Free Born to Bite by Lynsay Sands

and decided they were wrong. I was the man for her.” He grimaced at the memory. “It was adorable when she was young, but then my ten years at the farm near her father’s ended and I hired on a manager and moved on to one of my others. I didn’t see much of her after that. While her parents visited me often, they left her at home, afraid to encourage her crush. She was a bit obsessive with it even as a teen,” he admitted unhappily. “Anyway, several years later a young immortal woman arrived at my farm in search of a job as maid. She said her name was Alice, and she looked a hell of a lot like my Susanna.”
    “It was Althea, of course,” Eshe guessed dryly.
    Armand nodded. “She didn’t really look that much like Susanna in reality. They had the same blond hair and not completely dissimilar features, but that was about it. However, she had seen portraits of Susanna and styled her hair the same way, and then dressed in a more modern gown of a similar fashion to the one Susanna had worn for her portrait. It was enough that when I first opened the door I thought Susanna had risen from the grave and come knocking.” He grimaced and then admitted quietly, “I suppose I wanted to believe it was her. Or maybe even just pretend for a little bit.”
    Armand sighed at the old memories. “She happened to arrive at a weak moment and I bedded her that very night. She was more than willing. Of course, it wasn’t the same as with my Susanna, but it was nice and filled a little of the ache in my heart…until I finally gathered enough sense to read her thoughts and realized who she was.
    “Dear God,” he muttered with disgust at the memory of his shock and horror at the time. He still couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized her at once. While it had been years at that point since he’d seen her, and she’d been a child then, he still felt he should have recognized the seductress as the knobby-kneed child he’d known. Unfortunately, he hadn’t. “I didn’t know whether to shoot myself or her. She was my best friend’s daughter, for God’s sake. And at eighteen still a child really in immortal terms. Of course I took her home to her parents at once. She begged me all the way there not to tell them what she’d done and how she’d tricked me. I wasn’t all that eager myself to confess to bedding her, so allowed her to persuade me.”
    “But then she turned up pregnant,” Eshe deduced, and Armand nodded.
    “Yes. That was one hell of a memorable night, I can tell you. I wasn’t pleased when she showed up on my doorstep again, but then I was simply stunned when she blurted the news. Still, my annoyance passed quickly at the thought of another child, and so I offered her marriage with the understanding that neither of us would try to read or control the other, and when she met her true life mate we would dissolve the marriage to allow for him to claim her. The same was to go for myself as well should I meet a second life mate, though I didn’t really expect I would,” he admitted wryly. “Of course, then we had to go explain everything to her parents. That’s when the night really got memorable. I nearly lost her father’s friendship that night, but he knew what Althea was like when she wanted something and eventually came around.”
    “The child was Thomas,” Eshe said quietly.
    Armand smiled. “Yes. He was an adorable baby. Always laughing and chortling at something. Smart as a whip too, walking early, talking early, and forever humming tunes. I should have realized then he’d become a composer as an adult.” He sighed at the old memories of a very young Thomas dancing through his head. “I had to take him to Marguerite to raise when Althea died, and ashamed though I am to admit it, I missed him much more than his mother.”
    “Why did you take him to Marguerite?” Eshe asked. “Why not raise him yourself?”
    “How?” Armand asked dryly. “It’s not like there is an immortal nanny company out