My mouth gaped open. How did he know I wasn’t just some vagrant?
He seemed to guess my thought.
“Your shoes, son, show that you are obviously a gentleman, regardless of your current, eh, circumstances,” he said, eyeing them. I looked at them myself—scuffed and dirty, I hadn’t shined them since Louisiana. “The cut is Italian and the leather is fine. I know my leather.” He tapped his own shoe, which looked to be made from crocodile. “It’s how I got my start. I’m Winfield T. Sutherland, owner of Sutherland’s Mercantile. Some of my neighbors made their money from oil or railroads, but I made my fortune honestly—by selling people what they needed.”
The door to the study opened and a young woman I’d seen downstairs came in. She was composed and graceful, with a step that was both regal and efficient. Her cap was simple—almost like a servant’s—but it accentuated her refined features. She was a rarefied version of the girl I had found in the park. Her hair was a more subtle golden shade, and her curls fell naturally in soft ringlets. Her eyelashes were as thick but longer, framing blue eyes with just a touch of gray in them. Her cheekbones were a trifle higher and her expressions more subdued.
My human appreciation of her beauty fought with my vampire’s cold appraisal of her body: healthy and young.
“The doctor has just arrived, but Mama thinks she will be fine,” the girl said calmly. “The wound is not as deep as it first seemed, and appears to be mending itself already. It is by all accounts a miracle.”
I shifted in my chair, knowing that I had been the reluctant source of that “miracle.”
“My daughter Lydia,” Winfield introduced. “The most queenly of my three graces. That was Bridget whom you found. She’s a bit . . . ah . . . tempestuous.”
“She ran off by herself from a ball,” Lydia said through a forced smile. “I think you might be looking for a slightly stronger word than ‘tempestuous,’ Papa.”
I liked Lydia immediately. She had none of the joie de vivre that Callie had, but she possessed an intelligence and sense of humor that became her. I even liked her father, despite his huff and bluster. In a way, this reminded me of my own home, of my own family, back when I had one.
“You have done us a great service, Stefan,” Winfield said. “And forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but I suspect that you don’t have a proper home to return to. Why don’t you stay the night here? It is too late for you to go anywhere, and you must be exhausted.”
I held up my hands. “No, I couldn’t.”
“Surely you must,” Lydia said.
“I . . .” Say no. The image of Callie’s green eyes rose before me, and I thought of my vow to live apart from humans. But the comforts of this beautiful house reminded me so much of the human life I’d left behind in Mystic Falls, I found it difficult to do what I knew I should.
“I insist, boy.” Winfield put a meaty hand on my shoulder, forcing me out of the room. “It’s the least we can offer as a thank-you. A good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast.”
“That’s very kind, but . . .”
“Please,” Lydia said, a little smile on her face. “We are ever so grateful.”
“I should really—”
“Excellent!” Winfield clapped. “It’s settled. We’ll even have your clothes cleaned and pressed.”
Like a horse being steered through a series of groomers before a race, the Sutherlands’ housekeeper ushered me up several flights of steps to a back wing of the house that overlooked an east-facing alleyway. Instead of my usual hollow in the rocks by the stolen gravestones, I would sleep on a giant four-poster feather bed in a room with a roaring fire, in a house of humans that welcomed me happily and quickly as one of their own.
The vampire in me remained hungry and nervous. But that didn’t prevent the human in me from savoring a taste of the life I had lost.
Chapter 4
November 5, 1864
It feels like so long ago, but in reality little time has passed since my transformation, since my father killed me. It was barely a month past that Damon and I tried to save Katherine’s life, and her blood saved ours. Barely a month since I was a living, warm-blooded human, who sustained himself on meals of meat and vegetables, cheese and wine—and who slept in a feather bed, with clean linen sheets.
Yet it feels like a lifetime, and by some definitions, I suppose it is.
But just as quickly as my fortunes turned after New Orleans, leaving me to live as a vagrant in a rocky hollow in the park, here I am at a proper desk under a leaded window, a thick rug at my feet. How quickly I am slipping back into human ways!
The Sutherlands seem like a kind family. I picture tempestuous Bridget and her long-suffering older sister as mirror versions of Damon and myself. I never appreciated how harmless Damon’s and my father’s fights were back when they were just about horses and girls. I was always terrified one of them would say or do something that would end forever what semblance of a family we had left.
Now that my father is dead and my brother and I are . . . what we are, I realize how much more serious things can get, and how simple and easy life was before.
I shouldn’t even stay here, even tonight. I should sneak out the window and flee to my place of exile. Being enfolded in the warm, living embrace of the Sutherland family for any amount of time, no matter how short, is dangerous and deceptive. It makes me feel like I could almost belong to the world of humans again. They don’t realize they have welcomed a predator into their midst. All that would need to happen is for me to lose control once, to slip from my room right now and take my fill of one of them, and their lives would be filled with tragedy—just as mine became when Katherine arrived on our doorstep.
Family has always been the most important thing to me, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit how comforting it is to be among people who love one another, if only for one borrowed night. . . .