Chapter 12

Back in London, Adrian didn't go to Paris again.

He canceled all his work and stayed at the manor every night.

We slept in separate rooms, so he sat in the study at the other end of the corridor. Every time I opened my door, the light was still on.

He didn't mention Claire. He only did the things he had always done whenever he made me angry.

He warmed blood for me, went through the dinner schedule himself, and brought home art books I had loved when I was young.

He even replanted a stretch of white tulips in the garden.

On the fourth night he brought me a glass of his own blood.

Sharing blood between vampire partners is more intimate than any embrace. After I saved him thirty years ago, we did it every anniversary to confirm that we still belonged to the same home.

"You haven't been feeding properly," he said. "Have a little. It will help."

I looked at the dark red in the glass, his blood, and I didn't take it.

Adrian held the glass out for a long time.

Perhaps only then did he remember that a few nights earlier those same teeth had opened Claire's throat.

In the end he poured it into the sink without a word.

If this had been any ordinary quarrel out of seventy years, I would have softened long before.

But now every kindness he showed reminded me of one thing.

It wasn't that he didn't know how to be good to me.

He simply believed that once he was good enough to me, he could hurt me somewhere else.

"I've had the Paris apartment thoroughly cleaned."

At dinner, Adrian finally brought it up on his own.

"Claire won't be going in again."

"Mm."

"Her apartment and her driver will be taken back. When the record contract ends, she won't have any connection to Blackwood at all."

I raised my head.

"That's between you and her. You don't need to report it to me."

Adrian's face stiffened.

"Evelyn, I'm fixing my mistake."

"You think the mistake is that Claire is still living in that apartment?"

"I know it isn't only that."

"Then what is it?"

He didn't answer.

The logs in the fireplace cracked softly.

After a long time he said, "I shouldn't have let you see it."

I lost all interest in continuing the conversation.

He still thought what had really hurt me was the truth coming out.

Not the choice he had made for two years.

"We'll talk after the dinner."

I set down my cutlery and stood up.

Adrian reached out and caught my wrist.

He wasn't holding hard, but the touch made me think of the puncture marks on Claire's neck.

I pulled my hand free.

That movement humiliated him more than any accusation could have.

"You can't even stand me touching you now?"

"No."

I didn't comfort him.

Back in the bedroom I washed my hands for a long time.

Not because Adrian was dirty.

Because seventy years of physical memory was still urging me to turn around and hold him.

I needed to tell myself clearly that those memories no longer got to decide anything for me.

Helen brought the last of the documents at midnight.

The asset inventory, the living arrangements, the restoration report for the old house in France, and the formal divorce petition.

"Delivered after the dinner?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Adrian may refuse to sign."

"Then let the court handle it."

I signed my name on the final page.

As the pen moved across the paper, I heard Adrian's footsteps outside.

He stopped at the bedroom door without knocking.

A moment later I heard him say quietly to Agnes, "She just needs time."

"It's been seventy years. She can't really leave me."

I looked down at the signature I had just written.

He was wrong.

I didn't need time.

I was setting an exact date for my departure.