“It’s my duty to my country to share that I hold this knowledge, my friend,” Lavinia replied.
Valentine sighed a delicate, displeased sigh.
“It would be nice if you would come,” Lavinia urged. “I do think she’s of your…” her friend’s lips tipped up, “kind, and you will speak well together.” Her voice dipped quieter. “In times such as these, she may need something just as that.”
“I’ll return,” Valentine replied.
Lavinia nodded. She knew if Valentine said she would be there, she would be there.
Unfortunately, Lavinia knew Valentine would be there because she cared.
“You came to my world just for this?” Valentine asked.
Lavinia looked through the dark room but shook her head doing it, stating, “I was curious.”
“Do be curious at another time,” she invited. “When it’s not the dead of night and I don’t have a lovely body, not mine, obviously, currently warming my bed.”
Lavinia eyed Valentine. “Now I see why you returned home.”
Valentine shook her head. “You see nothing. He’s just a body. A trifle. A useful one, but only that.”
Lavinia eyed her far more closely. “No one is just a body, Valentine.”
“He is,” Valentine sniffed.
“Have you had another who meant more?” Lavinia asked.
“Ah,” Valentine breathed out. “I see you’ve come in the middle of the night not only because you were curious, but to discuss my love life, which means you’re not simply curious. You’re nosy.”
“It’s morn in my world,” Lavinia reminded her.
“I do know that, chérie,” Valentine sighed.
“I know you know. I also know you didn’t answer my question,” Lavinia pressed.
“When the time comes, I’ll choose a man to make me round with a daughter. But even then he’ll just be a body, though he’ll also be his seed, so rest assured, I’ll select him with great care.”
“That’s wretched,” Lavinia said gently.
Valentine lifted her brows in surprise. “You wish to be tangled up in a relationship?”
“I’ve lived a life where I was quite content with my own company. But I must say, watching Finnie and Frey, Maddie and Apollo…”
“That was about magic. And destiny,” Valentine eschewed.
“All love has its own magic,” Lavinia returned, her eyes sliding toward the door, her words the truth, of course, with caveats. “Even love that doesn’t span universes.”
“It also can be used for ill, if turned into a weapon,” Valentine retorted. “And this happens often, in both worlds.”
Lavinia returned her gaze to her friend.
“Quite right, my dear,” she whispered. “Odd, we seem to have this conversation often. With varying results. This suggests love is foremost on our minds most of the time. Including yours.”
Valentine didn’t deign to reply.
“You must come soon,” Lavinia urged, wisely changing the subject. “I’ve only visited with Franka once, and I didn’t know her before, but from what I knew of her, she’s much changed, though I think she’s discomfited by it.”
Valentine knew very well how that felt.
Lavinia spoke on. “Not to mention, when I’m with the others, they speak of her already not simply with compassion for what she’s endured, but with humor and even growing affection.”
This, Valentine had seen in her crystal, finding herself looking on…happily, doing so hoping it would continue.
“I’ll be there,” Valentine replied.
She then wondered when she started hoping about anything.
Caring and hoping.
How vile. Both were so very vulgar.
“Until we meet in my world,” Lavinia called, and Valentine watched as she faded away.
With an agitated gesture, Valentine shook her sleek red hair out of her face and looked back to her crystal. She lifted a hand and trailed her fingers over it, searching, and she found someone she’d discovered some days ago when she’d decided that meddling with Franka and Noc would not be enough.
There was another.
And as she watched the large man go about the business of sleeping in his own bed, her jaw set and she trailed her fingers over the crystal again.
The smoke vanished.
There she went, caring about someone else.
And worse, doing something about it.
Valentine Rousseau rarely expended effort on anything someone didn’t compensate her for, except, of course, one of her trifles.
She definitely expended effort on her trifles.
Her thoughts moved to what she’d just seen in her crystal and she was pleased in this world, as in the other, he was such a fine specimen. A plaything such as him would be—Valentine drew in a wistful breath—delicious.
Alas, such as him, she had found, didn’t tend to like the way Valentine played.
He would be perfect for his intended.
An intended he didn’t know he had (yet). And that intended had no idea what Valentine had planned for her future.
A warm curl swirled in her belly.
Valentine sighed yet again as she shook off her uncharacteristically soft, romantic thoughts.
She was losing her touch.
She needed to find it again.
To do that, her thoughts moved to the young, naked, firm, male form asleep in her bed, and in the dark, Valentine smiled her cat’s smile.
She walked back to her bedroom, went to the nightstand, opened it and took out a box of matches. She struck one and lit the three candles on the night table.