by Колин Глисон
Once back at Blackmont Hall, Maia sent Tren to notify Crewston and Mrs. Hunburgh about the apparent disappearance of the earl. Someone had to take charge, and Maia was so used to doing it that she didn’t consider letting anyone else do so—including Aunt Iliana.
Then she sent for Angelica and Mirabella, only to find out that Dewhurst had taken them for a drive in the park. So she set Tren after them to bring them back.
Next, she called for the ladies’ maid she and Angelica shared. Showing Betty the hairpin, she told her nothing other than that she wanted to return it to its owner, and that she was certain she’d met her at one of the recent events. Knowing how tightly knit the below-stairs community was, how servants gossiped from one house in the ton to another, and that of all people, the ladies’ maidservants would be the ones to know of the person who wore such a hairpin, Maia felt this avenue was her best chance to identify the woman. Thus, she sent Betty off to the market and to do some shopping, where she was most likely to encounter other loose-tongued servants.
After that, she sent for Aunt Iliana and while she waited, began to peruse through the stack of calling cards and invitations that had arrived for her and Angelica, as well as for Corvindale himself. Normally he ignored such things, leaving it to his man of business to respond if necessary, or to Crewston to handle callers.
She thought that by reviewing these items, her memory might be jolted as to where and when she’d seen the woman with the hairpin. Maia knew it wasn’t someone she’d known from the ton. It was either a newcomer—someone who’d married into the peerage from another country or area—or someone who hadn’t been out in Society for some years, or some distant relative. Or even, she thought suddenly, someone of the demimonde. Those women who were neither fully accepted into Society, but who nevertheless interacted with the men as their mistresses. Perhaps she’d seen such a lady wearing this sort of decoration while shopping or at the theater.
“Maia, whatever is wrong?” Aunt Iliana appeared in the doorway of the parlor. A handsome woman of perhaps forty or forty-five, she was built nearly as tall and sturdily as a man, although she was by no means masculine in appearance. Her skin was nearly as dark as the earl’s, and her eyes the color of strong tea.
Maia was more than a bit shocked to see her dressed in loose trousers and a manlike shirt, along with soft slippers. The older woman’s dark hair was pulled straight back into a braid and her cheeks were damp and flushed. She looked as if she’d just been doing something with great exertion.
“I apologize for my appearance,” Iliana said ruefully. “But Hunburgh said it was urgent, that it had to do with D—the earl.”
“He’s disappeared,” Maia said, and explained. She ended by showing her the hairpin.
Iliana took one look and said a very unladylike thing under her breath. “Rubies. Someone knows about his Asthenia.” Then she looked at Maia as if she’d been caught with her hand in the biscuit box.
“What is it about rubies?” Maia asked. “Do they affect all the Dracule that way?”
Iliana seemed to measure her for a moment. Then, obviously finding her not wanting, said, “It’s called an Asthenia. Each Dracule has his own specific weakness. The effects are like paralysis, and when whatever it is is touched directly to them, it can cause great, excruciating pain. Your instinct is correct. Someone used the gems to weaken him enough to take him away. Dimitri would never have been caught otherwise.”
Maia had known that without being told. Although she’d never had cause to see him in jeopardy or otherwise in a physical altercation, his presence suggested a man very much in control at all times. A flash of memory, of that bare, chiseled chest, broad shoulders and the long, sleek curve of his muscular arms had her insides fluttering again. No, indeed. He would not have been caught unless taken unawares.
She explained to Iliana the steps she’d taken to identify the hairpin’s owner, and the other woman nodded in satisfaction. “Very good. When Angelica and Voss arrive, we can send word to Giordan and Chas.”
Maia wondered about this woman, and certainly not for the first time. She spoke of the vampires and their world with such familiarity. “Who are you?” Maia asked. “You aren’t really Corvindale’s aunt, are you?”
