Over the splashing of the fountain came the click of a door opening. Lifting her head, Rosalia looked toward the abbey’s entrance. She could not see it from here, but there was no mistaking the sound of footsteps.
She no longer needed to hide her abilities. Reaching out with a psychic probe, she touched his shields.
Deacon.
Her heart leapt into her throat. Forcing herself to move slowly, she stood and waited for him to emerge from the house. She knew why he had come. Camille had come to the abbey for both the girls’ night and the reception, and upon her first visit had expressed her surprise that Deacon wasn’t here.
On behalf of the vampire communities, he would be asking for the protection from the Guardians. Of course he would—he was strong, but not so arrogant to assume that he could handle everything alone. And Irena had told Rosalia that she had been providing Deacon his blood.
He did not need her.
But she could not stop her pulse from racing, and the joy that a glimpse of his face brought. She steeled herself against hope, crossing her arms over her chest as if that could muffle the pounding of her heart.
His gaze found her from across the garden, and seemed to take her in all at once, as if devouring the sight of her, hungry for it. And he looked like hell—his shirt buttoned wrong, his collar crooked, his hair in all directions. He came into the courtyard, stopping at the edge of the fountain.
“I’m a fool, Rosie.”
Her lips parted. That hadn’t been what she’d expected.
Deacon took a step toward her, then stopped himself—as if determined to have it all out first. “I should have listened. I should have trusted. But I didn’t believe you loved me. And I almost threw away the best thing I’ve ever had.”
Almost? “You did throw it away.”
Though his gaze remained locked on her face, softly searching, his shoulders were rigid and hands curled into fists. “Yes. I did throw it away. I couldn’t imagine that the man you’d waited for, the one you’d told me about, could have been me. I couldn’t see myself like that. But I swear to you, Rosie, that I will—”
“The man I’d waited for?” Realization swept over her, followed by sudden anger. “Camille told you?”
Uncertainty flickered through his green eyes. His answer was low and rough. “Yes.”
“So now you believe that I love you? Not because of anything I’ve done or said in the past weeks, but because of what was? What you were before Caym got to you? I deserve better than that, Deacon.”
She let her anger ride over her, so that her tears wouldn’t. She hadn’t thought she could hurt more than the day he’d pushed her heart away. But she could.
He took a step toward her, but abruptly stopped when she backed up. He swallowed hard.
“I know you deserve better, Rosie. You deserve the man you loved.”
So he could believe she loved the man he’d been, but not the one that Caym broke. He saw himself as a man who betrayed and failed. She saw a man who almost destroyed himself trying to save his people, and then again trying to avenge them.
She shook her head. “I didn’t love you then. I hoped I would, someday. I admired you. I liked you. But I didn’t love you until the night you returned here to help me.” And now she conducted a postmortem on her heart. She couldn’t do this; she would break soon. While she could still manage it, she said, “I don’t expect you to believe that or to trust it, just as you could not believe me the first time. And so we are at the same place, with no reason for you to stay. You’ve come to ask for the Guardians’ protection. Of course you have it. Now go.”
Deacon stared at her, his throat working. Slowly, he fell to his knee and bowed his head. “I did not come to ask for your protection. I came to offer mine.”
The hoarseness of his voice scraped her raw. It took a second for his words to penetrate, and still she did not understand.
“What?”
“I came to offer mine,” he repeated. “Mine, and the protection of every vampire in whose service I fight. We all pledge to protect you, Rosalia Acciaioli, and to assist you in every mission. Every need you have, we will see it fulfilled. Our swords, our lives—if ever they can protect you or help you, they are yours to call upon. We owe you more than we can ever repay. And I would stay here, to protect and help you.”
She could not speak. He wanted to settle a debt. She understood that. But it was unnecessary. “You helped me once, Deacon. Now I have paid you back. You owe me nothing else.”
“No. It’s not in balance.” He lifted his head, and the torment in his eyes ripped at her heart. “You deserve more, but this is what we have to give—this is what I have that is worthy of giving. Everything I am now, you gave to me. Without you, I would still have nothing.”
“You are welcome to what you have.” She had created the plan, but he had seen it through, taken the most risks to his life and his soul. “You’ve earned it, several times over. But I deserve more.”
More than repayment. More than gratitude. Just to be loved in return.
He bowed his head again. “Yes. You do. So much more.”
It was so low and hoarse, she barely heard it. And she couldn’t bear to hear any more. Her tears were coming now, and she couldn’t hold them back.
“I need you to go, Deacon.”
His pain slashed against her psychic shields. Through the blur of her vision, she saw a motion that might have been a nod. But he didn’t get up.
“Deacon, please—”
“I’m trying to think of any reason.” Longing and loss wavered through the broken whisper. “Any reason that you might let me stay long enough to prove myself to you.”
For God’s sake, she loved him! What more proof did he need that he was worthy?
She didn’t have this strength. To argue again. To not be believed again. She tried to summon her anger—anything to get her through this. “You don’t have anything to prove.”
