“What is that?” she demanded.
Even though she knew it was too late, Portia clapped a hand to the scars on her throat. Valentine’s accusing gaze glided to her face. “This isn’t the first time you’ve tasted a vampire’s kiss, is it?”
“Perhaps not,” Julian growled. “But I can promise you it will be the last.” To underscore his threat, he grabbed a handful of Portia’s curls and gave them a rough yank.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, throwing him a glare over her shoulder.
Valentine began to prowl around them in a lazy half-circle, the hem of her cloak flowing behind her like the train of a queen’s ermine-trimmed robes. Her gaze was still fixed on Portia’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were no stranger to our ways?”
“Because you were too busy trying to rip out my throat,” Portia retorted. She lowered her hand, brazenly exposing that throat and her scars.
The woman’s hypnotic green eyes narrowed. “Ah, so the kitten has claws after all. You’d best watch your eyes, Julian.”
But Julian was watching Valentine, his every muscle rigid with wariness.
Portia instinctively shrank against him as the woman reached out one hand and brushed her fingertips over the scars, her touch almost gentle. “Who left their mark on you? Who is your master, kitten?”
Having had just about enough of being bullied by vampires for one night, Portia boldly knocked the woman’s hand away. “I don’t have a master and my name isn’t kitten. It’s Portia. But that would be Miss Cabot to the likes of you.”
Valentine’s eyes widened. “Portia?” She spat the name from her mouth as if it were the foulest of poisons. “You’re Portia?”
Julian groaned before muttering, “I knew I should have eaten you when I had the chance.”
Portia ignored him, her attention now fixed on Valentine. “How do you know me?”
The female vampire threw her hands in the air with a dramatic flourish. “How could I not know you, what with Julian here constantly murmuring your name in his sleep?”
“Don’t do this, Valentine!” Julian warned. “There’s nothing to be gained from it.”
The woman continued as if he hadn’t spoken, her upper lip curled in a snarl. “Darling Portia. Sweet Portia. Precious Portia. And then there was that time when he was making love to me and he forgot my name but had no trouble remembering yours.”
Portia gaped at her for a moment in stunned silence, then wheeled on Julian, torn between kissing him and kicking him. “You cried out my name? While you were making love to her?”
His face was so hard it might have been carved from a diamond. “She probably just misunderstood me. I barely spared you a thought while I was away. You were never anything more to me than a lovestruck child.”
Valentine made a skeptical noise that sounded distinctly like the French version of “Pppht!”
Although Portia knew she should be recoiling from the cruel lash of his words, she drew one step nearer to him, gazing up into his glittering eyes. “Is that why you stayed away so long? Because you couldn’t bear the sight of me? The sound of my voice?” she asked softly. “My scent?”
He closed his eyes for an instant, his nostrils flaring involuntarily. “I stayed away because I was relieved to be free of your fawning adoration. I found it to be a burden and a dreadful bore.”
“Good,” Valentine said briskly from behind her. “Then you won’t mind if I proceed with my plans to tear out her pretty little throat, will you?”
Before Portia could react to the woman’s threat, Julian had swept her back into his arms. He held her against his broad chest, sheltering her behind the barricade of his well-muscled forearm. “I’d advise you to keep both your fangs and your claws sheathed, Valentine.”
“Or you’ll what?” the woman purred. “Stake me? Drench me in oil and set me on fire? Cut off my head and stuff it with garlic?”
“Don’t tempt me,” he snarled.
She pursed her lush red lips in a pretty pout. “You really shouldn’t make idle threats, my darling boy, when we both know you’ll do no such thing.” She shifted her mocking gaze from Julian to Portia. “You may have his heart, kitten, but I’ll always have his soul.”
Eight
Julian had faced enemies of all sorts in his life—bloodthirsty vampires, ferocious soldiers, irate husbands—all willing to go to excessive lengths to put an end to his worthless existence. But he’d never known the depth of dread he felt as Portia calmly disengaged herself from his embrace and turned to face him. Even in heeled slippers she barely came up to his chin, but he still caught himself taking a step backward.
