Chapter Seven

 

She’d never seen anyone like the man standing in her doorway. He looked like a taller version of Rumplestiltskin in slightly more modern dress—a plain cotton open-necked shirt, worn gray trousers, cheap tennis shoes, and an odd hat.

“Can I help you?”

The man bowed. Somehow his little peaked cap stayed on. “Hello,” he said in an accent all too familiar to Becky at this point. “I am here to see my master, Sebastian—Master!”

He pushed past Becky, who turned to see him kneeling in front of Sebastian, his hat clutched in one hand on the floor. “Master,” the man said. “I have been looking for you everywhere. Why did you leave the hotel? You have not come to your office. I waited… I waited night and day for you to return. I thought something had happened to you.” He reached out and grabbed Sebastian’s leg. “Oh, Master, please, come back to the hotel with me. It is not safe for you to wander…”

“Silence, Jonas,” Sebastian said. “You may rise.”

Jonas did so, picking his little hat up and twisting it. Becky closed the door and walked over to the two men. “Can I get you a drink, Mr.—? “

“It is just Jonas,” Sebastian said. “Get him a vodka, Becky.” His tone was very different from his normal casual way of speaking. If Becky hadn’t already seen the man prostrate on the floor, she would have known he was someone Sebastian considered an inferior.

The two men followed her into the living room. Becky kept the kitchen door open while she grabbed three glasses and the vodka bottle. She didn’t want to miss this—whatever it was.

“You cannot stay here, Master,” Jonas said as she walked back into the room and started pouring. “You cannot stay with this”—he glanced at Becky—”woman.”

Sebastian accepted the glass Becky gave him, nodding his thanks. “Jonas, this is Ms. Fowler,” he said. “You will greet her properly.”

Jonas stared at Sebastian for a long moment before relenting. “Hello, Ms. Fowler,” he said. He really was astonishingly ugly. “It is nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she said, handing him his vodka. His fingers carefully avoided hers as he took it.

“Thank you.” He turned back to Sebastian. “Master, she is not—”

“She is teaching me about modern America,” Sebastian said. “Something I believe you were supposed to do, Jonas, but failed at. Am I correct?”

“No!” Jonas’s eyes widened. “No, Master, that is not true. Did I not obtain the credit cards of the corporation for you? And the hotel room? I bought you a suit, I showed you how to work the telephone and the television! How can you say I did not teach you? I am your servant. I live to serve you! You must come home with me.”

“No.”

Becky sat down while Jonas started to sputter indignantly. This was one of the most fascinating conversations she’d heard in a long time. So that was how Sebastian knew some of the more basic aspects of modern life.

It was also most interesting watching him deal with Jonas. She hadn’t seen Sebastian quite like this before. He was somehow haughty and kind at the same time.

“Master, I do not understand!” Jonas’s anguish was so plain it almost hurt to see. “Why would you forsake me? Why am I no longer good enough, that you would be with this woman, this junetya? She is clearly not—”

“Valre duntori, Jonas,” Sebastian said sternly. “Din jenkra doontaya.”

“Regn plas! Dinta shkiama bontri, voltuntreya, guntolya!”

Damn. She didn’t speak Robitsvian, if that’s what they were speaking. She sure wished she did. The argument looked really interesting. Both men waved their arms a lot and Jonas looked ready to cry.

Finally Sebastian glanced over at her. “I am sorry, Becky,” he said. “Jonas does not speak English as well as I do. It is hard for him.”

“Hey, no problem,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Is not okay,” Jonas said. He was no longer ready to cry. He was crying. Becky’s heart went out to him as a single fat tear rolled down his wrinkled cheek. “My Master has shamed me. He says I am no good to him, that I cannot help him anymore.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t mean it that way, Jonas.”

“He does, he does,” the old man sobbed. “I will…I will kill myself!”

Before Becky could react, he ran past Sebastian to the wide windows along the living room wall. “I will throw myself out the window and spatter on the street like a virgin!”

“Huh?” The statement was so bizarre that Becky, who had risen from the couch and started to lunge for Jonas, stopped. “Like a what?”

Sebastian was already at the window, holding Jonas in his powerful arms, pulling him away from the window to set him none too gently on the couch. “Jonas,” he said. “Gonteya. You will always be needed. But right now I need to learn what Ms. Fowler teaches me if I am to find a mate.”

“Why can I not stay here too?” Jonas glanced at Becky, his eyes shining with tears. “Please, let me stay here with him! All my life I watched over him. Before me, my father watched him. He told me stories, told me that when my Master woke up it was my duty to be always at his side and attend to his every need. It is my destiny.” He started to sob. “Please do not take it away from me!”

