“Forgive me for being late,” she said frigidly. “My invitation must have been lost in the post.”
Adrian winced. “Please don’t take offense, Portia. We simply saw no point in causing you any more distress.”
“How very thoughtful of you to consider my delicate sensibilities. Perhaps I should retire to my bedchamber to press some flowers or stitch a sampler with some inspiring homily on it.”
“I’m not trying to dismiss you. Given what you endured last night, I just thought it would be best if you allowed us to handle—”
“Let her stay.” Resting the side of his boot on his opposite knee, Julian stubbed out the cheroot on the boot’s sole before flicking it toward the fire on the hearth. “She’s earned the right.”
As Larkin scrambled out of his chair and ushered her into it, Portia gave Julian a grudging nod of thanks. Larkin settled his lanky form against the windowsill, his shrewd gaze traveling between the two of them.
Adrian rested his tumbler on the desk and rubbed his jaw, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else in the world. “Julian here was just explaining to us how he came to make this…um…woman’s acquaintance.”
“She’s not a woman,” Portia said firmly. “She’s a monster.”
Julian hiked one eyebrow in her direction, giving her no choice but to tar him with the same brush. She lowered her gaze to her lap, but refused to blush.
Still eyeing her, he took a generous sip of his port. “As I was saying before we were interrupted, when I first went to Paris to seek the vampire who had sired Duvalier, I’m afraid I wasn’t particularly subtle in my inquiries. The overlord of their nest was a rather nasty-tempered fellow who hated Brits even more than he hated mortals. When he discovered that I was seeking to destroy one of my own kind so that I could retrieve my mortality, he didn’t take it very well. He had me bound to a stake, doused in oil, and was about to take a torch to me when Valentine stepped in to plead for my life.”
Portia sniffed. “How very charitable of her.”
“I rather thought so at the time since my hair was starting to smolder,” Julian said dryly. “Because she intervened on my behalf, they ended up exiling her from the nest and we both had to flee Paris.”
“At least you had each other.” Portia leaned toward him in wide-eyed interest. “So did you find out she had your soul before or after the two of you became lovers?”
“Portia!” Adrian dropped his head into his hands with a groan while Larkin downed his port in a single gulp and turned to give the window a yearning look.
But Julian met her gaze squarely. “After, I’m afraid. When it would have seemed the height of hypocrisy to repay her for saving me by destroying her.”
“I forgot that you’re a man who always pays your debts,” she said softly. “Although Wallingford might disagree.”
“Enough about the past,” Adrian said, earning a relieved look from Larkin. “We’re here tonight to make certain that Portia has a future. If this Valentine is such a ferocious adversary, then why did she run away last night?”
Julian snorted. “She hasn’t survived this long by being a fool. She’s well aware of your reputation as a vampire hunter.”
“Then perhaps she’s already left London,” Larkin offered.
“She won’t leave him,” Portia said dully but with utter conviction.
“And she won’t leave Portia now that she knows where to find her…at least not alive,” Julian added grimly. “Even if I could find her and somehow convince her to come away with me, she’d only leave behind one of her minions to finish Portia off. We have to capture her before she can give those orders.”
“What if I send Portia away?” Adrian suggested. “I could send her and Caroline and Eloisa to the castle until we settle this matter.”
Portia stiffened. “I won’t give her the satisfaction of running from her! It’s humiliating enough that I let her get the best of me last night.”
“She’d only follow anyway,” Julian pointed out.
Larkin stroked his narrow chin. “If we know she’s going to come for Portia, then why can’t we just sit back and wait for her to make her move?”
Julian shook his head. “Because she’s clever enough to bide her time. For an impulsive creature, she can be extraordinarily patient. She’ll wait until we relax our guard. And then it will be too late.”
“Besides,” Portia said, “we have to draw her out of hiding before she murders any more innocent women.”
She rose to pace in front of the hearth, keenly aware of Julian’s heavy-lidded gaze following her every step. “She seems to be operating under the delusion that Julian still harbors some sort of sentimental attachment to me, which we all know to be blatantly untrue.”
Although Julian’s jaw tightened, he wisely kept his thoughts to himself and took another sip of the port.
“If we could only find some way to use her jealousy as a weapon against her…” Portia tapped one finger against her bottom lip. “I keep thinking about something Duvalier said right before he locked me and Julian in that crypt together.”
Adrian exchanged a worried glance with Larkin. “You almost died in that crypt, pet. There’s no need for you to relive such painful memories.”
“Your brother almost died, too,” she reminded him before turning to Julian. “Do you remember what Duvalier said right before he shoved me into your arms? He said that if you took my soul, you could ‘enjoy my company for all eternity.’”
“How could I forget? He was suggesting that I make you my eternal bride.” Julian swirled the port around in the bottom of the tumbler, his expression bitter. “For such a bloodthirsty bastard, he was quite the romantic.”
“What if we made Valentine believe that you’ve done just that?” Portia touched a hand to the white scarf encircling her throat. “She already knows that you’ve left your mark on me. So why not make her think that you returned to London to finish what you started all those years ago? Is there anything that would infuriate her more? Why, it would be as if we’d dashed holy water in her face!” Although she made a valiant effort, Portia couldn’t completely hide her delight at the prospect.
