A Dark Heart (11 page)

Her jaw swung wide, and she blinked down at him, speechless, for several
long breathless moments, her alabaster skin flushing pink. He followed the
movement of her throat as she swallowed, his arousal growing even more
ferocious, if that was even possible.

“Then do it,” she whispered.

Now
he
was speechless.

“Do it. It’s what I want, too,” she continued in an unsteady voice.

Surely she couldn’t mean it. He’d said those words knowing that they’d
drive her away. Not …
this
. Perhaps she’d misunderstood what he’d said.
Perhaps…

And then he smelled it. The unmistakable scent of feminine arousal.
Her
arousal. He nearly lost the last meager thread of his control. Nearly burst
in his trousers like some randy youth.

Her body couldn’t lie. Neither could his. But he was
not normal
,
he’d not been normal since Nick O’Connor had raped him for the first time and
sent him on to his first customer. The old shameful self-disgust instilled deep
within him rose up alongside his sexual desire. And for once, he was thankful
for it. It gave him just enough resolve to jab the needle into his arm and fill
his veins with a killing heat.

Her beautiful face crumbled, the light in her green eyes dimmed just a
little bit more.

“You choose that instead of me?” he heard her say, as if from a great
distance.

He sat back on his haunches, the drug dampening his arousal, his thirst.
Numbing him to her pain. Numbing him to everything. He closed his eyes and
nodded.

“Always. I deserve it,” he murmured. “I don’t deserve you.”

When he opened his eyes much later, she was gone.

CHRISTIANA
didn’t remember the drive back to the Romanov’s townhouse. Her mind kept
replaying those horrible final moments in Elijah’s office, the syringe jutting
from his ruined arm, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his whole body
shaking as the drug washed through his veins. Killing him just a little bit
more.

I deserve this. I don’t deserve you.

Of all the words he’d spoken to her for the past nine years, she
suspected those were the truest ones. At least in his mind. For some reason, he
was convinced he didn’t deserve her. As if she was some sort of prize. Foolish
man.

Somehow, it had almost been better when she’d believed he hated her. At
least then she wouldn’t feel this whole new level of frustration. So he wasn’t
indifferent, as she’d believed for years upon years. He wanted her –
wanted her, in fact, so much that he’d threatened to
fuck
her where she
stood. He’d wanted to
consume
her.

 
Good Lord
, when he’d said that, with his thickest, most
guttural Cockney drawl, her body had felt as if she’d stuck her finger into an
electrical socket, and the private place between her legs had literally wept.
No one had ever dared to utter such a deliciously coarse and filthy thing in
her presence. And oh, she’d
never
wanted anything more than for him to
do exactly as he’d threatened.

But he’d jabbed himself in the arm instead. Because he didn’t deserve
her, or some such nonsense. Ugh.

She’d prefer his contempt and indifference to this horrifying refusal to
see her as a flesh-and-blood woman. She didn’t want to be set upon a bloody
pedestal in his mind. She wanted
him
, both the good and the bad of him.
But he would never accept that.

Something had made him hate himself enough to choose death over
happiness. For she would have gladly given him happiness. She would have given
him
everything
, even after the countless times he’d lied to her and
pushed her away.

But no longer. She was done.

When she’d left Llewellyn House that morning, she’d had the driver take
her to Scotland Yard, determined to confront Elijah one last time. She’d held
nothing back, though she’d suspected deep inside that nothing she did or said
would be enough to sway him from his mad course. And she’d been right. Apart
from forcing him to drink her blood – a Herculean but not entirely
impossible task – she could do nothing more.

And she would
never
force him. Somehow she suspected that if she
did that, she would destroy any love he had for her. He’d have to come to her
of his own free will.

But she would be damned if she waited for a day that might never come.
She’d be damned if she spent another moment dwelling on Elijah Drexler. She
loved him – God, how she loved him! – but how could she go on like
this? How could she watch him kill himself?

She couldn’t, and she wouldn’t. She was through with Elijah, with Rowan,
with this whole lonely, stifling life.

“I’m moving to Paris,” she declared as she burst into the Romanovs’
private study before their housekeeper, Madame Kristeva, could even manage to
announce her. “Or China. I hear lovely things about Ito this time of year.”

Aline turned on her husband’s lap with a startled squeak, pushing
Romanov’s hand from underneath the top of her bodice. Both of their faces were
suspiciously flushed, and the usually urbane Professor’s hair was jutting out
at strange angles, as if Aline had been raking her fingers through it in a fit
of passion.

