Trying very hard to push away his suddenly very confusing thoughts, Eliot eventually made himself actually leave his chambers at last. He did cast Claire’s sleeping form one last glance. But then, as he stepped out of the room, his feet stopped him as he had the sudden urge to lock the door behind him. Then he also found himself addressing the nearest servant with instructions that no one was to enter his room or disturb his wife in any way for the remainder of the day. Shaking his head as to why he even thought to give that command, he nonetheless had other matters to attend to that day, distasteful as any encounter with his father and his father’s new family ever was.

Upon his less than timely arrival in the massive dining hall, his royal relatives were very nearly finished with their already late breakfast. “Merci de nous rejoindre, enfin, Eliot” his father greeted, with a nigh emotionless tone. Though the tone itself had honestly been the only one Eliot had ever heard his father speak to him in, the few times he ever spoke to him at all in the two decades since his mistress’ surprise pregnancy.

“I’m sure you’re thrilled to see me here at your table, father” Eliot responded deliberately in English instead as he sighed and took his seat at the ridiculously large stone table. He then added, “and my wife is American, so it’s only polite that I get used to speaking in English more these days, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, your wife” his father spoke curtly, surprisingly speaking in English as requested, for the moment anyway. His full name was actually Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, though he much preferred going simply by Napoléon III these days. The man was already nearing his fifty-seventh birthday, which was just another reason why so much pressure was now being put on him to allow Eliot to finally be included in their actual family, aside from the most pressing matter of his legitimate son’s sickly nature.

“What about her?” Eliot tried to keep any worry from his voice, instead putting on an air of boredom as he reached for the food a servant came to quickly offer him.

“I still am not quite sure how any of that even... came to be” his father stated, watching his eldest boy with clear suspicion.

That was when his stepmother interjected, though quietly, “Où est votre femme, de toute façon?”

Then his father responded, “Eugénie, the boy wishes us all to speak like his American wife now, remember?” he reminded her with barely veiled sarcasm.

Eliot simply rolled his eyes, but answered his stepmother nonetheless, “she’s still sleeping. I guess she’s tired” he couldn’t help adding with a barely hidden smirk, causing a slightly weak giggle from the boy seated across the table from him.

“Eliot” his father’s tone had a clear warning in it.

“What?” he repeated, mimicking his father’s sharp tone.

“Your brother does not need to hear such things” was his simple clarification as he reached for his goblet of wine.

“Don’t you mean half-brother?” Eliot mumbled, before speaking up again, “and honestly I’m surprised you and he weren’t both there last night too” he complained bitterly.

“Last night?” Eugénie asked, looking to her husband for only a moment before turning back to Eliot.

“Yes, dear father insisted on a bedding. Didn’t he tell you?” Eliot scoffed.

“Charles” she spoke softly to her husband, but added nothing further, upon seeing her husband’s obvious annoyance with his eldest son sharing that fact.

Trying to force down his anger for nothing more than the reason of his wife and younger son being present, the emperor continued, “I’ve already spoken with the witnesses as well as the servants, so I know that your marriage is apparently an actual marriage rather than some fiction you’re trying to feed us, but I still find it rather confusing, and... unexpected, to say the least.”

“Can’t plan love” Eliot returned wryly as he continued with his breakfast without actually giving the impression of even being present in the conversation at all.

“And love is what you’re claiming to have with this strange American girl who isn’t even of noble birth?”

Eliot scoffed, “her not having noble blood is one of her most attractive qualities, I’d say” he couldn’t help the jab, “besides, father, you’ve had enough mistresses to know how it would be so easy to become so enamored with this ‘strange American girl.’ I saw the way you, and every other man, looked at her last evening” he couldn’t help adding further fuel to his father’s simmering anger, somehow emboldened by the possibility that he had finally found a way to escape the life his father had planned for him.

Taking an obvious moment to keep that anger in check once more, his father finally spoke again, “yes she is quite beautiful, which only makes this entire marriage that much harder to fathom, honestly.”

“Love doesn’t make sense either” Eliot told him smugly despite that veiled insult.

“Nothing about your marriage makes sense” Charles agreed, then cast a look toward where his wife looked rather sullen, but remained silent, “which is the very reason why I insisted on the bedding. You know it’s a more than common practice in arranged marriages” he reminded her pointedly, as their own marriage had been arranged simply because Eliot’s mother, though a wealthy heiress was not indeed nobility.

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“Maybe people should stop arranging others’ marriages then” Eliot scoffed, though kept his volume low, knowing his father would eventually reach his breaking point with him if prodded just enough.

Allowing an annoyed breath he spoke to his son once more, “well, you’ve managed to avoid that after all. Which is why you should be the one to explain to she and her family, why you are not marrying the duchess who traveled here to meet you last night and marry you today. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You want me to explain to them why I married someone other than their daughter?” Eliot returned with renewed apprehension as he finally looked toward his father.

“It was your choice. Now own it” and with that, the emperor, his wife, and their son excused themselves from the hall, leaving Eliot behind to let out a heavy sigh at yet another prospect he didn’t want to face.

----------------------------------------

When Claire did finally awake, just as the sun set, she startled slightly at the sound of Eliot’s voice greeting her, and sounding rather sullen at that, “you sleep like the dead, my love.”

