The Trelayne Inheritance Page 6
“No.”
He stopped abruptly, giving her that haughty look that made princes nervous.
She stared right back. “If I’ve sacrificed my reputation to your whims, you have to accede to one of mine.” She strolled toward him, her eyes dilating again as she neared. “I want you to kiss me again. With your tongue. I enjoyed it.”
He felt the urge to duck behind the couch but quelled it. Dammit, what was wrong with him? Normally he’d have found temporary surcease, at least, in this lovely body. She was so determined to become a woman tonight, no matter the cost. And she was quite possibly right. Her reputation could already be ruined, so who would know?
He would.
They must have given her a very powerful dose. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. In fact, when she pressed that lovely form against him and pulled his head back down to kiss him, he knew ‘wouldn’t’ wasn’t a strong enough word.
‘Couldn’t’ better suited his feelings at the moment.
Max stood nonplussed, his hands holding her waist, his mouth just out of her range as she stood on tiptoe trying to reach his lips. Now he knew how a pretty woman felt when she was wooed against her will.
It was a most unique experience. He didn’t like it. The girl…no, woman, innocent or not, this female was all woman…had the arms of an octopus. When he moved one small, determined hand, the other was soon in its place, twining about his waist, or slipping behind his neck as she tried to tug his head down into her range.
Max caught both her hands in his.
She stopped, but only briefly. “This is a new experience for you, isn’t it?” She cocked her head on one side, her eyes sparkling with mischief and desire.
She looked so like her mother. He waited for the usual surge of interest. It didn’t come.
Embarrassed for the first time in a long time, Max began to back toward the door. Maybe if he screamed…This ridiculous about face disconcerted him, but dammit, he chose who, he chose how.
Angel seemed to think she chose now.
She cut him off at the door. “Craven,” she taunted. She approached him, sensuality in every measured movement.
He liked pursuing much better than being pursued. That’s why he couldn’t respond to her at this moment, he told himself..
He dodged her and ran for the side door.
“What kind of rake are you?” she complained, her arms crossed over her prominent nipples. She rubbed herself, obviously still aching.
“The sensible kind who knows when to run.” The door snapped shut behind him on her laughter.
Telling his coachman to take her home, he climbed the stairs a few minutes later, totally confused. Not once, in the past hundred years, had he ever had a lack of…interest. And Angel fired his interest more than any woman since Eileen.
If this got out, he’d never live it…He glared at the salient part of his anatomy, which remained fully down at the moment.
What the deuce had just happened in there?
Shelly’s sensitive ears caught the sound of his footsteps before he’d climbed three steps. She stood over the well in his room, staring down at the bottles of blood she’d pulled up. She’d tasted one just to be sure. Calf’s blood. The taste was familiar to her from her own forays into meadows when the wildness took her.
The bottles were almost icy with cold. There were six of them, filled to the brim. Enough, she was guessing, for a week. As much as he tried to keep it chilled, the blood had a thick, unpleasant taste. He must find it hideous compared to the silky warmth that came out of a living vein.
She could think of absolutely no reason for a virile vampire with a taste for young women to make do with calf blood out of a bottle unless…he was resisting his vampirism. Which put rather large ravels in the tapestry of motive she’d been trying to weave around the Earl of Trelayne..
His steps neared. Shelly glanced at the window. If she hurried, she’d have time to leap outside to the ground. Instead, she stood calmly, waiting. Even her strong heart pounded nervously as she realized what she faced alone. She wished she’d thought to tie a crucifix about her neck, too. But there could be no better time than now, during a full moon, to face him.
Maybe he’d be so stunned she could surprise him into telling her the truth of this well. Just in case, she opened the curtains to the moonlight, ducking back away from its allure. But if she had to embrace the change, she would.
Perhaps tonight would answer another question that had been bothering her of late--which was stronger? A werewolf or a vampire?
Despite his confusion, Max immediately felt the alien presence in his chambers. He instantly became well nigh invisible, still unable to totally become mist, but able to shift light about his form until he appeared as a haze to others.
Materialized on the other side of his door, he was so surprised to see who awaited him that he took human form again. He recognized her instantly. Shelly Holmes. She was famed as a contracted investigator for Scotland Yard, so famed that he’d seen her picture in the Times on more than one occasion.
Famed for solving murders. Which should have alarmed him, given that she’d snuck into his chambers to search them. She obviously suspected him as the Beefsteak Killer.
Her eyes glowed strangely in the darkness. She stared straight at him, tall, apparently unafraid. But he felt the throb of her heartbeat even from where he stood. She hid her fear well.
Blast, he’d had enough of intrepid women for one night. Anger began to surge through him at her temerity. No one, even his own servants, trespassed in his chambers. How had she gotten past the complicated opening device at his door? One had to know just which piece of molding to move to fit into another…
“It’s not difficult to find the opening. A tiny crack lies between two pieces of molding that are inverted. When you twist them, they fit neatly together.”
The fact that she read his mind so easily angered him further. In one bound, he stood over her. His breath warmed her face. “If you know what I am, you’re mad to come here alone.”
