Chapter 6

Disclaimer: This is a retelling of the story of The Luxe by Anna Godberson, using the characters and locations of Vampire Diaries, that belongs to L.J Smith. In other words; I own NOTHING.

Paris, August 1863

The summer is almost over, and I now understand my role more clearly – what it is to be a young lady of the Bennett family, and all that is expected of me. I must not always be so indulgent and careless – although I find it difficult to regret anything I have done.

From the diary of Katherine Bennett

Katherine, wrapper in the white silk kimono her father had bought on a trip to Japan and given to her for her sixteen birthday, hurried through the kitchen and out the back door. She was moving with the trembling determination of a desire that had been building in her all night. She had kept her head down as she stepped onto the first of four steps made of old pliant wood and then onto the stable floor.

She stood there on the soft floor, the air all around her heavy with late summer heat and motes of hay. She listened to the sounds of the horses gently shifting in their stables and felt fully awake for the first time all night. These things – the sound of the animals, the crisp and quiet night, and the sweetness of the hay – they were everything she had tried so hard not to think about while she was gone. She stepped lightly in her satin slippers, trying to keep her kimono from catching any incriminating bits of hay.

"You came," Stefan stated, though it sounded more like a question. His legs dangled off the loft where he slept, and his hair was greasy from humidity and work. He had the habit when he was nervous or annoyed, of pushing it repeatedly behind her ears. Stefan, unlike the other boys her friends lusted for, had a hooked nose from the time it was broken in a brawl, and thick expressive lips. His eyes were bright wounded blue, and he was sitting in a familiar position, it was the position of waiting. "I'd nearly given up on you," he added, the cautiousness of his phrasing masking the fear in his voice.

Looking up at Stefan, Katherine felt elated and weary at once, and she realized what a very long night it had been. The whole ball, all that shrieking laughter, all those elaborate gowns seemed like the stuff of a bright, absurd dream that had passed with the coming of morning. There had been dances with enough bachelors to make her mother happy, some of them less eligible and more charming than Percival Coddington. She had found time to catch up with Elena and they'd clasped hands and whispered appreciatively back and forth about each other's dresses. She forgotten to needle Elena about the secret affair, she had been a bad friend, she realized now, but she would make a big show of begging Elena to tell her who the unnamed beau was later. They'd agreed that the terrine was delicious, though they had been both too excited to eat any of it, and that they'd more champagne than they had meant to. But champagne, they agreed, as they always had before, was not to be resisted. It had been a very long night, but it seemed to her now that it could have ended nowhere but here.

"I'm sorry… but you know that you shouldn't be waiting," Katherine finally answered, even though she might as easily had told him that she'd thought of him every day and that their separation had been excruciating. She wanted to tell him about the far off places she has seen, how the broad avenues of Paris curved and opened onto grand vistas unimaginable in straight up and down Mystic Falls. There were many things she wanted to say, but instead she mumbles: "I wouldn't want you to count on my coming even when I might not be able-" She stopped herself when he looked away. "Please Stefan," Katherine said then, a little desperately, her chest aching at the sight of Stefan's downcast eyes. "Please…"

It was remarkable how quickly she adjusted from her big comfortable room upstairs to down here in the carriage house, how quickly all the rules that governed her daily life became useless and silly seeming. Of course, she had long told herself to reverse this course. In Paris, she was sometimes sure that she could, that she had outgrown Stefan, that she was now fully the lady her social position called for. But when she came off the ship and down the plank that morning, she saw him waiting with the family carriage and realized that he too, had grown up. He was somehow even handsomer than he had been before, and she knew from the way he carried himself that he was no longer the sort of boy to get into useless fights. There was purpose in his every gesture. And here she was now, stuttering and stammering, near begging him to adore her again, the way a girl in love would. That's what she was after all; a girl in love.

But all that could not stop a few stray thoughts from returning to the words that her mother had uttered just before Katherine had set out on the dance floor with Percival Coddington. The one thing we do not have is time. Her words hovered like an augury over Katherine's head, even now, as she stood on the stable floor.

"You were gone so long," Stefan said quietly, and shook his head in a show of despondency. Katherine looked up at him and tried to banish those words still looming like storm clouds. "And then tonight, standing out on the street, waiting for the ball to be over, not knowing what you were doing in there, who's touching you, who's-" He looked straight at her then, which made any further words unnecessary. One of the horses shifted, hooves against the hay, and neighed softly.

"Stefan I couldn't not go to the ball." She widened her eyes helplessly, wondering why he had to fight with over things she couldn't change, especially on her first night home. After all, wasn't she the one risking everything she had ever known, creeping around the house at night? Couldn't he just love her in the time they had? "I'm here now Stefan. Look at me, I'm here," she said softly, stepping forward. "I love you." She almost laughed because she meant it so much.

"I keep picturing you inside, dancing with those other men." Stefan fixed his grip on the wooden edge of the loft, and then went on. "Those Damon Salvatore types with their hundred dollar suits and their country houses even bigger than what they have in town…"

Katherine reached the ladder and took two steps up. The wood was soft on her soft unblemished hands, but she hardly thought of that now. She kept her eyes on Stefan's and a crescent smile on her lips. "Damon Salvatore? That cad? You must be joking." She couldn't help laughing her high, fine laugh outright now.

She didn't know where it came from, this urge to comfort and hold Stefan, but it was deep in her like fate. She didn't even know when their childhood adoration had turned into adult love, but whatever it was that pulled her to Stefan had always been there. She'd never met anyone so true, so stubbornly good. Sometimes he verged on righteous, but Katherine knew how to calm him down. She looked up at Stefan, all worn out with feeling, and knew he was ready to not be angry anymore.

