“I have no need of a carriage.” The woman gazed up and down the street, allowing Portia to admire the stunning elegance of her profile. “I am waiting for my lover.”
Portia blinked, taken aback by both the woman’s candor and her imperious air. “It’s very late,” she said tentatively. “Are you certain he’s coming?”
The woman’s full red lips curved in a smile. “Oh, he will come. I’ve made sure of that.”
She turned that dazzling smile on Portia. Portia couldn’t help staring, mesmerized by the feline slant of the woman’s eyes. She was starting to feel a little like a cobra coiled in the basket of a master snake charmer. If the woman started to sway, she feared she would too.
“So why does an innocent little dove like you brave the streets tonight?” the woman asked. “Are you also waiting for a lover?”
Portia stiffened. “I’m afraid not. My love”—she stumbled over the word—“my lover betrayed me. He has been proven false.”
To her surprise, the woman reached out a snow white hand tipped with crimson nails and gently stroked her cheek. “Poor little dove,” she crooned. “A lover broke my heart once. The pain was as fierce as any I have ever known. I longed for death.”
Portia felt her own bruised heart leap in sympathy. “You actually wanted to die?”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Not my death, little one. His. I felt much better after I’d cut out his heart and eaten it.”
Portia’s mouth fell open, but before her scream could escape, the woman’s hand shot out and closed over her throat. She lifted Portia clear off her feet, sending the stake in her hand tumbling from her numb fingers to the ground.
The woman’s ruby red lips parted to reveal a gleaming white pair of fangs. “If you will allow me, my dear, perhaps I can put an end to your suffering as well.”
“You promised me we were leaving London,” Cuthbert muttered, crouching down next to where Julian was kneeling and shooting him an accusing look. “You come knocking at my window in the dead of night and say, ‘Abandon your nice toasty bed and come away with me, Cubby. Bring a handful of your father’s jewels and we can spend the rest of the winter lazing on the sunny beaches of southern Spain with some delicious little opera dancer.’” Tugging down the brim of his beaver top hat to cover ears pink with cold, he eyed the shadowy loft of the abandoned warehouse with a mistrustful eye. “Instead you drag me down to this miserable hellhole where some miscreant may very well cut my purse or, worse yet, my throat.”
“If you don’t stop whining,” Julian said absently, peering through the jagged hole where a pane of glass had once resided, “I’m going to cut out your tongue.”
Cuthbert snapped his mouth shut, but his breath continued to escape his nostrils in frigid little puffs, making him look like an indignant dragon.
Julian sighed and pivoted on one knee to face him. “I told you I had some unfinished business in London. As soon as it’s settled, I swear I’ll find you that sunny beach and your bloody opera dancer.”
“Your unfinished business usually involves sneaking into a lady’s bedchamber to return a missing undergarment before her husband gets home, not spending half the night huddled in Charing Cross freezing our tailcoats off.” He leaned forward to survey the street below, forcing Julian to grab the tails of his coat to keep him from tumbling headfirst out the window. “Is this about Wallingford? Is the scoundrel up to no good? Have you found a way to blackmail him into tearing up your vowels?”
“This is about settling another debt I owe.” Julian’s wayward memory conjured up a vision of Portia nestled snugly in her bed. Only in this vision, she opened her eyes and her arms to welcome him. “And I won’t leave London without seeing it paid.”
“Well, I just hope this uncharacteristic attack of scruples doesn’t prove fatal. For either one of us.” Cuthbert settled back on his haunches. “What on earth have you been doing since you dropped me off at my father’s town house the other night? Based on your impressive performance at the coffee house earlier, it certainly wasn’t eating. I’ve never seen a man shovel down five rare beefsteaks at one sitting.” He shook his head in grudging admiration. “But I have to admit that it improved your color. You were looking a trifle bit pasty.”
Julian murmured something noncommittal. He was still so hungry that even Cubby’s thick neck was starting to look a little tempting.
