It’s a good thing I was standing near the couch. If I hadn’t been, my legs giving out upon hearing the words marry her would have resulted in my landing on the floor—and would have been a whole lot more uncomfortable.
“The message was received, my dear.” Frederick’s mother glared at him. “You could not have been clearer in your intent if you had announced it at a dinner party full of guests.”
“Then why are they coming here?”
“Because the Jamesons interpret your actions, as I have, as a clear sign that you have not been in your right mind since your awakening. They agree with me that this matter cannot be left to correspondence, and that a personal meeting is necessary.”
“I am as sound of mind now as I have ever been.” Frederick crossed his arms across his broad chest, adopting what he likely meant as an assertive stance. The effect was undercut by the fact that he was wearing pajama pants with Kermit the Frog on them that I definitely didn’t buy him at Nordstrom. But it didn’t matter. He was still hot.
Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam, however, didn’t seem impressed.
“I will leave you to explain that to your in-laws directly. You and I will meet them in their rooms at the Ritz-Carlton tomorrow evening at seven to discuss your impending nuptials.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam sniffed the air and cringed. “A human girl, Frederick. Honestly.”
With that, Frederick’s mother gave a theatrical curtsy to us both and breezed out the front door.
Deafening silence filled the room. I stared at Frederick, willing him to say something—anything—that would turn the chaos of the past few minutes into something that bore some resemblance to sense.
After what might have been eighteen years, he cleared his throat.
“There’s more I haven’t told you.” He had the decency to look sheepish.
“You think?” He flinched at my hostile tone, but I didn’t care. He’d promised me he would never withhold important information from me again. “Frederick, what else is there I don’t know?”
He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. “A lot.” He swallowed. “Do you want to hear it, or are you finished with me?”
“Tell me one thing first,” I said, holding up one hand. “Is it true that you told this Esmeralda person you wouldn’t marry her?”
“Yes,” Frederick said, earnestly. “In no uncertain terms, and repeatedly. This whole thing . . . all of it . . .” He trailed off and ran an agitated hand through his hair. “None of this should be happening.”
He looked absolutely tormented.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll hear it.”
He reached for my hand, eyes tentative. “Sit with me?”
I nodded, and braced myself for the rest of his story.
* * *
He sat beside me on the living room couch, his hands folded neatly on his lap.
As recently as ten minutes ago I’d planned to take him to bed to pick up where we left off this morning. But all that would have to wait. Right now his need to be completely open and honest with me was written all over his face.
And I needed to hear what he had to say.
“In certain segments of vampiric society,” he began, eyes on the floor, “arranged marriage is still a thing. When I left England to move to America—and especially when I left where my people settled in New York and came to Chicago—I thought I had left that nonsense behind me.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “My mother clearly has other ideas.”
I expected him to elaborate. When several long moments passed, and he didn’t, I asked, “Who is Miss Jameson?”
“Someone I hardly know.” His voice was low and sheepish. “We . . . had a fling, once. Nearly two hundred years ago.” He paused. “And now, apparently, we are engaged to be wed.”
My heart flopped a little in my chest as an irrational pang of jealousy stabbed through me. My reaction was irrational, of course. Expecting someone to be celibate for centuries would be unfair. Whatever happened between him and this Miss Jameson more than a century before I was even born had nothing to do with me.
It still stung, though.
“Oh.”
He turned to me, his eyes sad. “I haven’t always lived as I do now, Cassie. In my younger days I ate as others of my kind did, and fucked anyone on two legs. Men, women, humans—everything.” He looked away. “There was a party in Paris during the Regency period where Miss Jameson and I—”
“I get it,” I said quickly, cutting him off. I put my hand on his. “I don’t need all the details.”
“Good. Because I’m not quite up to sharing them.” He closed his eyes. “I am not the person I was in the early nineteenth century, Cassie. I haven’t been that person in a very long time.”
I had so many questions I wanted to ask him about how he became the person he was today. But there were other things I wanted to know first. “How long have you been engaged to her?”
“It happened during my coma,” Frederick said dourly. “My mother never approved of the changes I made to my life when I decided to live among humans instead of viewing them as dinner. She thought that when I woke, marrying me off to someone with more traditional values would be a way to bring me back into the fold.”
“Traditional values?”
“Yes.” He gave me a humorless half smile. “Drinking human blood from the source, rather than acquiring it from blood banks. Or, if blood banks are necessary, leaving nothing behind after raiding them.” He paused, then looked away. “Murdering humans indiscriminately.”
I shivered at the thought of Frederick living that way. “But that isn’t who you are.”
“It’s not,” he said fervently. “Not anymore.”
“But it is who Miss Jameson is,” I guessed. “And your mother.”
“Yes.”
“And Reginald?”
Frederick paused, considering his words. “He’s . . . changing. I think I’ve had a moderating influence on him.”
I stood then, and made my way over to the window overlooking the lake. The enormity of what he was telling me was sinking in little by little. I needed space to think about what all of this meant—for Frederick, and for us.
“I don’t know what to say,” I murmured.
His solid presence was at my back a moment later, his strong arms going around me before I had a chance to protest. He rested his cheek against the top of my head. I breathed in his reassuring scent, wishing that everything that had just happened here with his mother had been nothing more than a nightmare.