Ysanne

The next day, a storm of wind and snow roared around the house, rattling the barricaded windows and sending icy draughts into the room. Even Ysanne, who couldn't be hurt by the frigid temperatures, didn't want to do anything other than huddle in front of the fire.

"If only we had books here to pass the time," she said. "I used to once, but they've all been stolen now."

She should never have left them.

She hoped that at least they had been sold, rather than being used as fire tinder for the bastards who'd stolen them.

"I can't read anyway," Edmond muttered, looking away from her.

Once, Ysanne hadn't been able to either. As Richart's wife, she'd had no reason to read – or so she'd been told. But when she became a vampire, she found she wanted to learn. Agnes taught her to read and write, and now she could hardly remember a time when she hadn't been able to do either.

She'd forgotten that, as a peasant, Edmond had never learned.

He didn't like it when she brought up their class differences, however inadvertently, and it probably wouldn't ease his mood if she reminded him that, when she was human, she also hadn't been able to read.

"It's not something to be ashamed of," she tried.

"I never said it was."

Silence.

"I could teach you," she offered.

It was the wrong thing to say.

Edmond's face darkened and he abruptly pushed himself to his feet. "What's the point? When will I ever need those skills?"

"I . . ." What was she supposed to say?

She didn't really know why Edmond was so self-conscious about these things, but maybe that was because she had been born to a very different life. Coming to understand how many people in France suffered a dismal life as peasants was not the same as actually living that life. Edmond had lived it.

"I just thought you might like to learn," she said at last.

"You thought wrong." Edmond shook his head and stalked out of the room

If anyone else had spoken to her like that, Ysanne would have been annoyed. With Edmond, she actually felt bad. She hadn't meant to offend him, but in trying to make things better, she'd only made them worse.

When she hadn't been able to read or write, she hadn't much minded. He'd been taught that such things weren't for women, and she had accepted that. She didn't understand why Edmond appeared to be so sensitive about the subject.

Ysanne sighed a little. She'd lived for the better part of three centuries, but apparently she still had things to learn about how the human mind worked.

Now the question was: did she go after Edmond, or would that make things worse?

In the end, she decided to stay where she was, sitting in front of the fire.

This problem was Edmond's, and it was up to him to decide if he ever wanted to broach it.

About an hour later, Edmond returned, looking stiff and awkward.

"I'm sorry," he said, before she could speak. "That wasn't fair."

Ysanne patted the floor beside her, and Edmond sat down.

"I did not mean to offend you," she said.

"I know."

"Would you like to tell me how I did?"

He made a frustrated gesture with his hands. "You didn't. It's not your fault."

"If you cannot explain how I have managed to hurt you, then how can I avoid doing it again?" Ysanne asked.

Edmond sighed. "It was a reminder that we've always been from different worlds, and maybe we always will be. Here in this house, it feels like nothing else exists, like we've left the rest of the world behind, but I'm afraid that one day that will end."

He lifted his gaze to her face, and the rawness of his expression took her by surprise.

He had started to look older than the scrawny waif she had rescued from the snow, but that vulnerability made him seem young all over again. It pulled on the strings of her old heart.

"I cannot imagine a world that doesn't have you in it, Ysanne," he whispered.

She leaned forward, placing her hand on his knee. "I'm not going anywhere. Offering to teach you to read is nothing more than a way to pass the time. It doesn't mean anything more than that."

"I know," Edmond said, nodding. "I just . . . I suppose I got scared." He took a deep breath. "I don't think I'll ever have any need for reading, but perhaps . . ."

"Perhaps what?" Ysanne asked, after a moment.

"There are certain names that I would like to know how to write. My family's names. Lucy's name."

"I can teach you that," Ysanne said.

And maybe, further down the line, Edmond would change his mind about wanting to learn to read.

The storm raged all day and all night, and it wasn't until the next morning that either of them left the house. The snow had heaped in great drifts against the front door and up around the windows, and they had to dig a path out to the courtyard.

The wind had given way to complete stillness, and the air was so cold it cut like a blade. Everything, everywhere was white.

The first thing Ysanne did was knock the snow from the branches of her husbands' trees. Then she broke a long twig from Richart's tree and led Edmond over to a flattish area of ground.

She could have taught him to write on the floors inside, using ash from the fire, but there was much more room out here, and it was easier to brush away mistakes in the snow. Considering Edmond had never done this before, Ysanne was prepared for him to make a lot of mistakes, but she didn't say that out loud.

Using the end of the long twig, she wrote the names of the people he had loved and lost in the snow, and read them out to him, carefully enunciating each syllable.

Then she handed him the twig and instructed him on how to shape each letter. Once he had mastered those, he could progress to spelling full names.