“I thought we were trying to save your life, not goad her into killing you more quickly,” Larkin pointed out. “Won’t infuriating her just make her more dangerous?”
“Perhaps. But it will also make her more rash and apt to make mistakes. If she truly believes Julian has chosen me over her, she won’t be willing to bide her time any longer. Her patience will have come to an end.”
“As will your life if you make a single misstep,” Adrian reminded her, his scowl deepening.
Julian eyed her with equal skepticism. “Do you truly believe you could masquerade as a vampire with enough conviction to fool Valentine?”
Portia shrugged. “Why not? Your kind walks among us mortals with the setting of every sun. You eat our food. You drink our wine. You dance to our music. You mimic our breathing.” She met his challenging gaze with one of her own, her voice deepening on a husky note. “Why, you even make love to us.”
This time Adrian groped for the bottle of port instead of his glass. He took a long swig before handing it to a grateful Larkin.
“But mortals are more easily deceived,” Julian replied softly, refusing to free her from the hypnotic tug of his gaze. “They’re quite adept at seeing only what they want to see.”
For a heartbeat of time, Portia was back in the library again. Back in his arms. “Perhaps that’s because we’re taught to believe in mermaids and leprechauns and noble princes on white horses before we grow up and have to put such foolish fancies behind us.”
“Valentine is no fool. You won’t just have to convince her that I’ve turned you into a vampire. You’ll have to make her believe that you’re in love with me.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult.” Portia’s voice sounded a shade too bright and brittle, even to her own ears. “You’ve said yourself that I’m an accomplished actr
ess.”
Adrian sighed, visibly running out of arguments. “Do you think this scheme stands a chance of working, Jules? You know this…woman better than anyone.”
“In every sense of the word,” Portia could not resist adding.
Julian slanted her a look that would have quailed any stranger he happened to encounter in a dark alley. “There’s a chance it might work.”
Larkin cleared his throat. “And just how is Valentine to learn that this momentous event has taken place? Should we take out an ad in the Undead Gazette?”
Julian glanced toward the fire, the set of his jaw one Portia was coming to know only too well. “I just might know a way.”
They all gazed at him expectantly.
“Adrian may have driven all of the vampires out of London, but he hasn’t driven them out of England. There’s a flourishing nest of them living in a country house in Colney, less than an hour’s ride from the city.”
“I’ve heard rumors about the existence of such a place,” Adrian admitted. “I suppose I should have paid them a visit before now but ever since Eloisa was born…” He shrugged, plainly reluctant to admit that the birth of his daughter had encouraged him to guard his own life with more care.
“I took shelter there briefly after Cuthbert moved back into his father’s house,” Julian said. “Their overlord won the manor in a wager from some poor drunken sot who’d already gambled away the rest of his family’s fortune. Vampires are worse gossips than mortals, you know. If we make an appearance there, I can promise you that Valentine will hear all about it before dawn of the next day.”
“Oh, goody!” Portia exclaimed dryly. “I do so love a country house party! When do we leave?”
“Don’t start planning your ensemble yet,” Adrian warned her. “If you think I’m going to allow you to march into that nest of monsters all alone—”
“She won’t be alone.” Julian rose from his chair to join Portia, the note of authority in his voice quelling even Adrian. “I’ll be right there by her side.”
Adrian eyed him disbelievingly. “Weren’t you the one who kept me up until dawn blistering my ears because I let her coax me into using her for bait?”
“She won’t be the bait this time. I will. Once Valentine finds out that I’ve ‘betrayed’ her, she’ll be too hellbent on my destruction to worry about anyone else.” He took Portia’s hand, drawing her even closer to him. “And I can promise you that I’d drive a stake through my own heart before I’d let anyone, living or undead, harm a single hair on Portia’s head.”
Before Portia could react to that impressive vow or the disarmingly natural feel of having his fingers laced through hers, Adrian said, “If you expect me to give this unholy little alliance my blessing, you’re going to have to tell me exactly what you intend to do with our quarry once our trap springs shut.”
Portia held her breath, trying to pretend her entire future didn’t hinge on Julian’s answer.
He was silent for a long moment before finally saying, “I’ll take her away from here. So far away she’ll never again be able to hurt anyone I—” He stopped, his grip on Portia’s hand tightening until it was almost painful. “Anyone at all.”
Feeling as brittle as one of the Dresden shepherdesses she had coveted as a child, Portia dragged her hand from his. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I should probably go inform my sister that I’ll be attending a country house party tomorrow night hosted by a nest of bloodthirsty vampires.”
After the study door had closed behind her, Adrian shook his head, his handsome features clouded by both bewilderment and anger. “What in the bloody hell are you doing, Jules? I don’t understand your reluctance to destroy this creature.”
Julian turned on him, his dark eyes blazing. “Well, maybe I’ve never understood your reluctance to destroy me!” Pivoting on his heel, he started for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Adrian demanded, moving to block his path.
“Out,” Julian replied shortly, refusing to yield so much as an inch to his older brother. Once Adrian might have cowed him with little more than a disapproving look, but now they stood toe to toe, equal in both stature and determination.
