“Lafayette brought the guards with him, though he waited long enough to do it,” she said as Marcus teased her breast with his mouth.
Marcus’s head lifted an inch. “I don’t want to talk about the marquis.”
“That will make a nice change,” Veronique replied, arching her body toward him with a giggle.
“Vixen,” Marcus said.
Veronique nipped him on the shoulder with sharp teeth, drawing beads of blood. Marcus pinned her to the bed with his body, entering her in a single thrust that brought a cry of pleasure. Marcus moved within her, slowly, deliberately, incrementally.
Veronique bared her teeth, ready to bite again. Marcus pressed soft lips to her throat.
“You’re always telling me to be gentle,” Marcus said, teasing her flesh with his teeth and tongue. Veronique was far more experienced than Marcus, and happy to guide him as he explored her body and discovered the best ways to please her.
“Not today,” she said, pressing his mouth closer. “Today, I want to be overthrown. Like the Bastille. Like the king and his ministers. Like—”
Marcus stopped her from sharing any more revolutionary sentiments with a fierce kiss and applied himself to meeting her every desire.
* * *
—
IT WAS ALREADY DARK OUTSIDE when Marcus and Veronique emerged from their attic on the left bank of the Seine. Veronique’s red, curling hair tumbled freely about her shoulders, the patriotic ribbons on her white cap fluttering in the breeze. Her striped skirts were hitched up at the side, showing plain petticoats and a hint of ankle along with sturdy clogs that protected her feet from both the hard cobblestones and the deep Parisian muck. She was buttoning her blue coat under her breasts, which accentuated her curves in ways that had Marcus longing to return to the bedroom.
Veronique, however, was intent on getting to work. She owned a tavern, one that Marcus still frequented along with his friend and fellow physician Jean-Paul Marat. There, Marcus and Marat talked about politics and philosophy while Veronique served up wine, beer, and ale to the students of the nearby university. She had been doing so for centuries.
Veronique was that rarest of all creatures: a family-less vampire. Her maker had been a formidable woman named Ombeline who had struck out on her own when the family she was serving didn’t return from their crusade to the Holy Land. Ombeline made Veronique a vampire a century later during the chaos of the first plague epidemic in 1348, plucking her out of an infected hostelry near the Sacré Coeur. Paris’s vampire clans had seen the opportunity the disease presented to dramatically increase their numbers; humans desperate to survive were quick to take any hope of survival that was offered.
Ombeline had met her end in August 1572 when she was killed by a rampaging Catholic mob who mistook her for a Protestant during the melee that erupted when Paris celebrated the marriage of Princess Margaret to Henry of Navarre. Veronique was not, as a result, a great believer in religion. It was something she and Marat had in common.
Though many of the city’s vampire clans had attempted to fold Veronique into their ranks—first by persuasion, then by coercion—she had resisted all efforts at subjugation. Veronique was content with her tavern, her attic apartments high above the street, her loyal clientele, and her enjoyment of life itself, which, even after more than four centuries, still seemed precious and miraculous to her.
“Let’s stay in tonight,” Marcus said, catching her hand in his and pulling her back toward the door.
“Insatiable fledgling.” Veronique kissed him deeply. “I must make sure that all is well at work. I am not a de Clermont, and cannot stay abed all day.”
Marcus could not think of a single member of his family that did so, but had learned to steer conversation away from the sore subject of aristocratic privilege.
Sadly, it was the only topic of conversation in Paris, so it dogged them in overheard snatches all the way to the rue des Cordeliers, where the slump of Veronique’s tavern awaited them, its roofline bent with age and the windows listing this way and that. Light streamed out onto the street in sharp angles, refracted by the panes of glass as though they were involved in one of Dr. Franklin’s optical experiments. An ancient metal sign creaked on its pole overhead. The cutout shape of a beehive gave the place its name, La Ruche.
Inside, the conversation was deafening. Veronique’s arrival was greeted with cheers. These turned into catcalls when Marcus appeared behind her.
“Late to work, citizen?” her patrons teased. “Up at the crowing of the cock, Veronique?”