Chapter 4
Eli learns swiftly – literally. As they hunted, she talked, at length, of how long a human hunt would have taken. “Crawling around all on the ground,” Eli explains as she leaps at another deer and rips into it with glee. “Not at all like this!”
She even goes for far as to go through the process of skinning the hides after she’d drained the animal – using her nails to flay the deer. She scrapes the flesh from the membrane-like stretch of skin as she chatters.
“My pa never let me skin the same age as my brothers, you know? He always said girls see enough blood already!” Eli laughed once, throwing her head back, before dropping it down just as quickly to keep working.
Carine sits on a fallen log and watches the bawdy woman with his chin in his hand. He huffs out a breath through his nose as though amused but seems just as content to watch the sinking sun as the skinning.
Rosalie is not privy to Carine’s placidity and frowns lightly as Eli works. Human or vampire – she found it distasteful.
“Was always a bit of a struggle for me to cut smoothly …. before,” Eli murmurs, almost to herself.
“Why bother?” Rosalie asks, uncomfortable as she was with the fact that they had to hunt this way in the first place.
Eli blinks up at her. “Why not? It’s a true waste otherwise. At least we can make a few bucks off a buckskin!” Eli shrugs a little, looking suddenly shy, “You got all those nice new clothes for me, too.”
“You don’t need to worry about that, my dear girl,” Carine pipes up serenely, his smile light. “You’re family now.”
“Be that as it may, I’d like to,” Eli says humbly. As Carine and Rosalie had no where else to be and all the time to spend, they watch as she peels skin from flesh. “… I wasn’t much good as a daughter. My baby sister was only fourteen,” Eli’s tone is sad, but more wistful than injured. Rosalie found herself very attentive for any information about Eli’s former life. “But she was running around helpin’ mama twice more than I could. I just … if I could have been a proper son for her, maybe I would have been a lot more useful.”
“In matters of the house, men are not very useful at all,” Carine replies. Rosalie laughs in agreement at the truism. Whether or not her father was home or abroad on business – Rosalie and her mother had the firmest control over the house.
Though Rosalie was mildly surprised that the woman said such bitter words with an otherwise mild expression. “My mother never became accustomed to having sons,” Rosalie explains. “I had two younger brothers and she never knew what to do with them. She wanted girls to pamper and prepare, she wanted pretty, eligible debutantes.”
Between the two of them, Rosalie and Eli glance back at Carine, wondering if he would also speak about his time as a human daughter. Perfectly content to meet their gaze, his smile doesn’t move at all and he says nothing.
Eli turned back to Rosalie, smiling a little, her bottom lip pushed up, like she was trying to suppress it. “I think most woman want daughters like you.”
When Rosalie thanks her, slightly flattered with the idea that Eli’s human mother would have liked her, Eli grins back. “I think I should be thankin’ you,” she says. “You took me in without a pause.”
Carine tells her not to think one bit of it, “it’s much easier going along with Rosalie’s whims,” he advises, and laughs good-naturedly as Rosalie sticks out her tongue at him.
But Eli’s corresponding booming laughs makes her belly clench. “I’m not usually so thoughtless ….” Rosalie tells her quickly. “I just wanted you,” Rosalie feels a great sense of gratification when Eli seems to almost glow after hearing the words. It propels her to say, regardless of Carine’s placid presence, in a tone that was both grave and teasing; “I’m planning on keeping you too, I hope you know.”
“You’ll get no complaints from me, angel.”