Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Three's Company: Part Two

St-Guilhem-le-Desert, France, 1796

Lucille tasted the soup and pulled a face. "You've put in too much salt again," she complained.

"I did?" Ludovic frowned down at the pot that he was attempting to cook dinner in.

Laughing, Lucille kissed his cheek. "Not to worry, my love. We're used to it by now."

Ludovic stabbed at the soup with a wooden spoon. "Do you think I'll ever get it right?"

Being a vampire he couldn't taste it, and before Lucille and Régine, he'd had no experience with cooking. They'd spent the last two years trying to teach him, with varying results.

Lucille put her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder, her blonde curls tickling his cheek. "I have faith in you," she said.

Dropping the spoon, he pulled Lucille into his arms. She laughed, a high, sweet sound, like a bell, her eyes sparkling.

When Ludovic had rescued Lucille and Régine from the tumbrel years ago, he had never imagined falling for one of them – let alone both.

Régine was the one who had driven him to the Place de la Revolution that night, her eyes shadowed with fear yet bright with defiance, the woman that he had become determined to save, and yet Lucille was the first to fall into his bed. Away from the threat of immediate death, Régine's steely defiance had softened into something quieter, more reserved. They had first taken rooms at a lodging house together, both women still so shaken from their close call with the guillotine that they'd refused to leave Ludovic's side. And since he had saved them, he felt responsible for them.

They'd travelled far away from Paris, to St-Guilhem-le-Desert, nestled in the valley of the Gellone river, where houses of amber stone were guarded by cliffs, clustered with trees, and there they had settled. It was peaceful here, a simple life far removed from the finery that Lucille and Régine were accustomed to, but they'd never once complained.

Gradually, the friendship that they had built became something more. They no longer believed Ludovic was an angel, but they accepted all the vampiric parts of his nature, and they loved him.

Ludovic was happy – something he hadn't been sure he ever would be again.

He kissed Lucille and she responded eagerly, wrapping her arms around his neck, and one leg around his hips, pulling him against her until they stumbled back, jolting the pot of soup. Lucille laughed against Ludovic's mouth.

"We'd better not spill it, even if it is too salty," she said.

A door opened and closed, and Régine came into the kitchen, clutching a basket of wild herbs – clutching it too tightly, Ludovic realised. Her forehead was knitted with worry.

"What's wrong?" he said, reaching for her.

Lucille took the basket and put it on the table, then rested a comforting hand on Régine's shoulder.

"Marcel Deauchamp," Régine said.

Ludovic frowned. "The butcher's son?"

"What did he do?" said Lucille.

The three of them had never fully integrated with the townsfolk – they couldn't. There was too much that Ludovic couldn't do, and none of them wanted to answer awkward questions about their marital statuses – or lack thereof.

Once or twice Ludovic had considered pretending to be married to one of the women, but he loved them both equally, and he was afraid it would change the dynamic of their relationship. And he'd already been married once. He still sometimes saw Elise's face in his dreams, his nightmares – he didn't want to get married again. He didn't even want to pretend.