Iliana laughed. “No, of course not. That would make me more than a hundred twenty years old, and a crone—or a Dracule—at that. No, indeed. I’m merely one who understands the threats of his world, and an old friend of Dimitri’s. I helped to raise Mirabella after he found her. She needed protection from the earl’s enemies, and I needed a place to live away from—well, that’s another story for a time when we have time. Suffice to say,” she said, “I’ve learned to protect myself to some extent from the beastly ones. Even your brother admitted that I’m quite capable.”
Maia looked at her. “Could you teach me something?”
The older woman opened her mouth, likely to decline, but Maia pushed on. “If I’m to live in this world where my sister is to wed a former vampire, my brother hunts them and my so-named guardian is one, I think it only proper that I know something about protecting myself. Especially since there are vampires who are coming after us. My father taught me how to shoot a pistol when I was twelve,” she added when Iliana began to shake her head.
“Your brother would never allow it.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” Maia said firmly. “No one has to know.”
Iliana frowned and then threw up her hands. “Very well. But don’t tell the earl.”
Maia awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright.
Her heart was pounding and her body slick with perspiration.
That had not been a pleasant dream. The darkness still lingered, wrapping the frightening images through her mind. Not of a warm, red world with sensual lips and tongue, the easy and welcome slide of fangs, but one of tearing flesh and screaming pain. Violence and violation.
She couldn’t catch her breath, and Maia threw back the covers of her bed, trying to jolt the last vestiges away with sharp movement. It didn’t work instantly, but slowly the ugly feelings eased.
Moonlight shimmered over her empty bed and the table next to it. Maia’s attention fell on the two new additions to her bedside table: the ruby hairpin and a slender wooden stake.
True to her word, Iliana had taken Maia to an empty chamber in the servants’ wing of Blackmont Hall. The room had no furnishings to speak of, and was windowless. There, she’d shown Maia how to hold a stake the proper way and where to aim when stabbing at a vampire.
“In the heart,” she said, “and they die instantly.”
A little shudder ran through Maia when she recalled how Chas had launched himself across the room at White’s and thrust his stake into Dewhurst’s torso. If he hadn’t been wearing armor, he would have been dead.
Maia and Iliana had practiced awhile, with Maia surprised by the other woman’s speed and agility, and learned that she did quite a bit of training for this skill. Maia realized that her own days spent with merely a bit of walking, some riding and much sitting, had left her much less fluent in body movement. And although she was uncomfortably warm and damp after her session with Iliana, Maia also realized she felt energized. And now, however, her own body was a little sore.
She decided then that she would practice every day, with Iliana if possible. But now, Maia was unsettled and felt the need to get out of her bedchamber.
She left the stake on her table and padded down the hall to the stairs. Perhaps a book. Or a cup of milk or even a slice of cheese and an apple might help to distract her mind.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard voices. Her heart leaped and she hurried down and along the hall, her nightgown flowing around her ankles. A light poured from beneath the door of Corvindale’s study, so, without much thought in regards to her attire and the mortification of the last time she’d seen him, Maia flung the door open.
“Oh,” she said, freezing in the entrance. Not Corvindale.
It was Dewhur
st…and Angelica. They were standing in the middle of the chamber, in an embrace whose image immediately replaced the last bit of horror from Maia’s dream.
“Maia,” said Angelica, pulling away from what looked like a very passionate kiss…among other things. Her lips were swollen and her cheeks a lovely dusky rose. Dewhurst didn’t release her, and she didn’t seem to be interested in putting space between them, either. “Is everything all right?”
Maia swallowed, trying to ignore the heat that had rushed to her face and surely made it bright red. “I heard voices and thought perhaps the earl had returned, or been found.”
Dewhurst shook his head, and Maia couldn’t tear her eyes from the way his elegant hand curled comfortably around her sister’s neck, a finger sliding up into the loose braid at her nape. It was such a simple gesture, yet very intimate. So casual, bespeaking of a deep and comfortable connection.
