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She felt a surge of joy that Yannick trusted her with his horse—she saw how much he loved his beasts.
“You both must be careful,” she urged. She felt foolish, but she couldn’t help stating the obvious. For Zayan to ensure his safety, he had to destroy at least one twin.
They both stood in the shadow of a large oak, a stretch of protective darkness against the oncoming dawn. She didn’t see them change, but they flew by her face as though trying to blow one last kiss to her.
And then she was alone, holding the reins in her hands. The horse, Ares, gently bumped her back, as though urging her forward to meet her fate.
To face Father, and the workmen with weapons and lanterns.
Her father, who was five and sixty, charged up the hill, ahead of the lamplight. Before Althea could admonish him to stop, to slow down at least, he pulled her into an embrace and wrapped his arms tight around her. The smell of wet wool swamped her and she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Thank heaven, you’re alive! Oh, lass, you’re not to do that to me again.”
Only as she crumpled against Father’s greatcoat did Althea realize she no longer felt the unconditional comfort she’d always known in his arms. Tonight, in one mere night, she had betrayed every moral dictate he had taught her. Guilt warred with practicality. She couldn’t reveal what she’d done with Yannick and Bastien, but she couldn’t back down from the obligation to tell Father about the manor house and the mausoleum.
But how to explain where she’d come by the knowledge? Could she do it without admitting she had been with the twins?
She had found the courage to break into Zayan’s lair armed with only a stake and crossbow but one look at Father’s anguished blue eyes behind his spectacles had her tongue-tied.
“What in blazes did they do to you?” he cried, then he groaned, “Oh, sweet Jesus,” and raked her hair back from her neck.
None too gently, he inspected, then tipped her head the other way to look on the other side.
He thought she had been lured out by the twins. “No, Father, I haven’t been bitten.”
She pushed back gently. Father’s hat was gone and his wiry white hair was soaked and slicked down against his head. Splatters of dried droplets and fingerprints made his spectacles a hazy mask over his eyes. Mud was streaked across his forehead and cheeks. Deep lines were etched around his mouth and his lips trembled.
His chest heaved with his breaths. Shallow, rasping breaths. By the light of the lantern held by a soaked young man, Father’s face appeared vivid red.
“Heavens, Father, what happened to you?” Had he encountered Zayan?
“What happened?” he roared, but then he succumbed to coughing. Panicked, she wrapped her arm across his shoulders and almost fell as his weight sagged heavily into her. “You vanish in the night and you ask me what happened? I’ve been combing every inch of this blasted village looking for you. I feared—I feared you were lost to me already, Althea, lovey.”
Mr. O’Leary appeared behind Father, took hold of his arm. Those dark Irish eyes cast a look of condemnation on her. “He’s exhausted, lass. We must get him warm and dry.”
She could see the truth of that. “Well, let us not tarry then—”
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“No, I’m not moving from this spot until I find out what’s happened to my little lass.”
“That’s foolish talk, sir, and that’s a fact,” O’Leary forced Father to take a step down the hill. She clung to Father’s hand.
“It’s true, Father. I’m safe and sound, but I fear you aren’t. Please, let us get you warm and dry and then we can talk. You need to sleep.”
Father turned and she flinched at the penetrating fire in his blue eyes. “You’ve not slept either, have you, lass? And you are soaked through as well, though I’d like to know where you came by that cloak.”
Her hands strayed to it. Bastien had wrapped one of Zayan’s cloaks around her. She gulped nervously. But there was no urgency to tell Father of her night. Tomorrow, in daylight, would be soon enough and then they could search Zayan’s house. In perfect safety, during the day.
And when she’d had time to concoct a good story.
“I’ll tell you all in the morning,” she promised.
But, for the first time in her life, she would have to tell Father a pack of lies. And she realized there was now a far greater distance between them than there would have been had she obeyed and gone to London.
Halfway down the hill, with pink splashing over the brightening sky, Father stumbled. She couldn’t support him. O’Leary must have been taken by surprise, for he dropped down too.
