A Discovery of Witches(94)
Something was said on the other end, and the line went dead. Matthew smiled tightly and pulled back onto the road.
“She’s expecting us?” I asked, just managing to keep the tremor out of my voice.
“She is.”
“And this is all right with her?” I didn’t ask the real question—Are you sure it’s okay that you’re bringing a witch home?—but didn’t need to.
Matthew’s eyes remained fixed on the road. “Ysabeau doesn’t like surprises as much as I do,” he said lightly, turning on to something that looked like a goat track.
We drove between rows of chestnut trees, climbing until we reached Sept-Tours. Matthew steered the car between two of the seven towers and through to a paved courtyard in front of the entrance to the central structure. Parterres and gardens peeked out to the right and left, before the forest took over. The vampire parked the car.
“Ready?” he asked with a bright smile.
“As I’ll ever be,” I replied warily.
Matthew opened my car door and helped me down. Pulling at my black jacket, I looked up at the chateau’s imposing stone fa?ade. The forbidding lines of the castle were nothing compared to what awaited me inside. The door swung open.
“Courage,” Matthew said, kissing me gently on the cheek.
Chapter 18
Ysabeau stood in the doorway of her enormous chateau, regal and icy, and glared at her vampire son as we climbed the stone stairs.
Matthew stooped a full foot to kiss her softly on both cheeks. “Shall we come inside, or do you wish to continue our greetings out here?”
His mother stepped back to let us pass. I felt her furious gaze and smelled something reminiscent of sarsaparilla soda and caramel. We walked through a short, dark hallway, lined in a none-too-welcoming fashion with pikes that pointed directly at the visitor’s head, and into a room with high ceilings and wall paintings that had clearly been done by some imaginative nineteenth-century artist to reflect a medieval past that never was. Lions, fleurs-de-lis, a snake with his tail in his mouth, and scallop shells were painted on white walls. At one end a circular set of stairs climbed to the top of one of the towers.
Indoors I faced the full force of Ysabeau’s stare. Matthew’s mother personified the terrifying elegance that seemed bred to the bone in French-women. Like her son—who disconcertingly appeared to be slightly older than she was—she was dressed in a monochromatic palette that minimized her uncanny paleness. Ysabeau’s preferred colors ranged from cream to soft brown. Every inch of her ensemble was expensive and simple, from the tips of her soft, buff-colored leather shoes to the topazes that fluttered from her ears. Slivers of startling, cold emerald surrounded dark pupils, and the high slashes of her cheekbones kept her perfect features and dazzling white skin from sliding into mere prettiness. Her hair had the color and texture of honey, a golden pour of silk caught at the base of her skull in a heavy, low knot.
“You might have shown some consideration, Matthew.” Her accent softened his name, making it sound ancient. Like all vampires she had a seductive and melodic voice. In Ysabeau’s case it sounded of distant bells, pure and deep.
“Afraid of the gossip, Maman? I thought you prided yourself on being a radical.” Matthew sounded both indulgent and impatient. He tossed the keys onto a nearby table. They slid across the perfect finish and landed with a clatter at the base of a Chinese porcelain bowl.
“I have never been a radical!” Ysabeau was horrified. “Change is very much overrated.”
She turned and surveyed me from head to toe. Her perfectly formed mouth tightened.
She did not like what she saw—and it was no wonder. I tried to see myself through her eyes—the sandy hair that was neither thick nor well behaved, the dusting of freckles from being outdoors too much, the nose that was too long for the rest of my face. My eyes were my best feature, but they were unlikely to make up for my fashion sense. Next to her elegance and Matthew’s perpetually unruffled self, I felt—and looked—like a gauche country mouse. I pulled at the hem of my jacket with my free hand, glad to see that there was no sign of magic at the fingertips, and hoped that there was also no sign of that phantom “shimmering” that Matthew had mentioned.
“Maman, this is Diana Bishop. Diana, my mother, Ysabeau de Clermont.” The syllables rolled off his tongue.
Ysabeau’s nostrils flared delicately. “I do not like the way witches smell.” Her English was flawless, her glittering eyes fixed on mine. “She is sweet and repulsively green, like spring.”
Matthew launched into a volley of something unintelligible that sounded like a cross between French, Spanish, and Latin. He kept his voice low, but there was no disguising the anger in it.
“?a suffit,” Ysabeau retorted in recognizable French, drawing her hand across her throat. I swallowed hard and reflexively reached for the collar of my jacket.
“Diana.” Ysabeau said it with a long e rather than an i and an emphasis on the first rather than the second syllable. She extended one white, cold hand, and I took her fingers lightly in mine. Matthew grabbed my left hand in his, and for a moment we made an odd chain of vampires and a witch. “Encantada.”
“She’s pleased to meet you,” Matthew said, translating for me and shooting a warning glance at his mother.
“Yes, yes,” Ysabeau said impatiently, turning back to her son. “Of course she speaks only English and new French. Modern warmbloods are so poorly educated.”