Stay the Night (Darkyn #7)

Will set the glasses aside. "Rob? Why do you look that way? Did she take something?"

Aye, she had taken something. His dignity. Chris had left without waking him, without bidding him farewell, without so much as a by-your-leave. She had walked out as if last night had meant nothing to her.

No mortal had ever done such a thing to Robin.

Perhaps she had been frightened by the many intimacies that they'd shared. Yes, that would make more sense. She had seemed so cautious, so controlled—at least, before she had led him into his bedchamber. There she had become warm and loving and seemingly wholly at ease in his arms.

Robin glanced at the display of longbows he had mounted opposite his bed, interspersed with some of the arrows he had made over the centuries. The weapons represented many memories for him, all he had left of Sherwood, really. To a modern mortal like Chris, they may have seemed more intimidating.

Had she seen them upon waking? Had they caused her to flee?

"How did she appear to you when she left?" he asked his seneschal. "Was she disoriented? Did she seem upset?"

"I watched her through the security monitors only long enough to assure that she left the building," Will said, "but she seemed well."

"How well?"

Will made a vague gesture. "She was tidily dressed and moved with purpose. She did not weep or drag her steps. She did not take anything, and she did not look back." He cocked his head. "Did you not send her down?"

"No." Robin saw something glitter, and went to the bed. From the sheets he retrieved a short, plain gold chain. He had unfastened it from her ankle, he recalled, just before taking off her stockings. He wound the delicate thing through his fingers. "I never bade her to go."

"You…" Will's pale eyes rounded. "I do not understand, my lord. You never allow humans to stay the night."

"This one I did. Or should have." Robin touched the creased silk sheets on his bed. They felt as cold to his touch as his heart. "I slept with her, and she left me."

"I'm sure it was for the best. Had she remained, and awoken before you—"

"You do not understand me," Robin said. "I fell asleep with her. With her in my arms. I slept with that woman and did not wake, did not dream. I slept as I have not since my human lifetime." He closed his hand over the ankle chain. "How could she go like that?"

"You must have compelled her to leave before dawn," Will said. "She would not have departed herself, not while bespelled."

Robin thought of how she been with him. She had been eager and willing, and had startled him more than once with her boldness, but she had not behaved as if she were spellbound. "I begin to doubt that she was ever under my power."

"Could she be a Brethren operative?" Will sounded grim now. "We have known them to be resistant to l'attrait. 'Tis said they are bred that way."

Had Chris behaved differently, Robin might have shared his seneschal's suspicions. "Why would one of those zealots seduce me, much less leave me alone and sleeping in my bed, when she could kill me or have me taken?"

Will's expression turned wry. "True."

Robin saw something wedged beneath the base the lamp beside the bed, and retrieved it. The small square of paper smelled of her, and he unfolded it slowly.

Thank you for the dance. C.

Dark, tight resentment welled up inside him. "She wrote a note."

Will began straightening the bed linens. "You would be wise not to contact her again, my lord. A mortal who cannot be compelled is unpredictable, even dangerous."

"She does not offer me her phone number or contact information," Robin told him. "She thanks me."

Will cleared his throat to cover another sound. "That was very, ah, polite of her."

"Am I no one to her, then? Someone she must thank in writing? For what? A mistake she never intends to repeat?" Robin threw the note to the floor. "She used me. A mortal. A mortal used me."

"The stone-hearted bitch." Will fluffed the pillows. "Shall I track her back to her lair and offer her a sternly worded rebuke, my lord?"

Robin hardly heard him. "She did not purchase anything at the auction last night, but she did register as a bidder. She would have had to show her identification and give them a credit card. You will go to the auctioneer's office and obtain whatever information they have for her. I particularly want her full name and where she resides." He remembered something she had said at the club. "She told me that she recently transferred here from Chicago. One you have her full name, call Jaus and ask him to run a background check on her."

"Rob." His seneschal came to stand before him. "It was ill-mannered of this mortal to leave in such haste, but her actions are hardly worth so much trouble. Forget this."

"No. I was not finished with her." He went to his closet and jerked out fresh garments, tearing the sleeve from a shirt in the process. He tossed it aside and took out another.