Father clamped his hand over his heart. His face contorted in agony.
His heart! She had no idea what to do.
He gasped desperately for breath.
Get him air. Let him breathe
, a voice screamed in her head.
Fearing her efforts futile, Althea pushed open his greatcoat and tore at his cravat. Father kept his hand pressed tight over his chest. His face became gray, and sweat poured from his brow. She mopped at it with the trailing ends of the loose cravat.
“Please breathe, Father. Try to breathe.” She had no idea what one said to a victim of a heart attack. The men standing helplessly around her seemed to have no idea either. One shoved a flask of spirits forward.
Would that help or make things worse?
O’Leary seemed to think the idea sound, he held it to Father’s mouth. But the wine or brandy or gin just spilled over Father’s lips.
“Please, please ,Father,” she begged. “Please hold on.”
Yannick, Yannick, I wish you could
come. You could save him. I know it.
She glanced around the sky, but of course, Yannick wouldn’t—couldn’t—come to help now.
Father’s hand fluttered on his chest. His breathing deepened. Grew slowly steadier.
“The pain’s…pain’s going...” he wheezed.
She tried to warn him not to speak.
“Pet…oh, pet, it was like lightning striking me chest. Pins and needles down me arm.
Couldn’t even feel me fingers.“ He slumped back, against Mick O’Leary’s strong arms.
Tears burned her eyes, began to blur. No, she couldn’t give in to hysterics right now.
“Lift him, Mr. O’Leary,” she directed. “With haste, but gently.”
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It took two men, the strapping Mr. O’Leary and a brawny man named Creedly, to carry Father. She held Father’s cold hand on the entire procession back to the Inn, and kept her fingertips on his wrist. Now and again she felt the pulse. Not strong, but it grew steadier.
It was worry over her that had almost killed him. And no amount of holding his hand or brushing her hand over his cool, drenched brow would make up for what she’d done.
Yannick’s blood might help, but what was she to do? She had to ensure she didn’t give Father another bad shock. She had to ensure he never learned the truth of what she had done.
She stood at the top of a flight of stone steps. Beneath the moonlight, the stairs gleamed
white. Sweeping in a curve, they vanished into shadow where masses of blooming lilacs dripped
over them. Directly before her, the moon sat high and blue-white in the sky, almost full,
entrancing and magical. Softness teased her skin and she discovered, as though she hadn’t
known before, that she was naked beneath a sable wrap.
Whose garden did she stand in? Pale statues frolicked amidst the stretch of lawns and
bushes of pale purple lilac and budding white rose. She spied the satyr Pan. Diana with bow
and hounds. Bare-breasted nymphs bent over a small pool. A water sprite caught one in a
forbidden kiss, the damsel desperately attempting to pull away.
Strangely, for all they were stone, sightless and soulless, the kissing pair stirred her desire.
Which was mad, for the idea of being forced truly horrified her.
Well, a statue could not come to life and pursue her, but where was she?
Not Zayan’s gardens surely, for this one was well tended, groomed to orderly beauty.
There should be a house behind her. She began to turn, although it seemed difficult to do
so, her feet sluggish and unwilling to obey.
Sweet angel, come with us.
Yannick and Bastien raced up from the shadows. Bastien’s
long, gold hair streamed out behind him, glinting in the moonlight. His thighs bunched beneath
trousers of robin’s egg blue as he took the steps two at a time. The tails of his deep blue coat
bounced against his buttocks. She’d never before seen him dressed. His taste was…flamboyant,
to say the least. Yannick smiled and held out his hand, his hair burnished silver. He wore
simple clothes—the attire of a young, affluent country gentleman. A tailored coat, white cravat
at his throat, leather breeches that outlined his muscular thighs, gleaming boots. More subdued,
but he shone just as brightly.
Yannick caught hold of her right hand, Bastien clasped her left. They laughed, fey and
wicked, like schoolboys about to announce they planned to steal a pie from the kitchen. As they
tugged, the wrap fell, leaving her naked.
