The Trelayne Inheritance Page 4

  The words crept unbidden into her heart. Words she’d tried all her life to believe, with limited success.

  Tomorrow’s a gift, but today’s a blessing.

  That little homily had been embroidered on Angel’s christening cushion, the last thing her mother made before she killed herself. Tonight, Angel vowed, she’d live its true meaning.

  Alexander proudly escorted his wife on one arm, Angel on the other, as they made their way to the ballroom. Glittering gas lights reflected back myriad mirrors and crystal chandeliers, elegant bejeweled ladies and gentlemen in shining evening shoes and severe black tie and tails.

  As Sarina predicted, when the receiving line ended, Angel was besieged with admirers wanting to sign her dance card. Angel felt flushed and flattered by all the attention, the avid desire in the eyes of the men who stared at her. Usually she shunned such attention, but as if even her body sensed tonight would be different, she acutely felt the touch of silk against her own skin. Her nipples tingled, and her nether parts felt…strange.

  A dark young man eagerly fetched her a glass of punch. Angel twirled it from side to side, admiring its deep ruby red color in the bright gas lights. She brought it to her lips to taste. It was snatched from her hand. A glass of champagne was substituted.

  A hush fell over the ballroom. She looked up into brilliant green eyes.

  He stood right in front of her. As if he belonged there.

  Max set the punch glass down on a waiter’s passing tray. Taking her dance card from her limp hand, he boldly wrote his name over it on a diagonal, imprinting himself over all the others.

  A few of the surrounding men muttered a protest, but then he looked at them. They seemed to shrink in stature under his gaze. He was so tall that he literally and figuratively overshadowed them in the bright lights.

  Angel was embarrassed for them. Collecting her scattered wits, she opened her mouth to put him in his place, but it was too late. The other men, who had seemed so gallant, melted away like mist before a fiery sun.

  The analogy was apt, Angel had to admit as she looked back at what appeared to be her only remaining dance partner. Max was a blazing contrast to the local gentry. In total contempt of their fashionable black tails, he wore old-fashioned creamy silk pantaloons and a heavy cream tapestry jacket shot through with gold threads. The garments were a perfect setting for that strange pocket watch he wore, and an even better setting for a face and form that seemed to have more in common with Apollo than a mere English lord.

  As she looked at him, Angel’s breasts felt so full and heavy she almost cupped them to stop the aching before she caught herself. That green gaze settled on her, and the sound of the orchestra, the whispering of staring guests, even her sensitivity to Alexander’s obvious outrage at Max’s boldness, all faded away. There was only this moment, and this man, and the singing joy fulfilled: She’d known she’d see him again.

  He held out an imperious, perfectly shaped hand. “Dance with me.”

  Tomorrow’s a gift, but today’s a blessing. Her mother’s favorite saying allayed the last of Angel’s wavering inhibitions.

  Mesmerized, she was reaching out when Alexander protested, “Now see here, Britton, you can’t barge in without so much as an invitation--”

  Carelessly, Max put a gold edged invitation in Alexander’s jacket pocket with one hand while he took Angel’s hand with the other. Alexander jerked the invitation out, glaring down suspiciously, as if he believed it could be forged.

  Max’s deep voice purred, “Your secretary will vouch for its authenticity. She wrote it out for me over a very nice picnic on your grounds.” Max’s smile widened into Alexander’s outraged face. Max gave a strangely quiet Sarina a short bow, took Angel’s hand and led her onto the dance floor.

  The guests parted like sheep before a wolf. Which made her, Angel reflected wryly, his prey. Odd that she didn’t feel like prey, unless prey longed to be eaten.

  And then his hand was around her waist. Her legs brushed against him in the intimate sway of the waltz. She looked into those admiring green eyes, so full of life, and joy, and admiration, and she felt like what she suddenly, surely knew she was.

  A desirable woman. Wanted by a desirable man. That’s all he was, after all. A man. Surely no creature of the night could be light incarnate, or make her laugh even as he made her wary.

