Emily snatched her hands away from his. “Why should he have? They were estranged. Lady Alberta, um, doesn’t approve of the supersensible.” Before Michael could question her further, Emily pulled the vraja from her reticule. “I believe this is yours.”
He frowned at the talisman. “Where did you find that?”
“In the Society vaults. It has me in quite a puzzle, since Papa didn’t permit anyone to enter the vaults other than myself.”
Michael wrenched his eyes away from the talisman. “Following your father’s death, there were countless people wandering through the house. I told you at the time that we should put more stringent security measures into effect. Perhaps the vraja belonged to one of those people. Or even to the Professor. At any rate, it isn’t mine.”
“Oh? Where is your vraja, then?”
Michael’s hand moved to his waistcoat. “It didn’t seem appropriate for an occasion such as this.”
Since Emily had never seen Michael on an occasion such as this, she couldn’t quibble with his statement. “You’re certain that this vraja isn’t yours?”
Michael scowled. “Are you accusing me of something? I’ll tell you what, Emily: grief must have unhinged your brain.”
With difficulty, Emily kept rein on her temper. Silently she dropped the charm back into her reticule.
Michael’s eyes moved from her reticule to her face. “I am anxious to speak with you at greater length. What is Lady Alberta’s address?”
Be conciliatory, Emily told herself again. “At the moment, my aunt and I are guests of Lord Revay-Czobar.”
Michael’s mouth dropped open. “Ravensclaw? But why? Unless—” His gaze sharpened. “Is his name on the Dinwiddie list? What is he, werewolf, shapeshifter, the devil’s spawn? You are not qualified for this work, Emily. You must leave his house at once.”
What was it about her that made people try and tell her what to do? “Now who is unhinged, Michael? Ravensclaw is nothing of the sort. Ah, Lady Alberta is beckoning. You will excuse me.” Michael pressed his lips together. Without further protest, he let her go.
At last the interminable evening ended, after a series of ballads sung in a sweet soprano voice, which — having progressed from Loch Lomond (“and me and my true love will never meet again”) through The Three Ravens (“she was dead herself ere evensong time”) to Mary Hamilton (“the land I was tae travel in, or the death I was tae dee”) — left many of the revelers in a somewhat somber frame of mind.
Ravensclaw’s carriage was waiting at the door. Lady Alberta climbed inside.
Val lifted Emily into the carriage as if she weighed no more than a feather. “I will speak with you tomorrow, little one.”
“Tomorrow? But I must tell you what Michael said.” Or hadn’t said, but that was beside the point. Emily lowered her voice. “I think he may suspect what you are.”
Val smiled. “If Mr. Ross’s suspicions are on a par with yours, I’ll not tremble in my boots just yet.” He stepped back and closed the door.
Emily sank back on the carriage seat. Had Ravensclaw admitted what she thought he had? And if he had admitted it, then how dare he leave her here with a thousand unanswered questions buzzing about in her poor beleaguered brain?
“It may be unchristian of me to say so, but Lisbet Boroi is not a nice woman,” remarked Lady Alberta. “And I have my doubts about Cezar Korzha as well. I don’t mean to say that Korzha is a woman, because any fool can see he’s not, which isn’t always the case.”
Counts who were Other, dogs that were werewolves — that sort of thing Emily could accept. But men who were women? Her companion must have imbibed more than was prudent of the champagne punch.
As, perhaps, had she.
She should be searching for the athame — but where to start? And so here she sat, twiddling her thumbs while Ravensclaw— Was where? Doing what? With whom?
Foolish questions. Ravensclaw was probably even then nuzzling and nibbling and sinking his teeth into Lisbet Boroi’s throat. Fangs! Yes, and why had she been able to speak silently with him? Did Michael have the d’Auvergne athame in his possession and, if so, what did he mean to do with it? Emily leaned her head back against the carriage seat and closed her eyes.
Chapter Nine
Do not all you can; spend not all you have;
believe not all you hear; and tell not all you know.
