After Midnight

by Teresa Medeiros

  The top of the vanity was a charming jumble of powders, unguents, and other mysterious potions all deemed indispensable when in pursuit of the elusive ideal of feminine beauty. As far as Larkin was concerned, Vivienne required none of them. A silk stocking had been slung carelessly over the back of the vanity’s bench. He ran his fingertips over the gossamer fabric, trying not to imagine Vivienne sitting on that very bench and drawing the stocking up over one of her creamy calves. Trying not to imagine his lips following that same path until they reached the sensitive dimple behind her knee.

  Larkin snatched his hand back, appalled by his lack of self-restraint. He was turning to go when he spotted the note lying open on the vanity. A note penned in a precise yet feminine hand.

  This time he took the stairs two at a time, his dread at what he might find mounting right along with him. Without bothering to knock, he burst into the north tower.

  His steps slowed as he approached Caroline’s bed. The hangings were drawn back like the curtains of a stage ready to sweep down for the final act. Garbed in a dressing gown of emerald velvet, Vivienne reclined on her back among the pillows, the slender fingers of one hand curled like a child’s near her cheek. Larkin’s own breathing slowly steadied as he watched her chest rise and fall in sweet repose.

  He slumped against one of the bedposts, running a shaky hand over his jaw. It seemed he owed Caroline an apology. Perhaps Vivienne really hadn’t felt well enough to attend the masquerade. Perhaps she had seized upon Caroline’s summons to the tower to escape the fuss and noise emanating from the great hall. She might even have found the dress and cameo in the attic and insisted that Caroline wear it, not realizing they had once belonged to another woman Kane had loved.

  Drinking in the angelic purity of her features, he sighed. He would have been content to stay and guard her slumber for the rest of the night. But if one of the servants should stumble upon him, there would be grave consequences to her reputation.

  He gently drew the quilt up over her, determined to linger only long enough to add another shovel of coal to the fire.

  An empty teacup rested on the table beside the bed, along with an unmarked bottle. His instincts beginning to hum once again, Larkin uncorked the bottle and gave it a suspicious sniff. It took little more than a whiff of the pungent sweetness for him to recognize its contents.

  “Damn them,” he muttered, slamming the bottle back down on the table. “Damn them both!”

  He sank down on the feather mattress beside Vivienne, no longer caring what the servants would think if they were discovered.

  Capturing her by the shoulders, he gave her a gentle shake. “Vivienne! Vivienne, darling, you’ve slept long enough. You need to wake up now!”

  She stirred, a sleepy moan escaping her parted lips. Her eyes fluttered open. It was too late for Larkin to school his features into indifference. All he could do was wait for the horrified scream that would doubtlessly come once she realized exactly who was looming over her in the bed, gazing down at her with his heart in his eyes.

  It took him a dazed moment to realize she must still be dreaming for she lifted a hand to his cheek, her lips slowly curving in a tender half smile, and whispered, “Portia always told me my prince would come.”

  Caroline closed her eyes, growing flushed and breathless and dizzy, not from the whirling motion of the waltz, but from the blood rushing from her head to other, far more reckless corners of her body. She almost wished she would swoon in Adrian’s arms so he could carry her from the hall and do all of the tender, wicked things to her that she secretly desired, but could never be bold enough to demand.

  None of her girlhood fantasies had prepared her for this moment. She was no longer the sensible sister, content to watch wistfully while her sisters joined the dance of life. Instead, she was the one commanding every eye in the hall, the one spinning around the floor in the embrace of this magnificent man.

  His hand caressed the small of her back, urging her ever closer, so close that her breasts ached to escape from the torturous confinement of her corset each time they brushed the starched lapels of his tailcoat.

  “If you want to put on a show for Duvalier, shall we pretend we’re at Vauxhall again?” Adrian whispered, his voice vibrating with urgency. As his thumb stroked the very center of her palm, his lips nuzzled the sensitive shell of her ear, coaxing a shudder of yearning from her womb. “I haven’t forgotten what a convincing little actress you can be. I still remember the sound of your sighs, the taste of your lips, the way you clung to me as if you never wanted me to let you go.”

