Startled, I pushed myself loose from Tris’s arms. Giles slammed the door shut and stood there, glowering at me and Tris.
Before I could say anything, Giles’s eyes widened in recognition. “Professor Lovelace? I don’t bloody believe it.”
“You must be young Blitherington,” Tris said, completely unruffled either by Giles’s tempestuous entrance or the hostility in his voice. Tris turned to me. “You might have mentioned, Simon, that the boy had grown into quite an attractive man.”
This wasn’t the first time I had had the urge to slap Tris’s face, but I wasn’t going to give in to my baser impulses in front of Giles.
“Thank you, Professor,” Giles drawled in his insufferably aristocratic tone, the one he assumed when he wanted to be annoying. “I must say that you look rather older than I remembered.”
“My, my,” Tris said, matching drawl for drawl. “The child has claws and isn’t afraid to use them. How frightfully amusing.”
Giles reddened, but before he could respond, I hastened to put an end to the bickering.
“As fascinating as this little pissing contest is,” I said, my tone deliberately offensive, “I actually find it rather distasteful. It’s beneath both of you. You will stop it at once, or I’ll ask you both to leave.”
Tris simply laughed at me, but Giles grew even angrier. I could feel the waves of emotion simply pouring out of him.
“I’ll save you the trouble, Simon,” Giles said. Before I could say another word to stop him, he opened the door and pulled it shut with a loud clatter before he stalked away.
I moved forward, but Tris laid a restraining hand on my arm. “Let him go, Simon.”
I tried to shrug off the hand, but Tris is a very strong vampire. Even as strong as I am, I couldn’t shake myself loose. Then I heard the rattle of Giles’s car as he clattered away from Laurel Cottage.
“Are you satisfied?” I demanded, as Tris finally let go of me.
“Not just yet,” Tris said, pulling me back into his arms.
After a moment, my lack of responsiveness communicated itself to Tris’s overheated libido. He released me.
“You can be excessively tedious sometimes, Simon,” Tris complained. He turned and went into what I called the living room, though locals might have referred to it as the parlor or sitting room.
Tris made himself comfortable in the largest chair in the room and reached into his inner jacket pocket for his pipe and tobacco pouch. As I stood there glaring at him, he calmly filled his pipe with tobacco, then proceeded to light it. Aromatic smoke began curling around his head, and he sat and smiled at me while he puffed away.
“You’re quite welcome to smoke in my house,” I said acidly. I sat down on the sofa across from him. Once again I marveled at his ability to produce smoke in such prodigious quantities. Vampires don’t breathe, naturally, but can appear to do so when necessary. Tris had been a dedicated smoker for decades before he became a vampire, and he had kept up the habit in death. As he no longer had to worry about lung cancer, he reasoned, he might as well indulge himself.
“I should think so,” Tris said, teeth clenched around the stem of his straight briar, “especially since this used to be my house, and I gave it to you.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I said. “I greatly appreciate your generosity, Tris, and I have come to love this place and my existence in this village. If you’re having second thoughts about your gift, you need to let me know.”
“No, Simon, you’re quite welcome to Laurel Cottage,” Tris said, waving a hand through the smoke swirling around him. “It’s not the cottage I want back.”
I almost laughed, but with one look at his face, I could tell he was completely serious. For the moment, I forgot about the problem of explaining all this to Giles and tried to focus instead on what Tris was telling me.
“After what? Nearly three years, you suddenly decide that you want me back?”
“I made a mistake, Simon,” Tris said, the very picture of earnestness. “The worst thing I ever did was to let you go.”
He seemed sincere, but I had learned not to trust my ability to read him. Vampires can read strong emotion from the living, but with other vampires we simply have to go on instinct and experience. Tris was an Olympic-standard liar when it suited him.
“Pardon my skepticism, Tris,” I said, “but this is uncomfortably like a scenario enacted about five years ago. Or have you forgotten?”
“You have every right to be mistrustful, dear boy,” he acknowledged, “but even someone as old as I am may learn from his mistakes, particularly deeply regretted ones.”
“One would hope,” I said, still not convinced.
“I certainly wouldn’t expect you to make a decision this very moment,” Tris said, waving his pipe about with one hand, “but I did think it fair to let you know that I intend to win you back.”
“Since when did I become such a prize?”
Tris smiled at that. “Don’t underestimate yourself, my dear Simon. You’re well worth having, and I intend to have you. Make no mistake about that.”
“Really, Tris,” I protested, “you sound like the hero from one of my historical romance novels.”
“If the role suits,” Tris said, half-bowing from his chair.
“Honestly,” I said. I couldn’t help laughing at that point, and Tris grinned at me.
Damn the man, but he was just as attractive to me as he had always been. The leonine mane of dark hair streaked with a bit of white at strategic points, the sapphire blue eyes with their roguish twinkle, the handsome weathered face—he could give Sean Connery a run for his money as the sexiest man alive. Or in Tris’s case, dead.