This was awkward. Becky felt sorry for the little man, but she wasn’t about to give him the spare room. Imagine having to stare at that face every day. It would be like having Ernest Borgnine for a roommate.

“Jonas, you cannot stay here,” Sebastian said. “You must stay at the hotel and answer my calls, yes? And let me know if there is anything that needs my attention.”

Jonas sniffled. “My duty is to be always at your side.”

“No, Jonas. Your duty is to serve me in whatever way I need. I need you to do this for me. Take care of the business, the way you have for years, and tell me if I am needed. That is what I ask you to do.” He sat down next to the old man. “I cannot trust anyone else enough to ask them to perform these duties.”

Jonas brightened. “No one?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Only you. Who else takes such good care of me?”

“Of course, it is only me,” Jonas said. “As it has always been. I spend every minute of my life after my father died with you, I watch you sleep, I handle the business, I change your clothes and the sheets and I—”

“Thank you, Jonas.” Sebastian stood up, glancing back at Becky, who watched, speechless. “Now you go back to the hotel and have some dinner or something. Or go to a movie. Yes, Becky? A movie?”

“Of course, what a great idea,” Becky said quickly. “There’s a theater right by the hotel. You can get a cab there if you want.”

“I can drive,” Jonas said. “I have never been to movie.”

“Then this is the perfect time to start.” Sebastian urged Jonas toward the door. “Go to the movie. Have a drink. Keep me informed of what is happening.”

“Of course,” Jonas said. “Of course, Master, I will do what you ask, of course. You must never worry about anything when Jonas is here. Truly, I will tell you all you need to know—”

“Excellent.” Sebastian opened the door and practically pushed the old man out, then closed the door on his speech.

Becky and Sebastian looked at each other for a long moment before Becky burst out laughing.

“Oh my God,” she gasped. “What was that?”

“That was Jonas.” His tone and the stony expression on his face set her off again.

“He-he—was he for real? Oh my God! And he was going to—” she gasped. “He was going to spatter on the street like a virgin? Oh geez, Sebastian, I get that English isn’t his first language, but I haven’t heard anything so funny in ages, and—”

She finally realized Sebastian wasn’t laughing.

“Yes,” he said. “How funny it is when people don’t act the way you think they should, Becky. How funny is the concept that some people find meaning in serving their superiors. I am very amused.”

That wasn’t what she expected at all. What was he talking about? Why was he mad at her?

“Hey,” she said. “I wasn’t being mean. I just thought he was sort of a funny little man, that’s all, and…”

“That funny little man,” he said, “cared for me for forty years. My mother and father both died a few years before I went to sleep, and after their deaths, Jonas’s father Yvan served me until he died and Jonas took over. From his childhood, he was taught that nothing in his life was as important as watching over me and helping me when I rose.”

“I—”

“Jonas spends hours every day reading newspapers and watching television, from all over the world. He learned to use the computer and internet, to run my family’s companies, although Jonas would rather have been a musician. He did this because nothing matters to him but my happiness and success.” Sebastian’s tone was strangely dispassionate, a recital of facts as dry as if they meant nothing to him at all.

“I’m sorry,” Becky started. Sebastian was being kind of unfair. How was she supposed to know all of this? Some crazy Rasputin character showed up at her door and started ranting about virgins and she was supposed to automatically know he’d spent his whole life devoting himself to a sleeping supernatural being?

If only her righteous anger would drive away the trickle of shame that even now crawled down her spine.

She’d never seen Sebastian this cold. He didn’t look angry so much as disappointed. It made her itch. Just like when she was little and her mother would watch her trying on clothes in the “Large & Lovely” section of Macy’s, shaking her head. “Oh Becky,” she would say. “If only you wouldn’t eat so much and cared about your appearance, you could be so pretty. Don’t you care how others see you?” She’d follow it up with the words Becky still heard sometimes in her sleep. “What’s inside a person is like a present. Nobody wants to open a present wrapped in dirty newspaper, do they?”

Damn Sebastian for making her feel the way her mother had. She’d worked so hard, for so long, to be the kind of present people wanted to unwrap, the kind of person people did love. “I said I was sorry,” she snapped. “What more do you want from me?”

She expected him to fight, to yell at her, but he didn’t. Instead he just looked sad. “If you do not know, Becky,” he said, and she knew from the way he said her name that he was not going to be rushing her off to the bedroom for validation—for sex, she meant, for sex—anytime in the next couple of hours. “If you do not know, I cannot explain it to you.”

* * * * *

“What are you doing?”

Sebastian looked surprised. “We are here to exercise, are we not? I am exercising. Just as you showed me.”

