The Trelayne Inheritance

by Colleen Shannon

  There was the distinct crack! of broken glass, and then Max’s precious blood dripped down onto the table top. Dismayed, she ran for another plate and a swab, but in the few seconds it took her to return to the table, Max’s blood had hardened.

  It was dry, crusty, unusable unless she liquified it again, which would change its consistency. She was so angry with her own carelessness that it took a moment for the significance of the hardening to dawn on her.

  Blood clotting normally took minutes, not seconds.

  Angel took some of the samples she’d already studied and exposed them to air, timing how long it took them to harden. Anywhere from five minutes to ten.

  She found a tiny speck of Max’s liquid blood in the unbroken part of the plate and dabbed at it with a swab.

  It hardened in three seconds flat.

  Impossible. Just as she’d always deemed the existence of vampires impossible?

  She sat down hard at the table, her head in her hands, forcing herself to think logically.

  She’d kissed this creature, longed to lie with this creature.

  Very well, put truth upon the matter–she’d lusted for this creature. What did she do now?

  That was a much harder verity, for another question had logically followed.

  If Max were a vampire, why had he not bitten her when he had the chance? And why did she sense this protectiveness in him, as if he were truly concerned for her well being?

  Vampires weren’t supposed to be moral creatures. They didn’t have laughing green eyes more in common with sunny meadows than moldy mausoleums.

  Or perhaps they did, if they were very old, and very intelligent. The longer one lived, the more defense mechanisms one learned. And by his own admission, he’d known her mother.

  Chilled to her marrow, Angel forced herself to go back to her experiments. One thing was incontrovertibly certain now.

  Her wish for a sample of Alexander’s blood had become a need.

  She had to compare Max’s hemoglobin to Alexander’s and see if they both clotted so rapidly.

  Alexander came often to check on her progress, and always it was on the tip of her tongue to request, purely in the interests of objectivity, of course, that he supply his own blood sample. But she could never quite think of a reasonable reason to demand one from the master of the household.

  Finally, as she handled beakers filled with various solutions she mixed with the blood samples, trying to separate their components into discrete elements, she stared down at the glass. It sparkled in the dim sun coming through the high, dirty, leaded casement windows.

  She carefully emptied a beaker. She greased it with a clear oil, and then she set it upon the very edge of the table.

  When Alexander entered a few hours later, she was bustling about, sorting bottles and beakers. To her delight, he said, “You look to be making progress. Can I help, my dear?”

  Her arms were full, so she nodded at the beaker on the table. “Can you bring that one to the sink for me?”

  He picked it up–or tried to. It slipped from his grip and shattered on the flagstone floor.

  The shards flew everywhere but at him. They embedded in the chair leg and flew all the way across the floor toward the door. A few pieces even stuck into the wainscoting. But they left him unscathed.

  “Deuced slippery,” he remarked, bending to pick up shards.

  But he did so very carefully.

  “Careful. I’ll help.” Angel walked toward him, setting her burden down on the table top. As she knelt, she ‘accidentally’ brushed against him while he was picking up pieces.

  The shard he held embedded deeply in his thumb. He yelped.

  Making a commiserating sound, Angel jerked a clean cloth off the table above her head and dabbed at the tiny cut.

  “Never mind,” he said brusquely, rising abruptly. “I’ll send a servant down to clean this up. When you reach any valid conclusions, please send for me.” And he hurried out, sucking his thumb.

  Too late. Angel stared down at the soft cloth.

  She twisted it and numbly watched hardened flecks of dark blood flake off.

  Alexander’s blood had hardened in less than three seconds.

  Both men were vampires.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next night’s ball held neither promise of joy nor hope of delight for Angel. She’d spent the entire day earlier grappling with the consequences of the truth she’d sought with such zeal. She was a reformer, a rebel, a scientist. She should accept even the most unpleasant consequences of her experiments with equanimity.

  But objectivity was beyond her now. Her feelings see-sawed between terror, sadness and anger.

