Then a voice she recognized, “Dammit, I did all I could to see the bastard captured!”
Gustav. The head groom.
Angel vaguely recollected glimpsing him at the lead of the villagers who’d collected in the cemetery. Before she’d had opportunity to figure out why, Alexander had whisked her off even before Max emerged from the catafalque.
Unable to find an opening, Angel pressed her ear to the wall. Her heart skipped a beat as she clearly recognized Alexander’s smooth voice. “Then I should be appalled to see a half effort from you, Gustav.”
“You haven’t had any better luck cornering him,” Gustav retorted.
The voices abruptly went silent.
There was a choking, gargling sound that chilled Angel enough to make her run down the corridor back toward the glow of light.
She didn’t hear the “What’s that?” that came from inside the room.
Almost, she went back to her chamber to cower under the sheets. But that wall didn’t seem to open on this corridor and she doubted if she’d been heard. Besides, these damnable locks were suddenly symptomatic of all the blocks and blank walls her life had consisted of to date. She was tired of being manipulated.
Her mouth twisting defiantly, Angel pulled from her pocket the long, wicked metal skewer she’d filched from the scullery for just this purpose. It wouldn’t be the first time, no, nor the last, doubtless, she’d pry open a locked door.
There were a few advantages to being an orphan, and a female determined to succeed in a man’s world. The first lock was easy, the second far harder. She wiped sweat from her brow but was finally rewarded at the faint click.
“Isn’t it easier with this, my child?” The voice came over her shoulder, silky smooth and so bland it almost concealed the menacing undertone.
Almost. Trying to disguise her terror with a cough, Angel turned to see her uncle dangling a key from the chain at his waist.
Her orphanage escapades had also taught her that bluffing was the best policy when caught red-handed. Angel stood to her full height, calmly reached out, and removed the key from the chain. “Thank you.” She immediately turned back to the last lock, but his stunned expression told her she’d finally surprised him.
“Were you wandering down the corridor just now?” he demanded.
The fact that he was worried enough she’d overheard that he had to ask warned Angel to lie. She glanced over her shoulder at him, then quickly looked back at the lock. “I’ve been struggling with these for nigh onto thirty minutes. Why, did something happen I should know about?”
“No.”
Pretending not to hear the doubt in his voice, she fumbled the lock open, picked up the candles and entered the lab. But she looked back over her shoulder at him. Because of the bright glow blinding her, she couldn’t see his face, but she trusted the strange instincts that had come to her more and more strongly of late.
He wouldn’t hurt her. At least, not yet. “Please, would you show me around finally?” she asked lightly. “Normally I wouldn’t dream of intruding, but you’ve been so kind to me that I, well, I just want to repay you. And I’m an excellent lab assistant, truly.” As she spoke, she moved further into the room.
He followed her, moving so soundlessly that he was right behind her when she turned to set the candles down. With a great effort of control, she managed not to shrink back, but to her relief he only held out his hand for his key. She handed it over without a quibble.
“What do you wish to see?” he asked with ill grace. “The dead bodies I have removed every Thursday.”
Angel tapped her chin with her finger. “Hmm, given this is Friday, I suspect I’ll have to make do with boring notebooks instead of an interesting autopsy.” Her retort surprised a fleeting smile from him. More of her fear easing, she smiled back.
“You truly are Elaine, the best and worst of her. She was as curious as a cat, also.” He moved up, making her heart skip a beat, but he only tapped her cheek. “Sassy as brass, too.”
“And you’d have it no other way, darling, as you well know,” said Sarina from the doorway. “Now let the poor child explore and get behind her the dastardly truth of Blythe Hall.” Sarina held a finger to her lips, her blue eyes dancing in the candlelight. “Shhh…you will keep our secrets, won’t you, dearest Angel?”
Her tone said, ‘We have none, but I understand your need to look.’
Angel relaxed further. Somehow she always felt better when Sarina was near. Stronger, more capable, as if the older woman drew out the best of her. “Please forgive me,” Angel said, finally shamed. “But indeed I did come here to work in science and--”
“No need to apologize. I’ve been telling Alexander for days that you are not the typical milk and water miss. That you don’t mind getting your hands dirty and your mind cluttered.” Sarina sauntered forward and pulled several heavy notebooks from a shelf. “But if you can read this drivel for more than an hour without falling asleep, I shall find myself surprised.”
Angel accepted the dusty notebooks as if she were offered the ten commandments, ark included. “Thank you.” She took them to a table, set the candles down and opened the first one. She began to read, immediately engrossed in the dry recitation of the experiments Sir Alexander had conducted on his own calves, trying to determine the differences in composition between bovine hemoglobin and homo sapiens hemoglobin.
He’d reasoned that if he could define vast differences first between species, the finer points of what differentiated various human types would slowly become evident.
Specious reasoning, as far as Angel was concerned. She kept her head down as she quickly skimmed through the experiment. If one wished to determine the pattern of an oak leaf, one didn’t collect elm leaves and hope it led to the same pattern. Had he given her bogus notebooks to try to disguise what he was doing, or was he merely incompetent?
She was reaching for the second notebook when both Sarina and Alexander stiffened and turned to the door. Angel turned, too.