“I do. I didn’t trust your love. I didn’t believe you. And so when I say that I love you, you will have no reason to trust mine.” His fists clenched at his side. “So I need time . . . I am begging for time . . . so that you can believe.”
She could not believe. But she hoped. She flew forward, fell to her knees in front of him, tried to look up into his lowered face. “You love me?”
He raised his head. His body stiffened, as if bracing for a blow. “More than my life.”
Oh, God. Oh, God.
She surged upward on a wave of joy, catching his face between her palms, melding her lips to his. Laughing and crying at once, she could barely kiss him, but his mouth was just as awkward, almost unsure, until she felt the acceptance and wonder flooding his psychic scent. Then his strong arms wrapped her tight, his hands cradling her head, and he kissed her deep, hard, as if to convince himself that she was there, that this was real.
She had to convince herself of it, too. Rosalia pulled back, her gaze searching his, her fingers confirming his face, his throat, his hair.
He bent to her again, gently kissed her wet cheeks. “Don’t cry, Rosie.”
His soft touch, the love she heard in his voice only made the tears fall harder. “I’m happy,” she assured him.
He looked into her eyes. “I see you are,” he said, low and rough, and his green eyes were suddenly swimming; then he was kissing her again, hard and sweet, and she never wanted him to stop.
But she had to know, had to hear it from his lips. She broke away just enough to say, “You are staying here with me?”
“Yeah. You’re stuck with me now, princess.”
“Oh, good.” She kissed him again, laughing, then teasing his fangs and nibbling at his bottom lip, before taking a deep breath. “I’ll always be a little managing, Deacon. I can’t help it. I have a . . . a need to help those I love.”
“The love bit makes it a lot easier.” He lifted his head, looked down at her. “Just, not behind my back. All right?”
Perfectly. “Yes.”
“And I should tell you—I’d have come earlier, Rosie. But I thought that you might be at your most desperate and lonely right after the wedding, when everyone left. And that I’d have a better chance.”
She grinned against his lips. “You manipulative bastard.”
He laughed and kissed her, but his gaze was serious when he regarded her again. “No one will ever love you more than I do, or work harder to see you happy. No one will try every moment to be the man worthy of your love.”
“You are.”
“I’ll make certain I always am. I swear it.”
She believed him. Laying her hand against his cheek, she promised, “I’ll love you no matter what you go through; I’ll stand by you no matter what trouble you face. And no matter what I face, I’ll know you’ll love me. That will never be in question.”
Deacon nodded, then rested his forehead against hers. His eyes closed, and she felt him breathe her in. “I love you, Rosie.”
“Tell me again.”
He said it with a soft kiss. His arms, holding her close. Then the words, again, before a wicked smile touched his mouth.
“Unless I’ve told you to be there, Rosie, I don’t like seeing you on your knees.” Rising to his feet, he swung her up, cradling her against his chest. His lips touched hers, then deepened into a kiss that left them both breathless, hungry. When he lifted his head, she looked up at him, and he narrowed his eyes. “So what have you got planned for us now? I know you’re working something out in there.”
She laughed. So she had been. An endless lifetime, new beginnings, and so many possibilities stretched out in front of them. “Short-term or long-term?”
“I’ll take care of the short-term.” He started toward her bedchamber. “What about the long haul?”
She turned her face into his neck, breathed in his scent. “I’m making a plan for us to live happily, forever—and even after that.”
“Happily, forever?” Deacon lifted her left hand and pressed a soft kiss to her ring finger. She heard the smile in his rough voice—and the promise. “I have no doubt we can pull it off, princess.”
Keep reading for a special preview of Meljean Brook’s next novel
THE IRON DUKE
Coming October 2010
from Berkley Sensation!
London, England
Mina hadn’t predicted that sugar would wreck the marchioness of Hartington’s ball; she’d thought the dancing would. Their hostess’s good humor had weathered them through the discovery that fewer than forty of her guests knew the steps, however, and they’d survived the first awkward quadrilles. But as the room grew warmer, the laughter louder, and the gossiping more vigorous, the refreshment table set the First Annual Victory Ball on a course for disaster.
Which meant Mina was enjoying the event far more than she’d expected to.
Not that it wasn’t as grand as everyone had said it would be. Despite the slowly increasing tension, the great ballroom had not begun to rip at the silk-papered seams; the restoration of Devonshire House had cost Hartington, and it showed. Candle-studded chandeliers displayed everyone to their best advantage. Discreet gas lamps highlighted the enormous paintings gracing the room but had not yet smudged the walls. Musicians played at the opposite end of the ballroom, and the violins did sound sweeter than the mechanical instruments Mina was accustomed to—and much sweeter than the hacking coughs from forty of the guests, all of them bounders.
Two hundred years ago, when most of Europe was fleeing from the Horde’s war machines, some of the English had gone with them. But an ocean passage over the Atlantic hadn’t come cheaply, and although the families who’d abandoned England for the New World hadn’t all been aristocrats, they’d all been moneyed. After the Iron Duke had freed England from Horde control, many of them had returned to London, flaunting their titles and their gold. Now, nine years after Britain’s victory over the Horde, the aristocratic bounders had decided to hold a ball celebrating the country’s newfound freedom, though they had shed no blood to gain it. They’d charitably included all of the peers who had little to their names but their titles.