Claire froze a moment at that statement, but forced an attempt at an innocent smile as she looked over at where he had draped himself into an overstuffed chair near the bed, and looked like he had been there quite a while.

“I’m sorry, what time is it anyway?” she asked innocently.

He gestured to the still drawn curtains that no light shown through, “it’s evening already. I’m sure that your performance last night must have taken some energy, but not that much, surely” he scoffed, though it was obvious his unease was caused by something entirely different than her oversleeping.

“Bad day?” she dared to ask as she pushed herself up to her elbows, once again searching through the colors of his aura.

“How could any day possibly be bad when spent with my father?” he replied sarcastically.

“So they still aren’t convinced that our marriage is real?” she worried aloud.

Eliot scoffed as he nervously bit at a nail, “alas he does seem to think it is real thanks to that aforementioned performance of yours” he added, “but that doesn’t make him any less angry with me.”

“What’s wrong now?” she asked with concern.

He took another deep breath, “now his anger is simply because I broke the agreement he made with my former betrothed’s family. Never mind how I felt about it to begin with” he added in a mumble.

Claire sighed softly, “well how long does his anger usually last?”

“I’ll let you know” he returned pointedly. He then let out another sad breath, “I’m to meet with she and her family and ‘explain myself’” he scoffed again.

“You?”

“I’m the one who didn’t follow through on the promise, even if our grand emperor is the one who actually made said promise” he returned with that continued bitterness.

Claire thought another moment, before asking, “when are you supposed to meet with them?”

“Tonight, tomorrow? I didn’t get a chance to ask before he left the room. He has a limit of how many minutes he can bear speaking with me each year, you know” he added sarcastically.

She thought another long moment before finally speaking again, “well if they do believe our marriage is real, then isn’t that the whole reason we stayed here last night? To convince them? Well, if they’re convinced, why don’t we just leave?” she asked with an innocent shrug.

Eliot looked like he was about to offer another protest, but then lost it before it left his throat. Finally, he simply asked, “leave and go where, exactly?”

“Anywhere, really” she stated with another shrug. “He no longer needs you to marry some noble girl and he won’t need you around for any other reason unless...” she then decided not to finish that sentence.

“Unless my little brother does die” he finished for her, though quietly. It was true that he had no real love for his father, or even his stepmother, but his brother couldn’t be held responsible for who their father was, so he had no actual animosity toward at least that member of his father’s ‘acceptable’ family.

“But we could just leave though, couldn’t we? There is nothing holding you here right now, so why stay at all, right?” she told him with another small smile.

Eliot seemed to be thinking deeply on her words for a long while before he couldn’t help a smile as he looked back at her expectant expression. “When exactly did we become we?” he couldn’t help asking, as he moved forward in the chair then to offer her another smile as he spoke in a whisper, “you do recall that we’re not actually married, right?”

Claire just scoffed, though smiled, “married or not, so far we’ve seemed to make a pretty good team. I don’t see why we can’t stay friends, right?”

Eliot simply smiled again, though looked away, biting his nail once more, though wearing a smile still as he thought on the proposal she was now the one offering him.

He was quiet for a long moment as he continued smiling back at her from time to time, as though still processing the possibility of her suggestion actually being that simple. Finally, he spoke again, appearing to have finally come to a decision, “well, Duchess Mariam, or whatever her name was, she and her parents could arrive at any moment, so I guess you should get dressed and gather your things then?”

Claire smiled back at him then too, more than eager to escape his father’s home as well, probably for even more reasons than Eliot had. But as she moved from the bed and reached for her still discarded dress, she had to look back at him again, “not to repeat your own question, but where are we going again?”

Eliot allowed a sincere chuckle, shaking that mop of long dark curls once more as he stood as well, “I guess wherever that train was going to take us after all?” he offered, to which Claire only could laugh at his innocent tone, despite knowing she would eventually have to find a way to contact her own kind and get back to her original reason for even coming to France at all. But she had already bought herself a few days before Lemuel would come knocking at her psyche again, and she definitely didn’t want to spend them in that palace with those people. Well, at least not any of those people other than Eliot, himself, she smiled to herself as she continued dressing.

It wasn’t until they were boarding that train again, later that evening, that the fears that were never too far below Claire’s surface started eating at her. She did truly enjoy his company and found it almost refreshing when there was a seeming lack of lust to have to wade through in order to even have a conversation with him at all. Not that she minded the lust most of her male, and a fair many female, companions felt for her. But it was something new to her at least, to not have to think in those terms for once. And something new was something she did find herself relishing after nearly three hundred years.

Despite the ease she found in his company in that regard, there was still her underlying fears of spending an extended amount of time, including those deadly daylight hours, with any mortal. As that led to entirely new problems. So she had to either hope she could somehow keep that secret while sharing such close quarters, or else hope she could share her secret without him running scared or, more likely, just thinking she was completely mad.

And therein lay the problem she had now somehow volunteered for, which caused her to try and come up with some plan, and quickly. Only a moment later, the train pulled into motion and she managed to offer him another tentative smile as they began yet another odd new adventure, together.