Ravensclaw

by Maggie MacKeever

  Before he realized what she was about, Emily snatched up his letter opener and slashed her arm. A red ribbon flowed over her freckled skin. “I have come to the conclusion that if one desires something, one shouldn’t sit about waiting for it to fall into one’s lap. Taste me,” she said.

  He truly didn’t wish to. Rather, he wished to — Val hadn’t experienced this ravening a thirst in all his countless years — but he tried very hard to refrain. And then Emily raised her bleeding arm to his lips, and the barriers between them came crashing down.

  Val groaned and surrendered to his nature. Emily watched wide-eyed as he licked away the blood, then pressed his mouth against her flesh.

  Her pleasure curled through him, her heat. Her heart sped up as his hunger shot through her, shocking and intense.

  He bent to kiss her. Emily’s mouth was soft beneath his, eager, warm. Val bit gently at her lip. Her neck. His teeth found her pulse—

  I am willing. Drink from me.

  Those simple words stopped him. Val drew back, appalled at what he’d almost done.

  Emily’s disappointment washed over him. She looked bereft. Val ran his thumb over her soft lower lip. “You can’t want this.”

  Emily caught his hand. “Don’t tell me what I want! I know from my reading that for you to drink the blood of another is the ultimate intimacy. Dissertation on the Bloodsucking Dead.”

  Val was stunned. She trusted him. He couldn’t remember when he had last been given someone’s trust.

  Not something he’d missed, trust, and the responsibility that accompanied it. Val clamped his teeth together and his sharp fangs nicked his lip. Emily caught the trickling liquid on her fingers and raised them to her mouth.

  Val was a blood-drinker, albeit a regretful (at least in this moment) one, and it was beyond his power to stop Emily from this highly erotic act. It was barely within his power to stop himself from leaping on her and sinking his fangs into her tender throat. “You don’t understand what you’re asking,” he growled.

  “Fustian!” said Emily. “You’re being noble again. I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Val looked at his blood smeared on her lips. Watched her pink little tongue lick it away. Gazed into her gold-flecked eyes. Lovely eyes without her glasses. She blinked owlishly at him and he felt himself falling into those warm, gold-flecked depths.

  Had she indeed ensorcelled him?

  He had long ago learned ‘twas folly to underestimate a Dinwiddie.

  Emily was a Dinwiddie, when all was said and done.

  The devil with it. Val touched his fingers to the pulse beating so rapidly, so richly, at the base of her throat. Emily clasped his shoulders, arched her neck. Val leaned closer, and—

  A throat cleared: “Ahem!” Emily’s eyes jerked open. She gaped at the specter that hovered just above Val’s desk. He bit back a curse.

  Emily fumbled for her spectacles. “You didn’t tell me that this house was haunted. Whyever not?”

  She sounded irritated, as if he’d withheld some great treat. “Because it wasn’t,” Val replied. “Until recently.”

  Emily peered at the apparition. “Did one of the castle ghosts follow you here? It doesn’t look like a Gowkit Gordie or a Kiuttlin’ Kate.”

  Val’s headache had returned, threefold. “Meet Ana,” he said.

  Emily’s eyes widened. “Your wife?”

  Ana jiggled one faint foot. “Where are your manners, girl? Don’t you know it’s rude to talk about me as if I weren’t here? Not to mention sitting on my husband’s lap.”

  Emily was exactly where he wanted her. Val tightened his grip. She squirmed. He winced.

  Emily paid him no attention. She said, to Ana, “You poor thing! Doomed to wander through eternity until your death is avenged.”

  “Avenged?” Ana attempted, unsuccessfully, to pick up a piece of shortbread. “Oh, I dealt with that! Oko was set upon by wild dogs on his way to the souk, may he fester in his grave.”

  Emily looked fascinated. “Then why are you still here?”

  “Everyone is trying to get rid of me! Well, you shan’t. Not until I’ve been properly tupped.” Ana considered. “And maybe not even then.”

  “Tupped?”

  “You know. Tup. Swive. Dance at the buttock ball. Must I spell it out? A man has a manroot. Like a maid has—”

  “Don’t say it!” Emily’s cheeks were rosy. “I think I understand.”

