For a moment she moved into his kiss, then pushed against him. “No, Nicholas. You won’t seduce me away from finding out. You may not wish to tell me everything, but someday I will know what it is that frightens you.”
He moved away from her impatiently. “There is nothing, I assure you. I wish you would stop prying, my dear, for you would find little of use to you. And if you did, what would you do with it?”
Leonore gazed at him as he looked into his reflection in one of the windows to adjust a fold in his neckcloth. His voice was nonchalant—almost. She had spoken only about some unspecified fear that he might have, not one that she could cause. He had voiced the possibility, not herself. She played a part, then, in the thing he feared. A familiar feeling—cold loneliness—filled the pit of her stomach. But she would never hurt him! And why did he marry her if he thought so? She went to him and laid her hand upon his arm, making him look at her.
“Nicholas, I would never do anything to hurt you. How could I? You’ve been kind and generous to me and my family. It would be unjust and cruel if I were to return all your goodness with anything painful to you. Haven’t I said I care for you?” She touched his cheek with her fingers and at his uncertain look felt tears come to her eyes. She drew him down to her, kissing him so that he would not see them.
Nicholas’s sigh sounded like a groan, and he pulled her to him hard, kissing her breathless. “Ah, God, Leonore, you don’t know … you don’t know …” he murmured as he kissed her eyes and lips and throat. His hand came to her breast, and he pushed away her bodice, tearing the delicate fabric. She didn’t care, for his touch was fire and life to her. He drew her down to the daybed, pressing himself against her. She felt his hands pull up her skirts, then felt him hard against the apex of her thighs, and she closed her eyes, shivering with the pleasure of it.
“You hurt me now, the way you make me feel,” he said. His words made her put her hands against his chest and open her eyes again. He pressed himself against her, moving sensuously, and his eyes were closed tight, as if he were indeed in pain.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, then gasped at the pleasurable ache he produced in her.
He looked at her, his eyes confused and lost. “When I hurt, I know I am alive,” Nicholas said. “It is worth more to me than anything.” He pushed himself into her, and she could not puzzle over his words, for she was lost in pleasure. He trembled as he thrust into her until she cried out twice, three times with the heat and ecstasy that burst within her. At last he groaned himself and thrust hard into her, breathing in sobbing gasps. “God, oh, God, Leonore, how you make me feel,” he murmured against her ear. “Sometimes I cannot bear it.”
Leonore sighed and relaxed, but said nothing. A still distrustful part of her mind wondered if he had seduced her once again for the purpose of distracting her. His arms came around her then and held her tightly; perhaps he had not meant to seduce her this time. She took some solace in the thought. In this, at least, he wanted her and seemed to take comfort in it as well.
But a still, lonely voice inside her heart mourned for him and for herself, for now she knew there was something in her that caused him fear, and she did not know what it was.
Chapter Eleven
St. Vire sat up with a gasp. His hands shook, and he pressed them to his eyes to suppress the images that had come to him—more vividly this time, as if to make up for their long absence. It had been months since he had dreamed anything; he had not dreamed since he was wed, and that was four months ago. This dream had a clarity that transported him sixty years to the night when he had been made a vampire.
In it, St. Vire had smiled at the whore who accosted him. The orgy—for that was what it was—was a farce, nothing more than men and Covent Garden ware dressed up as monks and nuns, profane and stupid with drink. Discarded bagwigs and buckram coats littered the floor of the abbey, and the scent of spilled wine made him grimace.
He absently stroked the woman’s exposed breast as she cooed in his ear, and looked across the crowd at Sir Francis Dashwood, whose dissipated countenance was now fired with lust. Dashwood had said he’d knowledge of certain forbidden magical arts, and so lured Nicholas to this idiot’s gathering.
The Hellfire Club. He should have known any group with true knowledge would not have let itself be advertised with such a flagrantly provocative title. A group with any knowledge of the magical arts would not have advertised itself at all. They had also called themselves the Amorous Knights of Wycombe, and he should have suspected the meetings were nothing but a debauch.