(Romanian proverb)
Faint fingers of dawn crept across the somber sky. The early morning air was damp and chill and noxious, the sanitary arrangements in Edinburgh’s Old Town being considerably inferior to the New, which made not a whit of difference to footpad or resurrectionist, randy young buck or supersensible creature or Lady Alberta’s ghosts.
Ravensclaw wondered how Miss Dinwiddie felt about ghaisties. She would doubtless tell him in good time.
He climbed the exterior stair to his front door. His servants, accustomed to their master’s nocturnal habits, were long abed. Val made his way up the inner stairway to his own chamber, where he found Drogo stretched out on the hearth, and Machka and Miss Dinwiddie stretched out on his bed. One of them was snoring. He doubted it was the cat.
Drogo rolled over on his back. Val paused to scratch the creature’s belly before he walked closer to the bed. Machka opened one incurious eye and yawned.
Emily’s spectacles lay abandoned atop a stack of correspondence. Society business, he gathered from what he could read upside down. A water kelpie had been sighted, in the form of a handsome man with seaweed in his hair instead of a bullish black beast with two horns.
Val wondered who had written the account. Water kelpies were prone to lure the unwary to watery graves.
Given the opportunity, Emily would more likely lure the kelpie to his.
She wore her necklace of charms, which was of no more practical use than the poppy seeds she scattered outside her bedroom door with the absurd notion that the undead had a compulsion to count everything in their path.
On the other hand, he wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover she had hidden an axe in his pillows.
One bare foot peeped out from beneath the practical cotton wrapper that she wore over her voluminous night gown. A fragile little foot, with painful-looking blisters. Miss Dinwiddie’s new slippers hadn’t fit her any better than the role she’d played in Lady Cullane’s elegant drawing room.
She turned her head on his pillow. Tendrils of hair had escaped from their braid to frizz around her face. Val slipped his hand under her foot, rubbed her sole with his thumb.
...
She lay on the woolen rug before the fireplace. He lowered his lips to her throat. Pleasure hummed through her veins. His teeth found her pulse, and nipped. A strange melting sensation, a growing warmth—
...
The young woman was preoccupied with throats. Val decided to advance her understanding a little bit.
...
His lips slid along her silken skin to the soft flesh of one breast. He teased her rosy nipple with his tongue until it pebbled, begging him for more. His mouth closed around her. She moaned.
...
Her scent surrounded him. Not garlic now, or lavender, but an erotic female perfume that made his nostrils flare. Emily. Wake up.
She opened her eyes, peered nearsightedly at him. You said you weren’t what I thought you were. You lied.
Val traced the arch of her foot. What did you expect? I am vampir.
She considered this, and the hand that clasped her. Are you lying now?
No. Are you frightened, little one?
Maybe. Emily watched him trace a pattern on her ankle. What are you doing to my foot?
Caressing it. Do you mind?
Oh. She blinked at him. On the hearth, Drogo stirred. Machka opened one green eye and reached out a sharp-tipped paw.
Emily snatched back her foot and tucked it under her nightdress. “What are you doing here?”
Val shrugged off his jacket. “I sleep here, remember? Perhaps I should a
sk you the same thing. This is hardly so large a house that someone might get lost.”
Emily fumbled for her spectacles and plopped them on her nose. “You said we would speak tomorrow. Well, now it is tomorrow, so don’t try and put me off again. Have you found out anything about the athame?”
No, nor had he tried to, having had more urgent fires to douse. “Has anyone ever told you that you are as tenacious as a cockleburr?”
“Papa, when he was trying to keep things from me. Don’t change the subject. I take it you did not.”
Val did not feel inclined to explain himself. “You wanted to warn me about your Mr. Ross.”
Emily looked away. “He’s not my Mr. Ross.”
Val shrugged out of his coat. “Nonetheless, you know him well.”
“Not half as well as I once believed I did.” Emily toyed with the edges of her sash. “Thanks to your insistence that I appear at Lady Cullen’s dratted musicale, Michael thinks I followed him to Edinburgh.”