Which was clearly what Christiana had interrupted, unfortunately. A fit
of passion. It wasn’t the first time. Even when Aline had been the size of a
small country during her pregnancy, Romanov hadn’t been able to keep his hands
to himself. They were disgustingly in love.

Her heart sank even further. She was a horrible friend to be jealous of
Aline’s happiness. But she was –
oh
, she was. Aline’s perfect life
was the last thing she needed to be reminded of at the moment. It just
reinforced her own pathetic
barrenness
. For that was what she felt.
Barren. Down to her soul.

“Ito is not in China, my dear,” Aline said, recovering most of her
dignity, but still remaining perched on Romanov’s lap as Romanov struggled to
do up buttons on the back of Aline’s drooping gown as discreetly as he could.
“That’s in an entirely different country.”

Of course it was. She had always been hopeless at geography – at
most subjects, really. No wonder Rowan and Elijah had been so comfortable in
their lies. They’d known she was too stupid to ever catch on.

Christiana’s face must have finally betrayed her utter misery – or
maybe it was the tears that had begun to gush from her eyes that gave her away
– because the Professor looked suddenly alarmed. Aline slid from her
husband’s lap and rushed to her side, guiding her over to a settee that was
occupied by their large half-automaton Russian wolfhound, Ilya. Aline shooed
the dog away and helped Christiana sit down.

“What is wrong, Christiana? What has happened?” Aline demanded urgently,
holding out a handkerchief. “Are you hurt?”

She took the handkerchief and rubbed her wet cheeks, angry with herself
for crying. “I’m hurt all over. I think I’ll never stop hurting,” she said
miserably. And she told them – or attempted to tell them, in between
bouts of wet, incoherent blubbering – all that had happened in the past
twenty-four hours. She had just enough wherewithal to leave out the part where
Elijah had threatened to ravish her in his office, of course. But she
apparently got her point across, for when she was done, the Professor looked even
more uncomfortable.

Aline, however, looked spitting mad. Aline was a petite woman, but her
temper was as tall as Big Ben’s clock tower. “Bastards! Pig-headed, patronizing
bastards!” Aline muttered angrily. “I can believe the Inspector would behave
like an arse, the stubborn man. But the Earl! I didn’t expect him to lie to
you.” She rounded on her husband with fire in her brown eyes. “Don’t tell me
you
knew about this too, Sasha.”

Sasha’s eyes grew even more alarmed. “What? Good God, no. I didn’t even
know vampires existed until last year. You think I was given a manual
explaining their … feeding habits? All I know is how to kill them.”

“Well, we don’t want you pulling off Elijah’s head,” Aline said, patting
her husband’s arm. “Or do we?” she asked, turning back to Christiana
expectantly.

Christiana gaped at her friend. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if Aline was
being serious or not. Her friend could be as dry as dust, and far too clever
for her to follow.

Aline gave her a gentle smile. “I was joking, of course. No pulling off
heads. I am trying to lighten the mood, my dear. I hate to see you like this.
And over Elijah Drexler, of all people. He’s right to think he’s not worthy of
you, because he’s not.”

“That is what Rowan said,” she mumbled, far from consoled.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,
milaya
,” the Professor said
quietly.

Aline rolled her eyes. “I know that better than most. Look at what I
ended up with for
my
heart’s trouble.”

Sasha grinned wolfishly and looked as if he would snatch his wife back on
his lap even with Christiana looking on. But thankfully they were interrupted
by the entrance of a harried-looking Fyodor. The mute ex-Abominable Soldier,
more automaton than human, clanked into the room, his one remaining human eye
strained with worry.

The appearance of Fyodor always managed to send a frisson of unease down
Christiana, though she knew that her reaction was rather unfair. The stigma
against the Russian Abominables was nearly as great as it had been forty years
ago, and Christiana, like all English schoolchildren of her generation, had not
been exempt from an irrational fear of them growing up.

During the Crimean War, Stieg Ehrengard had taken thousands of men like
Fyodor and transformed them into nearly invulnerable metal soldiers,
controlling their thoughts and actions through radiotelegraphy. The Abominable
Soldiers had swept across the floundering Ottoman Empire like a swarm of
locusts, devouring everything in sight. They’d been virtually unstoppable,
until the Duke of Brightlingsea’s Final Solution had severed the soldiers’
connection to Ehrengard, restoring their free will and ending the war before it
could spread too far into Western Europe.

None of the Abominable Soldiers had chosen their fate. Most of them were
Russian serfs press-ganged into Ehrengard’s army and controlled by the device
Ehrengard had implanted in their heads, but that hadn’t mattered in the
aftermath of the war. Few Soldiers had survived after the Allied Forces had
finished with them, and those who had survived were not exactly welcome back into
the bosom of humanity with open arms.

