Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(77)

“No doubt whatever it is involves the gunpowder he asked for yesterday,” Matthew said grimly.

Having displayed the clock with suitable ceremony, Philippe began a tribute to friends past and present and family new and old, as befitted a festival honoring the ancient god of time. He named every creature the community had lost over the past year, including (when prompted by the Lord of Misrule) Thomas’s kitten, Prunelle, who had died tragically by misadventure. The hand continued to inch toward twelve.

At midnight precisely, the ship detonated with a deafening explosion. The clock shuddered to a stop in its splintered wooden case.

“Skata.” Philippe looked sadly at his ruined clock.

“Monsieur Finé, God rest his soul, would not be pleased with your improvements to his design.” Matthew waved the smoke from his eyes as he bent to take a closer look. “Every year Philippe tries something new: jets of water, chiming bells, a mechanical owl to hoot the hours. He’s been tinkering with it ever since King Fran?ois lost it to him in a card game.”

“The cannon were supposed to fire little sparks and give a puff of smoke. It would have amused the children,” said Philippe indignantly. “Something was amiss with your gunpowder, Matthaios.”

Matthew laughed. “Evidently not, judging by the wreckage.”

“C’est dommage,” Thomas said with a sympathetic shake of the head. He was crouched next to Philippe, his crown askew and a look of adult concern on his face.

“Pas de problème. Next year we will do better,” Philippe assured Thomas breezily.

Shortly thereafter we left the people of Saint-Lucien to their gambling and revelry. Upstairs, I lingered by the fireside until Matthew doused the candles and got into bed. When I joined him, I hitched up my night rail and straddled his hips.

“What are you doing?” Matthew was surprised to find himself flat on his back in his own bed, his wife looking down at him.

“Misrule wasn’t just for men,” I said, running my nails down his chest. “I read an article about it in graduate school, called ‘Women on Top.’”

“Accustomed as you are to being in charge, I cannot imagine you learned much from it, mon coeur.” Matthew’s eyes smoldered as I shifted my weight to trap him more securely between my thighs.

“Flatterer.” My fingertips traveled from his trim hips up and over the ridges in his abdomen and across the muscles in his shoulders. I leaned over him and pinned his arms to the bed, giving him an excellent view of my body through the night rail’s open neckline. He groaned.

“Welcome to the world turned upside down.” I released him long enough to remove my night rail, then grasped his hands and lowered myself onto his chest so that the tips of my bare breasts brushed his skin.

“Christ. You’re going to kill me.”

“Don’t you dare die now, vampire,” I said, guiding him inside me, rocking gently, holding out the promise of more. Matthew reacted with a low moan. “You like that,” I said softly.

He urged me toward a harder, faster rhythm. But I kept my movements slow and steady, reveling in the way our bodies fit. Matthew was a cool presence at my core, a delicious source of friction that heated my blood. I was staring deep into his eyes when he climaxed, and the raw vulnerability there sent me hurtling after him. I collapsed onto his torso, and when I moved to climb off, his arms tightened around me.

“Stay there,” he whispered.

I did stay, until Matthew woke me hours later. He made love to me again in the quiet before the dawn and held me as I underwent the metamorphosis from fire to water to air and returned once more to dreams.

Friday marked the shortest day of the year and the celebration of Yule. The village was still recovering from Saturnalia and had Christmas yet before them, but Philippe was undeterred.

“Chef butchered a hog,” he said. “How could I disappoint him?” During a break in the weather, Matthew went to the village to help repair a roof that had collapsed under the weight of the latest snowfall. I left him there, throwing hammers down a ridgepole to another carpenter and delighted at the prospect of a morning of grueling physical labor in freezing temperatures.

I closeted myself in the library with a few of the family’s finer alchemical books and some blank sheets of paper. One was partially covered with doodles and diagrams that would have made sense to no one but me. With all that was happening in the chateau, I’d abandoned my attempts to make spirit of wine. Thomas and étienne wanted to be running around with their friends and sticking their fingers into Chef’s latest cake batter, not helping me with a science experiment.

“Diana.” Philippe was moving at great speed and was halfway into the room before he noticed me. “I thought you were with Matthew.”

“I couldn’t bear to see him up there,” I confessed. He nodded in understanding.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking over my shoulder.

“Trying to figure out what Matthew and I have to do with alchemy.” My brain felt fuzzy with disuse and lack of sleep.

Philippe dropped a handful of small paper triangles, scrolls, and squares onto the table and pulled up a chair. He pointed to one of my sketches. “This is Matthew’s seal.”

“It is. It’s also the symbols for silver and gold, the moon and the sun.” The hall had been decorated with spangled versions of these heavenly bodies for Saturnalia. “I’ve been thinking about it since Monday night. I understand why a witch might be symbolized by the crescent moon and silver—they’re both linked to the goddess. But why would anyone use a sun or gold to denote a vampire?” It went against every bit of popular lore.