He'd just finished stacking up the papers in the room and settled in to wait for Néomi to wake when his brothers traced into the room.
Nikolai exhaled wearily to find him moving about freely. 'How did you get loose?'
'Dislocated my shoulder.'
Almost at the exact same time, all three raised their brows at the collection of papers. 'You dislocated your shoulder to get to the newspapers on the road? You could have asked one of us if you wanted to read—'
'No. That's not it.' Why not tell them? They already thought him mad. What if one of them has encountered a ghost? What if they believed him? 'I got them for a female who lives here.' He was sane enough to recognize how this sounded. 'She likes to read them.'
'The house is abandoned, Conrad.' Nikolai pinched the bridge of his nose. 'You know this.'
He ran his palms over his pants. 'I'm the only one who can see her. She's lying on this bed right now.'
To a man, they got that anxious expression as though they were wondering whether madness was catching.
'If there is truly a ghost there, get her to move something,' Murdoch said. 'Can she make a door slam? Or rattle something in the attic?'
'Yes, she can move things with her mind.'
Sebastian waved him on. 'Then by all means... '
Conrad glanced from them to her, and back again. 'She's... asleep.' And he couldn't shake her to get her to wake.
'Of course she is,' Sebastian muttered. He'd always been the most skeptical of the brothers. Conrad figured that even after three centuries, that hadn't changed.
'Damn it, I'm telling the truth.'
'Yet you can't rouse her?'
Conrad considered explaining why she was so exhausted, but thought that would only make things worse.
Murdoch asked, 'Why would we believe you're seeing a ghost rather than another hallucination? You're supposed to be bombarded with delusions.'
'I was. Constantly. I'm not anymore. She's real.' Right at her ear, he said, 'Néomi, wake up!' No response. 'Wake up!' he said louder, aware that he appeared to be yelling at the sheet.
Murdoch had a look on his face as if he couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry over Conrad's actions. Finally, he said, 'Kristoff has given word that there will be a battle tonight. So we likely won't be returning for two days.'
Nikolai added, 'We'll leave you free run of the property. The refrigerator is filled with weeks' worth of bagged blood, and I'll get my wife to stop—'
'I'll manage on my own,' Conrad said quickly.
'Very well.'
Surprised by the concession, Conrad said, 'Free me completely.'
Nikolai's gaze went from the newspapers to Conrad's eyes, and he exhaled. 'We can't. You've come too far to relapse. Soon I'm going to ask you to make a decision. A critical one—but you have to be stable.'
Conrad gave a bitter laugh. 'Since when do you ask me to make a decision instead of making it for me?'
Nikolai's expression was grave. 'Since I lost my brother for three centuries.'
16
'Are you a betting man, Conrad?' Néomi was surprised her voice wasn't quavering.
He'd shaved, fully revealing the striking structure of his lean face. And she'd been given no warning. She'd breezed into the room, then stopped, speechless at the sight of him reclining on the bed.
Devastating male. And she wondered why she couldn't stay mad at him.
He frowned at her reaction. He obviously had no idea of his heart-pounding effect on women. 'Depends.'
Yesterday, once she'd awakened from her lengthy reverie, she'd found a stack of newspapers lying on the floor. He'd gruffly said, 'I was able to get some of the ones that had piled up out of your reach.' She thought that for a man like Conrad, this had been on a level with picking flowers for her.
Though the gesture had softened her, she'd still been hesitant when he'd wanted to stay close by. 'Why should I choose to be around you?' she'd asked. 'You're just going to hurt my feelings or start haranguing me for the key again.' The key that she'd stolen from Murdoch and hidden away.
'My brothers were here earlier,' Conrad had answered. 'They said they aren't returning for two days. There will be a moratorium on the key. And I won't insult you.'
Apparently, his brothers had allowed him to remain untied from the bed, with his manacles in front—even after he'd disclosed that there was a ghost living here.
The idea that he'd had to tell them that he would have gotten the spirit to prove herself, but she was asleep, was too amusing. The image of him yelling at seemingly nothing but a sheet was hilarious.
She'd decided to give him another chance. Which was why she held a deck of cards this evening. 'I challenge you to twenty-one rounds of vingt-et-un. Whoever loses a round has to answer a question, truthfully and completely. Any question whatsoever.'
He sat up. 'Deal.'
She hovered on the foot of the bed to face him. He had difficulty with the cards because his hands were still chained, but he wouldn't ask for help. And she had to use her most highly concentrated telekinesis, which would mean she'd have to sleep more. But still they muddled through.
After he won the first hand, his lips curved, not quite a smile, but she still had to shake herself. 'I win.'
Yes, you do... . In the game of attraction, lips like his should be ruled an unfair advantage.
What were the women of his time thinking to allow him to go unscathed? She wanted to fan herself with the cards she appeared to hold. 'So ask your question,' she absently said.
'Were you survived by any of your family?'
'Non. I never knew my father. Maman died when I'd just turned sixteen. I was an only child.'
She dealt again. He had an ace showing, and she had seventeen. Dealer holds. 'Merde,' she snapped when he flipped a ten of clubs.
He asked, 'Why didn't you know your father?' When she hesitated, he repeated her words: 'Any question whatsoever, truthfully and completely.'
'I didn't know him because he was a scoundrel. He was rich, a scion of Nîmes, France, and my mother had been a young servant in his home. He was married, but he still seduced her. When she revealed to him she was expecting his child, he told her, 'Take the voyage to America, and I'll follow right after my divorce. We'll raise the baby there as a family.' But he never came. She waited for him—stranded here, pregnant, and without enough money to return.'
'Maybe he died on the crossing. Who knows what could have happened to him?'
'Non, he sent maman a pittance that only served to let her know she'd been duped—a potential scandal decisively removed from société's eyes. To her dying day, she thought he would come for us, so she never remarried.' Though there were certainly proposals in her line of work—some even legitimate.
Néomi had been unable to comprehend how Marguerite could turn away opportunities for a better life when they were offered to her, opportunities for a French émigrée dancer and her bastard to get out of the Vieux Carré.
In Néomi's mind, if a woman was silly enough to wait for a man to save her, then she didn't get to be choosy about which man it would be.
Marguerite's life had taught Néomi well. She'd vowed never to be in that situation, dependent on a man.
She dealt once more. She had nineteen, while he had a jack of hearts showing. 'Hit,' he said. She did. 'Hit again. And once more.' He flipped his cards over. Jack, two, three, six.