A rush of envy shuttled through her and she was instantly ashamed. Alexander was a good man and he cared for her.
He might not make her insides billow and burn when he kissed her, but he was financially comfortable and unfailingly polite and rather boring. She stopped any further thoughts right there.
“I’ve spoken with Cale, and have sent word to Chas—”
Dewhurst was saying.
“How do you do that? Do you know where he is?”
He looked uncomfortable. “There are ways we do it with blood pigeons and private messengers and other techniques.
But that’s beside the point. I just came here to…er…” He looked at Angelica and the heat that passed between them with a mere glance was enough to make Maia’s knees weak.
“He came to report that there isn’t any news about Corvindale,” Angelica said. At last she stepped away from her fiancé, and for the first time, Maia noticed that her sister was garbed in no more than a night rail, as well. “And to let me know that he was safe.”
“We’re doing everything we can to find him. When Woodmore returns, I’m certain he’ll have other ideas about where to look and how to track him. One would expect Moldavi to be involved somehow, and since Dim—Corvindale isn’t one to…uh…spend time around women, whoever was there and dropped the hairpin is likely in Moldavi’s employ. And now that I can move about in the day, it gives me more freedom.”
Angelica looked at him. “But you are no longer Dracule. Which makes you more vulnerable.”
Dewhurst waved this off in the way men did when a woman raised an issue they preferred to ignore. “But I’m smart and fast and I no longer have an Asthenia.”
“Your Asthenia now is a bullet,” Angelica reminded him flatly. “As well as a sword, a stake and many other implements. Not to mention fire, and…” Her voice trailed off. “Please take care.” These last words were little more than a heartfelt sigh, leaving Maia to feel like more of an intruder than ever.
“And you, as well,” he said, looking at both of them. “That’s the other reason I’ve come. Cale and I have arranged for more guards to keep watch over you now that Corvindale is missing. Both day and night. I suspect Moldavi has had him removed so he can more easily get to one of you. So don’t go anywhere without an escort—particularly at night.”
“But vampires cannot move about during the day,” Angelica argued. “We’re safe enough shopping and visiting the park.”
“Corvindale was taken during the day,” Dewhurst reminded her flatly. “Do as I say, Ange.”
“I suppose I should return to my bed,” Maia said, turning toward the door. Why she felt so bereft was one thing, but the other thought that followed her as she climbed the stairs was the realization that she, the very proper Miss Woodmore, had just left her sister and a man alone in the study with hardly a second thought. At night.
What had changed her?
Maia slept fitfully for the rest of the night, and in the morning the first thing she did was send a message to Alexander that the wedding would need to be postponed until her guardian returned.
And then she sat down at the breakfast table. Alone.
Maia couldn’t remember ever feeling so…alone. Angelica was clearly deeply in love with her viscount and didn’t have time for sisterly talks—although it appeared that they might have much to talk about, if the position of Dewhurst’s hands on her last night was any indication.
Even the thought of where they’d been made Maia blush.
She sat down with another batch of invitations and calling cards, determined to remind herself where she’d seen the hairpin. Only partway through her first piece of toast and cup of tea, the dining room door opened to reveal Betty.
“I’ve got some news for you, miss,” she said. Betty was a plump, cheery woman old enough to be Maia’s mother—or at least a much older sister. Her eyes were glinting with pleasure as she approached. “Tracy Mayes, who works for the Gallingways—easy way to remember with a bit of rhyme—says that Rosie over to the Yarmouths’ knows she’s seen that same type of hairpin before. It didn’t have no rubies, but sapphires, though.”
Maia felt a spark of excitement. “It was the same, just different gems? It must be made by the same jeweler. Who had the hairpin?”
“That’s what I thought, too, miss. I could send over to one of the servants at her house. It was a Mrs. Rina Throckmullins, and Rosie said as she met her and her maid at the milliner’s last week. She remembered it because it was such a rainy day, and they shared an umbrella when they left the shop, so she had a good look at the pins in her hair, huddled as they were under it. Mrs. Throckmullins is a…well, miss, I’m not one to speak out of line. But she’s a single woman who ain’t looking for a husband, if you know what I mean.”