  “What are you thinking?” Max asked softly, his gaze locked with hers.

  “I’m wondering how a rabbit feels before it’s a last meal.”

  “You mean before it eats a last meal?”

  “No, I mean before it is a last meal. For a wolf.”

  Laughing, Max whirled her in a complicated maneuver that averted disaster with another couple on the crowded dance floor, his mirth whirling above her head, its tempo and meaning equally complicated. When he brought her back to his chest, he said, his solemnity spoiled by sparkling eyes, “You’re safe for the nonce. I supped before I came.”

  Angel looked around at the packed room, half of its occupants staring at them.

  He read her mind with his usual ease. “No, I care not what others think. And someday, I hope, you shan’t either. Besides, how can I eat you? I forgot my knife and fork.”

  Without missing a beat, Angel rejoined, “From what I hear, all you need is a spoon.”

  That teasing quirk went flat. Ominous. “Even naive American girls should know better than to listen to nasty English country rumors.”

  “American I may be, naive I may be, both through circumstance, but listening is a skill I choose. And perhaps it’s one you could hone as well.”

  The slight stiffness in his movements eased. That thread of golden laughter glittered under his severe tone when he whispered, “Oh, I hear you. You try to put me in my place by hinting of the rumors you’ve heard of me. And you’re quite correct. Rumors often have a vestige of truth.” He bent his head to whisper, his warm breath stirring the hair at her temple, “They also say I’m a great lover. Do you wish to be curious about that as well?”

  Challenge. She’d longed for a change from her boring routine. Well, here it was with a vengeance. Was she bold enough to take it? Her gaze locked with sparkling green, Angel automatically matched her movements to his. She felt the cool brush of night air and realized he’d danced her toward the open French doors leading to the second floor balcony.

  “This time, my cool headed little scientist, I don’t need knife, fork or even spoon to eat you.” Still dancing, he ably closed the doors behind them with his foot as they passed. Without missing tempo, he led her toward the stone railing that lined the second floor balcony.

  Her heart pounding at the subtle intent in his slow, deliberate movements, Angel managed, “Then I’m safe.”

  He glanced at the double side stairways leading below, and her heart skipped a beat.

  Was he going to whisk her into the night? And if he did, would she scream?

  To her mingled relief and regret, he ignored the stairs, continuing their slow glide toward the railing. “Of course you’re safe…in my arms.”

  Dimly, she knew that was the most dangerous place of all. Their hips brushed as he slid them to a stop.

  The cold, hard stone on one side of her hip accentuated the warm hardness on the other side that proclaimed him very much a normal man. And blood surged through every inch of her in response, bringing her nipples to tingling, painful life again. Life so bright and sweet she hurt with its poignancy. She’d never felt so alive as in the arms of this man who looked like a fallen angel but could be…something much worse.

  But the rumors and warnings were impossible to heed at this moment, beneath these stars. Strange, even in starlight he shone golden, his hair and eyelashes glittering as if with moon dust.

  Then the stars above her head tilted crazily as he swept her high into his arms as if she weighed nothing. “Safety is such a boring word, don’t you think?” The husky purr of his laughter brushed warm air above her bosom like the herald of a lordly
procession. His head bent lower, lower. “No, my dear Angel, I don’t need the banality of utensils to eat you. I only need tongue…” Lifting her higher, he sucked the nipple thrusting high and taut, beading the silk, into his mouth. Delicately, wetting the silk with his heat, he licked and tongued as if she were the most delectable candy that sustained not just body, but soul.

  She melted in his warmth, sugarspun…and oh so glad to be eaten. She slumped against him, so inert with the strange sexual sensations she almost missed the last taunt whispered into her nipple, “Better yet, I only need teeth.” Gently, delicately, his teeth enclosed her nipple and tugged upward.

  Through a haze that made everything but the intimate circle of his arms seem far away, she heard angry voices approaching. The french doors rattled. Her uncle’s voice came faintly.