Her eyes were clear and bright, her expression amiable. Yet he knew that if she’d had a stake in her hand at that moment, there would have been nothing left of him but a film of dust on her slippers. “So you went in search of your soul and you found her.”
Although it was not a question, he slowly nodded.
“You left everyone who loved you waiting and worrying for over five years. While we were spending all of those sleepless nights praying for your safe return, you were cavorting in the bed of the vampire who possessed the one thing that could restore you to humanity.”
“When I went looking for the vampire who sired Duvalier, the last thing I expected to find was a woman.”
“Especially not such a beautiful one, I’ll wager. If you’d have found some homely, bowlegged old crone with a hairy wart on her chin hoarding your soul, I’m sure you would have had no compunctions about ripping out her throat and retrieving it.”
Gazing at him fondly, Valentine sighed. “My Julian has always been such a gentleman when it comes to the ladies. I’ve often feared it would be his downfall.”
“For once, madam, you may just be right,” Portia said softly, never once taking her eyes off of his face. “So why did you come here tonight, Julian? Did you come to rendezvous with your lover? Or to destroy her and claim your soul so that you could come home to us?” It was pure agony to watch her lift her chin and swallow the last bitter dregs of her pride. “To me?”
Although he owed her so much more, all he had to give her was the truth. “I wanted to make sure the murders were going to stop. So I came to tell her that I was leaving London. I knew she’d follow me, whether I wanted her to or not.”
Julian felt a pang of unexpected grief as he watched all that had been spring turn to winter in Portia’s eyes. Since he’d never deliberately sought her affection, he’d had no idea he would mourn it so keenly once it was gone. For the first time in a very long while, he felt like the monster he was.
“You suspected that she was the murderer all along, didn’t you? Yet you let me believe it could have been you. Why would you do such a thing? To protect her?”
“To protect you. If you believed the worst of me, I thought it might be easier for you to let me go.”
A wealth of emotions played across Portia’s expressive face before she finally nodded. “You were right. Because as far as I’m concerned, you and your soul-sucking mistress can both go straight to the devil.”
Valentine clapped her hands like a child on Christmas morning. “She’s giving us her blessing, darling! Isn’t that quaint?”
Shaking her head in disgust, Portia turned and began to walk away from him, wobbling slightly on a loose heel.
Fighting an irrational flare of anger, Julian moved so swiftly that she could not quite hide her startled jump when he appeared directly in front of her. “I’m afraid I can’t let you go.”
“You already have,” she said, unshed tears burning bright in her eyes. “So I would suggest you take your precious Valentine and flee London before Adrian puts a crossbow bolt through her shriveled little heart and some other bloodthirsty beauty inherits your miserable soul. I hope the two of you will live happily ever after. Oh wait—it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”
She neatly sidestepped him but before she could make her escape, he had blocked her path again. His desperation m
ounting, he reached for her arm. “Please, Bright Eyes, you have to listen to me.”
Before he could react, she had hiked up the hem of her skirt, revealing a delicious froth of petticoat and silk stocking, whipped a pistol out of her garter, and pointed it straight at his heart. She cocked the hammer with a decisive flick of her thumb. “Don’t ever call me that again!”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Portia, put that thing away! It’s not as if you’re going to shoot me.”
“Oh, no?” Smiling sweetly, she pulled the trigger.
Julian staggered backward, the blast ringing in his ears. Gritting his teeth against a searing wave of pain, he gazed down at his chest in stunned disbelief. The wound was already healing, its ragged edges neatly folding in on themselves, but there would be no repairing the blackened hole in the expensive silk of his waistcoat.
Regaining his balance, he shifted his disbelieving gaze back to her. “You know, it’s one thing to threaten to drive a stake through a man’s heart, but ruining a perfectly fine waistcoat is just bloody rude!”