  Ana tilted her head. “It appears to me, Valentin, that you’ve lost your touch. Mayhap vampires don’t —”

  “I assure you that vampires do,” he snapped. “Unless uninvited guests take it into their heads to interfere.” For which Val should probably be grateful, but frustration had him in its claws.

  Emily pushed up her spectacles. “You are referring to the amorous congress, ma’am?”

  “Call it whatever you like! You’re welcome to him, miss whoever-you-are, as soon as he gives me what I want. And until he does—” Ana shook a ghostly finger. “There’ll be no tupping hereabouts.”

  Emily turned to Val. This is why you were in need of dragon’s blood.

  It is.

  But we can learn so much from her!

  “Bloody hell!” sighed Val.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A crow is never whiter for washing herself often.

  (Romanian proverb)

  Emily was eager to have further conversation with her first ghost. She had many questions to ask. For instance, where had Ana been between the time of her demise and her reappearance in Ravensclaw’s study? What had she been doing, and with whom? Not that — the hereafter being doubtless an immensely large place — Emily imagined Ana had encountered her papa. Were that not enough to occupy her mind, there was the additional revelation that Ravensclaw and Isobella Dinwiddie had had intimate relations of some sort.

  Isobella had had intimate relations with any number of gentlemen, from all accounts. Emily supposed she should have guessed that Ravensclaw might have been among them. However, she hadn’t, and the discovery made her cross.

  Gaining Ravensclaw’s cooperation had been her original reason for seeking him out. Cooperation concerning the matter of the vanished athame. But then she had become distracted by neck- nibbling, and couldn’t seem to put it from her mind. Emily retitled this episode of the Dinwiddie Chronicles: The Perplexing Problem of the Prudent Fiend.

  What in heaven was she thinking? Ravensclaw was a vampire. A vampire who in this particular moment was waltzing gracefully with Lisbet Boroi. Lisbet wore a gown made from a cashmere scarf, with a scalloped bottom and split oversleeves, and a broad, low neckline which left most of her shoulders bare. Maybe it was Lisbet who was Val’s ailalta, in which case Emily had made a cake of herself. Cezar and his shadow, Andrei, were nowhere in sight. She hoped they were searching for the d’Auvergne athame. Lady Alberta rapped Emily’s wrist with her fan. “You’re staring, dear.”

  So she was, and why shouldn’t she? Every other female in the Assembly Rooms was doing the same thing. Val’s dark coat was molded to his broad shoulders, and his breeches to his thighs. His auburn hair, tied back with a velvet thong, gleamed in the candlelight. He looked handsome as Adonis, and wicked as sin.

  She watched him smile at Lisbet in an annoyingly intimate manner. “Tell me, Lady Alberta, what do you see when you look at Ravensclaw?”

  Lady Alberta glanced at the dancers. “An extraordinarily handsome gentleman who has every female in the vicinity panting after him. We can hardly fault him for enjoying it. My dear, do you feel unwell?”

  So much for the glamour. Ravensclaw was as he was without the use of artifice, unless he knew how to alter perception on a monumental scale, and the overseer of the Dinwiddie Society was no different from any other female: she had offered herself up like a plump piglet on a platter, and he had turned her down. Although perhaps he might not have, save for the interference of his dead wife.

  Tupping, indeed. Emily’s education was proceeding in leaps and bo
unds. She knew she wasn’t the sort of female to attract a gentleman’s attention in the normal way of things, and since the man, if not gentle — and, for that matter, not a man — was the most gloriously masculine creature she’d ever set eyes upon, and since he could cause her to practically dissolve in pleasure by merely looking at her—

  Lady Alberta nudged her. “Emily?”

  “I am quite well, thank you. Merely a little overwhelmed. There are so many people here.” Emily gestured vaguely at the glittering throng. Lady Alberta glittered a bit herself tonight in a gown with gold banding on her neckline, the scooped edges of her overskirt, and the ends of her short sleeves. Once assured that Emily wasn’t going to swoon amid the crush of bodies, Lady Alberta resumed her lecture on Edinburgh, which had been founded nine hundred and ninety years before the birth of Christ, or alternately in 330 B.C., and had definitely been given a Royal Charter in 1329.

