Blood Red (31 page)

“Then help me destroy Zayan tonight.”

Yannick’s control over his rage snapped. “You don’t understand, do you?” He slammed his fist down on the coffin. As a crack shot through the gleaming cover with an explosive bang, Sir Edmund jumped back. “Goddamn it, old man, I thought you were more intelligent. Zayan won’t return here. He needs to destroy either Bastien or myself, and he knows damn bloody well that Althea is the way to accomplish that.”

He felt the tension ratcheting up amongst the workmen. Saw picks and shovels raised to shoulder height, ready to swing, and crossbows aimed. Saw the men move forward, slowly encircling him and Sir Edmund. Sir Edmund gave a slight shake of his head. Telling the men to wait, he guessed.

“Althea is with someone who won’t let that happen,” Sir Edmund stated.

“
No one
you entrust Althea to could protect her from Zayan!” he shouted again. “Only I can do that—I’m the only one whom Zayan can’t kill.”

Suddenly he realized how pale, how weak, Sir Edmund appeared. The man pointed a finger at him and it quavered. “You brought her out here—”

“I brought her to protect her. Don’t you realize that she would have come alone? She would have armed herself with her stake and her crossbow and followed me, thinking herself completely able to take care of herself.”

“She would not have done something so—” But Sir Edmund broke off. He seemed to sink down, looking old and deflated, and he braced his arm on the coffin as though to keep himself from collapsing.

“You’re the one who taught her to hunt bloody vampires—” Hell, the man was sick.

Yannick could see it, could sense it. Sir Edmund’s heart was laboring, and the blood was flowing weakly. “The attack by Zayan?” he asked. “Are you in need of more blood?”

Sir Edmund shook his head. The man was paler than a vampire, his breathing shallow. “An attack of the heart and I’m afraid I have to let nature take her course.” His hoarse voice came out with a strain.

Althea’s father hung his head, as though cowed by a great weight. “Althea would have gone alone. I know she would—even though it was dangerous. She would have done it to protect you, I expect, my lord, and done it to try to stop Zayan. Althea is a noble, courageous lass—with stronger will than most men I’ve encountered, but she’s still…innocent.”

Yannick tried not to choke on that statement. Not anymore, thanks to him. Though he didn’t think sexual innocence was exactly what Sir Edmund meant.

“She’s determined to hunt vampires, to follow in my footsteps.”

“I know, she made that plain to me.”

“You are correct that it’s my fault, my lord. I dragged her around the Continent. She’s lived longer in the Carpathians than in England—is more at home in Buda-Pesth than London. I was a bloody selfish man, never once thinking of how I was molding her future. And now, I want her to wed. I want to see her married, happy, mistress of a home, raising children of her own.” Sir Edmund took several breaths and rubbed his chest. “Not the heart this time, I don’t think. More likely that kidney pie.”

“Where is she in London?” Yannick repeated.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 150

Sir Edmund rallied his strength and shook his fist. “I should shoot a bolt through your heart on the spot for visiting her last night. You’ve captured her with your charm and your handsome looks and blinded her to what you truly are—”

“And what do you think I want from her, Sir Edmund. Why do you think I went to her?”

What in hell was he doing, goading her father? He’d
seduced
her. Only a lunatic would challenge a man who had six armed men ready to attack him.

But goddamn, he wanted Sir Edmund to understand—

“I know what you want. Her blood. She’s young and beautiful and you want to destroy her.”

“God in heaven, no, that’s not what I want. I…I think…I am in love with her—”

“Then you want to change her into a vampire and I won’t allow that to happen.”

To Yannick’s surprise, Sir Edmund eyes grew sad, and the anger and strength faded. “She deserves to live and be happy, my lord. She’s seen horrors that no lass should see—I understand that now. Strong enough to endure it, she was, but it has forever marked her.”

Yannick understood. “And you want to try to turn back time? You want her to marry and be happy and forget there is evil in the world.”

“It’s too late, I know. Too late for a selfish man to right his wrongs.” Sir Edmund took hold of a cane lying on the cracked coffin and put it to use. He shuffled across the floor, back to the anteroom. Yannick followed and the armed men followed him.