She looked back at him steadily. “If you had a taste for fresh blood, you wouldn’t have bottles of the stale stuff awaiting your consumption.” She flung a hand out at the carriage rattling away down the long paved drive. “And you wouldn’t put Angel in a carriage to send her home so soon. Intact, in every way, I suspect.” A strange smile played at the corners of her mouth.
Sheer fascination began to ameliorate Max’s anger. How did this woman read him so clearly when most of the people in the county, common folk and gentry alike, were terrified of him? “But if I’m a killer some five hundred years old, do you not think I’d be smart enough to build up a stock…just in case I have to resist my darkest urges to escape capture.” He was delighted to see her steady gaze waver. No, she hadn’t thought of that.
He pressed his advantage. “Or maybe I just feel the urge to make an exception in your case. Unless you tell me why you’re here.” He closed a strong hand about her throat, letting her feel the strength of his fingers. His nails began to grow enough to graze her skin.
With a surprising strength of her own, she used both her hands to pull him away. She sidled several steps until moonlight pooled at her feet. “If you tell me what the grudge is between you and Alexander, perhaps I won’t go to the authorities.” Then she struck at his weakest spot. “Or tell Angel what you are.”
Silence descended between them as neither gave an inch. Max showed her his fangs, but she eyed them analytically, with more interest than alarm. He noted she inched into the moonlight until it covered her…bare feet. Why were her feet bare?
Unable to terrify her like the others, he turned away in disgust. “Get out. While I’m inclined to let you go. If you come back, I won’t be so forbearing next time–Miss Holmes.” He was delighted to see her check on the way to the door.
She peered at him. “How do you know my name?”
“Anyone interested in the investigative arts in England knows your name.”
“You’re to conclude exactly what you always do, I expect–whatever your evidence supports.” He glanced meaningfully at his well.
She ticked off on her fingers, one by one. “One. Vampires are apparently thick on the ground in this part of England. Two. There’s a war between two of the most powerful ones, the victor most uncertain. A war over a woman? A war over a kingdom? No doubt I shall learn, eventually. Three. Angel is the prize in that war, though she doesn’t know it yet. Four. Whoever wins is most likely the Beefsteak Killer.” She dropped her hands. “Can you tell me why you and Sir Alexander hate one another so? Just so I don’t draw the wrong conclusion–and have the wrong man arrested.”
Max laughed. “Do you really think you can toddle a vampire off in chains and expect him to let himself be imprisoned?”
“There are ways. Sunlight--”
“We don’t like it, but over the years, some of us have found ways to battle its effects.”
“Garlic--”
“My favorite spice.” He lied. He detested the stuff.
“Crosses.”
“I attend church every Michaelmas.” And he could get past the holy water only because of those disgusting bottles in his well and the magical, invisible glow of his watch. Any vampire who supped on human veins couldn’t bear to look at a crucifix.
“Stakes.”
Max was silent. He glanced at the hidden compartment beneath his bed. It looked secure. He suspected he interrupted her before she had time for a thorough search. Which was a good thing because she’d really be intrigued if she found a vampire killing kit in the room of a vampire.
She turned back for the door. “We all have our weaknesses, my lord.” With her hand on the knob, she paused, looking back over her shoulder with that odd smile. “I suspect you discovered one of your own tonight. Your…dalliance didn’t last long.”
He blinked, truly chilled now. How could she possibly know?
She did, as she proved with a bland, “Did you enjoy your ratafia?”
For an instant, he was too stunned to be angry. “You put something in the wine?”
“I knew Alexander gave Angel an aphrodisiac, and I wanted to give her a fighting chance, at least, to resist you. I’m glad to see it worked.”
Max knew he should be angry. If nothing else, he had a reputation to live up to. But now he finally understood why she’d invaded his home, even suspecting she faced a vampire without so much as a crucifix.
She’d come to Angel’s rescue.
He’d always had a soft spot for the courageous, especially when they fought for the innocent. Staring at her widening smile, Max admitted ruefully, “She didn’t drink the disgusting stuff. I, on the other hand, had three glasses.”
Her hearty laugh joined with his own as relief swept the last of his anger aside. At least there was nothing wrong with him.
In that moment, Max realized he’d met two very unusual women tonight. One he could love. The other he could call friend.
His mirth faded quickly. And both were dangerous to him and his solemn oath.
He flung the door open. “Get out.”
The sympathy in her eyes remained with him long after the door shut in her face.
He tried to eat after she was gone, but one taste of the chilly, vile stuff and he tossed it aside, vowing to live with the hunger as long as he could.
Max prowled his room, staring at his coat of arms and its motto. That was a saying he’d spent over a hundred years trying to live up to. He could only bear what he’d become by living each day as it dawned and not repining over the many dark days already past. Days where the natural optimism of his nature found it harder and harder to remain hopeful.
Maybe tomorrow, or the next, he’d find the missing clue, the link that would prove beyond all doubt that Alexander or another of his cozy circle of vampires was the Beefsteak Killer. The quarry Max’s family had been hunting for over a century. The reason for the grudge was, appropriately enough in a war between vampires, because of the spilling of blood. Innocent blood.
