A Most Peculiar Season Series Boxed Set: Five Full-length Connected Novels by Award-winning and Bestselling Authors

by Michelle Willingham

  She was watching him warily.

  He swung around to face her. “It might answer.”

  “Answer?”

  It might be the way to save her life and his race. If he could only convince Vlad to listen.

  “I asked Miss Ester to discover how it is that you can see us,” he said. “I need to ask her what she has learned. I will return. If you will allow?”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes, please. Perhaps she will discover a way to cure me. So I can be normal. Like everyone else.”

  Guilt was a twisting ugly thing in his chest. He did not want to cure her, he wanted to use her. And even if they could cure her, as she called it, she would not live to enjoy the healing. She knew too much. “I will ask. In the meantime you must say nothing to anyone else.”

  She drew herself up. “I have never spoken of this to anyone ever before. Anyone else would think I had lost my mind.”

  True. He nodded, cloaked himself and strode to the window. “I will bring news tomorrow evening.”

  The last thing he heard was her cry of horror as he leaped from the sill.

  All day she had waited, her nerves strung tight. Caught between fear and hope. Orrick had put her restlessness down to her headache and insisted she retire to her bed, since Mrs Davenport had invited Caroline to spend the day with her, visiting the shops and an evening at the theatre.

  Alone all day with nothing to think of but what she had learned the previous evening.

  The more time that passed the more she feared his presence in her room had been some sort of dream or nightmare caused by her longing for some explanation of what she saw. She forced herself to remain still, seated in the chair by the hearth. The pain in her head no longer bothered her, though it was still there, a faint dull throb at her temple. It paled to a minor irritation compared to her impatience.

  A shadow loomed at the open window.

  She leaped to her feet as Count Grazki stepped in, his cloak swirling about him in the breeze.

  He had come after leaving her to stew all day. “Can you not arrive at the front door like a normal person?”

  The surprise in his face cut through her anger leaving only a pang of shame. “I beg your pardon. That was unforgivably rude.” She dropped her gaze to the threadbare carpet. “I thought you had forgotten. I expected you earlier.”

  “It is for me to beg pardon,” he said, his voice cool, distant. He remained by the window, his eyes wary. “I thought you understood.”

  “Understood what? That I am little more than a servant? That I am of little consequence in the day of someone as important as you?” If it was not so, he would have come sooner. Would have known how she fretted and worried.

  He made a small gesture with his hand. “You called us people of the night. We do not go about during daylight hours. At least not with ease.”

  “But you called yesterday morning and—” She blinked. “You did not leave the carriage until we were inside the arcade.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I am sorry, I am being rude again. I was so worried you would not come. That perhaps I had dreamed everything you told me.”

  He strode to her side, lifted her face. Kissed her lips softly, tenderly. “Hush, please. I should have made it clear I would not come until this evening. I assumed—”

  “What happens if you go out in the day?”

  “If I tell you, you must not laugh.”

  She shook her head.

  “To all intents and purposes we are blind once the sun comes up. Our eyes are not designed to function in daylight. And our skin is sensitive to the sun, so much so that even a second or two will cause a serious burn.”

  Disappointment filled her. How foolish she’d been to hope.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She turned away.

  “Tell me.”

  “I thought perhaps I was one of you. That perhaps I had been lost somehow. And that was how I could see you when others could not.” She took a breath, bracing against the ache in her chest, the sense of loss, when she hadn’t lost anything. “Apparently not.” She smiled brightly. “There must be some other explanation.”

  He put his hands on her waist, turned her around to face him and looked down into her face. His dark eyes held sympathy. “I wish it was so.” There was something else in his expression. Bleakness. Longing. As if he too wished for something that could not be. Slowly he dipped his head and she lifted her face, to accept his kiss. She wanted to belong so badly, to someone, somewhere.

  Their lips touched.

  The sensations were magical. Dizzying. And so very familiar. They tugged at her mind, pulsing in a little pain at her temple. She parted her lips and his tongue swept her mouth and she could feel nothing but the sweet ache in her breasts and between her thighs. It was wicked. Wrong. And yet so deliciously right. She leaned into him, revelled in the hard male feel of him against her body. Hers.

  Swept up on a tide of passion, the silken slide of his tongue tasted of brandy and seduction, each inhale perfumed by the scent of cool night. After long moments, he broke away, breathing hard.

  “We must not,” he said, stepping back.

  Her face flushed hot. Wasn’t it what she was always warning Caroline? Never to be alone with a man. Never allow passion to overcome reason. If she was to be caught in such a compromising position her life would be ruined. And yet none of that entered her mind when he held her in his arms.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and gestured to the chair. “Won’t you be seated and tell me if you have learned anything. Did Miss Ester discover anything about... my condition?”

  He disposed his bulk with the grace of a large cat. Not slouching, but completely at ease, yet ready to spring at the least danger. He regarded her gravely. “I was unable to speak to her today.”

  “Your other duties,” she said, nodding as if she quite understood when in truth she wanted to rail at him for forgetting her problems.