“Why should he think you followed him? Unless you told him of your suspicions, and that you found his talisman. Did you return it to him, by the way?” Casually, Val removed his waistcoat and cravat.
Emily’s cheeks reddened. “He claimed it wasn’t his. Before my papa’s death, Michael was, ah, courting me. He may think that we’re betrothed.”
Val pulled the velvet cord out of his hair. Scooted Machka out of the way and sat down on the bed. “Miss Dinwiddie, you are a femme fatale.”
Emily adjusted her spectacles. “Don’t poke fun at me. I should have realized it was all moonshine. Michael wants to marry me and thereby gain control of the Society and my pocketbook. However, I have decided that I don’t want to marry anyone. Papa managed matters so I wouldn’t have to, despite the fact that the law doesn’t find females fit to manage their own affairs. Do stop regarding me as if I were some raree show exhibit. You aren’t taking this seriously enough.”
If so, it was understandable: Val had during the countless years of his existence been hanged, shot, and staked, none of which had been particularly pleasant, but he had lived (so to speak) to tell the tale. “You are serious enough for us both. If Ross did steal the athame, he didn’t have it with him last night.”
Emily’s expressive eyebrows climbed halfway up her forehead. “How do you know that?”
Val raised an eyebrow of his own.
She glared at him. “I fail to understand why your servants are so devoted to you. Unless you’ve swayed their minds.”
“That would be unsporting of me.”
“And you never take advantage?”
“We have strayed from the subject. Indulge my curiosity, Miss Dinwiddie. Most young women would settle for marriage at any price.”
“Most young women are not as great an oddity as I am. Papa was almost pathetically grateful when Michael began to pay me court.” Emily drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “My parents had a marriage of convenience — her dowry and his convenience, that is. They rubbed on well enough together for the most part, except on such occasions as when his experiment with a reverse magnetosphere went awry, and we had rabbits in the drawing room, and Mama fainted into the teapot. I want more than that for myself.”
“I see,” said Val, and so he did. Miss Dinwiddie was an heiress. Every fortune hunter in Scotland would be hanging on her skirts. Or they would be if they knew about her situation, which wasn’t likely, given the young lady’s eccentricities. Thus, the field was left clear for Michael Ross.
Rather, the field had been left clear. Val had already arranged to introduce his ungrateful houseguest to what passed for Polite Society in Edinburgh, ostensibly to help her in her quest. She would hate every moment spent among her peers, and thereby amuse him even more. Maybe he would engage in an additional altruism, since she was clearly too impulsive to be left dashing about on her own, and make her financial status known. Val didn’t imagine for a moment that Emily would thank him for it, which made the notion even more piquant.
Emily puffed up her cheeks and blew out an exasperated breath. “This is all far off the point! It is vitally important that we retrieve the athame. Why don’t you just reach out and find the blasted thing?”
“Because I cannot.”
“Oh. I assumed your extramundane senses— Isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes. It may have been due to the bagpipes, or because I wasn’t close enough, but I learned nothing from your Mr. Ross last night. Yes, I know he isn’t yours, but I’m afraid you must act for a little while as though he is.” It took no extramundane senses to hear the sound of grinding teeth. “If you will recall, it was our intention to flush out your fox.”
“He’s not my fox.” She eyed him. “Why have you finally admitted what you are?”
It hadn’t been solely for his entertainment, Val conceded to himself, although entertained he was. “I don’t know that I did.”
“I have never heard of a vampire with memory problems. Although, all things considered, I can see why it might be inconvenient to have encyclopedic recall.” Val settled himself more comfortably. Emily cast a sideways glance at the strong thigh that pinned down her skirt. “I understand there is more than one traditional way to become a vampire. Were you set upon unawares and drained to the point of death?”
Val hoped Miss Dinwiddie’s inquiring mind wouldn’t be the death of her. Or him. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. It was nothing like that. I became what I am by choice.”
Emily watched him stroke the cat. “Why would anyone become a vampire by choice? I do not mean to be insulting, but it is difficult to embrace the notion of drinking blood.”