  The man who’d almost made love to her was a vampire.

  The only family she had left in the world was also a vampire.

  She’d stumbled upon some sort of ancient grudge match between two creatures of the night. And she was the prize.

  Even worse, one of these two beings liked to torture and murder innocent young women. The memory of that girl in the mausoleum was so horrific in light of the new facts that it finally, curiously calmed Angel’s torment.

  Perhaps that’s why fate had sent her across an ocean. Not to find herself, but to find the Beefsteak Killer and save other poor girls with more pride than prosperity.

  That night, with unwonted care, she dressed for the ball in the bright blue dress Sarina had lent her for the occasion. This one was equally low cut, the bias seams so long and form fitting that every enticing curve and hollow of her body glimmered with lustrous blue waves ranging from sea foam to deepest marine blue when she moved, depending upon the angle of the light.

  Angel eyed her own form objectively. She’d always hated her shape, the full bosom, small waist and flaring hips, for it caused her nothing but problems. Tonight, however, she’d use it like the tool for pleasure men often utilized and then cast aside. Sometimes quite literally in a ditch.

  Pinning random sparkling brilliants in her coiffure, Angel decided she was perfectly capable of making one boring move at a time. Let these two despicable creatures think they used her as their pawn. But her mother had been a formidable chess player, and she’d passed her skill down to her daughter. The best chess players were methodical, setting up the entire board move by move instead of impulsively striking prematurely with their queen.

  Oftimes, the innocuous pawn captured the king.

  The ballroom sparkled with the gaiety of laughter, and good food, and good spirits. The gaiety seemed centered around the punch bowl, where that ruby wine glowed under the candle sconces. As Angel watched, an old man emptied a cup, dipped up another full cup and drank it thirstily, too. Then, seeming more animated, he bowed in a courtly fashion over a young girl’s hand and led her to the dance floor.

  Indeed, in this setting, age, social standing and gender rules normally unspoken but adhered to in stuffier gatherings were broken and cast aside in the interests of a good time to be had by all.

  In other circumstances, Angel would have been invigorated by the comity. But when she saw her uncle holding court amidst a circle of sartorially correct and socially corrupt admirers, Angel’s resolve almost wavered.

  How could she hope to outsmart someone so rich and powerful and wily? He even had a woman as strong and bright as Sarina under his thrall. Angel looked around the room between handsome buck and winsome femme fatale. If her uncle and Max were both vampires, it logically followed that many of these social butterflies only showed their true colors at night. When they flew the countryside on bat wings…

  “He does like to hold court, does he not?” Sarina locked her arm with Angel’s. “Sometimes Alexander reminds me of a peacock, strutting his way through life, tail feathers furled, assured of his own superiority. Until he opens his mouth and tries to crow.” Sarina covered her own mouth, her blue eyes sparkling above her hands. But Angel knew Sarina wasn’t in the least contrite for the criticism, as she proved with her audacious whisper, “But you won�
��t tell him I said that, will you?”.

  Angel smiled at her aunt. Again, she wore white. Again, she looked about twenty rather than a respectable matron in her forties. “He has much to be proud of. His wife, most of all.”

  Sarina smiled her pleasure and tapped Angel’s cheek. “Tush, you almost make me wish I’d been brave enough to spoil my figure with my own children. How I wish you were my own daughter in blood as well as in deed. But I shall take equal pride in you nonetheless even though it was only an accident of marriage that brought you to me. Now, I shall force myself to share you with my guests. Come along.”

  Touched, Angel let Sarina draw her around the ballroom, introducing her to people who seemed quite normal and quite respectable. One of the eager young men offered to get her a glass of ruby red wine punch. Angel nodded, but she watched him carefully all the while.

  She needed no more spiked libations. This night of all nights. But he merely dipped her up a sizeable glass and carried it carefully through spinning dancers. When he returned, she let him sign her dance card. She held her glass up to the light, admiring the deep vermillion hue and sniffing the pleasing though heavily spiced aroma.