Stefan lowered his eyes and pushed his hair behind her ear once again. Then he raised his face slightly and peeked at Katherine. "Are you laughing at me Katty?"

"I would never," she said seriously, rising another step on the wooden ladder.

Then he swung his legs upward and stood, his worn leather boots making the loft shake. When he reached the ladder, he bent and swooped Katherine up, so that she was folded in his arms. He smelled like horses and sweat and plain soap – it was a smell she knew and adored. "I'm so happy you're back," he whispered into her neck.

Katherine closed her eyes and said nothing. It was so rare and so good, this being touched. She hadn't known how much she'd missed it until now.

"So what kind of evening was it?" he asked, speaking low, directly into her ear as he set her down on the loft's plank wood floor. "Elegant or wild?"

She pressed her face into his chest and tried to recall the party, but all she could remember were her mother's ominous words and the strange looks she kept shooting at her daughter. Katherine considered her reply, then finally said, "Boring." Then she looked up at his big handsome face and wished she could forget the evening and who she was and what her obligations were. She had come down here because what she wanted – against all her upbringings – was to be close to him for a few hours. "I thought about you the whole time. Now, can we never talk about fancy dress parties again?"

He smiled and gently laid her down on the mattress he kept in the corner of the loft, under the wood beams where he slung his clothes to dry. Katherine untied her silk kimono. He hovered over her, holding her face in his big hands and kissing her lightly again and again. A natural smile spread unbidden across her face. "I think you do love me, Miss Bennett," he whispered.

The light of an already advanced morning streamed through one small window. A certain feeling of agitated ecstasy coursed through Katherine's comfortable body, reminding her that comfortable was not how she was supposed to be feeling at all. It was her second morning back in Mystic Falls, but she had not yet slept in her own bed.

"What are you thinking about?" Stefan whispered, propping himself up on his elbow.

"I hate that question," she said, because she was again thinking about her mother's warning and how waking up in the warm crook of Stefan's arm was the opposite of heeding her. She sat up and looked out the window onto the vegetable garden in the back. "I should go," She could hear the lack of conviction in her own voice.

"Why?" Stefan slid his hand inside her kimono and rested it above her heart. The touch made her conscious of how quickly it was beating, and that every moment she spent there made her more nervous about the goings-on in the house. Caroline, despite her strange absence the night before, would likely be arriving soon with hot chocolate and ice water to find an empty bed. Katherine forced herself to give Stefan a quick kiss on his soft lips and then push herself out of his grasp.

"You know why." She stood, wrapped her robe around her. Katherine looked down at the horses stirring in their stables below and tried to look like she was doing what she thought was right. "If my mother found out that I come here – if anyone found out – it would be the end."

"But if we moved out to Montana… or California… nobody would care what we dis. We could lie in bed all morning," he said, his voice growing warm and persuasive. "And then, when we did get up, we could go for horse rides, or whatever we wanted, and…"

Katherine had heard all this before, but she could tell that she thought about it much more in her absence. She liked it when he talked this way. He was the only boy she knew who looked into the future and tried to imagine how it would be better than the present. Stefan was the most frightening and beautiful and exacting person she had ever known. Being somewhere far away from Mystic Falls, where they could be just be any boy and any girl, was the prettiest idea she could think of. There would be no more harmful misunderstandings, because she wouldn't have to sneak around and visit him only when she knew the rest of the house was too exhausted to notice.

She turned back, half ready to entertain the fantasy, but she was silenced by what she saw: Stefan, wearing only his faded black long johns, his chest slender and strong and naked with a few errant hairs, raising himself up from the bed and onto one knee. Katherine had seen this position before. She knew what it meant.

"Maybe you should be thinking about a new kind of life…" he said softly, and then reached for her hand. Katherine snatched it away instinctively as her heartbeat regained its rapid nervous pace. She looked down at her palm and wished that her sense of priority didn't make her do things like that.

"I'll be back when I can, all right?" she forced herself not to look into Stefan's face, which she knew would be twisted with confusion. If she did, she might realize how afraid she was of losing him. She might become neglectful, off all the things a good girl like her must do.

She climbed the familiar wooden steps into the kitchen, readying herself to scale the servant's stairs to her bedroom, where she could do what the rest of the girls of her set were doing: sleeping off the first ball of the season, content in the knowledge that they could doze into the afternoon, dreaming all the while of the dresses they would wear and the boys they would dance with in the upcoming months.

"Morning Miss Bennett."

Katherine turned to see Caroline sitting in her constant black dress at the heavy, uneven table In the kitchen where the cook took her breaks. While Katherine was in Paris, her maid had grown longer and skinnier, and the freckles splattered across her nose had increased in numbers. The sight of her, looking plain and a little sullen in the early morning, caused Katherine to gasp. She could feel the sweat collecting in the small of her back, and closed her robe around her to describe the flush that was spreading to her throat. Katherine was surely beginning to panic, so she was shocked by the calmness o her throat. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I am ready for my bowl of chocolate now. And bring water also. I have been all night without it."

Then Katherine turned for the stairs. "Where were you last night anyways?" she added as she hurried out of the kitchen. She tried to tell herself that she had pulled it off. Caroline was too a sulky a girl to pay attention to Katherine's doings. And anyways, how long could she have really have been sitting there?

A/N: Hi guys! Sorry for taking so long, been kind of distracted. I know it was a pretty uneventful chapter but tell me what you think. Review!