“I rather suspect,” Tris continued, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement, “that I have some competition that I had not considered before. I don’t believe you ever mentioned to me, Simon, that young Blitherington is so enamored of you. Had you a boy-toy all this time and not told me?”
His patronizing tone set my teeth on edge, and he well knew it. “Giles and I have a professional relationship, Tris,” I said.
“But young Blitherington is hoping for rather more than that, I would say,” Tris said, before I could continue my explanation.
“Yes,” I said, as evenly as I could. “Giles wants a more personal relationship, but I have thus far refused.”
“You’re attracted to him, of course,” Tris said, a bit too smugly. “And I must say he’s a handsome young devil. What’s the matter, Simon? Surely you haven’t turned celibate?”
“Promiscuity is your game, not mine,” I responded with as much acid as I could muster. Tris actually blinked.
“My dear Simon, I see I hurt you rather more than I had guessed,” he said, emitting another cloud of smoke, “and that I do deeply regret. The more distant one becomes from the finer human emotions, the more one tends to forget that others might not see things in quite the same way.”
“One doesn’t have to be human.,” I said, mocking his tone, “to find loyalty a desirable quality in one’s lover.”
“Touche, Simon, touche,” Tris said. “The question remains, however just how serious are you about young Blitherington?”
Trust Tris to find a sensitive spot and stick a pin in it. I debated briefly whether to lie to Tris, but he reads me far better than I can read him. Lying wouldn’t do much good. “I’m very, very fond of him,” I said.
Tris laughed. “Ah, Simon, I know you too well, dear boy. That means you’re in love with him, but you don’t want him to know it. Why? Are you afraid he’ll run away screaming if you tell him the truth about yourself?”
“If you must know, yes,” I said, wishing that I had never opened my door to him this morning. Then I sat, stunned, because for the first time, I had admitted, aloud no less, to my feelings for Giles. Bloody hell!
“One might as well know what the competition is,” Tris said, seemingly unruffled by my admission. He was taking it rather better than I was. “Don’t think, Simon, that I’m going to stand aside. I know you still have feelings for me. I’ll simply have to work harder to win you back.” That vulpine grin appeared once more. “Frankly, I don’t fancy young Blitherington’s chances of staying the course.”
If my blood could have run cold, it would have at that moment. Something about the way Tris spoke that last sentence chilled me to the core.
“You wouldn’t dare harm him, Tris,” I said, watching him closely.
“Now, Simon,” Tris said, “you don’t think I would actually resort to physical harm to remove a rival, do you?” He laughed, as if to make nonsense of the notion. “Especially not a human one?”
The trouble was, I did believe it. Tris was completely ruthless when it came to getting what he wanted.
Tris knocked out his pipe in an ashtray on the table beside his chair, stuck the pipe in his pocket, and then stood up. “Now, Simon,” he said, “is the guest room habitable? I won’t presume to share your bed just yet.”
“You’ll have to make the bed,” I said, glaring up at him. “I’m sure you know where to find the linens. Do make yourself at home, Tris.”
He smiled down at me. “Thank you, Simon, I shall. This will be much more comfortable than a hotel, and I can easily pop up to London or drive to Oxford or Cambridge when I need to do research. Being near you, however, is the real attraction.”
Whistling jauntily, he left the room and headed upstairs. He could bloody well bring in his own bags, though no doubt he expected me to retrieve them from his car and carry them up to him.
I sat there on the sofa and fumed. I should have told him to get the hell out of my house, that I wanted nothing more to do with him. So why hadn’t I? I asked myself.
Because, you idiot, I told myself sternly and truthfully, you’ve never gotten over the bastard. Not completely.
The memories came flooding back. Happy memories of times spent with Tris, when I was deeply in love and had no idea how treacherous he could be, how deceiving. I wallowed in the memories for a few moments, then took myself sternly to task. I dredged up the unpleasant ones, forcing myself to acknowledge why I had ended the relationship. The pain was still there, the pain of betrayal and deceit.
Had Tris truly changed? Was he serious about wanting me back? Or was it simply some game he was playing? Why would he want to do that to me?
Then there was Giles. What was I going to tell him? “Oh, by the way, Giles, my former lover is going to be staying with me for a few weeks. Hope you don’t mind.”
That would go over well. I groaned. Giles had a volatile temper, and I couldn’t predict how he would react to the news that Tris intended to stick around for a while. Not to mention the fact that Tris was going to be involved in some way with the medieval faire going on in Giles’s backyard, so to speak.
Would he cede the field to Tris and walk away? Or would he stay and fight?
And why did I suddenly feel like the exceptionally dim-witted and totally incapable heroine of the worst kind of romance novel?
Too many questions; not enough answers. The next few weeks couldn’t pass by quickly enough for me.