  “Cloves?” she asked her aunt.

  Sarina nodded. “Alexander’s favorite punch recipe. Cinnamon and nutmeg as well.”

  Angel was about to sip when there was a stir near the door. Angel had her back to the entrance, but she felt him, a tingle on the back of her neck, an itch where she couldn’t scratch, before she saw him. She froze, the glass halfway to her mouth. She turned, watching the smooth, powerful way Max walked.

  No, he glided, walking so lightly he scarcely seemed to touch the floor. As if the crude physical realities of time, and gravity and distance held no sway over him. He was dressed tonight in navy blue, the same old fashioned coat and fall of ridiculous lace that somehow seemed so right on him.

  Ignoring Sarina, Max bowed over Angel’s hand and whisked the glass out of it as he did so. Angel jerked her hand back and reached out for the glass. He held it out of reach and then set it on a tray carried by a passing servant.

  The young man who’d fetched it for her protested, “I say, that’s most rude of you--” One look from those green eyes and Angel’s admirer was gone with a muttered excuse.

  Sarina wasn’t as easy to intimidate. She glared at Max. “I suppose you have an invitation this time, too?”

  Max reached inside his jacket pocket, but she flounced off before he could hand her…a clean white handkerchief. His eyes brimmed with laughter at Angel’s expression. “Admit it. You like the bold sort.”

  “To the contrary. I detest arrogant men.” Especially when they drink blood for sport.

  “Then you must have a veritable hatred of your own uncle.”

  No, but she was forming one. “Would you please go about your business?”

  “I am about my business.”

  ‘You are my business.’ She heard his voice in her head again.

  Their gazes locked. She felt the pull of those verdant green depths, sucking her in to a sun-dappled pool hidden within a forest where right and wrong ended at water’s edge. Angel felt herself teetering toward him. How luxurious to warm herself in those hypnotic green eyes. They were too bright and bold and beautiful to be evil. If she frolicked there maybe she could plumb the depths of who he really was. Vampire or man.

  Good or evil.

  Curse or blessing…

  “Tomorrow’s a gift, but today’s a blessing.” This time, he spoke aloud. Again, as if he’d read her thoughts.

  She caught her breath. “That’s my mother’s favorite saying.”

  “I know. She trusted me, Angel. Why can’t you?” He held out his hand to her.

  Every particle of her being gravitated toward him. She looked at that perfectly steady, perfectly shaped hand, reaching out to her. It was a simple thing, to take a man’s hand. But the feeling behind the handclasp was not simple in the slightest.

  Trust. A problematical idea to anyone of her bent and background, even if he were a normal man. But vampire or not, there was nothing ordinary about Maxwell Britton, Earl of Trelayne.

  Someone laughed loudly, startling her. She broke eye contact, and that was enough to jolt her back to the reality of the parquet floor beneath her feet and the wavering of her good intentions. Jerkily, she turned toward the refreshment table. “I’m thirsty.” Truly, she was parched and that ruby red punch was enticing under the wall sconces.

  At the punch bowl, she dipped herself a goodly drink–only to have Max take it and pour it back in. Twice more they repeated the game, but then she got tired of playing. She smacked the back of his hand with the ladle.

  He looked so shocked that she was startled into a laugh. “It’s obvious you were never disciplined even as a child.”

  That slow, lazy smile made her light-headed. And she’d had not so much as a sip of punch yet.

  “I was always…good. Very, very good.” He leaned so close his sweet, clean breath that carried not the least hint of blood or decay stirred the brilliants in her hair to dancing. “And now that I’m a man, I’m even better. I should be happy to prove it to you. But it requires a change of venue.”

  “I enjoy my own bed, thank you very much.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “My, you do have a mind in the gutter. I was referring to the dance floor.” And he whisked her away from the punch bowl onto the middle of the gleaming floor.

