Chapter 2

Adrian did not notice anything wrong with me.

He held my hand the whole way back to the bedroom.

Blackwood Manor is more than four hundred years old, the corridors are long, and after dark only the wall lamps are lit. Adrian knew I disliked too much dark, so every lamp was a little brighter than it used to be.

He had kept that habit for seventy years.

"The doctor came this afternoon?" he asked.

"Yes."

"What did the results say?"

"The same as last month."

My answers were short.

He stopped walking and turned to look at me.

"Evelyn, you're upset."

Four hundred years of life had made him very good at reading people, and seventy years of marriage had made him especially fluent in my moods.

I used to think that was proof we loved each other.

"Just tired," I said.

Adrian frowned slightly but did not press.

Back in our room, he took out the medicine I had to take and poured a glass of warmed blood.

I don't like blood that has gone cold, and I don't like it served in a clear glass.

He remembered every one of those small, almost fussy preferences.

"Finish it before you sleep."

He handed me the glass, his voice gentle, leaving no room for argument.

I took it, and I caught a trace of scent still clinging to his cuff.

White roses, amber, and some kind of vanilla that was far too sweet.

It was exactly what had hung in the air when the woman in the video leaned toward the camera.

I lowered my eyes and drank a mouthful.

"Did everything go smoothly in Brussels?"

"Smoothly enough."

Adrian undid his cufflinks, and his expression did not change in the slightest.

"The council won't raise the rates for human blood donors. We argued about it for two nights. Victor thinks we can negotiate slowly, but I don't want to drag it out any longer."

He gave me specifics.

What the meeting covered, who attended, where the disagreement came from. Every detail would have held up under questioning.

If I hadn't seen that video, I wouldn't have doubted a single word.

"Which hotel was the meeting at?" I asked.

He glanced at me.

"The usual place, the hotel near Sablon Square."

The corridor in the video had dark green carpet and brass room numbers.

I had stayed at that hotel before.

It isn't in Brussels. It's in Paris.

When Adrian took off his shirt, I saw three scratches on the back of his shoulder, already faded.

A vampire's body heals fast.

An ordinary scratch disappears in a few hours. If these were still there, the woman had used real force, and they had been made more recently than he was claiming.

He followed my eyes and glanced down.

"What is it?"

"Your shoulder is hurt."

"I probably caught it on a broken nail in the doorframe of the old archive room last night."

He answered easily, and even reached back to touch the marks.

"They're almost gone."

I didn't tell him that a nail in a doorframe doesn't leave red marks shaped like fingernails.

Before we slept, he put his arms around me from behind, the way he always did.

The curtains were drawn, the heavy fabric holding back the daylight that was coming. Adrian buried his face against my neck, and his breathing slowly evened out.

I didn't close my eyes all night.

He still remembered to warm my blood, remembered the lamps in the corridor, remembered the date of my monthly examination.

I could not find a single piece of evidence that I had been neglected.

But his tenderness didn't reassure me.

It only made me see more clearly that he hadn't gone to another woman because he'd stopped loving me.

He had chosen to lie to me while he still did.

After sunrise, Adrian fell into a deep sleep.

I picked up his phone, then stopped before I touched the screen.

I didn't need to read his private messages.

I only needed to check what he had told me.

I left the bedroom, went into the study, and searched for the Brussels meeting on the computer.

The official page came up quickly.

The meeting scheduled for that week had been canceled a week early, because the host had been injured.

The cancellation notice had been posted ten days ago.

There was no way Adrian didn't know.

Because underneath the notice, his reply was there in plain sight.

Sorry to miss it, looking forward to the next one.

It was dated the day before he left London.