  “Now see here Britton, unhand my niece!” The doors rattled even more loudly.

  Angel heard them as the veriest tinkle, all her sensations concentrated on the tiny circle of nubbin flesh leaping up to meet tongue and teeth. Then came the break of glass. Raising his proud blond head, Max leapt over the second story railing in a single bound.

  Night air whistled past her heated cheeks. Why was she flying?

  Vaguely Angel sensed a great rush of movement rising toward them, but the thud she expected came lightly. As if their combined weight was welcomed, not punished, by the earth. Only later would she realize he should have been embedded ankle deep in mud.

  As he carried her off into the night under a bright, full moon, Angel’s restless curiosity was still strong enough to overcome the screaming need surging through her lower parts. She looked back as he walked away.

  Sir Alexander stood, his figure outlined by the blaze of light behind him, very still as Maximillian bore her off into the night.

  Odd that he didn’t run after them. Odder still that she saw no imprints marking their passage in the lawn. She blinked, wondering if she was drunk on one glass of port, or blind. Clouds skirted across the moon, and by the time they cleared, Max was on the pebble-covered drive and Alexander had disappeared back inside.

  Angel struggled with the eerie sense of unreality that had been growing on her since she arrived in Oxford. Was this night all a dream? Or was this man--or this being--carrying her into the night, the preface to a nightmare? Angel knew she should struggle free. Since her uncle made no hue and cry after them, she should demand Max put her down and not ruin her reputation like this.

  But then Max lowered his head again to tease her other nipple to a like excited state.

  And the dream became the only reality. She slumped back into his arms.

  The sunlight of his presence filled her as the night swallowed them up.

  From the second story salon window she’d opened earlier, Shelly Holmes watched Maximillian Britton, Earl of Trelayne, carry poor Miss Blythe Corbett into the night. Her eyes glowed as they caught the light cast by the full moon. She felt the change coming over her and ducked back, whipping the thick curtains shut. The hairs sprouting on the backs of her hands disappeared, and the claws growing on the ends of her fingers were sheathed back into her skin.

  Over the past couple of years she’d managed to exert formidable control over when and how she changed, but in full moonlight, when she was stressed, or upset, she couldn’t always control herself.

  Tonight, she was both.

  She liked Miss Blythe Corbett. Liked her almost as much on first meeting as she’d liked Lil Haskell. Which is why it bothered Shelly exceedingly to know that the poor girl was the prize in a game she didn’t even know she played.

  A game the masters of which were, quite possibly, two powerful male vampires. Earlier, from the front drive, hidden beneath a tree, already suspicious of the master of this house and his strange nightly perambulations, Shelly had watched Sir Alexander pour three glasses of wine. Then, his back to Angel, he’d sprinkled a white powder into one glass and swirled it around. He gallantly offered it to Angel, who looked like what she was in her seductive red silk: a siren who didn’t know it yet. Strange way of showing familial devotion, for an uncle to drug his own niece who’d come thousands of miles to meet her only remaining family.

  She’d heard the commotion he made on the ballroom balcony as Max jumped down with his prize. But if Alexander had really wanted to stop Max, he’d have summoned servants or led a rescue group down the balcony steps.

  He did neither.

  Now, Shelly went to the liquor tray and appraised the three glasses there. Closing her eyes, using her powerful olfactory senses, Shelly smelled the residue in the bottom of each glass. Nothing but the scent of expensive port. Nothing in the second glass, either.

  But in the third…Shelly sniffed and almost gagged, jerking the glass away from her nose. Over the many years of her investigations, Shelly had learned the stench of various aphrodisiacs by smell alone. This one was very old, very powerful.

  She forced herself to sniff again. Persian, if she recalled correctly.

  The question was–why would Sir Alexander give his own niece an aphrodisiac and then let his greatest enemy carry her off? And were these two powerful males truly vampires, or men who liked to pretend they were vampires?

  Most critical of all, if they were vampires…which one of them was the Beefsteak Killer?