She hated the weakness in herself that always reacted like a child confronted
with the bogey-man when Fyodor appeared unexpectedly, for she knew from over a
decade of his friendship that he was one of the sweetest, gentlest men she’d
ever met, underneath all the steel plating and fearsome scowls on the half of
his face that remained human.

And as if to emphasize his benign nature, he currently had spit-up on his
lapel, if she wasn’t mistaken, and a silver baby rattle sticking half-way out
of his waistcoat, tinkling with every heavy step he took on his mechanical legs.
He made a few frantic hand signals in Romanov’s direction, which were somewhat
hampered by the nappy clutched in his metal fist.

Romanov rose to his feet, looking relieved at the interruption.
Christiana couldn’t blame him. Even
she
didn’t want to be around her,
sniveling, self-pitying mess that she was. “The twins are giving Fyodor fits. I
shall go see to them,
milaya
,” he said.

With that, the two men left for the nursery. Christiana stared at the
empty doorway in shock. “Is Fyodor…”

“The best nursemaid in London? Why yes, he is,” Aline said. “We fired the
one we brought with us from Paris this morning. She’s an incompetent compared
to Fyodor. He took the twins in hand the minute we arrived home yesterday.
Apparently, he helped raise ten brothers and sisters back in Russia before the
War. He has a gift. Alison and Augustus must be in rare form for him to seek
help.”

Christiana shook her head with incredulity, her tears drying up. She’d
known Fyodor had a sweet nature, but she’d not expected
this
. “And the
babies aren’t…”

“Frightened of him?” Aline supplied again. She grinned. “They love him. I
know, I don’t understand it either. You know how they shriek and wail whenever
I try to hold them, but the minute they’re in Fyodor’s cold metal arms, they
couldn’t be happier. I’m quite jealous, actually.”

No, she wasn’t. Christiana could tell that Aline was relieved to have the
help. The twins had been peevish from the moment they’d come into the world,
and Aline and her husband had been at their wits’ end for the last month. For
the first time in ages, Aline didn’t have shadows underneath her eyes. She was
a Bonded companion and could heal quickly, but she’d had a difficult delivery
and had convalesced for weeks afterwards. And Romanov had nearly fretted
himself to an early grave alongside his wife, despite being a centuries’ old immortal.
Neither had recovered from the ordeal yet, and neither had the first clue about
being parents. They needed all the help they could get, even if it meant
turning their bodyguard into their nursemaid, it seemed.

“If only he’d come to Paris with us,” Christiana mused. “You could have
been spared the last month.”

Aline wrinkled her brow. “I think I am a horrible mother. My children
prefer a Russian Abominable to me.”

“You don’t seem terribly concerned,” Christiana said.

Aline shrugged. “I’m not. I love my babies. I want them happy and
content, even if that means using Fyodor’s arms as cradles.” She sighed
dramatically. “I should have expected the pair of them to be perverse, what with
the parentage they have.”

As if on cue, Madame Kristeva appeared with tea and biscuits, having
anticipated Christiana’s need for that particular brand of consolation, and
bustled out to finish preparing Christiana’s room. Apparently, her steamer
trunks had already arrived earlier that morning, much to the surprise of the
Romanov’s house staff.

Christiana cringed at her oversight. “I didn’t even send word around to
ask if I could stay here.”

Aline waved away her concern. “Of course you can stay here. When the
trunks began arriving, I knew something had happened between you and his
Lordship. Not
this
muddle, of course.”

“I don’t think I can forgive him.”

Aline considered this as she poured their tea. “He’s acted like an
overprotective, patronizing ass, that’s for certain. But he loves you,
Christiana.”

“He treats me like a child. An idiot child.”

Aline gave her an impatient look. “You aren’t an idiot.”

“I’m not precisely smart, either,” she said miserably. “Not like you. I’m
not clever,
or
interesting,
or
strong.”

Aline was quiet for a moment. “You are a fool if you believe that about
yourself, Christiana,” she said gently. “Rowan doesn’t think you’re an idiot.
But I think you are right about him treating you like a child. Because that is
what you are to him. A child.
His
child, in all the ways that matter.”

“He said something like that this morning,” she muttered, staring down
into her milky tea.

“Parents do drastic things to protect their children, but they aren’t
always wise about it.”

Christiana set aside her teacup, suddenly not particularly thirsty. “I
know this. But I just don’t care. I can’t forgive him. Not right now.”