Elisa listened for a few moments, but her eyes were on the woman, her attention flickering between that and the changes in Lord Marshall’s attitude. He’d gone from somewhat interested to politely allowing Mal to say his piece. It was clear that the key to his acceptance of William and Matthew was the woman who was now tuning them out.
Making a murmured apology, as if she needed a bathroom break, Elisa slipped out of the room. She hurried to her guest room, a smaller room adjacent to Mal’s. Retrieving the item she wanted, she trotted back to the study, holding up the robe so she didn’t trip over it.
“It’s a fucked situation, all the way around, Mal,” Lord Marshall said as she came back in. “It sounds like you’ve got a good handle on it. I’m not sure why you don’t keep them down there, rather than throwing them out to the wolves like this.”
“For the same reason I rehabilitate as many of my cats as possible to be released into their intended habitats. It’s the way it’s supposed to be, allowing them to maximize their full potential.”
“What about your cats that came to you from people’s homes as pets, or circuses, where they’ve performed for years? How many of those can be rehabilitated into the wild?”
“Very few,” Mal acknowledged. “Because what they were intended to be was so twisted it is very difficult to find their way back to Nature.”
“And vampires whose growth is forever stunted so they’ll never look older than children? Wouldn’t they be the same?”
It was always the same argument. Elisa bit down on her tongue, knowing she had no place to interrupt the two vampires, and would only make things worse if the perception was that Mal had no control over his own servant. But it was so difficult. More difficult now than even before, because after spending these past weeks seeing things through Mal’s learned eyes, she knew they were terribly valid points.
But she’d seen things he hadn’t—he’d as much as said so, and that was why he was here. He believed this was the right course to pursue. So instead of getting frustrated by the topic, she slid around the two males, over to where Nadia was, and took a seat on the carpet next to her chair, opening the drawing pad on her lap.
“I’ve taken to sketching the cats to help me keep track of things about them,” she said, low, glancing up at the woman’s face. “You and Lord Marshall should come visit there. It’s truly an amazing place. There are over a hundred wild cats.” She held up the pad. “These are cheetah cubs. You’ve probably seen them, but I’d never seen one outside a book. To me, they look very different from most cats. Almost more like fuzzy baboons, without the red backsides.”
Giving a tired, vague smile, Nadia leaned forward and picked up the sketchbook to politely peruse the pictures. Elisa rose behind her, bracing her hands on the chair back so her knuckles grazed Nadia’s thin shoulders. The woman shivered, and Elisa automatically began to draw back, but her hands were seized, the album almost toppling from Nadia’s lap. “No, don’t move them,” she whispered.
The poor girl was literally starved for touch. Elisa recalled then how much Mal had touched her since he marked her. He never left the kitchen in the morning without grazing her body with his own, or kissing her, sliding a palm over her backside, a hip, the line of her throat. Tonight, no more than a few minutes at a time went by without him stroking or caressing her, and she didn’t feel it was all for her own reassurance. During dinner, Cynthia and Jonathan had touched their servants frequently. And the yearning between Marshall and Nadia for it was palpable.
Mal had shown her that lions liked tactile communication, almost more than any other cat species. They rubbed faces and bodies together frequently. For all that they were solitary, vampires apparently had that in common, even if only with their servants. And their servants quickly became dependent on it, or perhaps were already naturally inclined to crave it. Without prompting, she began to rub her palms in slow circles along the tops of Nadia’s bony shoulders. “See the next one? Turn the page there.”
When Nadia did, the woman glanced back up at Elisa. “That’s not a cat.”
“Actually, it is. It looks like something between a sloth and a bear, doesn’t it? It’s called a binturong, and when it passes gas, it smells like fresh popcorn. I told Mal it must have done something that the Creator liked, since he gets a nicer smell than most of us get.”
A tiny chuckle hitched the woman’s shoulders, and Elisa moved from there to her neck. The shiver had a different component, one she well understood herself. She unbound Nadia’s hair from the ribbon that held it, unfurled it over her shoulders and began to comb through it with her fingers, taking time over the scalp, with a slow massage of the fragile line of skull. She loved it when Mal stroked her head, and Nadia seemed to respond the same way, tilting into the touch while she turned the next couple pages. As she did, Elisa explained various more tidbits about the cats. She even shared Mal’s leopard story in an even lower tone, making Nadia chuckle again. Since she knew Mal could hear everything if he chose, and Lord Marshall, too, the low tone was mainly courtesy to the males’ conversation.