He stood there. His golden hair mussed, his cheeks flushed as if he’d hurried. He looked between Alexander and Sarina, who stood arm in arm, apparently on perfectly cordial terms with their niece. Then, to Angel’s fury, the look he turned on her was considerably more fiery.
“Blast it, girl, do you ever stay in your bed after it turns dark?” He stormed inside the room.
Angel slammed the notebook down and surged to her feet. “Only when I’m accompanied by my two lovers. Neither one blond, I might add.” Almost, she laughed at his slack-jawed astonishment. When had she become so bold?
Apparently Sarina was less surprised, but far more appreciative. She gave that lilting, feminine laugh that men likened to the music of the ages. “A sally even the Earl of Trelayne cannot top.”
The Earl of Trelayne turned on her. “If anyone other than yourself, my dear Lady Blythe, can better top the subject of lovers, blond or otherwise, I cannot think whom.”
Sarina paled and shrank away as if from a blow.
Making fists, Angel took a couple of steps toward Max. Really, that was most uncalled for. She’d heard the rumors, too, but accounted them exactly that. Rumors perpetrated by other less lovely women in what passed for the local ton.
But before she could take more than two steps, Alexander surged toward the door.
Max stood where he was just inside the room with a ‘please, do’ look.
Alexander glanced at Angel and stopped. He enunciated through his teeth, “Get out of my house, out of my county and out of my life. It’s your last warning, Britton.”
“Or what? You’ll send another loving assortment of villagers to do your dirty work for you?”
Angel looked closely between the two men. Villagers? She also noted that Alexander looked at her again. Sneakily this time.
Max turned from his rival in disgust and offered his arm to Angel. “Come along.”
If he’d commanded her in a manner a bit less than that he might use for a recalcitra
nt dog, she might have taken his arm. She was still uneasy about those voices she’d heard and Alexander’s defensiveness. And after all, tonight, in the crypt, Max had been quite protective of her.
Before he’d hovered over that poor unfortunate girl with a glitter of unmistakable hunger.
Angel looked at Max’s arm, flexing with his own strong but shielded emotions. Then she glanced at Sarina.
Sarina’s eyes were jewel-bright with tears, pleading. “If you follow him out of this house, you begin a pathway from which you will never return.” Her soft voice had the air of certainty, not as if she predicted. As if she knew. As if she’d been there…
Angel looked between Alexander’s saturnine face and Max’s handsome, expressionless one. Unable to choose between Scylla and Charybdis, Angel instead turned back to her solace: science. Sitting back down at the table, she picked up the second notebook. She couldn’t resist a last peep up, however.
Was it her imagination, or had Max’s cheeks gone ashen with pain? A flash of something hot and hurtful and dangerous roiled in those emerald green eyes, but then he’d shielded them with his lashes.
Having made her choice, as usual, she knew she was forced to live with it. She bent her head over her research, wondering why the pages suddenly swam before her gaze.
A slight rustle of clothing, and she knew Max was gone. This hot burning in her throat was merely her reaction to the dust, she told herself.
Alexander took the notebook from her hands and set it back on the shelf. “Enough science for tonight, dear child. I’m quite proud and touched at your trust in us, however. I promise tomorrow morning you can come back down and I shall share with you everything I’ve learned in my years of research.” He caught her arm and helped her to the door.
Numbly, Angel followed. And just as numbly, that night, she lay in bed, staring into the slowly ripening darkness, wondering why she felt as if she’d betrayed someone.
That someone was, at the very least, a dangerous rake. Probably far worse. And while Alexander obviously had his own secrets, he was her kin. Turning on her side, Angel hugged the pillow and told herself over and over she’d made not only the right choice, but the only one.
The trick was believing it….
In the ensuing days, the choice felt no more palatable. She neither saw nor heard from Max, who had seemed almost her shadow since she heard his voice in her head. Now she heard nothing but the whisper of her own foolish regrets. She had a feeling that quite possibly she’d never see him again. Since he made her weak and made her forget why she’d come here, she tried to tell herself that was for the best, too.
She didn’t need a bright, bold star that drew her out of her dark obsessions with her own heritage. She didn’t need a man whose kisses made her forget who and what he could be behind that brilliant facade.
She needed….blood samples. Too many people died too needlessly. Once the mystery of blood typing was unlocked, operations could be performed safely, accident victims need not have their blood pour out, unreplenished, into the street.
And vampires, if there were such a thing, could perhaps one day be stopped. If they truly thrived on the blood of humans, then if that blood could be duplicated in the laboratory, they’d have no need to kill.
Angel kept telling herself that this, then, must be why Alexander was also obsessed with the blood composition of humans. What other explanation could there be, especially if he were a vampire? A vampire shouldn’t care that a human’s blood was the kind that another human could take intravenously; he only cared that it was fresh.
For several days, Angel scarcely left the lab. She’d reviewed all of Alexander’s notes and discussed with him what she saw as the flaw in his reasoning. In fact, they’d argued quite heatedly on the matter in a way that was curiously reassuring to Angel concerning his humanity.