"You know that women of this time are not like Kyn females," Will suggested carefully. "They have much freedom and independence, and they do as they wish. They do not respect men as we expect they should, but that is how things are in this society—"

"When have you known me to sleep the day through, from dawn to dusk?" Robin demanded. "With a mortal in my bed?"

"Never," Will admitted.

"Just so." He thrust his arms into the sleeves of the second shirt. "She did something to me, this female. I shall learn exactly what it was."

"She could not drug you or exhaust you," his seneschal said as he picked up the torn shirt from the floor. "Could it be that she made you happy?"

Robin turned on him. "Do I look happy to you now?"

"Not in least, my lord. Forgive me for suggesting otherwise." Will's radio buzzed, and he pressed the response button and spoke into it. "What is it, Sylas?"

"An Italian lady has arrived to call on our lord," the guard said. "She gives her name as Contessa Salvatora Borgiana."

Robin nodded.

"Escort her to the reception room," Will replied. "Our lord will meet with her shortly." He switched off the radio. "Were you expecting the contessa to call?"

"I did not know she was in America."

The last thing Robin felt like doing was receiving a suzerain's widow, but Kyn customs gave him no choice. The contessa was obliged to pay her respects upon entering his territory, and it was his duty to welcome her—and find out what she was about.

Then he would deal with Chris.

His seneschal looked thoughtful. "She may have been driven out of Italy by the Brethren. So many have, these last months. Shall I prepare rooms for her and her men?"

"Sylas and Bergen can attend to her needs," Robin said as he buttoned his cuffs. "You have work to do. Go. I want to know everything you can learn about this mortal before dawn."

Chapter Five

On the outskirts of London, Michael Cyprien escorted his sygkenis, Alexandra Keller, from their limousine to the couple waiting for them on the front marble steps of the baroque mansion. He knew from her closed expression that she was feeling apprehensive, and kept her hand in his.

"Do you smell apricots?" she whispered.

"Geoffrey has an orchard of them, and keeps great heaping bowls all over the house," Michael murmured back.

"What for?"

He wondered why she had never noticed the baskets of lavender he had instructed Phillipe to keep around their home in New Orleans. "I imagine that their scent pleases him."

"Seigneur, welcome to my territory, our home, and England." Geoffrey, suzerain of London, stepped down and folded his tall, rawboned frame into a bow that would have seemed theatrical, had it been made by any other Kyn.

"Suzerain, I am most happy to be here." Michael returned the bow before offering his hand. "It has been too long, Geoff. Lady Braxtyn." He turned and bowed to the lady beside the suzerain, straightening to admire her artfully draped sarong of blue-green batik and the elegant folds of the sapphire scarf she wore wrapped around her head. "You dazzle me, my lady, as always."

Pleasure glowed in her dark eyes. "It is wonderful to have you here with us, Seigneur."

"You should have come to see us after you laid siege to Dundellan," Geoffrey said, winking shamelessly. "But you have made up for it by bringing to me an angel from heaven."

Michael never tired of watching his lover meet his oldest friends among the Kyn. At first it had secretly amused him to see his sygkenis cope with being showered with flowery praises, generally for her grace and beauty. A thoroughly modern woman, Alexandra had never learned how to accept compliments for anything except her medical skills, and to be told she had the tresses of a forest nymph or the eyes of a river sylph often left her speechless. Over time, however, she had grown accustomed to the effusive Kyn manner of greeting, and had learned to respond with an acceptable measure of grace.

After Michael performed the introductions, the suzerain seized Alexandra's hand.

"My dear lady." Geoffrey bowed so low over her knuckles that the tip of his nose bumped into them. "At long last we meet." He straightened, looming over her, and placed his rather ridiculous feathered green hat over the untidy thatch of his carrot-colored hair. "Your praises have been sung to me both near and far, but I see they fail to encompass the paragon of beauty, intelligence, and charm that you are." His wiry orange brows drew together over pale green eyes. "I fear I shall be spending these next weeks at your feet."

"I'll have to wear nicer shoes while I'm here." She returned his smile. "I'm happy to meet you, too, Suzerain…"

"Call me Geoffrey, my lady," he insisted. "I avoid at all times my surname, as it could not be humbler, and I dread to be thought of as naught but a shoemaker."

"Well, I'd curtsy, Geoffrey," she said, "but whenever I try I usually stumble or fall over."