Which meant she was a woman who interacted with men outside of wedlock. Likely of the demimonde, or perhaps even a widow who didn’t move about in the ton. Which would have made it fairly impossible for Maia to have met her at a Society function. So she must have caught a glimpse of it somewhere else, as she’d previously surmised.
Giving a mental shrug, Maia finished her toast, contemplating this new information. Perhaps Mrs. Throckmullins wasn’t the owner of the ruby hairpin, but at least knew the designer. It was the best lead she had so far, and Maia decided it was worth investigating. She’d have to wait until the afternoon when social calls were made.
Thus, later in the day after a brief practice session in the special, empty room (this time without Iliana) and a bit of lunch, Maia called for Tren and the carriage. Angelica was otherwise engaged with a dress fitting for her wedding, and Mirabella wanted to look for some new lace and so they declined to go with her.
Mindful of Dewhurst’s warning not to go anywhere by herself, she advised Crewston, who arranged for two other footmen to accompany them. Her plan was to call on Mrs. Throckmullins under the guise of returning the hairpin, which would allow her to find out whether it belonged to the woman or whether she merely had one similar. If the latter were true, then she could find out where it had come from and follow on that lead.
And she’d be home in time to get ready for tonight’s dinner party at the Werthingtons’.
Maia opened her eyes.
Where am I?
Confusion and a dark, unfamiliar room made her mind groggy. She tried to sit up and realized her limbs wouldn’t move. An ominous clink indicated the reason why.
What in the world?
Panic trammeled through her and she drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes, ordering herself into calmness. What had happened?
She flipped back in her mind…she remembered riding in the carriage to Mrs. Throckmullins’s home, a room she’d let in a boardinghouse in a respectable area of the City, not far from Bond.
Mrs. Throckmullins was pleased to meet her in the parlor of the house, and Maia introduced herself and explained the purpose of her visit. She remembered giving her the hairpin, and Mrs. Throckmullins pressing her to stay for tea so they could talk about the jewelry. The next thing she knew, the room was wavering and spinning…
/> And now she was here.
Wherever “here” was.
Maia tried again to move and realized that her wrists were bound to some object and that she was lying on a bed or sofa.
It was difficult to tell, for the room was dim. Whatever was beneath her was soft, however, and the object to which she was tied moved beneath her when she pulled on it. Curtains covered the windows, and a faint gray outline told her that it was late in the evening, but not yet dark. So she’d been here for several hours.
The panic that could have spiraled out of control settled again. If she’d been missing for that long, someone would be looking for her. Angelica and Dewhurst and perhaps even her wayward brother.
Tren and the other footmen would have returned to Blackmont Hall when she didn’t come out of Mrs. Throckmullins’s boardinghouse…if they hadn’t besieged it in the first place, looking for her. And if not, they knew where to search for her.
But Maia became aware of the pungent scent of fish filtering through the air; something she hadn’t noticed in the parlor. So either Mrs. Throckmullins—who was clearly the villain or at least in cahoots with the villain, as Mrs. Radcliffe would describe it—had moved her to a new location, or someone else had.
Either way, that would make it even more difficult for the others to find her.
But on the bright side, perhaps Corvindale was here, as well.
Maia lay there, waiting for her vision to become used to the dim light, listening to every sound around her that might give her more information. She’d read enough Gothic novels to know what a heroine who was in a dangerous situation shouldn’t do, and she was determined to be intelligent about her predicament.
After listening for quite some time—she heard a clock tolling the quarter hour in the distance, and then a second toll—Maia concluded that she was either alone in the house, or whoever was there was either sleeping or very quiet. She also took stock of the room she was in, half pulling herself up on her side with her elbows. Sheets covered chairs and tables, making the chamber appear ghostly.