“God, Sebastian, you…you can’t do that.” She whispered the last words glancing around the gym to make sure nobody saw the crazy paranormal creature she’d managed to hook up with getting ready to bench press six hundred pounds.

“It’s not too heavy,” he said. He looked so proud of himself Becky had to fight the urge to let him go ahead and do it. Especially since she’d been trying to be a little nicer to him after Jonas’ visit the day before.

She couldn’t, though. There were too many people around, all pretending nonchalance in the cool stainless-steel aquarium of the gym. She was trying to pass him off as a European prince, not some kind of steroid-munching sideshow attraction. She had no idea if sideshow strong men actually munched steroids, but she damn well knew what everyone else in the gym would think if they saw Sebastian—already drawing his share of attention—lift that kind of weight.

“I know it isn’t too heavy for you,” she said. “But it’s way too heavy for anyone else here. They’ll suspect something is wrong if you lift that.”

“But I do not—oh,” he said. “They do not know about rotagosja, yes. I had forgotten.”

“Right,” she said, wishing he would stop talking about rotagosja like it was some big deal. So he was strong. So he was rich and could trace his family back for centuries. She knew lots of strong and rich men, and had even met an earl once. He was still just a man, and as such needed to be told what to do. “So, you take off at least three hundred pounds and I’m going to go right over there and use the treadmill.”

“Why do we not go for a regular walk?” he asked, removing weights. Becky flinched as he lifted them easily and set them down with such casual grace they might as well have been paperback books. “Why must you walk on a moving rubber band, like a mouse?”

“Because it’s dangerous to walk around outside,” she said. “Because it isn’t air conditioned outside.”

“I will protect you,” he said. “And it is not too hot.”

“Look, I just don’t want to, okay? I like it here.” Becky did not want to go for a walk with Sebastian, for reasons she would not explain to him, but were perfectly clear to herself. A moonlight walk through the city or the park would be romantic. They would have nothing to do but talk and get to know each other better, and if they were the victims of an attempted mugging and Sebastian protected her the way she knew he would, the police might have to get involved, which was not an appealing prospect.

Mostly, though, she just didn’t want to spend that kind of time with him, alone under the smudgy gray darkness of the city sky. Look what had happened last time, on the balcony. She didn’t want to have those kinds of thoughts again.

It was bad enough that she could not seem to keep her hands off him or to tell him to keep his hands off her. Every time he touched her, every time he even smiled at her, she wanted him. That could not be. When she was in danger of seeing him as more important than anything else, when she actually found herself wondering what it might be like to live in Robitsvia…how could she contemplate giving up control like that, so quickly and easily?

She didn’t want to stop having sex with him, either. It was a very fine line, but Becky was convinced she was walking it well as long as she never let Sebastian or herself do anything overtly romantic.

“Of course you like it here,” he grumbled, lying down on the bench. “Is sterile and cold and hard.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Go run on your treadmill. I’ll make it look like it’s difficult for me to lift this weight.”

She didn’t want to go. She wanted to fight, to find out what he was implying about her, but he was right. This wasn’t the place for that.

“Fine,” she said. “And good use of contractions.”

“I live to please you,” he murmured, before lifting the bar above him and giving a load groan. “So heavy!”

She blushed and instinctively glanced around. “Cut it out. You don’t have to put on a show.”

He didn’t answer, but continued lifting, although with quieter groans this time. Becky rolled her eyes and walked over to the treadmill. Maybe she could work off some of the tension between them that way and be ready when it was time for his dinner lesson and reading quiz later.

Maybe he would help her work off the tension in a different way after that. She shivered at the prospect, and climbed onto the treadmill, convinced that there was no reason to change their little arrangement. Sebastian understood her rules, didn’t he?

* * * * *

“It is boring,” Sebastian moaned, dropping his head to the table and covering it with his arms. The bottles on the table clinked with the weight of his skull slamming into it. Becky winced.

“It’s not boring. Honestly, you’re just like a child. This is important.”

“It is beer!” he said, lifting his head. “It’s just beer. I drink it, I am done. Wine is what we think about and discuss. Beer is what we drink.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “Look at all these bottles. They’re all designer beers and you have to have an opinion on them. People will look at the bottle in your hand and decide what kind of man you are from it.”

He lifted his hand and folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on top of them. “I know what kind of man I am, and if someone wants to make an assumption based on the bottle in my hand, they are not worth my time.”

“Wrong. Try that one.” She handed him a bottle of Green Pete’s new Twisted Rattlesnake Venomous Pale Ale with a Hint of Honey.

“I do not want to try. Please, can’t you just tell me which one to drink? I promise I will drink it for always.”

