Sarah gasped. I, too, was surprised by the outburst. It was difficult to think of Philippe as anything but a hero.

“Marcus.” Matthew looked at his son in warning, then slid his eyes in Ysabeau’s direction. But Marcus would not be silenced.

“If Philippe were here, he would have determined the course of Becca’s entire future by now, and to hell with what you, or Diana, or even his own granddaughter might have wanted,” Marcus said. “And he would be doing the same with Phoebe, interfering in every decision we made and managing every aspect of her life.”

Philippe materialized in the corner, his outlines hazy. He was substantive enough, however, that I could see the proud expression on his face, and the respect with which he regarded his grandson.

He always was unfailingly honest, Philippe said, giving Marcus an approving nod.

“Philippe was a meddling old busybody who tried to control everything and everyone,” Marcus continued, his voice rising along with his anger. “The hidden hand. Isn’t that what Rousseau called it? Lord, Grandfather loved Emile. He would quote passages from it all day if you let him.”

“Your grandfather was the same way when it came to Musonius Rufus’s notions of how to raise virtuous children,” Fernando said, taking a sip of his wine. “All you had to do was mention the fellow’s name, and Hugh would groan and leave the room.”

“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.”

25

Depend

JANUARY 1782

“Swords at the ready!” Master Arrigo stepped away from Marcus and Fanny. “En garde!”

Fanny flourished her rapier, cutting the air so cleanly that the blade sang. Marcus tried to imitate her but only succeeded in nearly impaling the Italian swordsman and slashing his own sleeve from elbow to wrist.

It was an unseasonably warm January afternoon on the rue de Saint-Antoine, and Fanny had relocated Marcus’s fencing lesson from the house’s grand ballroom, with its slippery parquet floor, to the wobbly-cobbled courtyard. Madame de Genlis was seated out of harm’s way in an upholstered chair carried down from the dining room, basking in the watery winter sunshine.

“Pret!” Master Arrigo said.

Marcus tightened his hold on his rapier and held it at the ready.

“No, no, no,” Master Arrigo said, stopping the proceedings with a frantic wave. “Remember, Monsieur Marcus. Do not grip the hilt like a club. You must hold it lightly but firmly—like your cock. Show it who is master, but do not squeeze the life out of it.”

Marcus shot a horrified look at Madame de Genlis. She was nodding enthusiastically at the vivid analogy.

“Exactement.” Madame de Genlis rose from her chair. “Shall I demonstrate, Maître?”

“Good Lord, madame,” Marcus protested, waving his rapier in hopes of persuading her to come no closer. The tip wiggled and quivered. “Stay where you are, I beg you.”

“Stéphanie is not troubled by your puritan morals, Marcus,” Fanny said. “Unlike you and Matthew, she has no fear of flesh.”

Marcus took a deep breath and readied himself once again to attack his aunt with a lethal blade.

“Pret!” Master Arrigo barked, adding, “With care, monsieur, with care.”

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.

A niggle of awareness ran along his spine, distracting Marcus from his fencing lesson. Someone was watching him. His eyes swept the windows that overlooked the courtyard. A shadow moved past the glass in an upstairs room.

“Allez!” Master Arrigo said.

Someone twitched at the drapes. Marcus strained to see who was there. He felt a small prick on his shoulder, no more annoying than a bee’s sting. Marcus waved it away.

“Touché, Mademoiselle Fanny!” Arrigo St. Angelo clapped his hands.

“Zut. He barely noticed.” Fanny pulled the rapier’s point free from Marcus’s shoulder, disgusted. “What’s the point of fighting blade to blade if you don’t even wince when I pierce your flesh, Marcus? You’re taking all the joy out of combat.”

“Let us try again,” Master Arrigo said, gathering his patience once more. “En garde!”

But Marcus was across the courtyard and up the stairs, already in search of his quarry. When he reached the upper stories of the house, there was a faint scent of pepper and wax, but nothing else to indicate anyone had been there at all. Could he be seeing things?

But the uncanny feeling Marcus experienced in the courtyard didn’t leave him over the next few days. It accompanied him to the opera when Marcus escorted Madame de Genlis to a performance of Colinette à la cour. He borrowed her opera glasses and peered through them at the members of the audience, all of whom were similarly more interested in the other attendees than they were in Monsieur Grétry’s latest masterpiece.

“Of course you are being examined!” Madame de Genlis retorted when Marcus complained of feeling scrutinized during a burst of applause. “You are a de Clermont. Besides, why else does one go to the opera, except to see and be seen?”

Marcus’s survival instinct, which had been honed to a fine edge during the years he’d lived under Obadiah’s tyrannical rule, had grown even sharper since he’d become a vampire. He would have liked to ask his grandmother about the prickling sensation that washed over him in the market when he was studying the types of waterfowl that might tempt his appetite with Charles, or outside the Hôtel-Dieu, which he didn’t dare enter again in case the scent of blood drove him insane, or in the bookstores where he read snatches from the newspapers while waiting for Fanny to make her purchases of the latest novel and imported copies of the Royal Society of London’s Transactions.

“Perhaps music is too passionate for such a young vampire,” Madame de Genlis mused the morning after their disastrous second trip to the opera, her feet crossed on a low, padded stool and a cup of chocolate in her hand. Marcus had been so uncomfortable, and so convinced someone was spying on them, that they left after the first act.

“Nonsense,” Fanny protested. “I was on the battlefield, ax in hand, within seven hours of my transformation. It was a baptism by blood and fire, let me tell you.”

Marcus leaned forward in his chair, more eager to hear Fanny’s story than he was to retreat to the library and conjugate more Latin verbs, which was his assignment that day.

Before Fanny could begin her tale, however, Ulf arrived, ashen faced and bearing a silver salver. On it was a letter. Ulf had arranged it so that its wax seal was on top—a distinctive swirl of red and black. Nestled in the pool of color was a small, worn, silver coin.

“Merde.” Fanny took the letter.

“It is not for you, Mademoiselle Fanny,” Ulf said in a sepulchral whisper, his long face grim. “It is for Le Bébé.”

“Ah.” Fanny waved Ulf toward Marcus. “Put it in your pocket.”

“But I don’t know what it says.” Marcus studied the address on the outside. It was penned in dark, distinctive strokes. “To Monsieur Marcus L’Américain, of the Hôtel-Dieu and Monsieur Neveu’s shop, who now resides at Mademoiselle de Clermont’s house, a reader of newspapers and a student of Signore Arrigo.”

Whoever had written the letter seemed to know a great deal about Marcus’s business, not to mention his daily routine.

“I do.” Fanny sighed. “It says ‘attend on me at once.’”

“It was only a matter of time, ma cherie,” Madame de Genlis said, trying to comfort her friend.

Marcus cracked the seal and freed the coin. It dropped toward the ground. Fanny caught it in midair and deposited it on the table next to him.

“Don’t lose this. He’ll want it back,” she warned.

“Who will?” Marcus unfolded the paper. As Fanny had divined, the letter contained only a single line—brief, and exactly as she had predicted.

“My father.” Fanny rose. “Come, Marcus. We are going to Auteuil. It’s time to meet your farfar.”