Mirabelle gave a little exclamation of delight at seeing the piano and hurried over, pausing just before her fingers touched the glossy black finish. “May I?"
Alexandra nodded in very much the way of a fine lady granting favors, and Cyn turned away to conceal her reaction. Some things, it seemed, had not changed. She wandered over to the piano, watching as Mirabelle ran her fingers somewhat stiffly along the keys. “My mother played,” Mirabelle said softly. “I took lessons as a child, before...” Her voice broke off, and then hardened. “Jabril refused to have a piano in the house; he said he couldn't abide the noise. Those are his words. He gave it away. My mother's piano."
Cyn glanced over to see Alexandra watching.
"May I borrow Cynthia for a moment, Mirabelle?” Alexandra asked.
Mirabelle frowned, concentrating fiercely on her fingers as they picked out a series of notes.
Cyn touched her shoulder and met Mirabelle's questioning glance with a quick smile of reassurance. “We'll be right back,” she said.
Cyn followed Alexandra down the hall and into a room that was set up as a kind of home office.
"My dayroom,” Alexandra said with a wry quirk of her lips. “The sort of room a proper lady would have used for keeping her household books or handling her correspondence. Not that I'm burdened with such things, of course. Raphael's people take care of everything.” She kept walking, leading Cyn all the way through the room and out onto a generous balcony overlooking the front of the manor.
"You've changed a few things,” Cyn commented as they stepped outside.
"Yes.” Alexandra smiled slightly. “A few things. I felt it was time. Past time, really."
"You look good."
Alexandra looked down at herself and back at Cyn, her mouth curving slightly with pleasure. “I do, don't I? I wasn't jesting about the clothes. I don't know why I struggled with those horrible dresses for so long.” She paused, listening to Mirabelle's enthusiastic piano playing, and made a moue of distaste. “She is a child."
"She was fifteen when her parents died, when the courts turned her and her ten-year-old sister over to Jabril Karim. She was eighteen and a day when he raped her and made her Vampire."
"I see. And does she want to stay here?"
"I don't think she knows yet."
Alexandra turned to study Cyn. She was a lovely creature, but with a smile that was less than genuine and somehow calculated, as if it could be turned on and off at will. “I like you, Cynthia,” she said. “You've no pretense about you, and my life has been nothing but pretense for too long."
She strolled over to the balcony's edge and leaned delicately against the stone balustrade to gaze at the courtyard below. It was paved in black and white checked marble, surrounded by a tall privet hedge that prevented anyone from mistaking it for a usable entrance. Alexandra glanced back at Cyn. “Tell me,” she said, her gaze returning to the gaudy marble. “What do you think of this courtyard?"
Cyn rested a hip on the stone and stared at the marble, wondering what to say. But then, according to Alexandra, she was the “no pretense” girl, right? “I think it's truly awful,” she said.
Alexandra laughed, the first genuine emotion Cyn had heard from her. “So do I,” she confided. “Although, once it reminded me of a better time, but I think I only had it installed to see if Raphael would go along. I kept trying to find something he would refuse me."
"Why?” Cyn asked bluntly.
Alexandra thought about it. “Do you have siblings? A brother or a sister?"
"A half sister. We're not close."
"Raphael and I were. Close that is. We had two other brothers, twins who were much older and gone before I was old enough to miss them. It was always Raphael who took care of me, indulged me, protected me from our father's anger, and from the men on the surrounding farms who were bargaining with my father for a marriage before I'd even had my first blood.” She shrugged casually. “Our mother was beautiful; I resemble her, of course. So does Raphael, although he has our father's considerable stature."
She glanced again at Cyn, gauging her reaction. “That terrible night so long ago, the night our family was attacked and Raphael and I were made Vampire. I don't know now if I would change those events even if I could, but at the time I hated what had been done to me. Hated what I'd become. I blamed Raphael for not protecting me as he should have, for not saving me from those creatures. For everything. I knew he was still alive somewhere, my vampire master taunted me with the knowledge, saying Raphael had chosen to serve his new mistress rather than be saddled for centuries with a useless little sister. It was a lie, of course. I know now that Raphael thought me dead along with our parents. But I believed the lie. Or perhaps it was only that I wanted to believe it.
"Of course, Raphael did save me eventually, although it was quite by chance. He found me in a dungeon in Paris during the Revolution. There I was, little better than a whore, living on the streets, stealing, murdering, seducing men so my Sire and his other children could drain them, leaving me the dregs. And then Raphael appeared—powerful, elegant, a master in his own right. He had finally come to my rescue and I hated him for it, for never surrendering, for never falling as low as I had.
She turned, placing her back to the courtyard and giving an elegant, little shrug. “So I made him pay. It was as easy as if we'd never been apart. He was full of guilt that I'd been enslaved for so long, that I'd been living in the gutter while he'd dressed in fine clothes and slept on soft sheets. And he was desperate to make it up to me. There was nothing he wouldn't do; I had only to ask. Eventually, I began to test his devotion."
"Did you ever find it?” Cyn asked.
"What's that?"
"Something he wouldn't give you?"
"You know, Cynthia, I did. Very recently, in fact."