His own lovely, virginal young sister had been, to Max’s knowledge, the Beefsteak Killer’s first English victim.
Max’s father, a learned man who’d studied myths of every type, including vampirism, found his dead daughter, her blood drained, two black holes in her neck, one crooked. While Max was but a babe, at first the earl went to the authorities and tried to convince them that the ancient rumors were true: yes, vampires had come to England. More vampires were created in the trail the killer left behind, he tried to explain. They had to stop this killer, not just for the Brittons, but for all Englishmen and Englishwomen..
Max’s father became the laughingstock of England. Humiliated, he vowed to find the killer himself. Binding all his sons in a blood pact, he made them vow to carry on and stop what couldn’t be stopped if he failed.
Max was still a baby when his father was gone for over a year. When he returned, he came home in a coffin, his own blood drained. One by one then, the other Britton brothers took up the grisly Trelayne inheritance. One by one, they doggedly followed slim clues, chasing the killer all over the world. Cairo. Monte Carlo. Mexico. Rome. London. Persia.
One by one, they were slain, some much more horribly.
Now the mantle had passed to Max. The youngest child, the favored child, the apple of his family’s eye. He was the mischievous boy, the brightest and most beloved for his sunny nature. The one who used to put ink in his sister’s tea, the one who knotted his older brother’s slippers together.
But as his brothers disappeared in sunlight and in darkness, blackness consumed his life. As men, even the earls of Trelayne were not strong enough to fight such evil. When his youngest brother came home in pieces, Max, the last of his line, the last heir of the terrible Trelayne Inheritance, knew there had to be a better way. And he’d found it, after much searching and much danger, in the science that had filled his life before he became earl.
Staring at Eileen’s miniature next to his bed, Max choked back a bitter laugh. Was he about to become what he hated most? It might have happened this very night, if that witch Shelly Holmes hadn’t drugged his wine. She’d done him a favor and didn’t even know it.
For all his long life, he’d struggled against the bitter cost of this legacy he chose. So far, he’d been incorruptible, using humor and his enjoyment of women, sports and art to keep the darkness at bay. He’d struggled as he’d been warned he’d have to do, a price he paid in becoming a Watch Bearer.
But this. He’d never faced a temptation as rich as Angel.
She was what he hungered for and what he feared most.
A sensual, beautiful woman designed for his touch for a very simple reason, though she didn’t know it yet herself–she was half vampire.
The one being, as Alexander knew, who could tempt Max away from his lonely path. Which is why Alexander dressed her like a slut and drugged her.
Max fumbled for his watch, but it didn’t offer him the usual comfort.
It was cold, and hard, a symbol of his loneliness. And he wanted something soft, and warm, and sweet.
Angel…
Bile rose up again. Grimly, Max forced himself to drink.
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, the minute she awoke, Angel blushed. Strange how she could recall last night with crystal clarity. Every touch, every kiss, every caress. For the first time in her life–and she hoped the only time–she’d understood the sheer power of carnality.
Was this why all those men followed her around, peeking at her in ways that made her uncomfortable, making her wish for a higher collar and a thicker layer of under garments? She’d never understood what dark urges drove them.
Until last night.
The baring of her bosom hadn’t been shocking because she’d wanted to expose herself, to revel in sin and forbidden delight. To know first hand the power of the urges mothers w
arned their daughters to resist until the gold ring glittered and the marriage sheets beckoned.
But Angel had no mother to warn her…
“Maximillian,” she whispered.
Just the sound of his name seemed to bring moisture to that forbidden spot between her legs good Victorian women were not allowed to think of, much less touch. On the sound of his name, for the briefest instant, she could have sworn she actually saw him, at least in her mind’s eye.
His head flung back, he bathed himself standing in the nude. Scrubbing briskly under one long, golden arm, then rinsing and rubbing the soapy sponge into the muscles of his impressive chest. Under the candlelight, he glittered golden from head to toe. The image was so real she reached out to touch him before she could stop herself. As she did so, he turned his head to smile at her.
That knowing smile, that glowing smile that caused a soft curling in her lower belly. It was almost as if…he knew she watched him. As if he were reaching into her mind across the miles between them. She bolted upright, her half closed eyes flying open. The image dissipated.
But the heat it inspired remained.
Angry at herself, Angel tossed her covers aside and rose, only to have to catch her arm about the bedpost. She was still quite literally weak-kneed. But she forced herself upright and walked steadily to the ewer. She poured water into the big ceramic bowl and rinsed her face, lecturing herself all the while.
This weakness was nonsense. Not in her nature at all. It was the wine, or the sheer novelty of the experience of being the object of such a dynamic man’s attentions.
She’d always been attracted to dangerous things. She’d experimented with opium, she loved to gallop full tilt over stony terrain, and she’d even climbed a steep cliff once, just to see if she could. The jagged-toothed rocks and crashing surf far below had only contributed to her exhilaration once she made it to the top and saw the folly of the path she’d chosen.
Somewhat like leaving the only home she’d ever known to venture to the land of her mother’s birth and remote relatives she barely knew.