongue. There was no other explanation for it.

“Behoove,” she said.

The angle of his mouth leveled out, and his voice turned exceedingly, dangerously soft. “Yes.
Behoove
.”

She opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it again.
Don't say it. . . .

Gray-green eyes narrowed, daring her to cross the line.

Then the rest of what he had said sank in.

A successful attendant.
Meaning, of course, that she wasn't a successful one. She wasn't anywhere near it. She wouldn't let him bite her, and she couldn't keep her mouth shut.

Was this what he had meant when he had said that some people couldn't settle into the lifestyle of attendant, even when they wanted to?

Discouragement sagged her shoulders. With a groan, she bent her head and put her face in her hands. “I'm sorry. I'm failing completely at this, aren't I?”

TEN

X
avier covered his mouth with one hand as he regarded Tess's dejected figure. “I don't know that I would quite say you're failing
completely
.”

“Thanks,” she said, her voice muffled. “I find those words
so
encouraging.”

Some undefined impulse brought him out of his chair. He walked around to her and when he reached her side, he leaned back against the table, crossed his arms and looked down at an angle at her bent head. “Perhaps we should take a moment to recall a frightened young woman I met at the Vampyre's Ball. Do you remember her?”

Her head lifted, and she looked up at him.

Those large, lovely dark eyes of hers were surrounded by shadows. She looked tired and worried. He smiled. “That young woman could not run for an hour, nor could she hit nine marks out of ten when shooting a gun. And she certainly could not have surprised Raoul so thoroughly, could she?”

Her gaze fell, and she pretended to straighten the spoon again. “Probably not.”

Nor would that young woman have tested his patience so thoroughly or endured having him in such close proximity, but he decided not to push his luck by mentioning that.

Instead, he held out one hand to her, palm up. “I think we are through with etiquette for the evening. Now we will begin with the dancing lessons.”

Her gaze focused on his outstretched hand. She hesitated, and for a moment he thought she would not take it. Then she put her hand in his, her gesture uncertain.

He didn't give her time to reconsider. Instead, he curled his fingers strongly around hers and tugged. Following his prompt, she rose to her feet. He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and firmly led her away, toward the ballroom.

While they had talked—and argued—the sunlight had faded enough so that he could enter the ballroom. He turned on the lights then led her into the room, pausing only to look at her curiously as her hand tightened and she dragged at his arm.

Her sharp gaze darted from the windows to the gleaming expanse of the floor, and he realized what she was doing. She was making sure it was safe enough for him to enter.

Something startled inside him warmed. Not only did she pay attention to the details in her immediate environment, also she had good protective instincts.

“It's safe,” he said. “But thank you.”

The glance she gave him was as uncertain as everything else she had done that evening, but her grip on his arm relaxed, and they walked forward together until they stood in the middle of the empty, polished floor.

Earlier, he had set a portable stereo on the piano, already loaded with a CD filled with waltz music. He turned to face her, and while he was not quite able to ignore how her heart sped up when they came face-to-face, at least her scent didn't fill with such overwhelming fear.

“The waltz is a simple and elegant dance,” he said. “And the music is beautiful. It's in triple meter.”

“I'm not musical,” she told him, looking down at their feet. “I don't know what that means.”

“Don't look at your feet. Nobody looks at their feet when they dance. Look at me.” He paused until her head lifted, and her wary gaze met his. “Triple meter simply means three beats to a measure. One-two-three, one-two-three. That's the rhythm of the dance. Spatially, visualize a box. We will be stepping around the corners of the box together. You move backward, while I move forward.”

The angle of her head acquired a skeptical slant. “Why can't you move backward, and I move forward?”

Trust Tess to ask that question. He bit back another smile. “Convention. I'm the male, and you're the female. That means I lead and you follow, which is good for you, since I already know the dance.”

“Well, you know how that old saying goes,” she said.

“What saying is that?”

A spark of humor entered her gaze. “Ginger Rogers did the same thing Fred Astaire did, only backward and in high heels.”

He had met Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers once in 1934, when they had come to Evenfall to dance for the Masque at winter solstice. He chuckled. “Very true. I'll keep the pace and guide you around the corners of the box, like thus.”

As she watched, he stepped back and positioned his arms as if he held a woman, one hand curved around his invisible partner's back and the other pretending to clasp her hand. Then he glided through the steps as he watched Tess.

Her eyes widened, and he stopped. “What is it?”

Color tinged her skin, along the proud curves of her high cheekbones. “You have this way of moving.”

“What way is that?” He walked back toward her with a frown, disquieted again.

When he had invited her, he truly had not anticipated how much she might change. The strong angles of her face highlighted the shape of her eyes and the sensual curve of her lips.

She had become too striking. That meant more eyes would fall upon her and linger, more people would remember her, and that meant, in some situations, she might be in more danger.

He would have to consider the possible ramifications of that, another time. For now, he set the issue aside and concentrated on her.

She lifted her shoulders in an awkward shrug, and her gaze fell away. “You move with such grace and self-assurance all of the time. I'll never be able to match that.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “Not only have I been dancing for a very long time, but I was also engaged in fencing lessons and swordplay from the time I was a young child. I have a lot of experience, and you haven't. You will learn soon enough.”

She shook her head and gave him a wry look. “Believe me, the way you move takes a lot more than just experience, no matter how many decades—or centuries—you have under your belt. Just now you looked as if you were floating.”