“No. You need to pick one for yourself. You’ll be drinking it a lot, so it better be one you like.”

“Why must I drink it a—”

“Because you can’t drink wine in front of other men, that’s why, unless it’s a dinner party, and because if you stick to hard liquor at every party, you’ll be drunk in an hour. So beer it is.”

“I do not get drunk easily.”

“Oh sure, that’s what all men say, and after an hour you’re playing air guitar and throwing up over the balcony.”

He straightened up and shook his head. “Rebecca, have you learned nothing about me? I am not human. I do not die easily. I do not get hurt easily. I am much stronger than human men, I do not need much sleep and I do not get drunk without drinking ten times what human men drink.”

Becky was silent for a minute while she considered this. She felt him watching her, expecting…what? “Well, that’s fine, then,” she said. “You can drink Scotch or vodka—ooh, vodka would be better, with that accent—and tell everyone you’ve been drinking since childhood because Europeans, no, because your people are so much more sophisticated than Americans when it comes to drinking.”

“That is not true,” he said. “And even if it was, why would I insult Americans at a party full of them?”

“You’re not insulting them,” she said impatiently. “At least, you’re not insulting the kind of people who would be at one of these parties. They like to hear stuff like that, I promise.”

He shook his head. “That makes no sense to me,” he said. “Why is it now fashionable to be rude?”

“It would take too long to explain,” she said, standing up. “Help me with these bottles.”

Together they took the beer bottles into the kitchen, where Becky started rinsing them for recycling while Sebastian opened the door to the fridge.

“No food,” she warned. “We’re having Thai tonight, and I want you to eat it.”

“Why can we not go to—”

“No more fast food.”

“But—”

“No.”

She didn’t need to turn around to see his disappointment. She could feel it in the air. “What would you like to watch tonight?” she asked, hoping to get his mind off greasy burgers wrapped in paper and extra-salty fries. “Something funny or serious?” She actually quite enjoyed watching movies with him. They would watch and discuss. His views on the films were invariably amusing but interesting and smart too.

“I do not care,” he grumbled. Becky smiled to herself. Wait for it…

“Perhaps we could watch the barbarian movie again?”

She stifled a laugh. “No, we can’t watch Conan again. We need to watch more modern movies, okay? Something people will talk about at a party. I have a few TV shows on DVD. Why don’t we start on those?”

“Is the Lee man in any of them?”

“No, Sebastian, Bruce Lee is dead, remember? He isn’t making any TV shows and I am not sitting through Enter the Dragon again. It’s bad enough Will brought all those movies over for you to watch without making me sit through them too.”

“Will,” Sebastian said, as Becky finished rinsing the bottles and put them in the bin. He was leaning against the fridge, his arms crossed. He probably wasn’t aware of it, but the pose emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the long, lean lines of his body. Especially when his gray t-shirt was slightly lifted, as it was now, showing off a strip of flat, muscular stomach.

She swallowed. “What about Will?”

“He is not so bad as I thought.”

“No, he’s all right once you get to know him,” Becky said, pleased that the two men seemed to have settled their differences—or at least, seemed to have set them aside for the time being. Will had been over two days before, bringing stacks of movies and sports magazines, which Becky knew were necessary but was no less irritated by. She’d had enough of ESPN while married. This was her home. She’d hoped she never had to hear that stupid Monday Night Football song again. “Just a little arrogant, you know. He grew up wealthy, so it’s only to be expected.”

“I grew up wealthy,” Sebastian said. “I am not arrogant.”

“Oh really? ‘Only peasants eat uncooked food. I am stronger and better than the human man. I do not need cologne, because I do not smell bad.’ Any of that ring a bell?”

He shrugged, lifting the shirt even further. Becky tried not to look but couldn’t help herself. “It’s not being arrogant if it is true,” he said.

“Yes, it is.” She wanted to say more but couldn’t, because he left the fridge and sauntered over to her in such a way that let her know he’d seen her gaze fixed on his stomach.

“Am I arrogant for being proud of my abilities, of my family and bloodline?” He reached for her, stroking her shoulders, sending heat radiating out from them through the rest of her body. “Is it arrogant to want to share such things with you? Look.”

He took off his shirt, exposing his soft, smooth flesh to her. It was still tanned from the lotions, and he did indeed smell good. Becky’s fingers itched to touch him.

He gave her the chance, picking up her limp hand and bringing it to his chest. His skin was warm under her fingertips and he grazed them lightly over his tattoo. “You have never asked what it is,” he said. “What it means. Shall I tell you?”

She nodded.

“It is an important secret, the meaning. You may have to pay a penalty if you ever tell anyone. Are you willing to pay the price?”