"Isn't that your brother Bastien's car?" Mirabeau asked as she climbed out from behind the front passenger seat and slammed the Jeep door closed.
Lissianna glanced toward the dark Mercedes and nodded. "Looks like it."
"I wonder if anyone else is here." Jeanne Louise murmured.
Lissianna shrugged. "I don't see any other cars. But I suppose Bastien could have arranged for a couple of the company cars to pick up and drop off people."
"If he did, I doubt anyone has arrived yet," Mirabeau said, as they started toward the front door. "You know it isn't fashionable to show up to these things on time. Only unfashionable geeks arrive on time."
"I guess that makes us unfashionable geeks," Lissianna commented.
"Nah. We're just trendsetters," Thomas announced, and they all chuckled.
Bastien opened the front door as they approached. "I thought I heard a car."
"Bastien, du-ude!" Thomas greeted loudly, then immediately stepped up to give him a hug that had the older man stiffening in surprise. "How's it hanging, dude?"
Lissianna bit her lip to keep from laughing and glanced toward Jeanne Louise and Mirabeau, then quickly away as she saw that they were also having difficulty controlling their expressions at the sudden change in Thomas. He'd gone from being just your average guy to a space cadet, in the passing of a heartbeat.
"Yes... Well... Thomas. Hello." Bastien managed to disengage himself from his exuberant younger cousin. As usual, he looked uncomfortable and not entirely sure how to handle the younger man. It was why Thomas acted that way, he knew that both her older brothers--at over four hundred and six hundred--tended to look down on him as a young pup, and it never ceased to annoy him. Being thought of as little more than a child at over two hundred years old could be terribly annoying, and so he acted like an ass around them. It never failed to make the older men uncomfortable and--Lissianna suspected--gave Thomas an advantage. Her brothers were forever underestimating Thomas because of their prejudices.
Suffering the same prejudice herself, Lissianna could sympathize with Thomas. She also never failed to enjoy watching her older brothers squirm with discomfort.
"So, where's the party, dude?" Thomas asked brightly.
"It has not started yet," Bastien said. "You're the first to arrive."
"No dude, you were the first to arrive," Thomas corrected him cheerfully, then confided, "You don't know how relieved that makes me. 'Cause if we'd been first, Mirabeau said we would have been unfashionable geeks. But we weren't. You were."
Lissianna coughed to cover the snort of laughter that managed to escape her as her brother recognized that he'd just been called an unfashionable geek. When she regained control of herself it was to find Bastien standing stiff and straight and appearing a tad annoyed. She took pity on him, and asked, "So, where's Mom? And are we allowed to enter, or are we to wait out here for another fifteen minutes?"
"Oh, no. Come in." Bastien stepped quickly to the side. "I just got here myself, and Mother went up to change for the party after letting me in. She should be down in a few minutes. Maybe you should wait in the games room until she comes down. She might not want you to see the decorations until everyone's here."
"Okay," Lissianna said agreeably, stepping past him into the entry.
"Want to play a game of pool, dude?" Thomas asked cheerfully as he followed Lissianna into the house.
"Oh... er... No. Thank you, Thomas, I have to watch for early arrivals until Mother is ready." Bastien backed away along the hall as he spoke. "I'll tell her you're here."
"He loves me," Thomas said with amusement, as Bastien disappeared from the hall, then he opened his arms to shepherd them toward the closed door on the right of the hall. "Come along. Let's go play. Anyone up for a game of pool?"
"I'll play," Mirabeau said, then added, "Lissi, you have a run in your stockings."
"What?" Lissianna paused and peered down at her legs.
"Back right," Mirabeau said, and she twisted to look at the back of her right leg.
"I must have got it caught on something on the garbage bin," Lissianna muttered with disgust as she spotted the long, wide ladder up the back of her right calf.
"Garbage bin?" Thomas echoed with interest.
"Don't ask," she said dryly, then made an irritated tsk and straightened. "I'll have to go change my stockings before the party starts. Fortunately, Mom insisted I leave spare clothes here in my old room when I moved out. I should have a couple pairs of stockings. You guys go ahead and play."
"Hurry back," Thomas called, as she jogged lightly up the stairs.
Lissianna merely waved over her shoulder as she reached the landing and started along the hall toward her bedroom, but she was thinking it was good advice. Marguerite Argeneau wasn't going to be pleased that they'd arrived early, but Thomas would quickly cajole her out of any irritation she might initially be feeling. For that reason alone, it would be better to be with Thomas and the others when she met up with her mother.
"Coward," Lissianna berated herself. She was over two hundred years old and well past the age where she should worry about upsetting her mother.