If that had come from anyone but Tess, he would have been sure that was a compliment. As it was, he had no idea how to respond.

Instead of speaking, he dug in his pocket to pull out the remote for the portable stereo and keyed on the music, and the lovely, timeless strains of Chopin's
Grande Valse Brillante
swelled to fill the room.

A sense of peace and contentment filled him. He loved music, and he loved to dance. Teaching Tess to waltz was going to be a pleasure.

A half an hour later, he had revised his opinion drastically, as she stepped on his foot again. Instantly, they both stopped moving and glared at each other.

“Young lady, you are not an elephant,” he told her. “Kindly refrain from imitating one.”

“I'm sorry!” she said for the fifth time.

Or perhaps it was the sixth. He wasn't sure; he had lost count. It was certainly often enough that she had begun to say it through gritted teeth.

He forced himself to take a breath. While he might not need to breathe anymore, the action seemed to help him reach for patience. “Not to worry. We'll keep doing it until we get it right.”

Rubbing the back of her head, she muttered something about dancing with the stars and Vampyres.

He cocked his head. “What was that? I didn't quite understand you.”

“I—never mind.” She squared her shoulders. “Are we going again?”

“Of course.” He opened up his arms, and she stepped into them.

While teaching her to dance had turned into much more of a chore than he had anticipated, this one thing was purest pleasure: she came readily to him, and she no longer remembered to flinch from his touch.

Of course, he did not clasp her too tightly, but instead held her precisely at the correct distance. And her heart rate still sped up every time he looked at her, or reached out to touch her slender, muscular body. But mostly, he thought, her fear seemed to have subsided, and even though she seemed to have the dancing ability of a koala bear, for that reason alone, he counted the waltzing lessons a success.

They assumed the proper dancing posture, hands clasped. His right hand cupped the strong, graceful curve of her shoulder blade. She rested the fingertips of her left hand along the shoulder seam of his jacket.

He met her gaze as they waited for the right beat in the music. Then he nodded to her, and as they began to move, she stepped forward instead of back and trod on his foot again.

“
Madre de Dios
,” he said. He said a few other choice things too. He hadn't realized that he had slipped into speaking Spanish until she started to snort and shudder. He stopped to glare at her. “What?”

“You sound like Ricky Ricardo,” she told him. Her voice quivered, and so did her beautiful lips.

When he looked at her more closely, he realized she was laughing, and trying to muffle it. “Who is this Ricardo?”

“From
I Love Lucy
,” she said. Then, when he still looked blank, she prompted, “The classic TV sitcom?”

“I do not watch TV,” he said. Belatedly, a vague image of a redheaded comedienne came to mind. Once, she had been famous enough that her image had dominated the media. He dismissed it.

“Not ever?”

He shrugged. “I do keep an eye on CNN, MSNBC and other news channels.”

“That's not real TV,” she told him. She glanced down at their feet again as she muttered under her breath, “Tonight is a lot like
I Love Lucy
. Only with Vampyres. Naturally.”

He decided to ignore that. “This conversation has turned irrelevant. You keep trying to lead, and you can't.”

“It's a natural instinct to step forward, not backward,” she pointed out.

“While I understand that, I have every faith you can overcome it and stop trampling your partner's feet.” He paused and looked at her more closely.

Dark circles had appeared in the delicate skin underneath her eyes. If she had looked tired before, now she looked exhausted and entirely out of sorts. As he studied her expression, he realized that while his “day” had begun shortly before sunset, she had been engaged in some kind of training exercise since early that morning.

Contrition hit. “Tess, I apologize. We have been working you too hard.”

Immediately her back straightened as she bristled. “I'm fine. Let's go again.”

“I think not. Thank you for your time. We're finished for tonight.” He inclined his head to her and turned away.

“Please.” Slender fingers caught at his sleeve. “I want to try one more time. “

He stilled and looked down at her hand. It was an imprudent gesture, of course, and when he had been a young man, it would never have been permitted. One did not lay hands upon a member of the nobility without permission.

But those early days of his youth were centuries gone. Now so many humans were brash and heedless. Strange vulgarities such as “yo mama” and “motherfucker” were actually considered legitimate interactions, along with backslapping, head rubbing, fist-bumping, hugs and other importunities.

He had learned to tolerate without flinching most minor encroachments upon his person, and if anyone else had so heedlessly laid a hand on him, he wouldn't have given it more than a passing thought.

Except, this was Tess who had voluntarily laid a hand on him. Tess, who, when they had first met, had difficulty remaining in the same room as him. Just now she had reached out so naturally, so thoughtlessly.

A quick, bright reaction flared. Triumph, perhaps, along with pleasure. He schooled his expression to conceal it as he turned back to her, covering her hand with his. “Very well, one more time, but then we're through. You need to rest, and I have other matters to attend to.”

Her forehead crinkled. “We were going to start meditating so I could learn some biofeedback techniques.”

Some tense, buried emotion lay underneath her words, and he studied her more closely. She was anxious, yet struggling to hide it. Frowning, he thought back over their conversation that evening. It had not exactly gone smoothly. She had tried his patience, and had evidenced her own frustration and discouragement more than once.

Then he remembered what she had said about Raoul slamming her to the ground or throwing her into the wall, and his frown deepened. If his suspicion was correct, the other man had been trying to discourage her from staying. It appeared they might have been hard on her in more ways than one.