“Why do you stay with Freyja?” Phoebe wondered aloud.
“This is my job. All creatures need jobs. Without one, you have no self-respect.” Fran?oise’s reply was succinct, as usual, but it didn’t really answer Phoebe’s question.
Phoebe tried a different tack.
“Wouldn’t you rather be doing something else?” Housekeeping seemed very limited to Phoebe. She liked going to the office and keeping up with the latest developments in the art market, testing her knowledge by attributing and authenticating pieces whose value was either unknown or long forgotten.
“No.” Fran?oise snapped her dish towel and folded it in thirds before hanging it on the waiting rail. She turned her attention to a heaping basket of laundry and switched on the iron.
“Wouldn’t you rather work for yourself?” Phoebe was willing to entertain the possibility that there were hidden rewards to cleaning and cooking, but she couldn’t fathom a life in service to others.
“This is the life I chose. It’s a good life. I am well paid, respected, protected,” replied Fran?oise.
Phoebe frowned. Fran?oise was a vampire, and her arms were the size of small hams. She didn’t seem in need of protection.
“But you could study. Go to university. Master a subject. Do anything you liked, really.” Phoebe tried folding her own damp towel. It ended up badly, one side uneven, pulled out of shape by her efforts. She hung it on the rod next to Fran?oise’s.
Fran?oise removed it and snapped the linen open. She folded it properly and rehung it on the rod. It was perfectly matched to the other, and both towels now gave off an air of perfect domesticity, like the pictures in the women’s magazines her mother subscribed to: soothing and mildly reproachful at the same time.
“I know enough,” Fran?oise replied. I know how to fold a piece of cloth properly, which is more than can be said for you, her expression said.
“Didn’t you ever want . . . more?” Phoebe asked with a bit of hesitancy. She wasn’t eager to anger another vampire who was older, faster, and stronger than she was.
“I wanted more than a life toiling in the fields of Burgundy, the soil in my hair and between my toes, until I dropped dead at the age of forty like my mother did,” Fran?oise replied. “I got it.”
Phoebe sat on a nearby stool, her fingers threaded together. She shifted, nervous, on her seat. Fran?oise had never uttered so many words at once—at least not where Phoebe could overhear her. She hoped she hadn’t offended the woman with her questions.
“I wanted warm clothes in winter, and an extra blanket at night,” Fran?oise continued, to Phoebe’s astonishment. “I wanted more wood for the fire. I wanted to go to sleep without hunger, and never again wonder if there would be enough food to feed the people I loved. I wanted less sickness—sickness that came each February and August to take people away.”
Phoebe recognized the cadence of her own display of temper before Freyja and Miriam. Of course Fran?oise had heard everything. She was subtly mimicking Phoebe—to make a point. Or to issue a warning. With vampires it was so very difficult to tell.
“So you see, I already possess all that I have ever wanted,” Fran?oise said in closing. “I would not be you, with your useless learning and seeming independence, for all the world.”
It was a startling announcement, for Phoebe felt her life was nearly perfect already and only going to get better with an eternity to do as she pleased and Marcus at her side.
“Why not?” Phoebe demanded.
“Because I have something you will never again possess,” Fran?oise said, her voice dropping to a confiding hiss, “a treasure that no amount of money can buy nor time secure.”
Phoebe leaned forward, eager to know what this treasure was. It couldn’t be long life—Phoebe had that now.
Fran?oise, like most taciturn individuals, enjoyed having an attentive audience. She had also mastered the art of the dramatic pause. She picked up her bottle of lavender water and spritzed a pillowcase with it. Then she wielded the hot iron with the same quick expertise with which she did everything else in the house.
Phoebe waited, as unusually patient as Fran?oise was unusually forthcoming.
“Freedom,” Fran?oise said at last. She took up another pillowcase and let her words sink in.
“No one pays any attention to me,” Fran?oise continued. “I can do as I please. Live, die, work, rest, fall in love—and out of it, too. Everybody is watching you, waiting for you to fail. Wondering if you will succeed. Come August, you’ll have Milord Marcus back in your bed, but you’ll have the eyes of the Congregation on you, too. After word spreads of your engagement, every vampire on earth will be curious about you. You’ll never have a moment’s peace or freedom in your life—which, God willing, will be long.”