However, he was not averse to harmless diversion. He looked down at the woman pressed against him and this time noted with surprise that she was beautiful. She had black hair, unpowdered, contrasting with flawless white, translucent skin. Her eyes were black as well—large and heavy-lidded with impending seduction, and her lips were full and red as ripe plums. He smiled at her with growing interest and she returned it, her teeth white and delicately small.
A loud thumping at the center of the room took his attention. Sir Francis had seized a curiously shaped staff and brought it down forcefully once more on the ground.
“We have taken profound delight in our unholy gathering,” Sir Francis intoned and paused. The noise quieted to just under a dull roar. “In thanks, let us send an invocation to our dear Lord of Darkness.”
St. Vire felt bored and looked about him for an exit, but the woman pressed herself to him insistently.
“Stay,” she said. “There is more to come … more delightful things, I assure you.”
Her voice had an interesting lilt—foreign, though she spoke English clearly enough. He shrugged. She was beautiful, and she felt sinuously sleek against him. Why not?
She pulled him behind a pillar and dragged at his clothes, taking off his cravat and lace, kissing him hard upon the mouth. He heard Sir Francis’s voice chanting some rhyme and calling upon infernal spirits. The hairs on the back of his neck rose at the sound. He ignored the sensation, for the woman pushed him down with surprising strength to the floor. She gazed into his eyes and smiled slowly, seductively.
“You want me …” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. Yet, he heard her over the noise in the room, and he wanted her then, indeed—badly, savagely. He took her quickly, behind the pillar upon the floor. She moaned with pleasure, pressing her lips to his throat, and reaching her crisis faster than he’d thought she would despite the lack of caresses on his part. She laughed huskily. “You are mine, now,” she said. “Always.”
And she sank her teeth into his neck. The pain of her bite and the pleasure of his climax combined to make him cry out and clutch her arms in a bruising grip. Red darkness flooded his mind, and he felt as if he were dying, dying …
Nicholas groaned and shook his head to dispel the images that rose up again before his eyes. It was only a memory now, but the memory of his foolishness made him wince. He had learned to be more cautious since that time, learned more than he ever had thought anyone could of magic, but it was too late. He’d been tricked and made into a vampire by that woman who took the opportunity when it presented itself.
Moving from the bed, St. Vire shrugged his robe over his shoulders, then pulled the bell rope for his valet. He had not thought of her for a long time. He did not know her name—not her real name, for she had changed it often, and lied easily. She had told him to call her Mercia, and after he’d got over his initial rage at her trickery, he’d been intrigued by all that she could tell him of his new powers. They’d traveled to Paris, where they had quarreled, and she’d left him for easier company. He had caught glimpses of her in his yearly travels to the rest of Europe, but they had avoided one another.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. It was Edmonds, carrying freshly ironed neckcloths. St. Vire selected his clothes for the evening, a little less particularly, for the memory of his dream distracted him. He wondered what it meant, for surely a dream so vivid and occurring after months of no dreaming
at all had some meaning. He hoped to God it did not mean he would see her again. Surely not now. Mercia had always said that next to Rome, she detested London.
St. Vire sighed and made one last adjustment to his neckcloth. The last time he had seen her, he had not been so caught up in discovering the extent of his powers or in his studies that he did not see the unrest that was the beginning of the French Revolution. He had left amidst Mercia’s scornful laughter and retreated to his estates in Avebury to study and find the spell that would reverse his condition. He had heard or seen nothing of Mercia since that time, and in fact had rather hoped she had been done in by the French mobs for her association with the aristocracy.
He grimaced, thinking of her indiscretions, then shrugged. He would ponder the dream later, after he had his supper with Leonore. He would much rather think of his wife, after all. than some vulgar woman he detested.