  The other dancers were beginning to give them a wide berth. Some had stopped waltzing altogether and were craning their necks to openly gawk at their scandalous display. Adrian’s guests had come to Trevelyan Castle expecting some sort of show, but not one quite this rousing.

  “Your guests…” she finally managed to gasp out, “…they’re watching us.”

  “Wasn’t that what you wanted? Didn’t you come here tonight so that Duvalier would see you? So you could bait him with your beauty? So you could stir his unholy lust and drive him half mad with wanting you?”

  As the heated velvet of Adrian’s lips grazed the curve of her throat, she knew instinctively that they were no longer talking about Duvalier. In truth, no vampire, however cunning, could pose as much of a danger to her as this man did. Duvalier could only make her heart stop beating; Adrian possessed the power to shatter it into a thousand pieces, leaving her to walk around for the rest of her days with the broken shards lodged in her breast.

  Digging her fingers into his shoulder to keep from melting against him in complete surrender, she said, “I came here tonight to help Julian. To help you.”

  Adrian drew back to gaze down at her, his eyes burning with both desire and anger. “And just how did you intend to do that? By getting your fool self killed? You’re wearing Eloisa’s dress. Do you wish to meet her fate as well?”

  “Of course not! I knew you would protect me. You swore that you were strong enough to protect Vivienne, didn’t you? How can you promise to protect my sister, but not trust yourself to keep me safe?”

  The music swelled to a crescendo. Although Adrian kept her imprisoned against the muscular length of his body, he gave up all pretense of dancing. “Because I don’t lose my wits every time Vivienne walks into a room. I don’t toss and turn in my bed every night dreaming of making love to her. She doesn’t drive me to distraction with her endless questions, her incessant snooping, her harebrained schemes.” His voice rose. “I can trust myself to protect your sister because I’m not in love with her!”

  His words echoed back from the rafters, warning them too late that both the waltz and the music had ended. Caroline stole a sheepish peek at the other dancers, fully expecting to find every gaze in the hall riveted on them. But oddly enough, the guests seemed to have been distracted by a new arrival.

  As their shocked murmurs rose to an audible buzz, Caroline followed the direction of their gazes to the door. Her heart sank into her slippers as she recognized the slender figure cradled in the arms of a man whose narrowed eyes promised both justice and retribution.

  She caught only the briefest glimpse of her sister’s stunned expression before Constable Larkin pressed Vivienne’s face to his shoulder, sparing her from witnessing another minute of the sordid spectacle she and Adrian had just made of themselves.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The silence within the castle’s library was worse than any sound Caroline had ever heard. She paced back and forth in front of the door, wringing a handkerchief in her numb hands. When Adrian had escorted a white-faced Vivienne into the chamber, Caroline expected to hear brokenhearted sobbing, shouting, and bitter recriminations. But although nearly an hour had passed since their disappearance, not so much as a whimper had escaped the room. Perhaps Vivienne had decided to suffer this betrayal, as she had so many other things, in silence.

  “She shouldn’t be alone in there with him. They req
uire a chaperone,” Larkin muttered, shooting Caroline an accusing glare that reminded her just how miserably she had failed in that regard. Instead of protecting her sister’s tender heart, she had been the one to break it.

  The constable was slouched against the opposite wall, his casual posture belied by the watchful glitter in his eyes. He and Adrian had nearly come to blows when Adrian had insisted on wresting Vivienne from his arms and whisking her away from the prying eyes of his stunned guests.

  “After everything I’ve told you,” Caroline said, “surely you can’t still believe he would harm her. He wasn’t the one who slipped her those drops of laudanum. I was.”

  Larkin shook his head. “Am I actually supposed to believe that Victor murdered Eloisa in cold blood, then turned Julian into some sort of monster? That Kane is a vampire hunter and he and Julian have spent the last five years tracking Victor to the ends of the earth and back? Why, I’ve never heard such a preposterous tale!”