  Mirrors at each end of the long chamber reflected a sea of dancers dipping and swaying to the music of the orchestra. An astonishing number of young men had asked Emily to dance, or if they might escort her to dinner, or call on her tomorrow, or at the very least fetch her a glass of lemonade, all of whom she’d sent away with the excuse that she was but recently out of mourning, and therefore it wouldn’t be fitting for her to engage in such frivolity.

  “Gracious!” murmured Lady Alberta, as yet another suitor was sent to the rightabout. “You are all the crack. How strange. I mean—”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” retorted Emily. “And it is.”

  “Unless they have all heard a certain rumor.” Lady Alberta watched the dejected suitor disappear into the crowd.

  “What rumor?”

  “Fifty thousand pounds. Was it supposed to be a secret, dear? Val seemed to think not.”

  “Damn and blast!” said Emily, then lowered her voice, though she need not have: what in a mere miss would have been considered uncommonly rude was in a wealthy heiress thought refreshingly frank. “So that is why everyone is emptying the butter dish over my head. How dare Ravensclaw interfere in my affairs?”

  “Did you not ask him to?” Lady Alberta turned her head, causing the plume in her turban to quiver as if wafting in a gentle breeze. Emily frowned so ferociously at a hopeful young gentleman that he changed direction and headed for the refreshment table, where he sought solace for his failure to recite a poem he’d composed in honor of the heiress’s exquisite eyebrows. “Forgive my presumption, but you are wealthy, are you not?”

  She was less wealthy than before Ravensclaw had started buying her clothing, Emily reflected. Of course she would repay him for this extensive wardrobe of which she had no need. Tonight she wore another of Val’s selections, a dark gown with a draped bodice and underskirt. “The Society — that is, my family has done well on the Exchange. We invested in a company that financed Sir Francis Drake’s piratical attacks on Spanish commerce. Even more important, we were fortunate enough to avoid the South Sea Bubble. We also made a nice profit from tulip stocks.”

  “Ah,” said Lady Alberta, her expression glazed. Emily didn’t expound upon her own fascination with Interest, Discounts and Transfers; Tables and Debentures and Shares. Her feet in their pretty slippers ached.

  The waltz gave way to Scottish country dances, and still Val remained on the dance floor. Set to and turn corners— Emily wished she might see Lisbet strike her hands and give three jumps. Even more, she wished she might see Lisbet jump off the Castle Rock.

  Lady Alberta broke off complaining about a gasworks in the Canongate that had a chimney more than three hundred feet high. “Here comes Mr. Ross at last. I believe I shall visit the supper room.” She whisked herself away.

  Michael made a stiff little bow. “Emily. You are but newly out of mourning, so I won’t ask if you care to dance.”

  The dancers were now attempting to bump elbows together, first the right and then the left. Lisbet and Val had vanished from sight. Had they too withdrawn to the supper room, or discreetly retired for a different sort of snack? Emily returned her gaze to Michael. He was a veritable tulip of fashion. She wondered if his tailor had been paid.

  Was he in need of a fortune? If so, scant wonder he wanted her to leave. One thing to have a wealthy fiancée safely tucked away in London, another altogether when said fiancée suddenly arrived on the scene and showed him no more affection than a gnat.

  “ ‘Family’ matters brought you to Edinburgh, I believe you said. Should you not introduce me to your family, Michael? They will be curious about the female you seek to marry. You should give them an opportunity to welcome me into the fold.”

  “All in good time,” he said vaguely. “We are attracting undue attention. Pray lower your voice.”

  The man grew more and more annoying. Emily wished she might punch him, like Twitcher had punched Mowdiewarp, right in the nose. “I have made some interesting acquaintances. They are known as Oxter, Twitcher, and Mowdiewarp. You may know of them, perhaps?”

  Michael’s brows drew together. “I have not. What maggot have you taken into your head now?”

  He might have been telling the truth. Difficult to tell. Most women averted their gaze when lying, whereas men could stare a person right in the eye. “Never mind. You seem out of sorts, Michael. Have you been burning the candle at both ends?”

