Page 31 of Just for a Taste

It’s because of me, I realized,that he is able to stand so strong.

As bitter as the feeding had been, this realization made everything feel a bit more worth it.

“Will it suffice?” Duca de’ Medici repeated.

“I, uh—” I swallowed, moistened my lips, and caught my breath. I could barely look at him. “What is it?” I finally mustered.

He frowned and turned his head away. “You can’t tell?”

“N-no, I—”

“It’s a garden,” he said, voice sharp. For an instant, I wondered if he was actually mad until I saw the faint glow of a blush across his cheeks. Then, he added, almost inaudibly, “For you.”

Numerous variants ofthanksswam alongside dozens ofwhy’s. I grasped into my psyche for anything to say, but all that came out after several seconds of dead air was an empty, “Oh.”

But by the time I could muster that single syllable, I was speaking to his back. Duca de’ Medici was walking off toward his aviary, and while his strides were even and confident, I saw the bright red tips of his ears.

He stopped for a second and said over his shoulder, “Feel free to take some cuttings from outside. There’s a map on the table. I’ll have Urbino remove the tarps.”

With that, he folded his arms behind his back and stalked off, leaving me to gawk.

I studied every corner of the room, feeling more and more overwhelmed by the second. Just as Duca de’ Medici had said, there was a folded piece of paper on the table—or rather, the potting bench—that contained a map of the abbey and its surrounding gardens. I had seen one of them many times when researching the Abbazia di Santa Dymphna. This map differed from the usual image, however, in that the tight, elegant scrawl of the Duca de’ Medici covered it. He had circled various areas and written on them:

Rosa x odorata

Soliel d’Or

Zépherine Drouhin

La France

And so the list continued.

It was an annotated map of the location of every rose cultivar in the abbey.

I crammed into my pocket and ran to the library. I flipped to the back of the logbook—the section Duca de’ Medici wrote in—and saw nearly a dozen books checked out on rose cultivars, rose horticulture, and gardening in greenhouses. All checked out within the last week.

So that was why I hadn’t seen him.

The text in front of me blurred, the pages developing several dark spots. I touched my fingers to my cheek and was alarmed to find them moist. When did I start crying? What could I even call the emotion pouring out of my eyes—relief, shock, gratitude, confusion? Maybe a strange mixture of all of this, and more. Regardless of what I should call it, the feeling burning inside me spurred me to drop the logbook and race back to Duca de’ Medici’s room. I burst through the door and looked around the dimly lit room, but the vampire was nowhere to be found.

I was hit with a flash of the other night and heard the echo of my own cries, but shook them and every other thought away. For the first time, I ventured further into the room, beyond the satin curtain I had seen him retreat behind so often.

“Duca?”

I couldn’t see him—or much of anything in such dim lighting, for that matter—but I still sensed his presence. I was not surprised in the slightest when I heard him reply, “Signorina. You realize our feeding is tomorrow, do you not?”

“Uh, yeah. Can I turn on the light?”

“There’s a lantern on the table in front of you.”

I touched my face again and found it sticky but dry. Hopefully, my eyes wouldn’t betray me. Squinting into the darkness, I discerned the faint outline of the aforementioned lantern and switched it on.

He was sitting on a bench, one leg drawn up with a notebook resting gently on it. And in front of him—“Whoa.”

A grand piano, which certainly lived up to the title.

It was antique, so much so that the keys were genuine ivory, but beautifully maintained, without a speck of dust on it. The piano bench he sat on appeared to be made from the same wood and had the same detailed carvings, with the addition of velvet cushioning. A massive four-poster bed was directly perpendicular to it, along with a nightstand, upon which was a record player. The rest of the furnishings formed a crescent around the trio: a large desk overflowing with papers, a sofa, and a coffee table with a vase of dead roses.

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