  Shelly felt the urge to go after the silly young girl and warn her if possible, save her if need be, but she squelched it. She really didn’t think Angel’s life was endangered. At least, not yet. On the other hand, another nubile young female, drained of blood, had been pulled from the Thames outside the very walls of Oxford just last night.

  Poor Miss Blythe Corbett indeed.

  Angel felt herself float down to a cloud. No, not a cloud, cushions. She forced herself to open her heavy eyelids. A carriage ceiling met her gaze, its plush black velvet lining centered by a coat of arms medallion. The medallion had writing at the bottom, but it was dark and she couldn’t quite read it. Then the carriage jerked into motion, and a strong, hard male body lowered over hers, jolting her back to reality.

  And the danger of what she’d thus far allowed without a protest.

  When Max’s hands covered her breasts, tugging at the fabric, and his tongue and teeth teased her ear lobe, from somewhere she found strength enough to quiet her raging body.

  She caught his hands. “No.”

  He froze. “No? Then why did you allow me to carry you off like this?”

  “How could I stop you?”

  He sat back, his knees straddling her hips on the wide seat. “A simple no would suffice. No matter what you’ve heard about me, I’m not a demon. I’m but a man, with a man’s needs.” He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips, bringing them dangerously close to the proof of male desire imprinting his pantaloons. But then he dropped her hand and finished coldly, “Needs I control. Can you say the same?”

  Shamed, she covered her aching breasts with her hands, but he gently tugged her hands away. She tensed, but instead of devouring her again as he had promised he could–with tongue and teeth–he moved aside, sat up and pulled her up next to him.

  “Tell me to turn the carriage around, and I shall.” Leisurely, giving her time to pull away, he kissed his way to her wrist, undoing with his teeth the frog that stopped his progress.

  “T–Tur…” The words would not come.

  To her horror, she watched a disembodied arm, for it certainly couldn’t belong to her, half bared as the sleeve gaped open, lift to twine about his neck. And it was joined, most improperly, by another arm in a properly closed sleeve.

  Then she was kissing him.

  Passionately. Not because he seduced her.

  Because she wanted to.

  And that made her truly lost.

  Lost to propriety, lost to independence.

  Lost to hope of escape of this sensual web so powerful surely only an unnatural creature could weave it.

  Did vampires really exist? She had a feeling she was about to find ou
t.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Angel had been kissed before, but she’d never been the aggressor, and she found the new experience heady. Perversely, now she’d quit fighting his masterful seduction, he’d lost interest. He sat unmoved as she shyly pressed her lips to his. When she leaned back, frustrated, he rimmed his teeth with the tip of his tongue.

  “Port. He gave you port. With an added little taste for my benefit.” He reached to open the carriage window and she realized he was going to tell his coachman to turn the carriage around.

  She couldn’t bear that. The need throbbing in her lower parts had become unbearable since he suckled her breasts. Her reputation was ruined anyway. Half the local gentry had watched from the ballroom windows as he carried her off. She caught his hand in hers and used her instincts.

  The strange, overtly sensual instincts she usually repressed with her restrained hair and loose fitting clothes. Her mother, she’d been told, was an equally sensual creature, and because Angel didn’t want to end as tragically, she’d deliberately smothered the needs that sometimes awoke her, lonely and empty in the night.

  But now…now she sat alone with temptation incarnate. There was no one to see or care if she followed the path of her mother in the land of her birth.

  Angel didn’t kiss his fingertips, or bring his hand to her breast. Instead, she licked the artery throbbing at his strong wrist. He inhaled sharply, making a fist, moving away from the window to give her more of his skin. He did taste delicious. “No fork, no spoon,” she teased huskily against his smooth skin. “Only tongue and teeth.” She glanced up through slitted lashes.

  He stared down at her, thunderstruck. She realized none of his previous night toys had been so bold as to use his own tactics against him. She was different. Maybe he was bigger, stronger, faster and much more experienced.

  But she matched him in willpower, intellect and sensuality