  “I thought the same thing when Adrian first told me, but Julian showed me…” Caroline trailed off, twisting her handkerchief into a new knot. She could expect no help from that quarter. Although she’d had the servants searching for him ever since the ball came to such an unceremonious end, Julian was nowhere to be found.

  Desperate to convince Larkin that she was telling the truth, as much for Adrian’s sake as for hers, she met his eyes squarely. “Weren’t you the one who once challenged me to trust in something other than logic?” He gazed down his long nose at her, his stony expression not softening one whit. “Would it be easier for you to believe that I’m the sort of woman who would drug her sister for the sole purpose of stealing her suitor for a torrid interlude?”

  He continued to glare at her for a moment before blowing out a reluctant sigh of defeat. “I suppose that’s even more preposterous, isn’t it?”

  Without warning, the library door swung open. Caroline turned as Adrian emerged from the shadows of the room. In some small corner of her heart she had hoped that he would come striding through that door, sweep her into his arms, and kiss every one of her fears and regrets off of her lips.

  But that hope died when she saw his face. The passionate lover from the great hall had vanished as surely as if he’d been a figment of her imagination, no more real than one of Portia’s mermans or noble princes, leaving behind a forbidding stranger.

  “I told her about Duvalier,” he said, his inscrutable gaze barely brushing over Caroline. “I told her everything.”

  Although Larkin straightened as if he’d like nothing more than to confront him, Adrian stalked right past him and down the corridor, the staccato click of his booted heels echoing behind him.

  Caroline had no time to linger over his deliberate slight, not with the library’s open door beckoning to her.

  Larkin gave her an uncertain glance. “Would you like me to—”

  Before he could finish, Caroline shook her head. The last thing she deserved was the constable’s companionship or sympathy. No longer able to delay the moment she had been dreading, she slipped into the library, silently pulling the door shut behind her.

  Vivienne was sitting on a leather ottoman in front of the fire, the skirt of Caroline’s emerald green dressing gown fanned out around her. She sat utterly still, utterly silent, her face buried in her hands.

  Caroline gazed at her sister’s shoulders in mute misery, knowing she would feel much better if Vivienne would bawl at the top of her lungs, hurl something breakable at her head, chastise her for being the shameless suitor-stealing trollop that she was.

  Creeping as close as she dared, she whispered, “Vivi?”

  Vivienne remained huddled in a despondent knot, refusing to acknowledge her presence.

  Caroline stretched out a hand toward Vivienne’s bowed head, aching to touch the golden silk of her hair. But just as quickly, she withdrew that hand, fearing such a touch might shatter her fragile sister into a thousand pieces.

  “I can’t imagine what you must think of me,” she began, choking out each word around the lump in her throat. “You have to know that I would have given anything within my power to make you happy. I would have cut off my right arm if it would have ensured your happiness and your future.” A hot wash of tears filled her eyes. “But he was the one thing I couldn’t bear to give you because I…I wanted him so badly for myself.”

  To Caroline’s horror, Vivienne’s shoulders began to shake. She had thought it would be a relief if her sister would cry. But it wasn’t. Those silent sobs nearly tore Caroline’s heart in two.

  She went to her knees beside the ottoman, feeling the tears in her own eyes spill down her cheeks in a scalding rush. “I should have left this place the moment I realized I was falling in love with him. I could have begged Aunt Marietta to find me a position as some sort of governess or paid companion and gone so far away that neither one of you would have ever had to see me again. If I had an ounce of decency in my soul, I’d return to Edgeleaf right away and accept Cousin Cecil’s proposal. A lifetime of waking up every morning to that odious toad is no more than I deserve for what I’ve done to you!”

  Her voice broke on a ragged sob. No longer able to bear up beneath the weight of her guilt, she dropped her head into Vivienne’s lap, clutching at her sister’s skirts as she wept out her shame.

  The last thing she expected to feel was a hand stroking her head. For just an instant it was almost as if time had gone tumbling backward and it was her mother’s gentle touch seeking to soothe away her heartache. Caroline slowly lifted her disbelieving eyes to her sister’s face. Vivienne’s cheeks were also streaked with tears, but her serene smile was no less loving than before.

