“Why isn’t your passport burgundy?” I asked, taking them out of the sealed plastic bag （another Em touch, I thought）。
“Because it’s a diplomatic passport.” He steered out onto the road and switched on the headlights. “There should be one for you.”
My French diplomatic passport, inscribed with the name Diana de Clermont and noting my marital status relative to Matthew, was folded inside the ordinary U.S. version. How Marcus had managed to duplicate my passport photograph without damaging the original was anyone’s guess.
“Are you a spy now, too?” I asked faintly.
“No. It’s like the helicopters,” he replied with a smile, “just another perk associated with being a de Clermont.”
I left Syracuse as Diana Bishop and entered Europe the next day as Diana de Clermont. Matthew’s house in Amsterdam turned out to be a seventeenth-century mansion on the most beautiful stretch of the Herengracht. He had, Matthew explained, bought it right after he left Scotland in 1605.
We lingered there only long enough to shower and change clothes. I kept on the same leggings that I’d worn since Madison, and swapped out my shirt for one of Matthew’s. He donned his habitual gray and black cashmere and wool. It was odd not to see his legs. I’d grown accustomed to their being on display.
“It seems a fair trade,” Matthew commented. “I haven’t seen your legs for months, except in the privacy of our bedchamber.”
Matthew nearly had a heart attack when he discovered that his beloved Range Rover was not waiting for him in the underground garage. Instead we found a blue sports car with a soft top.
“I’m going to kill him,” Matthew said when he saw the low-slung vehicle. He used his house key to unlock a metal box bolted to the wall. Inside were another key and a note: “Welcome home. No one will expect you to be driving this. It’s safe. And fast. Hi, Diana. M.”
“What is it?” I said, looking at the airplane-style dials set into a flashy chrome dashboard.
“A Spyker Spyder. Marcus collects cars named after arachnids.” Matthew activated the car doors, and they scissored up like the wings on a jet fighter. He swore. “It’s the most conspicuous car imaginable.”
We only made it as far as Belgium before Matthew pulled in to a car dealership, handed over the keys to Marcus’s car, and pulled off the lot in something bigger and far less fun to drive. Safe in its heavy, boxy confines, we entered into France and some hours later began our slow ascent through the mountains of the Auvergne to Sept-Tours.
Glimpses of the fortress flickered between the trees—the pinkish gray stone, a dark tower window. I couldn’t help drawing comparisons between the castle and its adjacent town now and how it had looked when last I saw it in 1590. This time no smoke hung over Saint-Lucien in a gray pall. A sound of distant bells made me turn my head, thinking to spot the descendants of the goats I had known coming home for their evening meal. Pierre wouldn’t rush out with torches to meet us, though. Chef wasn’t in the kitchen decapitating pheasants with a cleaver as the freshly killed game was efficiently prepared to feed both warmbloods and vampires.
And there would be no Philippe, and therefore no shouts of laughter, shrewd observations on human frailty lifted from Euripides, or acute insights into the problems that would face us now that we had returned to the present. How long would it take to stop bracing myself for the rush of motion and bellow of sound that heralded Philippe’s arrival in a room? My heart hurt at the thought of my father-in-law. This harshly lit, fast-paced modern world had no place for heroes such as he.
“You’re thinking of my father,” Matthew murmured. Our silent rituals of a vampire’s blood-taking and a witch’s kiss had strengthened our ability to gauge each other’s thoughts.
“So are you,” I observed. He had been since we’d crossed over the border into France.
“The chateau has felt empty to me since the day he died. It has provided refuge, but little comfort.” Matthew’s eyes lifted to the castle, then settled back on the road before us. The air was heavy with responsibility and a son’s need to live up to his father’s legacy.
“Maybe it will be different this time. Sarah and Em are there. Marcus, too. Not to mention Sophie and Nathaniel. And Philippe is still here, if only we can learn to focus on his presence rather than his absence.” He would be in the shadows of every room, every stone in the walls. I studied my husband’s beautifully austere face, understanding better how experience and pain had shaped it. One hand curved around my belly, while the other sought him out to offer the comfort he so desperately needed.