“Do you really think that’s wise?”
“I don’t know. That depends on whether I’m here as your guest…or your prisoner?”
When Julian’s resolute expression did not waver, Adrian reluctantly stepped aside, freeing him to stride from the study and the house.
Eleven
Julian walked the bustling London streets as if he owned both the city and the night, sending everyone who dared to look upon his face scurrying out of his path. Some of them instinctively recognized a monster when they saw one while others had simply learned that it was wiser not to provoke a man who had been born to both privilege and power, but who still stalked the night with the dangerous grace of a predator.
When a pasty-faced clerk unwittingly bumped his shoulder as he ducked out of his Threadneedle Street office, it was all Julian could do to bite back a growl. He knew he ought to be relieved when the crowds slowly began to thin, but the thought of them all rushing home to their cozy fires and the welcoming arms of their loved ones only sharpened the edge of his temper. He didn’t even have Cuthbert’s stolid company to give him cheer. The note he’d had a footman deliver to his friend’s house earlier in the day had been returned to him with its wax seal unbroken.
Although he walked the streets unfettered, he felt as if he was still dragging the chains from the crypt behind him. Duvalier’s taunts had never stopped haunting him.
You disappoint me, Jules. I had expected so much more from you. You’re not willing to be a vampire, but you’re not a man, either.
Duvalier had been wrong. He was both man and vampire and cursed with the hungers of both. Hungers that gnawed at the aching hole where his soul had once resided every time he looked at Portia, caressed the milky softness of her skin, tasted the forbidden sweetness of her lips.
Duvalier would have been gratified to know that after all these years he still hungered for both her flesh and her blood.
Someone jostled him from behind and he whirled around, his lips parting in an involuntary snarl.
A woman was standing there, her pretty, freckled face wreathed in a halo of auburn curls. “Sorry, guv’nor. Me mum always said I was clumsy enough to trip over me own feet.”
Although her cloak was threadbare, she’d taken some care with her appearance. Bright spots of rouge stained her cheeks and she’d tucked a wilted pansy behind one ear.
“No harm done, miss,” he assured her stiffly. “I’m sure the fault was mine.”
Before he could dismiss her, she boldly wrapped one gloved hand around his forearm. “’Tis a bitter cold night, sir. I thought perhaps ye might be lookin’ for somethin’ softer than a heated brick to warm yer bed.”
She was his for the taking. Julian could see that in the inquisitive tilt of her head, the appreciative gleam in her eye. She believed him to be a gentleman, not a beast.
There was nothing to stop him from accepting her offer and escorting her to some nearby inn with worn but clean sheets. He could court her with the same pretty words Portia had mocked, then feast on her in whatever manner he chose. By the time his practiced caresses had banished the memory of the fumbling hands and sweating, heaving men who had come before him, he doubted she would cost him a single coin.
But he couldn’t shake the notion that she might cost him something much dearer.
Ignoring a savage stab of regret, he dug a coin out of his coat pocket and pressed it into her hand. “Why don’t you take this and warm yourself by your own fire tonight?”
Tipping his hat to her, he started across the street, where a butcher was just stepping out to lock the door of his shop for the night.
Portia was back in the crypt.
The dank smell of crumbling earth and ancient decay filled her nostrils. She would have been paralyzed with terror if Julia
n hadn’t been there. If he hadn’t wrapped his strong arms around her to still her trembling. He had already torn away the gag and ropes Duvalier had used to silence and restrain her, chafing the feeling back into her numb wrists with his own unsteady hands.
“Why did Duvalier say those terrible things?” A sob caught in her throat as she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest. “Why did he say you were going to kill me?”
Julian shoved her out of his arms and staggered toward the corner, ducking his head and lifting a hand to shield his face from the torchlight. “Duvalier was right,” he growled. “You need to stay the bloody hell away from me!”
Despite his warning, she took an instinctive step toward him. “But why? Why should I listen to anything that miserable monster has to say?”
“He may be a monster, Portia. But so am I.” Julian slowly lifted his head and lowered his hand, baring his face to the torchlight and her anguished gaze.
She clapped a hand to her mouth, but it was too late to smother her horrified gasp. His skin was stretched taut over the striking bones of his face, his eyes hollow but glowing with a primitive hunger. It was as if everything he was had been pared down to its very essence, leaving something that was both beautiful and terrible to behold. As she watched, mesmerized by his feral grace, his eyeteeth sharpened and lengthened, curving into a pair of gleaming fangs designed by the devil for only one deadly purpose.
“Adrian was never a vampire, was he?” she asked softly, already knowing the answer.
Julian slowly shook his head.
“It’s always been you.”
He nodded.
She was distracted from the unlikely sight of his fangs by an even more impossible one. The rags of his shirt hung open halfway to his waist, revealing the familiar shape burned into the flesh of his chest.
With a broken cry, Portia ran to him. She traced the outline of the crucifix seared into his flesh as if she could somehow absorb his pain through her fingertips, then lifted her tear-filled eyes to his face. “Dear God, what did he do to you?”
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 12