  “She was absent from the shop when I visited.”

  He had tried then. The tension in her body eased. Her heart lightened. Merely because it meant he had thought of her. So idiotic.

  “I want to ask a favour of you,” he said carefully, as if he presumed she would refuse. Which likely meant it was something she would not like. She tried to keep the wariness from her face. “I would help, if it is within my power.”

  “Would you take me to the place where you saw the man killed?”

  A shudder rolled down her back at the memory.

  “It is a great deal to ask,” he said. “I would not have done so, if another of our kind had not died violently last night. A husband and a father. His family is fearful. They need to know what happened to him.”

  “You think he too might have been killed by those in the robes?”

  “I do not know. You are the only person to throw even a glimmer of light on what is behind these deaths. Do you recall the exact location?”

  The memory returned in full force. Blood running cold, she nodded. “In an alley not far from Covent Garden. We were returning home from the theatre. I could not believe no one went to his aid, but we passed by so quickly... There wasn’t time.... But I believe I would know it again if I saw it.”

  He breathed a long sigh of relief. “I wasn’t sure you would remember.”

  She frowned. There seemed more meaning to his words that simply a matter of recalling a location. “It is not the sort of thing one forgets.”

  “Will you go with me? He might have left some sort of trace that I can follow. Or a witness I can question.”

  “It was days ago, but if you think it will help, I will show you”

  He stood up and stretched out a hand. “Then let us go.”

  An odd feeling prickled down her spine when he walked towards the window.

  “You don’t expect me to go out that way.”

  “What excus
e will you give for going out at this time of the night, if you leave by the front door?” He smiled, and it was boyish and rather wicked. An expression she had never seen on his face before. It made him warmer. More human. A strange feeling made her heart squeeze in a sweetly painful way. He opened his arms. “We will go together.”

  “You can’t mean to jump down from here with me in your arms.”

  “Not directly down,” he admitted. “It is beyond even me and I am one of the strongest of my race. But we can make it down in easy stages.” He pointed to various roofs at lower levels.

  No. She couldn’t.

  “Will you not trust me?”

  Trust him. She looked inside herself and expected to find herself curled into a small bundle of fear, but inside she was calm. Perhaps even eager. Apparently, she had lost all sense of self-preservation when it came to this man. She walked into his open embrace. “All right.” She put her arms around his neck and closed her eyes. “But if you drop me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  All she heard was his soft deep chuckle and the rush of wind, as if she was standing out in the open at the top of a tower. She didn’t dare open her eyes.

  Brave. This woman had more courage than he could possibly have expected. He glanced down at her face, at her closed eyes and calm face and felt a pang of something painful in his chest. Longing. Want. Growing stronger and deeper. Something he hadn’t expected to experience ever again. Something he hadn’t even realized he’d missed all these long years, this needing of something for himself. To allow it after all this time would be the height of folly. Ruthlessly he cut himself free of it. Or at least he told himself he had.

  He leaped from roof to roof, until he was close enough to the ground to land gently. Humans were fragile creatures, short-lived and easily broken. Another reason why he must not allow himself to be tempted by the lovely curves and the delicious softness curled into his body. Or the heady scent of the blood hammering in the pulse at her neck.

  And most of all, he could not give in to the granite hard arousal begging for release. She wasn’t for him. The King’s Blade was permitted no woman. It was part of his sentence.

  Never had it troubled him as it did now. This creature of light had pierced the cold enveloping his heart and his soul. It was a fitting punishment. He would live with it, provided he could keep her safe.

  He cursed. Keep her safe? Right now his duty demanded that once he had all he needed he must see her elimination. He had the feeling it would be the end of him if he did. Perhaps there might be some way...

  If any member of Court ever learned of her existence.... He would indeed be finished.

  They landed in the street where his carriage waited with its door open and its steps let down. A gentleman strolling along the street swinging a walking stick passed them by without a glance. She stared at him in astonishment. “He can’t see us,” she whispered.

  “Nor can he hear us,” he replied in normal tones.

  “You can hide us both?”

  “Yes. Come, get into the carriage.”

  He helped her inside. “Covent Garden,” he said to his footman, who close the door. The coach rocked into motion.

  She had a rather strange look on her face.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I thought perhaps we would fly to our destination.”

  “It is with great shame I admit I cannot fly,” he said trying not to let his lips twitch in amusement. “Though I can move with great swiftness and jump great distances, but not carrying a passenger. As a general rule, we move around much as humans do.” A precaution to prevent accidents. More than one shadowed vampire had collided with a human and caused an unexplainable death. Their laws required vampires to hide in plain sight and not take advantage of their superior abilities. Unless it was an emergency.

  Removing all traces of shadowing, he raised the blind on the carriage window and glanced out. “This is Covent Garden. Do you know the name of the street?”

  “Let me see if I recognize anything.” She leaned forward and once more his senses were filled with the heady perfume, the scent of her soap and the deeper spicy note of her own particular essence. He clenched his fists on his knee and resisted the temptation to inhale deeply. But the denial did him no good. Every nerve in his body strained towards her.

