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But for you, I wanted it to be different.”
“As a matter of fact, I like all of my names. So does Baldwin,” Phoebe said, raising her voice slightly.
Just then a towheaded young man with long, gangly legs and wide shoulders walked in. “Hi, Mum,” he said. “Hey, Dad.” “Jack!” I said, surprised. “We didn’t expect you so soon!”
“You got Mum a dog?”
“Because I had nothing left to lose that mattered,” Marcus replied. “And I thought you might be the father that I had been searching for.”
“Ma?” No one else had ever touched him with such tenderness. “No. It’s Matthew.” His voice, too, was tender.
“Is there someone I should write to?” de Clermont asked. “Family? A sweetheart you left back home?”
“And if someone could grant you that wish—could give you a second chance at life—would you take him up on the offer?”
“Pay attention, Marcus. I asked if you would be willing to kill someone for this chance to live a doctor’s life. Not an animal—a man.” De Clermont’s voice held a note of urgency that cut through Marcus’s fever and the fog of disorientation and pain that accompanied it. “Yes—if he deserved it,” Marcus said.
He said he had lived for more than a thousand years. That he had been a carpenter and a mason, a soldier and a spy, a poet, a doctor, a lawyer.
Marcus finally understood why the colonial mail service was so expensive and unreliable: It was run by devils and dead men.
Matthew de Clermont falling to a stone floor.
“I know why MacNeil changed his name,” de Clermont said. “He killed his own father.”
And he fucking deserved it!
“Don’t be rude,” the chevalier said, his voice purring in his throat like a cat. “I won’t have my son behaving like an ungrateful lout.” “You’re not my father.” Marcus swung at him, his arm whipping out. De Clermont blocked it easily, cradling Marcus’s hand in his own as if there was no force behind it. “I am now, and you’ll do as I say.” De Clermont’s face was calm, his voice even.
“Go fuck yourself,” Marcus snarled.
that he was a wearh—but there was something missing in the account, some larger perspective that would explain how all this could be true.
“Warmbloods?” Here was another new term. “Humans. Witches. Daemons,” de Clermont explained. “Lesser creatures.
Lol
“Shh.” Marcus patted him awkwardly on the shoulder.
He looked at de Clermont, unsure of why his father had brought him here.
Marcus’s heart stopped in a spasm of grief for what might have been. Then it started up again. This was no longer his family. Marcus did not belong in Hadley anymore.
Then, a square-jawed, clean-shaven face appeared over the railing, wreathed in shoulder-length golden hair that had escaped from the cocked hat perched, backward, on his head. “Hello, Uncle.” “Gallowglass.” De Clermont touched his hat in greeting.
My sweet angel baby has returned to me!! <3
“Jesus!” Marcus scrambled away, afraid for his life. He might be hard to kill now, but he was no match for this creature. “Christ and his apostles. Don’t be daft, boy,” Gallowglass said with a snort. “I’m hardly going to attack my own cousin.”
Wearhs must all be Masons, he thought—or perhaps this was a French custom?
“Easy there, pup.” Gallowglass’s eyes creased in warning as he lifted Marcus to his feet. “Sorry. Don’t seem to know my own strength these days,” Marcus mumbled, embarrassed by his inexperience.
The man he called Gallowglass turned and, in a blur of fists, landed two blows to de Clermont’s jaw.
Baldwin is among the jaegers.
“Mademoiselle Juliette sends her regards. And here is Granddad’s post.”
Marcus liked this brawny Scot. Gallowglass made Marcus wonder what his own Scots grandfather might have been like as a young man.
I’m staying with you.”
I'd be the same bro :'(
“I’m Eric. Most people just call me Gallowglass.”
Eric?????????
your dear dad.
Gallowglass buried his face in his hands and groaned.
“Don’t be bowing to the servants, Marcus,” Gallowglass muttered. “You are a de Clermont now. Do you want the gossips noticing your strange ways?”
“Marcus, meet Davy Gams. We call him Hancock.”
“I’ll hold him down while you do it,” Marcus said, still smarting from all that he’d discovered about his new life from Gallowglass. “High-handed bastard.” Davy and Gallowglass stared at him, astonished. Then Davy began to laugh in the gasping, unpracticed wheezes of one who hadn’t been amused in some time. “Not yet sixty and already angry with his sire,” Davy said, wheezing and coughing some more. “I know,” Gallowglass said fondly. “The lad has real potential.”
Charles, the wearh who ruled that subterranean lair, was not female and did not smell as appetizing as Françoise did, but within thirty minutes of meeting him, Marcus felt nothing but love for the man.
“It’s a baby!” she cooed, blue eyes round in amazement.
Same Freyja, same.
“I’m Freyja de Clermont. Your aunt. You may call me Fanny.”
but really he must stop bowing to servants).
“I have come to see my grandson,” the veiled woman interrupted, clearly out of patience with Adrienne’s effusiveness.
Marcus couldn’t stop himself. He bowed. His grandmother was the finest lady he had ever encountered. Adrienne cooed and clapped in approval, wiping a tear from her eye at the touching domestic scene unfolding in Fanny’s front hall. Cold, delicate hands touched him on the shoulders, a quiet command to rise. “Yes. You are Matthew’s son,” Ysabeau said, her eyes holding his. “I hear his bloodsong in your veins. This will fade in time, as you become your own creature. But you are still too young for such independence. It is important that vampires understand who you are until you can protect
...more
“It matters little what you are called,” Ysabeau said, her voice dismissive. “All that is important is who you are: Matthew’s son—and a de Clermont.”
She was going for a walk. In Paris. At night. With Jason. He was a member of Miriam’s family—now Phoebe’s family—a male, and the son of Miriam’s former mate.
Even the head of the de Clermont family, Matthew’s brother Baldwin, was in attendance.
“I thought I was trading a life of powerlessness for one of freedom when I became a vampire,” Marcus continued. “But I was wrong. I simply exchanged one patriarch for another.”
You must hold it lightly but firmly—like your cock. Show it who is master, but do not squeeze the life out of it.”
Lol
Marcus tried with all his might to imagine his sword into a cock, and to handle it with just the right blend of discipline and gentleness.
“My father.” Fanny rose. “Come, Marcus. We are going to Auteuil. It’s time to meet your farfar.”
“Very well, Marcus Raphael Galen Thomas Chauncey de Clermont,” his grandfather at last pronounced. “I accept you into the family. You will be known as Marcus de Clermont—for now.”
“Your honor is not worth much these days.” Philippe whirled around. “You will do as I tell you and take Monsieur Marat to London. Gallowglass will meet you at Calais. He has been waiting there since Christmas, and will be glad to be rid of France.” “London?” Marcus stopped. “I can’t go to London. I’m an American.”