At first glance, Mina could detect little distinction between the guests. The bounders spoke with flatter accents, and their women’s dresses exposed less skin, but everyone’s togs were at the height of New World fashion. Mina suspected, however, that forty of the guests could not begin to guess how dear those new togs were to the rest of the company.
And they probably could not anticipate how stubborn the rest of the company could be, despite their thirst and hunger.
At the side of the room, Mina sat with her friend and waited for the entertainment to begin. Considering her condition, Felicity might be the one to provide it. Pale blue satin covered Felicity’s hugely rounded belly, which seemed to Mina to require an enormous amount of food, not just the drink Felicity had assured her husband was all she’d needed.
With such a belly, Mina could not see how Felicity wasn’t constantly ravenous, consuming everything in her path. If no sugarless cakes were available, she might start with the bounders.
“If it has taken Richmond this long, he hasn’t found anything.” Beneath intricately curled blond hair that had made Mina burst into laughter when she had first seen it that evening—and who, thanks to her mother’s insistence, wore a similar style in her own black hair—Felicity’s gaze searched the crowd for her husband. With a sigh, she turned to regard her friend. “Oh, Mina. You are too amused. I doubt anyone will break into fisticuffs.”
“They should.”
“You think it’s an insult to supply sweet and strong lemonade? To stack cakes like towers?” Felicity rubbed her belly and looked longingly toward the towers. Mina supposed they were to have been demolished by now, symbolic of England’s victory over the Horde, but they still stood tall. “Surely, they did not realize how strongly we felt about it.”
“Or they realized, but thought we must be shown like children that we can eat imported sugar without being enslaved.”
A little more than two centuries ago, the Horde had hidden their nanoagents in the tea and sugar like invisible bugs, and traded it on the cheap. The Horde had no navy, and even though Europe had fled before the Horde, Britain was protected by water and a strong fleet of ships. And so for years, they’d traded tea and sugar, and Britain had thought itself safe.
Until the Horde had activated the bugs.
Now no one born in England trusted sugar unless it came from beets grown in British soil and refined in a British factory—and no one had enough money to pay for the luxury, anyway. The Horde hadn’t needed sugar from them, and had left few beet farmers and fewer refineries. Sugar was as precious as gold was to the French, and Horde technology was to the smugglers in the Indian Ocean.
“You judge them too harshly, Mina. This ball itself is goodwill. And it must have been a great expense.” Felicity’s voice softened at the end, and she looked around almost despairingly, as if it pained her to think of how much had been spent.
“Hartington can obviously afford it. Look how many candles.” Mina lifted her chin, gesturing at the chandelier.
“Even your mother uses candles.”
That wasn’t the same. Gas cost nothing; candles, especially wax tapers of good quality, rivaled sugar as a luxury. Her mother used candles during her League meetings, but only so the dim light would conceal the worst of the wear. Repeated scouring of the walls removed the smoke that penetrated every home in London, but had worn the paper down to the plaster. Rugs had been walked threadbare at the center. The sofa hadn’t been replaced since the Horde had invaded England. But at Devonshire House, there was no need for candles to forgive what brighter gas lamps revealed.
“My mother will also make certain that each of her guests is comfortable.” Physically comfortable, at any rate. She supposed her mother could not help the discomforting effect that both she and Mina had on visitors. “Goodwill should not stab at scars, Felicity. Goodwill would have been desserts
made with beet sugar or honey.”
“Perhaps,” Felicity said, obviously unwilling to think so little of the bounders, but acknowledging that they could have been done better. “You look to find the worst in everyone, Mina.”
“I would not be very good at my job if I didn’t.” The worst in everyone was what led them to murder.
“You like to look for the worst in bounders. But they cannot be blamed for their ancestors abandoning us, just as we cannot be blamed for buying the Horde’s sugar and teas. It seems to me, the fault can be laid on both sides of the ocean . . . and laid to rest.”
No, the bounders hadn’t abandoned England—and if that were the only grievance Mina had against them, she could have laid her resentment to rest. But neither could she explain her resentment; Felicity thought too well of them, and she was too fascinated by the New World.
The bounders were part of that fascination—and they were part of the New World, no matter that they referred to themselves as Englishmen, and were called Brits by everyone except those born on the British isle.
Damn them all, they probably didn’t even realize there was a difference between English and British.
No matter what the bounders thought they were, they weren’t like Mina’s family or Felicity’s—or like those who’d been altered and enslaved for labor. Bounders hadn’t been born under Horde rule. And Mina resented that when they’d returned, they’d carried with them the assumption that they better knew how to live than the buggers did. This ball, for all that it celebrated victory over the Horde, was a reflection of what bounders thought society should be: They’d had their Season in Manhattan City and thought the tradition should continue here. It did not seem to matter that most of the peers born here couldn’t dream of holding their own ball. And although the ball provided a pleasant diversion, buggers had more important things to occupy their minds and their time—such as whether they could afford their next meal.
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