  She glanced at him as if she sensed something wrong.

  “Here?” he gritted out, trying to appear as if he had nothing on his mind but their task.

  She returned her gaze to the window looking out with a frown on her face, her lovely face with its fine bones and full luscious lips caught in the street lamps at regular intervals. “There!” she said.

  He knocked on the roof. The carriage drew up.

  Sybil pointed at an alley beside the church. “It was there. Where the street lamp casts light onto the building.” She winced at the recollection.

  He glanced up and down the street teaming with people, theatre goers, prostitutes, Bond Street Beaux on the strut. “Do you see anyone who looks like the attackers?”

  She perused the crowds carefully and shook her head. “Everyone looks normal.”

  Anton opened the door. “Wait here.”

  He stepped down into the street, turned to close the door and found her already half way down from the coach.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “It is not safe.”

  “But if I can see them and you cannot, surely it is better if I go with you. To warn you.”

  Logic said she was right. Animal instinct had his hackles rising. The vampire in him did not like the idea of her in danger. Logic had to win out or he would be little better than the animal inside him, something all vampires prided themselves on having overcome. Most of the time. “Very well. But if you see one, do nothing to attract their attention, simply tell me what you see and where. Swear it.”

  Clearly startled by his vehement tone, she frowned, but nodded acceptance.

  He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “We are a couple of cits on our way home from the theatre.” He guided her across the pavement and into the alley.

  “The young man was leaning up against that wall watching the passers-by,” she said.

  “Touch the place,” he said in a low voice. They were not shadowed now and he did not want anyone to hear their conversation.

  She put a hand on the wall. “The men came up behind him.”

  He inhaled deeply as he glanced around him, looking for anything that might give him a hint as to who or what she had seen. A faint splatter of dark stains at the bottom of the wall. He bent as if to pick up something he had dropped. A few drops only. He inhaled again. Vampire blood. He now knew who it was who had been killed here from his scent.

  He rose to his feet. “Careless,” he muttered in her ear. “The evidence is still there, if you know where to look. From here somehow the body was carried out of the city.” It had been days before they’d found this particular corpse.

  Beside him, she froze. “There is one coming this way, right now.”

  “Where.”

  “To my right. He is alone.” She jerked her head around and look up the alley behind him. “And another coming towards us from back there.” She shuddered.

  Damn it all. He saw not a single vampire anywhere around him. Could this be some sort of trick she was playing on him? He caught her around the waist and stepped out of the alley onto the footpath, heading towards the first one she had mentioned.

  For a moment or two his senses detected nothing, though he could feel Sybil pressing closer against his side, feel her deep trembles, her shallow pants of breath. He also scented and heard the blood of every human within a few feet of him. “Brave girl,” he murmured. “Tell me when we are alongside.”

  She gave a jerky nod. Even as she spoke the word, “now” he tasted a foul tang on his tongue and beneath it the unmistakable scent of a vampire at close quarters. It was gone as quickly as it had invaded his sense of taste. �
��Where are they now?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Behind us. They are talking together.”

  If he had not scented vampire, he would have had difficulty believing she could see anyone at all. He had to believe her and his senses. The lives of his people required it. Yet, how was it possible that she could see them and he could not? The danger this posed was unimaginable. And who would believe him? No one. Except perhaps Vlad.

  Thank God he had the blood evidence to help prove his point. Vlad would have to see he was telling the truth.

  “Back to the carriage,” he said, hurrying her along.

  “The first one. He’s following. He has a knife in his hand.”

  She stumbled against him and knocked him off balance.

  Something brushed past his ear in a blur of silver. “What—”

  She gazed up at him wide eyed and horrified. “He threw the knife. It missed you by inches. Oh, dear lord he has another one.”

  There was nothing for it. Anton dove across the street, barely avoiding an hackney carriage, whose driver yelled obscenities. He wove between the traffic, dodging vehicles and horses, making drunken gestures as he went. They arrived breathless on the other side of the road.

  Sybil made a sound of alarm. “There are two more.”

  “Where?”

  “There. About three yards that way.” She pointed further up the street. He could see nothing that looked in the least bit like a monk. Damn it, how could he fight an enemy he couldn’t see. He’d never felt so helpless.

  “Follow me,” Sybil said.

  Feeling like a blind man, he followed her into a shop. He glanced around. It was a dressmaker’s shop. Sybil dragged him into one of the dressing rooms breathing hard.

  “Miss Lofstrom,” the dressmaker said following them in with a scowl. “May I be of assistance?”

  Sybil blushed scarlet. “Yes. Please. This is my brother. He wishes to purchase some items for his wife. A chemise and stockings. I said I would help him choose. If you would be so good as to bring a selection like the one you showed me for Lady Caroline.”

  The woman frowned her lips pursed as if she didn’t believe a word of it. She looked at Anton. “Very well. If that is your wish.”