They exchanged a glance and before she could gasp, they drew her down to the steps and
smothered her with kisses to her lips and nipples. They cuddled her and tore one-handed at
waistcoats, shirts and breeches, exposing broad chests and large, bronze-pink erections.
We can’t make love on the stairs,
she thought shyly.
We can, if I cushion you from behind,
Bastien promised.
Do you want this, now, little dove? Yannick’s cock buried to the hilt in your hot quim and mine…mine thrusting in your ass?
We want to cram you full of cock.
She gasped at his shocking words.
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Do you want that? To be filled with cock?
Wantoness surged. She did. Her quim ached for it, her bottom tingled. She moaned and
arched back to lick his neck as Bastien pressed the head of his thick staff between her cheeks—
“Miss Yates? Are ye up, miss? I must speak with ye, if ye please.”
The high-pitched voice invaded her dream at the critical point. Althea flinched, blinked and tried to blot it from her thoughts. She tried to envision Yannick parting her legs but the dream was lost and it was her imagination supplying the image—
“Miss Yates!”
Althea’s eyes shot open. Fragile sunlight filled her room. Her curtains were still wide open and it was obviously long past dawn. The hustle and bustle of the Inn sounded from below and the cries and scents of the village poured in her open window.
Had Father had another attack?
Jolted awake, she pushed back the sheet and thin blanket. Her naked breasts greeted her.
She dropped the sheet. She’d been so exhausted, she mustn’t have bothered with her nightgown, but what a foolish thing.
“What is it, Sarah?” she called as she leapt from bed and grabbed her shift from her chair.
She recognized the voice of the maid who tended her and did her rooms, though for once the girl’s speech didn’t contain mostly giggles. “Is it Sir Edmund? Is he unwell?”
“No, indeed, Miss, though as ’e’s ’aving a rest, Mr. O’Leary told me I must come to you.”
With her shift over her head and her arms tangled in it in her haste, Althea called out a muffled answer, “Well, then, whatever is so urgent, Sarah?”
“I was bit by a vampire, Miss.”
By a miracle, her tangled shift dropped at Sarah’s announcement and floated over her hips, the hem settling around her thighs. Not decent but at least not nude.
“You had best come in then, Sarah, and tell me your story.”
So, after Father’s search last night, all of Maidensby must now know them to be vampire hunters.
Which put Bastien and Yannick at even graver risk—being hunted by a torch-bearing mob.
As she crossed to the door in quick strides, she realized how much her father was changing.
Aging. In his younger years, Father never would have been so careless. He was always so discreet. Not so much in the Carpathians, where legends of vampires ran deep, but in England he took care. Best to let people believe such things to be myths, he claimed.
Scooping up the key from the floor, Althea inserted it and unlocked the door.
Sarah all but tumbled in, blond corkscrew curls in a wild tangle beneath her cap and her wide blue eyes filled with excitement, not fear. She brushed her hair, the gold of guineas, back to expose her neck. “Look at the marks of ‘is teeth, Miss.”
Two tiny puncture wounds marred the creamy white throat. But Sarah’s cheeks were flushed a healthy pink and she appeared no worse for wear. The wounds were clean.
She took Sarah by the elbow and steered her to the chair. “What happened to you?”
“Well, it weren’t a bad experience, Miss Yates, and it didn’t hurt none. In truth, it were right exciting.”
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“Oh, Sarah. You must tell me exactly what happened. What was this vampire like?”
“Tall. And, gawd bless me, but ‘e was the most devilish ‘andsome man I’ve seen. Just afore dawn, I laid the fires and I took out the pail wi’ the ash. It were still dark and I just stepped out the door when this gent caught me about the waist and dragged me wi’ ‘im. Oo, but I were right scared. Then I thought it were ’is lordship, as ’e was tall and ’ad fair hair.”
“His lordship,” Althea echoed. She’d thought the vampire was Zayan, not Yannick. Of course Yannick must feed but why did he have to choose a voluptuous maid?