“My dear girl, where do you propose we get so many samples?” he expostulated. “My cows shan’t complain, aside from a moo here and there, if I prod and poke them, but my servants are another matter entirely.”
“Have you considered paying them?”
His open mouth closed. “No.”
“This is the typical dichotomy all scientists face, Uncle. Time. Or money. In the end they somehow equalize.” Her eyes danced at him as he made a disgruntled snort at her impeccable logic. “You’ve spent a great deal of time trying to compare cow and human blood. Now I suggest you spend a bit of money to get enough samples to be assured of a random order of each blood composition. Only when we compare human blood to human blood will we truly discover the fine chemical differences.”
“What with all these rumors flying about the countryside, I do not wish to be known as the ‘Blythe who pays for blood.’”
“If you’ll supply me the funds, I’ll do it, then.”
He eyed her closely. “I believe you would.”
She eyed him back. Evenly.
And so, the next day, at a table in a very clean stable stall, she found herself doing a brisk, peculiar sort of barter. The more servants who came and suffered her little prod and sample upon a glass plate, the more who seemed to appear from even farther away. As usual, the gossip post was far more efficient than the Queen’s mail.
“The mad Blythe girl,” she heard herself referred to behind her back. “They’re all that way, they say.”
The growing pile of samples was sop enough for the criticism. And the stack of coins her uncle gave her was dwindling in a quite satisfactory way. Only a few more to go, and they should have enough for a year’s worth of research. Angel tightly air-wrapped the latest sample in supple leather, keeping it pristine for later viewing under a microscope.
Mad she might be. But she was still methodical…
The next arm offered to her wore a much fancier sleeve. In fact, lace, the old fashioned kind, flowed freely over a strong wrist and hand far too finely shaped to belong to a servant. She knew before she looked up.
There he was again. “Max,” she whispered.
Those green eyes were unreadable, steady upon her face. She listened for, but didn’t hear, his voice in her head. He was shielding his emotions from her.
“Since you seem to enjoy drawing my blood with your verbiage, I decided to see if your needle stings less,” he quipped.
She didn’t smile. Why had he really come? To prove somehow that he wasn’t a vampire? How could she possibly know the composition of the creatures’ blood when she still hadn’t quite convinced herself they even existed? How did she even know it was different to a human’s?
He apparently read the questions in her eyes, for he leaned so close his breath brushed the mussed hair at her ear lobe. “Poke me and find out.”
Maddening that he could apparently read her mind so easily while shielding his own.
A small, taunting smile stretched those full, tempting lips. He leaned even closer. “Of course, if you prefer, I can poke you.”
Heat curled through her at his double entendre, but that only added anger to her disconcertion. Grabbing up a needle, she quickly pricked his wrist, catching the copious drops of blood on the glass plate.
He yelped.
“It’s not quite so pleasant when you’re the one being drained, is it?” she needled him verbally as well, just for the fun of it.
“You tell me.”
A flash of white hot pain caught her off guard. She looked down, stunned to see he’d poked her with one of her own needles and neatly caught her blood sample on a fresh plate. He had the temerity to use her own wrapping material to keep the sample pristine. He stuck the sample in his pocket.
“You have no right to do this,” she began, but a bright coin flipped through the air, end over end, and landed neatly in her lap.
“The going rate, I believe.” He rose and walked away. Taking her blood with him.
Just like that, leaving her staring after him, mouth agape.
When she blinked back to reality a few seconds later, she looked down at the plate still
in her hands. Marking it even more carefully than the others, she vowed to break her own self-imposed banishment from his estate.
If he was conducting blood experiments, too, she had to know why.
But first, if she could somehow get a sample of Alexander’s blood and take it with her, she could compare them…
For the next few days, Angel hunkered down, regimental fashion, in the lab. She felt in some atavistic sense as if she were actually doing battle. The unruly combatants were the hardest to defeat: her own emotions, her own fears. Only scientific proof, observable differences in Max’s blood, or in Alexander’s or, God forbid, in both, would ease her mind.
Quite possibly she was either the niece of, or the almost inamorata of, a vampire. She had to know. Though the thought was horrifying, truth had been a lodestone all her life. When truth was found, illumination almost always followed.
Of course, illumination sometimes came at great cost, too, as it revealed things best left hidden scurrying in the dark.
Undaunted, she compared random samples supplied by the servants throughout the district, making careful, copious notes in the pristine notebooks Alexander supplied her. No matter how she tried, she found little difference in the samples. They looked very similar under the microscope, tiny, round little cells dancing around. They separated into similar components when mixed with solution. They looked to be almost half a watery substance, and almost half a deep, brilliant vermillion.
To her extreme relief, Max’s blood sample separated the same and looked the same under the microscope, though it did seem to have more of the bright red component. But not so much more that it was far outside her mean. When tested in the proper solution, it also seemed to have a slightly higher iron content.
On a whim, she even inserted a minute piece of garlic between the plates and looked under the microscope. Max’s blood stayed inert. What had she expected, to see the fluid dance away in alarm? Smiling at her own foolishness, she was so relieved he was apparently human after all that she removed the glass plate a bit hastily from its holder.
The Trelayne Inheritance Page 9