Lady Killer (14 page)

She flew down the stairs, panting, her heart pounding. Her thoughts were a jumble—please don’t let them wake up, please don’t let me hurt anyone, what are you what are you
what are you
? With shaking hands she unlatched the front door of the house and rushed out, into the street, into the warm night air, into the comforting, anonymous, darkness.

Into the arms of the man who had been waiting for her all night.

Chapter Eight

“I had expected you earlier. You can’t imagine how long I have been standing here.”

At first Clio did not know him, in his dark suit with the cap pulled low over his forehead. But then recognition dawned and she fought even harder.

“Get away. Let me go. You must let me go.” Her voice was desperate, almost pleading.

He had not planned to reveal himself, had planned merely to follow her, see where she went, before letting her know he was there. It was the plan he had devised that afternoon, after he had followed her back to her house, but the way she had looked when she ran out the door, the dangerous expression on her face, changed his mind. Now he held her at an arm’s length and examined her.

“Clio,” Miles asked with genuine concern. “What is wrong? Has someone hurt you?”

Clio shook her head tensely. “I am fine. Just let me go. Please. Leave me alone. I must be alone.”

Her eyes were wild, and refused to meet Miles’s gaze.

“Clio, you are not fine. You must—”

“I would be if you would just leave me the hell alone,” she spat at him. “Get away from me. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that I am dangerous? That I am wicked? That I will hurt you.” Her voice changed. “Oh, God, Lord Dearbourn, for your own good, you must go away.”

“What do you mean you are dangerous?”

Tears were running down Clio’s cheeks. “I am the vampire, my lord. I am the killer.”

Miles looked at her in silence for a moment. “That is not possible.” Then, his eyes narrowed. “Is this some sort of jest?”

Clio’s face changed again, this time into a malevolent smile. “You think so, my lord? Not possible? Come and see.” She began to lead the way across the street, then stopped. “But you must promise me, after you do, that you will do nothing to stop me from turning myself in. That you will see to it I am not left alone until I am in custody. Do you promise?”

Miles nodded.

“No,” Clio insisted. “You must say the words.”

“I promise. I promise I will not leave your side until you are turned in,” Miles assured her, and she took his arm and led him into her house. Instead of turning left into her office as he had done that day, they went directly up two flights of stairs. They turned, then passed through a crooked doorway.

Two strides took Miles to the side of the bed. His eyes, already adjusted to the dark, spotted the dark pricks on the girl’s neck immediately.

He swung around to face Clio. “When did you do this?”

Her eyes looked strange, dangerous, again. “I don’t know. I woke there,” she pointed to the chair, “and found her as you see her now. But there can be no question it was me. This is my room.”

“What do you mean you ‘found her’? Didn’t you put her there?”

Clio shrugged. “I have no recollection. I can’t remember anything that happened tonight. But I suppose that makes sense. I suppose my mind blotted it out. That is the logical explanation. It would also explain why I did not remember killing the other girl, two days ago.”

“That, or the fact that you did not kill either of them,” Miles pointed out. He turned back to the bed and leaned over the corpse. At first he thought the girl had a bruise on her cheek, but he saw it was just a flower-shaped birth mark. She did have rings of bruises on her wrists, however, and scrapes on her knees and shins below the hem of her gown. The gardenia was clutched in one of her hands, but the other was closed, in a fist. He took it and pried it open.

“Light a candle,” he instructed without turning around.

Clio did not know why, but she obeyed him, then moved with the taper to his side. In his hand he held a small lead token, of the type sold as collectable souvenirs at major fairs. Each fair minted its own tokens and impressed its own logo on. them. This one showed a crude portrait of the queen, marking it as a token of the once-a-year fair that had opened that day in Smithfield, just outside the walls of London.

“Have you been to the Jubilee Fair?” Miles asked Clio.

“Not in my right mind. There is no telling what I might have been doing out of it,” she answered bitterly.

He turned to face her. “I do not believe that you killed this woman.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, because I have been standing outside your door all night.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he rushed on. “There is no way you could have entered, or left, by that means. So you would have had to come through there—” he gestured toward the window whose shutter continued to moan weakly in the wind, “—dragging the girl behind you. Which seems unlikely given that she is heavier
and
nearly a head taller than you are.”

“Why couldn’t I simply have induced her to walk up with me? Why would I have had to drag her?”

“Look at these marks.” Miles pointed to the scrapes that ran up the girl’s shins and over her knees. “Unless I am mistaken, we shall find that they match in width the supports of the ladder that is leaning against the house outside your window.” Clio looked out the window and noticed for the first time the ladder Mr. Williams had been using that morning in rehearsal. But how had Miles noticed? Before she could ask, he went on. “For another, the last time I saw a vampire, his mouth was dripping with blood. There is not a spot of blood on you except a touch on your lips and that is because they are so dry they have begun to crack. Besides, if you did kill her, why would you bring her to your house? Your room?”

“Perhaps I was trying to show myself. So I would know. I read about a madwoman doing something like that once. She did all these horrible things and never remembered any of it, it was as if she were possessed by a demon. And each time the demon got more powerful until finally he was going to take her over and the way he did that was by showing her all the evil she had done. Perhaps the vampire part of me is getting stronger.”

“I think it is more likely that the vampire wants to make it look like you are responsible for the deaths of those girls than that you are possessed.”

“Why would the vampire do that?”