“Once we get to Madrid, perhaps we can—”
“Shhhhhhh!” Julian raised a warning hand as a shadowy figure came stumbling out of one of the alleys below.
But it was just a drunken sailor searching for another tavern. Somewhere in the distance, the bells of a church began to chime midnight, their high pure tones out of place in this dangerous corner of hell where wisps of fog drifted up from the cobblestones like brimstone-scented smoke. Julian narrowed his eyes as another figure came melting out of the fog that had just swallowed the sailor.
“It’s a woman,” Cuthbert said.
“I can see that,” Julian snapped, his nerves frayed to the breaking point.
The cloaked woman meandered down the street as if she had no particular destination in mind. Julian might have thought she was drunk, but she was neither weaving or staggering. If she were a light-skirt trolling for coins, it should have been easy enough for her to coax the sailor into one of the nearby alleys for a quick coupling or a ball-against-the-wall, as it was known in cruder circles.
He felt some of the tension seep from his muscles as she drew abreast of the warehouse and he realized she was buxom and petite, not tall and willowy. But his relief was quickly replaced by a more discomfiting emotion. There was something distressingly familiar about the saucy roll of her hips, the glossy dark curls piled atop her head, the challenging tilt of her chin.
“What in the bloody hell…” he breathed.
He blinked rapidly, hoping hunger and fatigue would account for the sight of Portia Cabot gliding right out of his fantasies and down the damp, cobbled streets of Charing Cross.
Despite the seediness of her surroundings, she might have been taking a stroll through Hyde Park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Her cloak had slipped off of one creamy shoulder, making her look even more vulnerable. As Julian’s keen eyesight focused on the burgundy ribbon tied around the pale expanse of her throat, he felt his mouth go bone dry with longing.
“Not a very wholesome path for a young woman to take,” Cubby whispered. “Should we intervene?”
Julian wanted nothing more than to do just that. He wanted to leap right down there and shake some sense into her foolish little head, something his brother was apparently unable to do. But some primitive survival instinct made him hesitate. She had defied Adrian and risked both her life and her reputation to seek him out in the gambling hell. But what if he’d played the role of villain too well? What if her allegiance had shifted? He could think of no sweeter bait for his brother to use to lure him out of hiding.
Cuthbert pointed to the streetlamp on the corner. “Ah, there’s no need for worry after all. She must be meeting someone.”
Someone who had miraculously appeared out of thin air. Someone whose willowy grace made her appear to float even when she wasn’t in motion. Someone who was even now sweeping back the hood of her cloak to reveal the alabaster skin of an angel and a fall of silvery blond hair.
Julian felt the scant nourishment he’d derived from the beefsteaks turn to ice water in his veins. “Dear God,” he whispered, invoking a name he no longer had the right to use.
He scrambled to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Cuthbert demanded, his side-whiskers quivering with alarm. “You’re not going to leave me here all alone, are you?”
Julian seized his friend by the shoulders and hauled him effortlessly to his feet. “I need your help, Cubby. I wouldn’t have asked you to accompany me tonight if I could have done this alone. But I was afraid we were walking into some sort of trap. I need you to do what you do best—watch my back.”
He dragged Cuthbert to the edge of the loft and pointed to a pair of sandbags dangling from a nearby beam. They hung right over the splintery wooden doors that stood guard over the main entrance of the warehouse. Earlier in the day, Julian had looped the ropes holding them aloft over a nearby peg. “If anyone besides me tries to come through those doors, I want you to loosen the ropes and drop those sandbags on them. Do you understand?”
Cuthbert nodded mutely, his throat too swollen by panic for speech.
“Good man.” Julian clapped him on the shoulder, sparing him a brief but fierce smile.
Then he was gone, moving so swiftly that Cuthbert would have sworn his feet never once touched the rungs of the ladder they’d climbed to reach the loft. Before Cuthbert could puzzle over what he’d seen, a faint shriek, quickly muffled, came from the street. He started back toward the window but a man’s shout and the thunder of running footsteps drew him up short.
