Page 20 of Under Her Protection

"You have done this long enough to be certain?”

"Long enough." Leo nodded.

Vivienne's eyes, which had been resting on Leo's face, travelled once down and once up, not with desire, not yet, Leo was almost sure, but with appraisal. Leo let herself be appraised. She did not shift her feet. She did not adjust her jacket.

And, because she was trained to notice it, she noticed the thing Vivienne did next, which was not flinch.

Leo had, on her way into the room, positioned herself three meters from the chair Vivienne now occupied, which was the edge of the comfort zone for most civilian women with a stranger in the room. Somewhere during the conversation Leo had closed a meter. She had not decided to. She had done it. Vivienne had not shifted her body away. She had not leaned in either. She had simply stayed where she was, the way a woman who had never in her adult life given ground stayed where she was, and Leo, registering it, felt a small and specific thing crack and then knit back together in the middle of her chest. For one unguarded second, Vivienne's gaze dropped to Leo's mouth, then back up. It was fast, but not fast enough.

Respect.

Not attraction. Although Leo was very used to women being attracted to her. This was respect. The clean kind you did not often get in this work.

She liked Vivienne Strauss. She did not want to like her. She just wanted to do her job and do it well. She noted the liking and set it aside the way she had set aside the thing about her pulse.

"Finish your coffee," Vivienne said. "Then you may walk the house. Beaumont will take you. Staff will be assembled in the salon at sixteen hundred."

"Yes, Madame."

"You will address me as Madame in front of the staff."

"Understood."

"And not otherwise."

Leo inclined her head a fraction. "What would you prefer otherwise."

"Nothing, at present."

"Madame Strauss."

"Mademoiselle Cole."

They looked at each other a beat past the moment the conversation had ended.

Vivienne looked away first. Before she did, her mouth corner pulled once, brief, and she put it back. Leo did not take it as a loss; it was not that sort of look. Vivienne had looked away because she had decided, at some microscopic level, that the length of the look had started to mean something she was not prepared to consent to yet. Leo understood. Leo did not fully enjoy the understanding.

She finished her coffee. She set the small cup down. She thanked the Madame in front of her and turned for the door, and Vivienne, at the chair, behind her, said quietly, "Mademoiselle Cole."

Leo turned.

"I do not want you in my house."

"I understand, Madame."

"Do your work. But don’t interfere unnecessarily in my life and my home.”

"Yes, Madame."

She left.

In the hall, Beaumont was waiting with a face carefully arranged to suggest he had not just lost an argument. Leo drew a breath and spent the next ninety seconds restoring Beaumont's dignity, because Beaumont was going to be useful to her and resentful men were not useful.

"Walk me through the perimeter," she said, in French. "Start outside."

"I was going to start with the alarm."

"We can do both. Outside first. I want to see the sightlines in daylight."