it. The years taught one not to hold any tighter to names than to lovers.
She was the mistress of Michael Penfold, the Colonial Governor, and Sebastien had no more illusions about her nature or profession than Miss de Courten had about Sebastien's. She was a gorgeous creature, artifice and art, and even as he found her intriguing—exciting—he wondered what the child-Sebastien of centuries before, an unworldly young man of different name and no experience, would have made of her breathy, dusty contralto, elaborate scarlet wig, and the corseted curve of her waist.
It might be interesting to know her better. Secret-keepers were often amenable to assisting with the secrets of others. As he bowed himself back, he could not quite keep a smile from his mouth. Abigail Irene would have pretended to be shocked at him, he thought, with a trace of satisfaction. Although given her own—checkered—history, it would have to have been dissimulation.
Sebastien took a seat close by the fire where it could lend some warmth to his winter-clammy flesh. He permitted himself to be poured a brandy that he had no intention of drinking, and bowed his head over the glass with a show of enjoying the fumes. Even that was lost to him; they stung his eyes and burned his sinuses. He blinked as water filled his eyes, and realized the room was still silent. "Please," he said, "don't let me interrupt."
The wearer of the domino sipped tea. Sebastien rather thought it might be fortified. "The conversation," she said, delicately, flicking her nails against the gold-painted-china eggshell rim of her cup, "hinges on matters of scandal."
Mr. Chisholm, the author, chuckled. "Mr. Frazier advanced the suggestion that the architect of last night's murder might be the wampyr escaped from New Amsterdam. We were discussing the possibility—"
"There are no vampire in New Amsterdam," the hostess said, with a sniff. "There isn't a single vampire in America. How would one manage the Atlantic?"
"He could have himself shipped."
"He'd starve along the way," said the one in the domino.
Sebastien smiled at her. She blushed and glanced down, and glanced back. He liked her boldness, the way she did not hide her intellect, and the breadth of her hands and shoulders worried him not at all. It wasn't as if it mattered to him what lay behind her petticoats.
Mr. Frazier ran a hand through thick black hair, snagging a few strands on a sapphire pinky ring. Sebastien looked at it askance, but it was a clear Ceylon stone, powder-blue and velvety, set high in gold—no courtesan's
flat band of silver. He was a slight man, and his voice was a pleasant shock with its depth and scratchiness, no trace of defensiveness detectable as he said, "But the City Guard are seeking one. So someone is taking the possibility seriously."
"They are?" Chouchou's fan snapped open, hiding her mouth. Kohled eyes widened as she fluttered the device.
"The Duke's men," the actor supplied, while Sebastien caught the hostess's eye and let her read inquiry in his expression. She nodded, slightly, and her color rose.
Though he was dead, Sebastien imagined his pulse racing like a mortal man's. The body had its means of telegraphing excitement to the heart and mind, sensations that did not change simply because the heart beat no longer.
Chisholm interrupted, "As a writer, I have sources that others. . .may not. I heard that the wampyr"—with painfully correct overpronunciation—"subverted a crown officer, and she's resigned in disgrace."
"Is that so?" Sebastien made a show of boredom. Just an example of how tales grew in the telling: Abby Irene might resign her commission on principle, but never to flee scandal. She was a great believer in the merit of a brazen face. "What do you know of vampires?"
Most of the blood considered the English approximation of the word something of an insult. Sebastien thought it rather silly to draw such lines in the sand. Language was ephemeral as a mortal life, and clinging to it made as little sense. It would change and change again, like the world, and it was not Sebastien's role—as he understood it—to oppose that change, though he and his kind were changeless in the end.
Let the breathing concern themselves with politics and borders and the philosophy of human rights. He'd wager any movement created as many injustices as it redressed.
Chisholm, challenged, deflected the volley. "Far less than Mr. Frazier, obviously. I can't aspire to his levels of erudition."
Sebastien shared an irony-soaked smile with Miss de Courten, who chose to keep whatever special knowledge