Remembering the charge with which Julian had entrusted him, he stumbled over to the peg where the rope was looped. He cocked his head to the side, frowning. The footsteps were coming from the wrong direction. They weren’t coming from the street but from the ground floor of the warehouse. An icy band tightened around his chest as he realized they had been sharing their hiding place with someone else all along. Someone who was even now racing toward the very door Julian had ordered him to guard.
He reached for the rope, but hesitated, torn by indecision. Hadn’t Julian told him to drop the sandbags on anyone who tried to come through that door? He hadn’t specified in which direction. The footsteps were drawing nearer. In just a few more seconds, they would be at the door.
Before he could lose his nerve, Cuthbert gave the rope a decisive tug, loosing it from the peg and sending the sandbags plummeting to the floor below.
There were two loud thumps, muffled groans, and then dead silence.
Wincing in belated empathy, Cuthbert peered over the edge of the loft. In the dim light, he could barely make out two shadowy figures sprawled on the dirt floor below. Although he doubted the impact could have killed them, he was confident that they weren’t going to be troubling Julian—or anyone else—any time soon. He smiled and dusted off his hands, rather pleased that he had managed to fell two such giants without Julian’s help.
Portia deserved to be eaten.
She’d allowed herself to become totally consumed with the notion that Julian was both a murderer and a monster and now she was about to be consumed by some bloodsucking witch she should have recognized as a vampire at twenty paces. As she hung helpless in the creature’s deadly grasp like a rag doll caught in the jaws of a snarling mastiff, she found it odd that in these, the last moments of her life, she would be feeling not terror but acute embarrassment at her own ineptitude and bittersweet relief that she had misjudged Julian so thoroughly.
The toes of her slippers scrambled for purchase on the damp cobblestones. The woman wrapped a handful of her curls around one ruthless fist and gave them a harsh yank, jerking her head to the side.
As she hooked one of her scarlet-tipped fingernails beneath Portia’s choker and prepared to rip it away so she could better reach the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat, Portia squeezed her eyes shut. She could not help but wonder if Julian would miss her “bright eyes” when they were forever closed.
She waited for those lethal fangs to descend, for that bright, piercing agony to paint her world the color of blood. But nothing happened. She opened her eyes. The woman still had her scarlet claw hooked in the choker. Her fangs were still gleaming only inches from Portia’s throat. But her hungry gaze had been transfixed by something else. Something over Portia’s right shoulder.
Portia took advantage of her inattention to twist around in her arms. Although that powerful hand was still splayed over her jaw, the pressure on her throat had eased a fraction.
A man was walking down the street toward them. No, not a man at all, Portia quickly realized, her heart lurching with hope.
Julian came sauntering out of the mist as if he had an eternity to rescue her, his every motion fluid with masculine grace. With the lamplight lovingly caressing the sculpted bones of his face and the wind stirring his dark mane of hair, he looked like some sort of doomed angel cast out of heaven for committing a sin he could not resist. He had never looked as dangerous—or as beautiful—as he did in that moment. Portia sagged against her captor, biting back a sob of relief.
“Hello darling,” he said as he drew abreast of them, his voice low and silky.
Portia opened up her mouth to reply, but before she could, the woman purred, “Hello, my love. You’re just in time to join me for a little snack.”
Seven
Although her mouth continued to hang open, Portia couldn’t have choked out a word if her life had depended on it.
Julian raked a disparaging gaze over her. “Little indeed. A mouthful that small is hardly worth the bother. If I were you, I’d toss her back in the Thames.”
“I was hoping we could keep her.” Portia shuddered as the woman’s tongue darted out to give her cheek an affectionate lick. “She’s rather charming and I’ve always wanted a kitten.”
Julian’s laughter had a cruel edge she had never before heard from his lips. “Why would you wish to keep her, Valentine? So you could drown her in a bucket when toying with her ceases to amuse you?”
Valentine.
It didn’t seem fair to Portia that such a beautiful name would belong to such a cruel creature. But after all, it did rhyme with mean.