“You can send me your tailor bill.” She blew on the mouth of the spent pistol before tucking it back into her garter, then pointed to Valentine, who had been watching their entire exchange with poorly concealed delight. “Or perhaps you can get the Duchess of Darkness over there to darn it with her teeth.”
His chest and his temper still stinging, Julian growled at her, his fangs instinctively lengthening. This time she didn’t yield an inch. Her blue eyes blazed up at him, all but daring him to do his worst.
“Step away from her, Julian!”
They both swung around as Adrian’s commanding voice came ringing through the night. He was moving out of the mist toward them, his gaze locked on Julian and his powerful hands gripping a full-sized crossbow with a lethal bolt already slotted. Except for a few stray threads of silver woven through the honeyed gold of his hair, Adrian hadn’t changed one whit since the last time he and Julian had come face-to-face. His hands were steady on the weapon, his blue-green eyes every bit as resolute as they’d been when the two of them had played at knights and soldiers as boys.
Alastair Larkin moved like a shadow behind him, sporting a shiny new lump on his brow and hauling a sheepish-looking Cuthbert by his starched collar.
“I tried to stop them, Jules,” Cubby blurted out. “I dropped the sandbags on their noggins and knocked them out cold just like you said, but they came to before I could get them tied up. You always said I never could tie a decent knot in my cravat. I fear they may be madmen escaped from Bedlam. They keep blathering on and on with some nonsense about monsters and minions and vampires. When we heard the pistol shot, I feared the worst and—”
Larkin gave Cubby a sharp shake, startling him into silence.
Julian faced his brother without flinching, the night wind sifting its fingers through his hair. Ever since the day Duvalier had stolen his soul and turned him into a vampire, he’d known this moment would come. Perhaps Portia had been right all along. Perhaps he had returned to London because he knew there was no longer any point in delaying the inevitable.
He fully expected her to bow out of the tragic scene, giving Adrian a clean shot. But to his keen surprise, she stepped in front of him, putting herself between his heart and that lethal bolt.
“He didn’t murder those women, Adrian. It was her. She was the one who…” Portia turned to point an accusing finger, but her voice quickly trailed off.
The pool of light beneath the lamppost was empty. Valentine had vanished just as swiftly as she had appeared.
Portia blinked in astonishment but Julian wasn’t the least bit surprised by her defection. Valentine would have never thrived for over two hundred years, even surviving a near fatal brush with the guillotine after the French revolution, without possessing a healthy instinct for self-preservation.
“But she was standing right there only a second ago,” Portia said helplessly, turning back to Adrian. “Didn’t you see her?” She shot Larkin a pleading glance. “You must have seen her, didn’t you?”
The look Adrian gave her was both tender and pitying. “I know you have strong feelings for my brother, Portia, but you simply can’t protect him any longer.”
“You’re absolutely right. I have very strong feelings for him.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “There’s loathing. Contempt. Revulsion.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Julian murmured beneath his breath.
“Despite my feelings,” she said crisply, tossing him a murderous glance of her own over her shoulder, “I won’t see him executed for crimes he didn’t commit.”
Adrian shook his head. “You forget that I know you’ve always had a penchant for playacting. How can I be sure this isn’t just another ploy to help him make his escape?”
“Oh, she’s sincere this time,” Julian assured him. “She even shot me.”
Adrian and Larkin exchanged an incredulous glance before saying in unison, “She shot you?”
“She shot you?” Cuthbert echoed weakly, blinking like a befuddled owl.
“Right through the heart,” he said proudly. “If I was alive, I’d be dead right now instead of undead.”
“I’m sure I’m not the first woman to shoot you,” Portia said out of the corner of her mouth. “They’re probably queuing up for the privilege down in Covent Garden even as we speak. As you can see,” she told Adrian, “you no longer need to worry that sentimentality is clouding my good judgment.”