He found Sir Edmund amongst the sarcophagi, leaning heavily on the walking stick. “You there, Bowman, would you open that coffin?”

With a shudder, Bowman set to the task. Yannick didn’t know why he lingered to watch.

He should make haste to London, and set about finding Althea.

Bowman shoved the prying bar beneath the heavy lid. Yannick was tempted to display his strength, to move the lid alone, which he could do easily. But he also knew it to be unwise to reveal too much before his enemy—they both might love Althea, but Sir Edmund would never see him as anything other than the enemy.

As Yannick expected, when the lid slid open, it was not an old skeleton inside. A young boy, perhaps twelve, lay within, eyes open but glassy. Undead at first glance, but Yannick smelled the life in him. Zayan had not yet completely drained this one, and was keeping him controlled and imprisoned. The faint, tenuous life was trying desperately to hang on.

Just as he was. Within days—five to be exact—if he didn’t destroy Zayan, he would be dead himself. Burnt to mere ash. And he would not be able to protect Althea then. Neither could Bastien—not alone.

For Althea, he must convince Bastien to help him destroy the man he knew his brother had once loved.

“Let me give the boy my blood, Sir Edmund,” Yannick said. “I can save him.”

“Go ahead, my lord.” Althea’s father wiped at a tear and stepped aside.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 151

She prayed she didn’t fall down the stairs.

Gloved hand trailing along the curving oak banister, Althea took tentative steps down the sweeping stairs to the marble-tiled foyer, where the rest of the party—Sir Randolph, Lady Peters, their son David, two giggling female cousins, and a tartar-tongued aunt—stood waiting. A fringe of gold beads swirled about her ankles as she lifted the hem and negotiated another step.

She wasn’t accustomed to finery. Worse, she feared that if she didn’t hold herself perfectly straight, the bodice might drop to her waist. Or her curls, piled high on her head and threaded with a ribbon studded with emeralds and gold, would tumble free. But she risked one brief glance, a squint without her spectacles, just to make certain she wasn’t stepping on her hem.

She could see her pink areolas rising above the low, square-cut gown. True, a band of ivory lace disguised them but a gentleman with the advantage of height—

“Miss Yates, you look magnificent.”

She rounded the sweep and stopped, ostensibly to display the finished product, but mainly to regroup. Her Norwich silk shawl, draped over her arm, was dragging again, and she’d snagged the foot-long fringe with her heel.

Sir Randolph, quizzing glass to his eye, turned to his wife. “Marvelous work, my dear.”

Althea couldn’t help a wry smile. The undertone to his words obvious.
We’ll find a suitor
quickly and have her off our hands.

Lady Peters, a lovely woman of forty with ash-blond hair, a voluptuous figure, and dramatic dark eyes, patted Sir Randolph’s arm. “The credit most certainly goes entirely to Miss Yates.

She is a true gem with fine taste.”

Althea flushed. She hated to feel like a display at the British Museum. She clutched a hand full of ivory silk skirts and fragile emerald-green net, and tried one more step. Her first interview with Lady Peters hadn’t been successful at all, so she could sense her patroness’s relief that she at least dressed up well. She remembered that first afternoon.

Radiating kindness and gentility, her ladyship had propelled her into a magnificent drawing room, a room the size of the entire second floor of the Maidensby Arms. It spoke of fabulous wealth to Athea’s eyes. Carpets of exotic patterns covered the floor. All the furnishings lushly created in spare, elegant Grecian lines or sumptuous oriental splendor. Gleaming wood, rich silks and velvets, delicate plasterwork, flocked wallpaper. Much of the wealth came from Lady Peter’s substantial dowry—she was second cousin to a duke. Althea couldn’t imagine how beautiful Yannick’s house must be.

Here and there stood curios that caught her fascination. A sheelagh-na-gig—a Celtic fertility symbol. She couldn’t stop a blush at the sight of that stone figurine of a grinning woman Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 152

who held her nether lips wide open. A display of tall, thin stones, the ends rounded off. Staring at those, she realized they were phallic symbols.

“Have you spent much time in London, Miss Yates?”

Althea had started guiltily. She had—heaven help her—been thinking of which of the long, thick stone cocks were closest to Yannick and Bastien.