“Leonore, will you watch the dawn with me?” St. Vire asked abruptly. The sound of his voice echoed in the dining room, rattling the silence that had descended between him and Leonore often these days. He did not mean to ask her right then, for it was in the middle of supper, and he had thought he’d ask when he was giving her something, perhaps a necklace or a ring. He had put it off for four months—never finding exactly the right time, or at least the right time in which he felt comfortable. And how was he to ask it, after all? “Leonore, will you stay up so that I can confirm that I am not going mad?” Or, “Leonore, I need to see if I am going to stay a vampire for eternity?”
But she had smiled at him just then, her eyes warm and tender over the wineglass as she sipped. She looked beautiful, and he had been caught up in gazing at her, forgetting that he wanted to time his request at the right moment. He had simply opened his mouth and blurted out the words, graceless as a nervous schoolboy. He made himself look steadily at her and was, for once, glad he could not blush.
“The dawn?” Leonore’s eyes widened, and her hand nervously twisted her pearl pendant. “I thought … I thought you could not have sunlight upon you.”
Nicholas looked away from the clear concern and pity in her eyes and pressed his lips together in frustration. He did not want her pity, only her cooperation. He let out a breath, releasing an emotion that came too close to disappointment, and made himself smile at her. “I thought I might try to see if I could bear it this time.” He could see her indecision, how her teeth worried her lower lip. “Please,” he said.
She gazed at him and nodded slowly. “You must tell me if it hurts you, and I will close the bedroom curtains quickly.”
He shook his head. “No, that room faces west, and I cannot see the dawn clearly from there. I would like to see it in the attic library if you would not mind.”
“Of course,” she replied and with a quick, uncertain smile lowered her gaze and returned to her supper again.
“Thank you,” he said.
There it was again, her reticence. He had thought he’d eliminated it before they had wed, but it cropped up again and again since a few days after their wedding night. He was not sure what had made it appear. Did he not please her with his gifts, and did he not pleasure her in bed? He did not like her to act in this manner, alternately elusive and pitying. When she lay with him, she was not this way, but wholly herself—fierce and ardent, giving and receiving in equal measure. He had seen how tender and caring she was to those she held dear. Now, he only glimpsed that passion when they joined together, as well as that unrestrained naturalness of her laughter and tenderness when she protectively shepherded her sister Susan about to balls and assemblies.
Dissatisfaction made him tap his fingers impatiently upon the table. Leonore had carefully partitioned herself depending on whom she was with, and he knew he received a scrupulously dished out part of her attentions. He shook his head at himself. How greedy he was, to be sure! He did not need her regard, tenderness, or her passion to effect the completion of the spell, but he wanted it anyway. Well, he had been right when he had told her she’d prick any bubble of vanity he had left. She had told him he was vain, and now she showed him—not in so many words, it was true—that he was greedy. He wondered what other deadly sins in him she’d reveal and hold before his eyes, however unintentionally.
He grinned to himself as he let his gaze linger over the soft expanse of breast revealed by her low-cut evening gown. Certainly lust was another one of them, but it was not one he regretted. They were married, after all, and surely it was not a deadly sin to lust after one’s own wife.
His grin turned wry. More foolishness! Here he was, concerning himself with the idea of sin when he never considered it much before—certainly not during his life as a vampire. It was a novelty to think on these things, however. He shrugged and sipped his wine.
Meanwhile there was Leonore … sweet and lovely and wholly desirable. He had thought her pretty when he first saw her, and now she was more beautiful to him with each night that passed. Indeed, as the weeks went by, it seemed his senses became slowly more acute, even when the bloodlust was not upon him. Surely, he had set his foot on the right path where the spell was concerned.
But with Leonore? He watched as she picked the sharp bones from the salmon on her plate. That was what she was when she was with him—careful, as if there were some hidden threat she might happen upon.