Adrian took another step toward them, his eyes narrowing. “So despite all of the evidence to the contrary, you’re asking me to believe that Julian is innocent?”
A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “Hardly! What I’m asking you to believe is that he’s not the vampire who killed those women.”
“Vampire?” Cuthbert repeated, his round face going so pale he might have easily been mistaken for one of the undead himself. His glazed eyes slowly rolled back in his head. He crumpled into a swoon, his dead weight sending Larkin staggering to his knees.
“I gather that you never found the time to tell your devoted friend that you were a bloodsucking fiend,” Portia said.
“He never asked,” Julian replied, sparing Cuthbert a worried glance. “He just thought I was a late sleeper.”
“If Julian didn’t kill those women,” Adrian asked, “then just who did?”
“His lover,” Portia replied, frost dripping from her every syllable.
“She’s no longer my lover,” Julian said, biting off the words with equal ferocity. “If she was, I wouldn’t have purchased a commission in His Majesty’s army and gone all the way to Burma just to escape her.”
Turning her back on both Adrian and his deadly crossbow, Portia faced him, planting her hands on her shapely hips. “I suppose she simply found your charms so irresistible that she decided to pursue you to the ends of the earth.”
“Is that so inconceivable?” He reached out to cup her cheek in his hand, softening his voice so that it would be audible only to her ears. “There was a time when you would have done the same.”
He might have carelessly killed her love for him, but she couldn’t completely hide the ghost of yearning in her eyes as he ran his thumb down the velvety softness of her cheek.
In that moment Julian made a startling discovery. He didn’t want to end up as nothing more than dust on her slippers. In some sentimental corner of his heart he supposed he’d always believed that even if he perished without retrieving his soul and abandoned all hope of heaven, he would still live forever, if only in her heart. If he let Adrian destroy him now, she probably wouldn’t even spit on his grave.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“For what?” Fresh tears sparkled in her eyes. “Breaking a young girl’s foolish heart?”
“For this.” Without giving himself time to ponder the consequences, he slid his hand from her cheek to her nape and jerked her into his arms. Wrapping his other arm around her sl
ender waist, he dragged her around so that they were both facing Adrian. Using her vulnerable body as a shield was the only way he knew he could protect them both.
Adrian lunged toward them.
Forced to wield his only weapon, Julian dipped his head toward Portia’s throat, baring his fangs.
Biting off an oath, Adrian froze in his tracks while Larkin glared daggers at him. Portia’s warm body was trembling against his, but Julian suspected she was vibrating with rage, not fear.
“You should have listened to her,” he said grimly. “There’s a predator out there who’s far more dangerous than I am. Her name is Valentine Cardew. She was the vampire who turned Duvalier that night in the hellfire club. When you destroyed him, she inherited all of the souls he’d stolen and all of his power. And now that she knows who Portia is, she won’t rest until she sees her dead.”
“Then give her to me,” Adrian begged, his anguished gaze flickering over Portia’s face. “Let me protect her.”
Julian’s temper finally erupted. “You’ve done a capital job so far, haven’t you? Allowing her to travel unchaperoned through the city streets at night visiting gambling hells and men’s lodgings! Using her as monster bait and sending her to parade up and down dark alleys like a common light-skirt! If you’d have protected her as you should have, she’d have been married to some nice young earl by now and forgotten my bloody name!”
“I should be so fortunate!” Portia bucked wildly against him, but only succeeded in wedging her lush bottom against his hips, a position that was undoubtedly far more painful for him than for her. “In case you’ve forgotten, Adrian is my brother-in-law, not my father. I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself!”
“Oh, yes, that’s quite evident,” he replied dryly, wincing as one of her flailing heels connected soundly with his shin.
“What do you want from me?” Adrian demanded of Julian.
“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what you need. And if you’re going to have any hope at all of protecting Portia from Valentine, then you’re going to need me.”
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 9