  They danced. Country dances quite dissimilar to what she’d learned in America. He had to guide her slowly through the steps. But then came a reel, which she knew, and finally a waltz, which she loved most of all. Angel had always found her enjoyment of dances contingent upon the skill of her partner.

  And Max was right, damn him, as usual. He was very, very good.

  Angel forgot all about the other young men who’d signed her dance card. She forgot she was supposed to be devising stratagems to trick Max into revealing damaging information about the murders. She even forgot she quite likely held a vampire to her breast.

  She only saw the green of eyes that were full of life, not death. She only felt the flexing of muscles that were powerful, but surely not unnaturally so. He looked like a man, he felt like a man, he smelled like a man.

  “I am, you know.”

  Her step faltered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Only a man.”

  Her heart skipped a beat but she managed to keep her voice even. “A man who can read minds.”

  “It’s not such an unusual skill, you know. If you think back, you’ll realize your own mother could do it, too.”

  Angel’s gaze went dim as she remembered all the stories she’d heard about how her mother had an uncanny sense of what people would do and say even before they knew themselves. “Then why do I not have it?”

  “You do. You just haven’t figured out how to use it yet.”

  Could that be true? There were times when she could almost predict what people would say, but Angel had always accounted that to her instinctive reading of human nature, not some mystical gift of heritage. Angel concentrated, hard, on the spot right between his golden eyebrows, her own brow crinkling with the effort. She’d give the fortune she didn’t possess to be able to read this man’s thoughts.

  His chest shook with soft laughter. He released her hand to smooth her frown away with a teasing, gentle fingertip. “One does the trick with thought. Not by staring a hole into the desired repository of knowledge.” He gently mimicked her exact way of speaking.

  She blinked. “Do I really sound so pompous?”

  “At times. It’s the unfortunate consequence of having a vocabulary few can rival, much less understand.” He bent his forehead to hers, rubbing gently from side to side. Only then did she realize he’d brought them to a halt, barely moving their bodies from side to side, too. She heard the supple whisper of silk against silk and then he was holding her shockingly close. The warmth of their bodies melded, a precursor to the melding of their
minds.

  “Can you read my thoughts, Angel mine?”

  Images blazed into her brain. The two of them.

  Naked upon his bed. Writhing in a bonding that had no beginning and knew no end. Vermillion velvet spread, baronial fireplace, passion crackling in the vast room louder than the roaring fire…Angel sagged against him, her feet barely moving. She felt the hardness at his loins and knew the images were not one sided. She blinked up at him.

  The green eyes weren’t laughing any more. They’d caught flames from the sconces. They blazed a trail through her brain right to every sinew and impulse of her body. And she yearned to give in, oh yes, she did. A moment, a night…

  A lifetime…

  Eternity.

  If she let him, this man who was likely a vampire would invade not just her body, but her soul. She knew the stories. Vampires were created by other vampires. The thought of having to consume human blood to survive nauseated her. To become a creature so powerful, so ruthless, that innocent young women like that poor unfortunate in the mausoleum became not just easy prey but chattel. Inferior, put on earth to be fed on by stronger, older beings.

  Her eyes finally coasted to his face, skirting those eyes that did such strange things to her. But it was apparently enough for him to yet again read her thoughts in that unnerving way. He rested his cheek against her hair, still swaying them from side to side. He hesitated, then said softly, “All vampires aren’t ruthless, Angel. Some find the affliction…a necessary evil.”

  Was this an admission on his part? Almost. But not quite. “Are you speaking hypothetically or empirically?”

  He pulled back and looked at her again, his perfectly shaped mouth quirked in a rueful smile. “You are without a doubt the most logical woman I’ve ever met. Perhaps that explains your unnatural…equanimity in situations that should quite overset most innocent young women.”

  “You presuppose I’m innocent. How do you know?” She stared boldly into his eyes.

  His hand coasted from her waist up her side to the tender underarm bulge no one but he had ever touched. She caught his hand and placed it firmly back at her waist.