  “You can’t marry Cousin Cecil,” Vivienne informed her. “I refuse to play the role of doting aunt for a passel of odious, toad-faced brats.”

  Caroline blinked up at her sister through a wavery curtain of tears. “Don’t you want to see me punished for the terrible thing I’ve done? How can you forgive me for stealing the man you love?”

  Vivienne gave her head another stroke, looking wise beyond her years. “Because I don’t love him, Caro. I never did.”

  Caroline shook her head, her bewilderment growing. “I don’t understand. How can you say such a thing? What about that letter you sent us? You went on for pages and pages, detailing his irresistible charms and his manly virtues. For heaven’s sake, you even dotted the i in his name with a heart!”

  Vivienne winced at the memory. “All of the things I said about him were true, but I think I was trying to convince myself that I was falling in love with him. After all, he was exactly the sort of man I was supposed to fall in love with—wealthy, titled, powerful. If I could land a gentleman like him, I knew it could be the making of us. I could single-handedly pull our family back from the brink of ruin. I was just trying to look after you and Portia.” She seized Caroline’s hand, her blue eyes shining with a tenderness Caroline had feared she would never see again. “Especially you, dear Caro, after all you’d sacrificed for us. You didn’t always have to be the strong one, you know. Portia and I would have helped you. We needed to help you.”

  Caroline shook her head ruefully, still struggling to absorb her sister’s words. “We make a fine pair, don’t we? Both trying to sacrifice for the other and making a dreadful muck of it.” She gave Vivienne’s hand a fierce squeeze. “Even if we were begging on the streets, I never would have forced you to marry a man you didn’t love.”

  “Don’t you think I knew that?” Dragging her hand from Caroline’s, Vivienne rose to pace in front of the fire. “It wasn’t as if becoming the viscount’s wife would have been such a terrible ordeal. He’s a very kind and handsome man and I admire him more than I can say, even more now that he’s told me about poor Julian’s…affliction.” She whirled around to face Caroline, her pretty brow puckered in a tortured frown. “But how could I marry him when my heart belongs to Alastair?”

  “Alastair?” Caroline echoed, baffled anew by the passi
onate declaration. She searched her memory, wondering if there was some village lad or brawny gardener she’d overlooked. “Who on earth is Alastair?”

  “Why, Constable Larkin, of course! I’ve loved him ever since he spilled sherry on my skirt at Lady Marlybone’s afternoon musicale and tried to dab it away with his cravat. But I knew he wouldn’t suit. He has no family of any repute and unless there’s some major kidnapping or jewel theft among the ton, he can barely support himself on his commissions, much less a wife and her family. And besides, he has abominable fashion sense.”

  “Yes, he does, doesn’t he?” Caroline murmured, thinking how very happy the constable was going to be when he discovered that he wasn’t going to have to hire that valet to tie his cravat after all.

  “And worst of all,” Vivienne continued, “I knew he didn’t have a single acquaintance that you or Portia could marry. Not a friend, not a brother, not even a second cousin thrice removed!”

  “What about a doddering old uncle?” Caroline asked, finding it more and more difficult to suppress her smile.

  Vivienne shook her head sadly. “Not even that, I fear. I knew he wasn’t a suitable prospect from the beginning so I tried to discourage him by being distant and cruel.” Her eyes softened in a look Caroline didn’t need a mirror to recognize. “But the more insufferable I became, the more he seemed to adore me.”

  “That seems to be the curse of true love,” Caroline whispered, no longer thinking about the constable. Struck by a sudden thought, she tilted her head to study her sister. “If you weren’t distraught because I’d stolen the man you loved, then why on earth were you crying just now?”

  “Because I was so very relieved to learn that you were truly in love with him and I hadn’t just made a dreadful mistake!” Vivienne beamed at her. “Now that I’ve fixed everything, you and Portia will always be taken care of and Alastair and I can finally be together.”