After his reaction last night, Ysanne had half-expected him to approach this defensively or warily, but he watched with keen eyes as she showed him what to do, and then he quietly took the stick and started to mimic the strokes she'd made in the snow.

Even if this was the most she could teach him, it was better than nothing.

Edmond made a mistake, smoothed it over and tried again, and Ysanne felt a warm spark of pride.

Maybe one day he would be able to spell his wife's name, whoever she turned out to be.

And whoever she turned out to be, she would be a very lucky woman.

Something sharp cut through the flush of pride in her chest, something that felt so strange and unfamiliar, she couldn't at first identify it.

Jealousy.

That realisation hit her like a slap.

Growing up, she'd had no cause for jealousy. She was beautiful and wealthy, she came from a good name, and she had attracted a good husband. She hadn't wanted more from this life until Richart died, and even then, she had been far more focused on broadening her own experiences than envying what other people had.

The last time she could recall being jealous was several decades before she'd met Julien.

She had fallen hard for a married man, and for a while it had seemed that he returned her affections. He insisted that his marriage was no longer a happy one, and he promised Ysanne that he would give it all up for her.

But it had been lies.

Ysanne had ended the relationship when she realised that her lover was simply feeding her lies to keep her in his bed. He had no intention of sacrificing anything, and her love for him had quickly turned to disgust. But at the same time she hadn't been able to help herself from being jealous of his wife. She knew he was faithless, knew he was a liar and a bastard, but part of her hadn't been able to shake off her feelings, and that part of her was still jealous.

She'd got over it, eventually, and since then she'd had no cause to be jealous of anyone.

So the sudden spike in her heart took her by surprise.

She wasn't used to it, and she didn't want to feel it.

She wasn't ready.

But as she watched Edmond from under her lashes, studied the way his raven-black hair settled around the broadening width of his shoulders, the intensity on his face as he spelled out words in the snow, she couldn't help imagining another woman in her place, a woman who wouldn't hesitate to run her fingers through his hair, or kiss his lips and every other part of him.

And she was jealous.

She didn't know how to process that emotion, both because it had because it had been so long since she felt it, and because this was completely the wrong time to feel it. She had come here to mourn Julien.

Edmond looked up suddenly. "Look," he whispered.

Ysanne pulled her gaze away from him.

A pair of deer had appeared a short distance away, delicately picking their way through the snow.

Ysanne shifted into a noiseless crouch, getting ready to leap into action. "You can have venison tonight," she said.

She would wait until the deer came a little closer, and then –

Edmond put a hand on her arm. "Don't," he said.

"What's wrong?"

"Just . . . don't kill them."

Ysanne frowned. "I've been killing for you for weeks."

"I know, but . . ." Edmond poked the snow with the twig. "Look at them."

Ysanne looked. "They're deer," she said, getting impatient.

"They're beautiful," Edmond said.

Ysanne swallowed her impatience and looked again.

One of the deer was pawing at the snow, trying to get at the grass buried beneath. The other had its head raised, ears twitching as it scanned the countryside. Their reddish coats were like smudges on the pristine snow all around them, their eyes dark and long-lashed. They were beautiful, but Ysanne still didn't see what difference that made. The horses drawing her carriage had been beautiful too, and that hadn't stopped her killing one for Edmond. Nor had it stopped her killing anything else for him.

But Edmond gazed at them as if he'd never seen their like.

Ysanne had seen him skin and butcher enough animals to know he wasn't sentimental about them, and she couldn't quite fathom why he was reacting like this.

"We have enough food for now," Edmond said, as if he knew what she was thinking.

"It's always prudent to take it when we can," Ysanne argued.

"Maybe . . ." Edmond shook his head a little. "But don't you want to appreciate life's small pleasures? We don't have to look at everything and decide if it will be useful to us."

Ysanne looked back at the deer.

She had never seen animals as much more than food – both as a human and as a vampire. Edmond saw something else. He saw all the little beauties the world had to offer, despite the hard life he'd led. He took pleasure from things like watching two deer pick their way through the snow, and even though she still thought they could use the meat, Ysanne would not take that appreciation away from him. It was a good quality, one that she had been losing sight of over the years.

Edmond looked back at her, and as their eyes met, Ysanne felt a shift between them, the foundations of their friendship realigning, tipping towards something else.

Abruptly she stood up, startling the deer. They fled through the snow in leaps and bounds, before disappearing over the horizon.

Edmond stared up at her, but he didn't say anything, and Ysanne had no clue what to say either. So she kept silent.

She hurried back inside the house, smearing the names that Edmond had written in the snow.

We're getting close to the end of this novella, so this seems a good time to remind you all that, in addition to this book, I have also started a completely new contemporary romance story. You can find Beautiful Broken Things on my profile :)