“Excuse me,” she rasped, her throat still raw. “I hate to interrupt this touching little reunion but am I to assume—”
“Silence!” Julian hissed.
Portia hated herself for flinching, but the sparkling warmth she had always seen in his eyes whenever he looked at her had vanished, leaving them cold and flat. She pressed her lips tightly together to keep them from trembling, forced to satisfy herself with a defiant glare.
“I always knew you’d come back to me,” Valentine said, the gloating note of triumph in her voice unmistakable.
“Come back to you?” Julian snorted. “You’re the one who’s been following me from one end of the world to the other.”
“Only because I knew you’d come to your senses someday and realize that we were destined to be together.”
Portia’s stomach was beginning to roil. It didn’t help to know that she’d had countless fantasies about saying those exact same words to him, preferably while cradled in his arms and gazing deeply into his eyes.
“Then I suppose that day has finally come.” Julian’s contemptuous gaze skirted over her again. “So why don’t you send the kitten scampering on its merry way so we can be alone?”
“Why waste such a succulent little morsel? I thought the two of us could share her to celebrate our new beginning.”
Portia gritted her teeth against a wave of pain as Valentine trailed a blood red nail across the front of her throat, carving a shallow trench.
“No!” Julian barked. She felt a flare of hope but then he scowled, that beautiful mouth of his taking a sulky turn. “I’m not in the mood to share tonight. If I’m going to have her, then I want her all to myself. She can be your gift to me.”
Valentine sounded genuinely surprised. “But you’ve always been so finicky about dining on humans, darling. Have you had a change of heart?”
“How can he change what he doesn’t have?” Portia muttered, renewing her squirming efforts to escape the woman’s vise-like grip.
Valentine shrugged. “Very well. If you want her, she’s all yours. But only if you let me watch.”
She gave Portia a harsh shove, sending her careening into Julian’s arms much as Duvalier had done in the crypt all those years ago. But then Portia hadn’t known he was a vampire. She had pressed her trembling body to his as if he was her salvation.
He wrapped his arms around her, dragging her flush against him. His body was burning with that peculiar fever
she now recognized as hunger. Hunger for her.
She shuddered as her own body betrayed her with a perverse thrill at being back in his arms again. She began to fight in earnest, kicking with her feet and striking out with her fists until he was forced to twist both of her wrists behind her back to subdue her. Although she doubted his grip would leave so much as a bruise, there wasn’t an ounce of mercy in it. She might as well have been a helpless fly twisting in the sticky strands of a spider’s web.
“Struggle all you like, little one,” he murmured, his seductive gentleness somehow crueler than all of Valentine’s brutality. “It will only make your surrender all the sweeter when it comes.”
Portia sagged against him, undone by her darkest fear. What if she succumbed to him? What if, in that moment when he pierced her flesh and made her his own once again, she felt not despair but exultation?
His lush dark lashes swept down to veil his eyes. He leaned over her, the lethal points of his fangs already visible. His warm mouth grazed her throat in the caress of a lover, not a monster, and Portia felt her resistance melting away, leaving only desire and shame. If she was going to die, then why shouldn’t it be by his hand, in his arms?
His parted lips lingered against the pulse behind her ear, making his whisper little more than a vibration. “I may have to nibble you just a little, Bright Eyes, but when I shove you away from me I want you to run as if the devil himself were fast on your heels.”
For a fevered moment, Portia almost thought she’d imagined his words. Especially when his strong fingers ruthlessly ripped away the choker and his fangs descended toward the tender flesh of her throat.
“Wait!” Valentine’s shrill cry froze them both where they stood.
This time there was no mistaking the succinct oath Julian swore beneath his breath.
Slipping her wrists out of his suddenly lax grasp, Portia wiggled around in his arms until they were both facing Valentine. The woman was pointing at Portia’s throat, her scarlet-tipped finger all aquiver.
The Vampire Who Loved Me Page 8
