Night’s Edge by Barbara Hambly Page B

dancers. She left the bedroom and went out into the living room/kitchen/office to wait for Sean. It was small and neat, too, and had a couple of narrow windows through which she could see people’s feet go by. For the first time, she realized Sean had a basement apartment.
    Shortly after, he came in with two bags full of food. “How much of this can you eat?” he asked. “I find I have forgotten.” He’d gotten Chinese, which she loved, and he’d bought enough for four. Luckily, there were forks and napkins in the bags, too, since Sean didn’t have such things.
    “Sean,” she said, because she enjoyed saying his name. “Sit down while I eat, please, and tell me about your life.” She knew how his face looked when he came,but she didn’t know anything about his childhood. In her mind, this was way off balance.
    “While I was in Pineville,” he said, “I looked in the windows of your parents’ home. I was curious, that’s all. In the living room, your father was staring into a huge glass case that takes up a whole wall.”
    “All my stuff,” she said softly.
    “The crowns, the trophies, the ribbons.”
    “Oh, my gosh, they still have all that out? That’s just…sad. Did he have a drink in his hand?”
    Sean nodded.
    “Why did you tell me this when I asked to know more about you?”
    “You’re American royalty,” he said, supplying the link.
    She laughed out loud, but not as if he were really amusing.
    “You are,” he said steadily. “And I know you’ve heard Sylvia say I was an aristocrat. Well, that’s her joke. My origins are far more humble.”
    “I noticed you could make a bed like a whiz,” she said.
    “I can do anything in the way of taking care of a human being,” he said. He looked calm, but she could tell he wasn’t—something about the way his hands were positioned on the edge of the table. “I was a valet for most of my human life.”

CHAPTER NINE
    “Y OU WERE A GENTLEMAN’S gentleman?” Her face lit up with interest.
    He seemed taken aback by her reaction. “Yes, my family was poor. My father died when I was eleven, so I couldn’t take over his smithy. My mother was at her wits’ end. There were five of us, and she had to sell the business, move to a smaller cottage, and my oldest sister—she was fifteen—had to marry. I had to find work.”
    “You poor thing,” she said. “To have to leave school so early.”
    He smiled briefly. “There wasn’t a school for the likes of us,” he said. “I could read and write, because our priest taught me. My sisters couldn’t, because no one imagined they’d need to.” He frowned at her. “You should be eating now. I didn’t get you food so you could let it grow cold.”
    She turned her face down to hide her smile and picked up her fork.
    “I got a job with a gentleman who was passing through our village. His boy died of a fever while he was staying at the inn, and he hired me right away. I helped out his valet, Strothers. I went with them when they returned to England. The man’s name was Sir Tobias Lovell, and he was a strange gentleman. Very strange, I thought.”
    “He turned out to be a vampire, I guess.”
    “Yes. Yes, he was. His habits seemed very peculiar, but then, you didn’t question people above you in social station, especially since anyone could see he was a generous man who treated people well. He traveled a great deal, too, so no one could wonder about him for too long. Every now and then, he’d go to his country house for a while. That was wonderful, because travel was so difficult then, so uncomfortable.”
    “But how did you come to be his valet? What happened to Strothers?”
    “Strothers had already grown old in his service, and by the time I was eighteen, Strothers had arthritis so badly that walking was painful. Out of mercy, Sir Tobias gave him a cottage to live in, and a pension. He promoted me. I took care of his clothes, his wigs, his wants and needs. I shaved him. I changed his linen,