She tightened her fingers on Nadia’s scalp, a brief pause, as the woman’s fingers pinched up the next page. “The next sketches are of the fledglings. If you don’t want to look, you don’t have to, but I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to trick you.”
Nadia paused, her head inclining briefly. As she stared at the last page of cats, considering her next move, Elisa continued to stroke through the long blond strands. While not as thick and lustrous right now, it made her think of Danny’s hair. She’d sometimes brushed her lady’s hair before she went to bed, particularly if Dev had to be out on the station early mornings to go deal with the herd or check things with the hands. But she’d seen him sit on the top porch step at night, Danny leaning back between his knees while he did this, a firm scalp stroke that trailed off into the loose tresses. Sometimes he’d curl them around his callused fingers and tug.
Elisa paused, realizing the relationship she kept using as a guide of how a relationship should be involved a vampire and her servant, rather than a husband and wife. It was a startling yet undeniable fact. Before she could figure out how to react to that, Nadia drew her attention again.
“Why would you be so honest?” the woman asked, not lifting her head.
“Because I care about them.” The answer was simple and straightforward. “Mal’s taken in cats that were pushed off onto someone who felt reluctantly obligated to try and help, and the cats often end up in equally bad circumstances again. This isn’t a pair of dresses I’m asking someone to take off my hands because I don’t have the heart to throw them away myself. They’re chil—young vampires, with feelings and thoughts, who’ve had such a crook time of it they don’t trust anything good in their lives. Even if the best they can ever do is me and Mal’s island, as long as he’ll let us stay there, they’ll know they’re cared for and wanted. But they deserve better if we can get it for them.”
Nadia turned the page. “Oh. He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Yes. That’s Jeremiah.” Elisa swallowed over the sudden thickness in her throat. “As you heard Mal say, he’s not doing so well right now, but he’s really the closest thing they have to a leader. He’s so serious and thoughtful. His eyes can get red at times, but when they’re not, they’re like that perfect gray-green a field has in midsummer. His hair is the color of fresh straw, but so thick and silky. He’d have been a very handsome man, one of those with a smile that makes a girl think of doing foolish things. And he is so brave, Nadia. The incident Mal spoke of... where we lost Leonidas. It was Jeremiah who took his life, though you could tell it tore up something so deep inside him to do it.”
“Well, of course.” Nadia traced the boy’s face on the page. “If they’ve been through all this together, and they were turned close to the same time, then he got to see Leonidas when he wasn’t . . . beyond help. He not only had to watch Leonidas lose his grip on any semblance of control; he had to be the one who ended it for him. As truly awful as that was for Leonidas, can you imagine how Jeremiah felt, watching it unfold?”
“To know you can do nothing to fix the suffering of someone you care about?” Elisa leaned down, putting her temple against Nadia’s. She slid her arms around the woman, laid her hands over her cold fingers on Jeremiah’s face. “Yes,” she whispered. “Because I see it in your lord’s face, each time he looks at you.”
Though becoming a servant might incite greater pleasure in those casual caresses, Elisa had always loved the familiarity of touch. Strokes, hugs, lying side by side with another warm body at night. If Dev had to be out at the dawn hours, Danny sometimes impulsively pulled Elisa into the bed with her. Curling around her maid, she held her softness close. It was mildly arousing, for Danny’s hands tended to drift over a throat, trace a curve of breast, or rest on the rounded part of a hip, but it mainly confirmed connection, a sense of belonging that Elisa had welcomed.
One or two remarkable times, when Dev had come to his Mistress in the morning hours, usually after working long hours, Danny had bid her stay. He’d stripped down to his shorts and then coiled around them both. When he held them close, dropping into exhausted slumber to Danny’s tender amusement, Elisa had felt nearly content. Had they been teaching her even then?
She thought about Gustav and Christophe, who hadn’t known her at all, but put her more at ease with their calm contact and provocative embraces before they led her into such intense play with their vampires. And now Nadia, not finding it at all odd to allow Elisa to touch her this way. She even tilted her head, inviting Elisa to press her lips to her throat, to brush along the pumping artery. Elisa saw a faint imprint, knew that was where Lord Marshall must feed most often. When she touched the tip of her tongue there, Nadia quivered in the loose grip of her arms.