  “What would you care if I did?” he retorted, then forced an apologetic smile. “In truth, I haven’t been sleeping well. Maybe you do have feelings for me, if you’re concerned about my welfare.”

  Emily was also concerned about the welfare of the three corkbrains who were so determined to abduct her. She didn’t point this out. When her companion failed to broach the matter of their union, she said, “Do you still wish to marry me, Michael?”

  He gaped at her. “Have you finally come to your senses, then?”

  Emily pinched him. “That was hardly romantic.”

  “I’m not—” Michael grimaced as if a headache gripped him now. “Emily, be my wife.”

  Emily knew she was not the sort of female to inspire ardent declarations. Why, then, was she suddenly depressed?

  “You do me great honor, Michael. I hadn’t realized you held me in such esteem. Pray forgive me if I don’t give you my answer right away. We helpless— Ah! I will require some time to make up my mind.” He appeared unconvinced. Emily offered up an eyelash flutter and a coy glance.

  He looked bewildered. “You’ve never required any time to make up your mind before. Why are you blinking like that? Is there something in your eye?”

  So much for lash-fluttering. “I know you purchased a vraja from Mr. Abercrombie, Michael. Perhaps you might like to explain?”

  “Why should I? Unless— You can’t believe I had something to do with that attack on you!”

  Emily studied his flushed face. “Actually, I don’t.”

  He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Have you found your missing knife? If indeed it is missing. I’m not convinced of that.”

  Emily for her part was convinced of nothing. She was relieved when Lady Alberta returned and drew Michael into conversation about Arthur’s Seat and the old Tolbooth, the Luckenbooths and the Krames. Emily clutched Michael’s arm all the harder when she saw Lisbet and Val making their way toward them.

  Michael turned irritably on her. “Why are you clutching at me?” His eyes narrowed. “Your pendant has turned dark.”

  Emily lowered her head and squinted down her nose. The pendant had also grown warm. Neither of which were particularly helpful since she was in the middle of a large crowd. “Gracious!” said Lady Alberta. “Does that signify something, dear?”

  It signified that she was beyond foolish for being without both her pistol and her umbrella. Emily would have to rely on her wits. What was left of them.

  Lisbet’s voice grated on her ears. “You have been neglecting me. Leaving me too much to my own devices. You know how much I dislike that, Val.”

  Val smiled down at her. “I haven�
��t entirely neglected you. Must I remind you of the other night? As for abandoning you to your own devices, some bothersome details have taken up my time.”

  She was a bothersome detail? Emily’s cheeks burned. When she recalled her behavior— She reminded herself that Val had been the one to set her in his lap.

  Emily imagined he had done a great deal more than set Lisbet in his lap. There was little question of what ‘haven’t entirely’ meant. Val’s glance flickered indifferently over her and away.

  He might as well have plunged a knife into her heart.

  Peawit! Cabbagehead! Beetbrain!

  Michael frowned at her. “Emily?”

  “I have made my decision. I will marry you, Michael.”

  Emily had spoken loudly enough that everyone in the vicinity heard her. Lisbet appeared mildly interested. Val looked distinctly annoyed. Michael recovered from his astonishment to raise her hands to his lips.

  Oh, heavens, what had she done? Lady Alberta whispered, “Smile!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When you are an anvil, hold you still;

  When you are a hammer, strike your fill.

  (Romanian proverb)

  The skirt of Emily’s voluminous dressing gown swished along the bedroom carpet. Late though the hour was — or early — she was unable to sleep. She had tried to pass the time in reading, had discovered that to protect herself from danger she should carry the tip of a calf’s tongue; that safety in battle was achieved by rubbing oneself all over with leeks; that one’s home might be protected from witches by hanging the diseased leg of a calf near the hearth, or keeping a bull’s heart stuck with pins in the chimneypiece; had finally flung the book into the fireplace and with some satisfaction watched it burn. That would show Val. What it would show him was uncertain, unless it was that Emily could behave as badly as anybody else.

  The rest of the household had long since retired. Only Machka remained, less to share her vigil, Emily suspected, than because the cat was loath to give up her warm spot in the center of the bed.