He looked down at his own plate then and pushed the vegetables about with his fork. There was a threat to her, and he did not want to think about it. Little chance she’d turn into a vampire, not without the proper rituals and circumstances. But once in a while, not more than once a month, when he lost himself in combined passion and bloodlust, he’d drink her blood at last. She could become weak from the lack of blood, and he knew it, and so he kept himself from slaking all of his thirst so that she would not become ill.
And truth be told, it disgusted him now. He had accepted the taking of blood as a necessary condition of his survival. Now it seemed it was not so. He’d always enjoyed being in control of any situation. Now that he was regaining his senses again, now that he felt the thirst with far less frequency than he had before, each time he drank from Leonore’s veins, he … he …
He hated himself. He pushed his plate away and swallowed down bile. He took and took from her, and she asked nothing from him. That was why he had hesitated asking Leonore to watch the dawn with him for so long. That was why he offered her time and time again trinkets for which she thanked him, but in which she clearly had little interest. A short, mirthless laugh escaped him, and when he looked up, he encountered Leonore’s questioning look.
“A joke, my dear,” he said in explanation, and even he could hear a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “A private joke that means little to anyone but myself.”
Leonore nodded and looked away from him, down at her plate again. She seemed to shrink into herself.
“Stop it, Leonore.”
She glanced at him again, her brows rising in question.
Nicholas let out an exasperated breath. He was making matters worse. How was he to bring her out again? He wanted her natural with him, not only in bed, but when they were in the same room, in the theatre, in the dining room, anywhere.
“What have I done to make you withdraw from me?” he asked.
“Nothing. And … I was not aware I was withdrawing from you. I am sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, my dear.” This was getting nowhere, Nicholas thought. He looked at her again and saw the loneliness in her eyes as she gazed back at him. Relief washed over him. That was it, certainly. She had little company during the day, especially since he was not available. She needed companionship. “Are you lonely, Leonore?” he asked.
A relieved expression crossed her face. “Yes … yes, that is it. I miss my sister, and I worry about her. I see her at assemblies and such, but there is no one to talk with when you are not here.”
“Well, then, you must invite Susan to stay with you here—unless you feel she will not like it. You may even br
ing her out for the Little Season if you wish.”
His reward was her wide, grateful smile and sparkling eyes, and he found himself smiling in return. “Oh, Nicholas— If it would not be an imposition, I would like it of all things!”
“Not at all,” he said. “It displeases me to see you moped, that is all.” He frowned. “Do you not have friends, then? I thought perhaps you might make some and accompany them to luncheons and such.”
“Not really … I do not always know what to say to people.”
“Oh? I had heard from Lady Jersey that you put Lady Brunsmire firmly to rout when she called upon you.”
Leonore blushed lightly, but put up her chin. “I fear I manage to find my tongue when I lose my temper, and Lady Brunsmire made me do so.”
“Did she? I shall be sure to give her the cut direct when next I see her, then.”
“Oh, you need not do so,” Leonore said hastily. “Lady Jersey gave her a set-down as well, so Lady Brunsmire has become quite amiable.”
He felt a little disappointed and smiled ruefully at himself. Did he want to play the knight errant, now, as well?
“I am rather bookish, too,” Leonore continued, and her smile grew crooked. “It is not popular thing to be, and it’s difficult to strike up a conversation about the things that interest me.”
“No, I suppose it is not popular, which is why I keep my bookish habits a secret, you see.” It occurred to him that he had never asked her what she liked to read and knew only a little of her interests. He looked down at his plate again, and his smile turned ironic. He was wholly self-centered and selfish, too, in addition to being vain and greedy. Again, she did not say it and showed no hint of even thinking it. That she thought him generous and kind was clear. He knew he was not. The contrast between what she thought and what he knew threw his faults in his face as no accusation could have. Well, he knew he had no virtues; perhaps at least he could assume a few of them.
“Is that why you keep your library in the attic, then?” Leonore said, her gaze clearly curious.
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