“Shift the blame. It would be a good way to get you, and anyone to whom you reported the news that you were the vampire—say the Special Commissioner—to stop investigating.”

“But if I were arrested or turned myself in and another girl was killed, then it would be clear it was not me,” Clio pointed out. “This would only work for a short time.”

Miles glanced outside and saw the waning moon low on the horizon. “Perhaps that is enough.” He crossed to Clio’s armoire and opened it. “Are these the only gowns you own? This old one and the tattered one you are wearing?”

It took Clio a moment to realize what he was doing. “I am sorry if my wardrobe does not meet with your approval, my lord,” she answered acerbically. “If I had known you would be pawing my clothes, I would have improved the selection, I assure you.”

Miles almost smiled with relief. She had begun to sound, and even look, like Clio again. “It rained tonight. If you had been out of the house, your clothes would have been wet. The girl’s dress is wet. But it seems that your entire wardrobe is dry.”

He was right. Her clothes were all dry and the girl’s were wet and that meant that she had not dragged the girl there, had not been out of her house.

But she could have had another set of clothes. A vampire outfit. An ensemble she left stashed somewhere. And—

“There is something else, my lord.”

Miles, who had again been looking at the girl’s body, faced Clio. “What?”

“My ankle. When I woke up, it was sore, and in a bandage. But I don’t remember having done anything to it.”

“What do you remember of yesterday?”

“Not very much,” Clio said, avoiding his eyes. Not anything about his lips. Or about what it was like to kiss him. “I spent the afternoon in my study and dined and then fell asleep. But downstairs. Not here. I do not remember coming to bed.”

“Perhaps you tripped on your way up the stairs.”

It was not impossible. Indeed, it was distinctly possible. But it also seemed like the sort of thing she would remember.

“Did you drink anything?” Miles asked.

“Are you suggesting I drank too much? That I was drun—”

Miles interrupted. “No, you hardly seem like the type to gulp down a decanter of sack.”
And you should know.
“I was wondering if your drowsiness might have been induced. It is easier to put a sleeping powder in wine than in food.”

“You think someone drugged me?”

“It is a possibility. Can you think of anyone in your household who would do that? Your cook, or baker, or footman?”

The degree to which he had misestimated the size of her staff almost made Clio laugh. “Why not the yeoman of the buttery?” she asked earnestly.

A crease appeared between Miles’s brow. “It could be him, certainly. I did not see a butter shed outside so—”

“You are right. We have no buttery. I guess that rules him out. And also the idea that I was drugged. At least by anyone in my household. Besides, the cake I ate was not made here. It was delivered by special messenger in a basket of food.”

“Who was it from?” Miles demanded.

“A very good friend. Someone who would have no interest in drugging me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t know about your friends, my lord, and I can already see the appeal of drugging you myself, but I am fairly sure that none of my friends would be up to it.”

“That is too bad.”

“Why, would you prefer that I were drugged? Is that how you like your women?”

“Oh yes,” Miles replied with such apparent sincerity that for a moment it looked like Clio might explode. “Actually, I had something else in mind. As I see it, there is only one good explanation of what happened: Someone—most likely the vampire—waited until they could be sure you were asleep, then dragged a body up through your window. Very few people would undertake that kind of operation unless they could be assured that you would not wake up. A convenient way to ensure that would be to send you drugged food. A readily available herb like mandragora would do the trick perfectly.”

He was right, but that was not what made Clio’s eyes grow huge. “The vampire was here,” she said, almost whispering. “If I am not the vampire, he was here, in this room, tonight. With me.” Clio shuddered, then looked right at Miles. “But if he was,” Clio went on, “why didn’t he kill me?”

Miles opened his mouth, and then closed it. He did not know. Nor did he know why he was so damn hell-bent on convincing Clio Thornton that she was not a vampire. Perhaps she was. He could use a drink. Maybe there was more than one of them, maybe he had killed the Vampire of London last time and Clio was merely a replacement. But somehow he did not believe it. Clio was a connection to the vampire, but not the vampire herself.

Or at least he hoped not.

Where had that come from? He did not care what happened to Clio Thornton.
Liar!
No matter how brave she was, no matter how smart, and how—No matter what, she was not his responsibility. He had given that up, the kind of caring that engendered responsibility, with Beatrice’s death. He looked around for a carafe of wine. The only duty he owed now was to his queen, to find the vampire. That was the only reason he was staying so close to Clio. That and the fact that he did not want her death on his conscience. The only reason he had hovered around her house all night was to be sure that nothing happened to her.

But something had happened. He saw her watching him, the strain showing on her lovely face.

No. She was not his responsibility. She had refused his help that afternoon, flat out. She was damn lucky that he had decided to spend the night in the shadows next to her house at all. If he hadn’t been there, who knew what she would have done, he asked himself. But his conscience would not relent.
This is your fault.
He remembered the tears running down her face when she first ran out of her house.
You failed.

“Do you have a manservant you can summon?” he asked abruptly. His manner was cool, condescending even, and the question sounded more like a command.

Clio blinked at the change in him. “Why?”

“I want to send him to get my carriage. You can’t walk all the way to Dearbourn Hall with your ankle like that, and I doubt you would let me carry you.”

“You are absolutely right, I wouldn’t,” Clio said, outraged. “Nor can I imagine what makes you think I would go home with you. Why would I go anywhere with you?”

“You have no choice. I cannot protect you well enough if—”

“Is that what you call what you were doing in front of my house tonight? Protecting me?” Her tone was sarcastic.