“Have you formed an opinion on London, Miss Yates?” Lady Peters had probed again with a pleasant but appraising smile.

Althea’s teacup had rattled on its saucer. She must concentrate. Lady Peters was judging her ability to banter and flirt with gentlemen. The protracted silence would be ringing alarm bells in her ladyship’s head. She didn’t want Father to learn she was not even trying.

Was the lady already crossing potential suitors off the list? Mentally searching to the bottom for those most desperate for a wife? Althea could imagine the thoughts whirling behind her ladyship’s stoic expression:
Old knock-kneed Lord So-and-So—he’d take her. Or Lord
Such-a-Body is as deaf as a post—he’d never notice the silences.

The gentle tick of the clock had marked her poor showing as she’d searched her brain for a redeeming answer. Father had warned her not to speak her mind in polite London society, so she knew it wouldn’t do to tell the truth.

“I’ve not even spent a month in London in my life. I don’t wish to form an opinion too hastily, my lady.”

“Hmm. I detect disappointment,” her ladyship had teased, blue eyes twinkling.

“Homesickness,” she’d lied.

Genuine surprise showed on her ladyship’s lovely face. “You don’t consider England to be your home?”

“I barely remember it, my lady.” And all the memories Althea had were of her mother, more so than of England. Her mother’s pink cheeks touched by a winter wind. Her mother’s warm embrace, comforting even on a hot summer’s day. Then Mother was gone and Father left England for the Carpathian Mountains…

She furtively brushed a tear. Her father’s warnings came to mind.
Don’t harp on about
your foreign travels, pet. And don’t speak of vampire hunting. A woman adept at the use of a
crossbow would make a man nervous.

“Shopping!”

Althea only realized then that she’d been staring at the cooling tea in her cup. Shopping?

“That is the true delight of being in London, Miss Yates.”

“Yes,” Althea had hedged, “I am looking forward to London’s bookstores—”

“Books! Edmund did warn that you were something of a bluestocking, my dear. I’m speaking of gowns.”

“But I could not afford—”

“But I can.”

“I couldn’t accept—”

“Yes, you can. Dear Edmund saved Randolph’s life on more than one occasion. Turning you out in some fine plumage would barely begin to repay him. Now, come along, Miss Yates, we have much work to do!”

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 153

And so Althea found herself swathed in rich ivory silk that barely encased her bosom and swept over her hips in a way that showcased their sway as she walked. At first, with Yannick’s and Bastien’s lives at risk and Zayan on the loose in London, she’d chafed at standing while a modiste’s seamstress poked her with pins. She’d fumed and fretted while shopping for frivolous bonnets. What did it matter if she looked lovely when she had to warn the twins to keep away from her! And as for trying on a hundred pairs of slippers—!

But the glowing smiles of Sir Randolph and Lady Peters, and the stunned look of David—

who was a mere twenty and the object of Sarah’s dreamy sighs—told her she was transformed.

In front of her own cheval mirror, as she’d twirled and sent her fringed hem spinning, she’d felt beautiful.

Struck by a whim, she had held her miniature of her mother up to the mirror. She wanted to believe her mother could see her.

She hoped, foolishly so, that Yannick and Bastien would somehow find her at the Fortesques’ ball. She wanted to dazzle them. And after three nights of celibacy, she hungered to make love.

“Damnation, I hate these things.”

Bastien took a champagne flute from a passing tray and drained the fine bubbly wine in one gulp. He grinned at his brother. “Only because every maiden and matron here is targeting you for marriage. What a joke—can you imagine the reaction if you did marry one of these chits?

Once the sweet little virgin realized that her eccentric husband who sleeps until dusk is truly a big, bad vampire?”

God almighty, you really don’t belong in polite society.

Bastien laughed at his brother’s comment, then groaned as a warm female body pressed close to him from behind. A lush, rounded female body. The Fortesques’ foyer was so crowded that people couldn’t avoid collisions. Spicy perfume wrapped around him. The pumping of her heart was a more entrancing melody than the one drifting out of the ballroom. He smelled her rushing blood and his fangs pounded forth, shooting out from his gums. Perhaps he could lead the lovely matron off into the dark and indulge in a little supper—