She had many more questions. He answered them as best he could. Val was not accustomed to being regarded as a scientific curiosity. He found himself equal parts annoyed and amused.
“Most females who find their way into my bed,” he said, when his inquisitor paused for breath, “don’t do so with interrogation in mind.”
Emily sighed. “I’m being unforgivably pushing, aren’t I? It’s just that you are my first supersensible creature and there are so many things I’d like to ask. Are you afraid I can’t keep a secret? I promise you I can. Is it true that the nonliving have remarkable regenerative powers? Hugely heightened senses? The ability to cloud people’s minds?”
Val was going to have to cloud her mind. Eventually. He reached out and caught her hand.
She studied their intertwined fingers. You’re going to do that thing again. Where you read my mind.
Eventually, but not yet. I won’t do this again unless you wish me to.
Images flooded his mind. Images of the circumstances under which she might wish such a thing, which had to do with nibbles and kisses and nips.
And then he saw nothing, as if she’d slammed shut a door.
Val glanced at the window and the brightening sky outside. “I promise you will have your answers, and retrieve your stolen property. But now, you must return to your room, before the rest of the household begins to stir.” She looked rebellious. Go! commanded Val.
She went. He lay back on his bed, imagining the so-curious Miss Dinwiddie’s reaction were he to turn into a corpse before her eyes.
Chapter Ten
If an ass goes a-traveling, he’ll not come home a horse.
(Romanian proverb)
Emily’s foot still tingled where Ravenclaw had stroked it. Of course he would know how close he’d come to seducing her. Without even trying. For Ravensclaw to seduce females must be as natural as drawing breath.
Not that he drew breath.
She really must try to remember that.
All in all, she considered that she had exhibited remarkable self-possession for a young woman who had never before found herself sharing a bed with a half-clad gentleman.
Still, it might be prudent, in the future, to avoid champagne punch.
He hadn’t seemed surprised to find her in his bed. No doubt Ravensclaw was accustomed to finding females in his
bed. It was that ivory skin. Those sapphire eyes. Those oh-so-knowing lips. That glorious muscular chest with its furring of auburn hair. Emily reminded herself that the strigoii of Romania had two hearts. And that red-haired men who rose from the dead had the power to transform themselves into frogs. She tried but failed to convince herself that in his true form Ravensclaw was ugly as a toad.
Emily sighed, drawing the attention of the other occupants of the drawing room. Zizi, Bela, and Lilian paused in their attempts to instruct Jamie in the proper handling of a tea tray, it being customary for the first pot to be prepared in the kitchen and carried to the lady of the house. These being early efforts, Jamie carried a book — A Greene Forest, or a Natural Historie, divided into three sections, Animal, Vegetable and Mineral, an encyclopedic digest prepared by John Maplet in 1567 — on the tray instead. Thus far he’d only spilled it thrice. Machka lent her efforts to the enterprise by winding around his feet. Sprawled in his usual spot on the hearth, Drogo surveyed the proceedings with an expression of lupine disbelief.
Lady Alberta put down the magazine from which she had been reading Mr. Polidori’s account of Lord Ruthven, the fearless world-traveling aristocrat who lured innocent women to their deaths so he might feed on their blood. “Is something on your mind, my dear?”
Jamie did a nice turn with the tray. “Och, she’s in a wee dwam.”
“I’m no such thing,” protested Emily. “Whatever it is.”
Lady Alberta reached for an oatcake. “A dwam is a daydream.”
Emily was in rather more than a daydream. She couldn’t decide whether she should be pleased with her initiative at bearding the dragon in his lair, or appalled at herself. Bearding dragons was one thing, falling asleep in their beds something else.
She watched Jamie’s contortions with the tea tray. Emily had brought the boy into a nightwalker’s household, only to, preoccupied with her own problems, abandon him to his fate. Ravensclaw must surely dine on something more substantial than oatmeal and tea. “Jamie, has Count Revay-Czobar—” How best to phrase it? “Ah—”
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