Lady Killer (21 page)

“Do you see this, Miles?” she asked, gesturing around at the destruction of what had been the most sumptuous apartment in London. “You said you would make me happy. You said you would protect me. You promised to care for me. But you abandoned me. Like I knew you would.”

Her voice echoed through Miles’s thoughts, ricocheting from past to present, from the woman in his bed beside him now to that other woman, from Clio to Beatrice, from this empty chamber to that one and back again. He wanted a drink.

“You talk of love, but it is all lies. Liar liar liar,” her voice grew more hysterical. “Protect me. Fine job you did protecting me. Caring for me. Look at this. Look at this!” she shouted, and the voice mingled with other voices in his head, his father’s, his own. “You did this, Miles. This is your fault. All your fault.”

(No. NO. I did love you. I tried. I TRIED!!!)

“You failed, Miles.”

That was the last time a woman had shared Miles’s apartment. Sitting up in bed now he shook his head, shaking the images and voices back into obscurity. He squinted into the dark of the chamber, looking for the telltale glint of a carafe. There wasn’t one. Damn Corin. Why had the manservant believed him when he said he wouldn’t be needing any wine? The fool should have known better.

Miles raked a hand through his hair. The look in Corin’s eyes when he had given the order—easy words, “I won’t be needing a decanter tonight”—came back to him, an expression of wonder and relief. He was sure his cousins would have shared it. It pissed him off. Damn them all. He had the queen and the admiralty breathing down his neck on the one hand, and some breathtaking fool of a woman claiming to be a vampire and keeping him from his investigation on the other. He deserved a drink. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone, leave him to drink himself into oblivion or peace or whatever he was drinking himself into. Why did any of them care if he had a couple of glasses of wine before bed? What the hell difference would it make to anyone?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clio stir. She was probably getting ready to chastise him about his drinking, too. Having her here was a mistake. He should never have consented to share a bed with her, even if there was no other place to sleep in his chamber, even if they were both dressed, even if the mattress was huge. Although the desire he had felt for her in the library had fizzled out as they poured over the old news sheets together, her presence still made him feel… like he wanted a drink. Tomorrow he would order Corin to unpack all the furniture so he could sleep somewhere else. Anywhere else. Away from her.

Who did she think she was, barging in, disobeying him, knocking out his household staff, challenging his orders? Some woman who did not know the first thing about manners. Or how to flirt. Take her eyes, for example. Those eyes that flared purple when she had climaxed. Had other men seen them do that? God he wanted a drink. She just looked out of them, challenging, direct, instead of using them to convey a hint of mystery, a spark of desire. Instead of making a man feel like he was the most interesting creature she had ever stood near, she made him feel like she suspected him of some nefarious deed that she would soon be finding out and sending him a bill for. She had no notion of how to be seductive. Or coy. She was totally uncouth. Totally uncultivated. Totally uninteresting.

Damn his throat was dry. The key was to get her the hell out of his bed and his house and never see her again. Which meant finding the vampire and proving to her that she was not one. Why was she so damn determined to believe she was a fiend anyway?

It had happened again that night. He had hoped that the kiss had worked to show her that her hiccups were simply a sign of strong desire, not necessarily the desire to do violence, but she had gone right on willfully crediting she was a fiend. Acting on her suggestion, they had looked through the old news sheets and confirmed that all but two of the girls killed by the vampire three years earlier were from Devonshire. Not only that, it appeared likely that the remaining two were as well.

“But what does it mean?” Clio had asked, dropping the papers with frustration. “I wish we knew what it meant.”

Miles had been about to agree with her when something tugged at his memory. “Perhaps we do.” He picked up the small blue volume and started flipping through it.

“What is that?” Clio asked.

“It’s that perennial favorite, the
Compendium of Vampires,
” he told her absently as he skimmed the pages. “I remember reading something about this. Something that explained how vampires chose their victims.”

She frowned. “Where did you get that book?”

“I took it from the reading alcove when we were leaving. It was sitting on the table.”

“Impossible.”

Miles looked up. “Why?”

“I looked all over the alcove for it and it was not there, much less on the table.”

“Then it must have appeared by divine intervention.”

“Or by the office of whomever it was that entered the room while we were there.”

“It would make sense that someone in my household was looking at it,” he said, brushing it off. He had not wanted to think more about those moments in the reading alcove than necessary. “Here, look at this.”

Studiously avoiding touching her, he had extended the book across the table to Clio, his finger indicating a passage:

“
They say that the Vampire must have the blood of whatever creature had the Nursing of him as a child, so that if he was put out to nurse with a Goat, it will be a Goat he requires, or a Cow, or a Sheep, or a Woman, of whatsoever type she be. Only this blood will he have a taste for, and only this blood will be sweet to him. For whatsoever creature whose blood he takes, the Vampire has afterward a soft place, as for his mother who gave him life, or one with whom he had dined often and eat well. So therefore will he take away a token from them, as a memento, or in the French, soovineer, for to remember them by.

And in one family there might be only one Vampire of four siblings, and ye can know him by his bad behavior, because even from a youth he will not be like the other children, and he will try to harm them, so he may lick their blood as if by chance and not give himself entire away. For this reason, and for his wickedness, the Vampire as a child is impossible to love.
”

Miles had been surprised by the shocked expression on her face when she raised her eyes and looked at him. He did not know that the words “impossible to love” seemed to vibrate on the page in front of her, or that in her head she heard Mariana’s voice repeating
You are unlovable, you are unlovable,
taunting her, in an eerie echo of the book.
You are unlovable. Impossible to love.

It won’t happen again. No, it won’t. IT WON’T IT WON’T IT WON’T IT
—

“Why did you show me this?” she had demanded in a voice that shook with emotion. “What you said before made your position quite clear.”

He had not tried to conceal his confusion from her. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“About your wanting nothing to do with me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is no need to hide behind excuses. Just say that you have changed your mind and you want to send me away from your house. Send me to Newgate.” When Miles appeared too bewildered to speak, Clio went on. “
‘As a youth he will not be like the other children and try to harm them, so he may lick their blood as if by chance,’ ”
she read aloud. “I told you, I did that. When I bit Mariana.”

“Please. Please do not say you are going to start claiming to be the vampire again.”

“How else—”

“I was talking about the paragraph above that,” he had interrupted her forcefully. “Where it says that the vampire drinks the blood of
‘whatever creature had the nursing of him.’
Since our vampire kills only women from Devonshire, we can assume he comes from Devonshire. You see? And since you are not from Devonshire, it cannot be you.”

She had looked up at him with excitement then, but it faded quickly. “My nurse. My mother died when I was just a few months old and a nurse brought me up. She was from Devonshire.”

Of course, Miles had thought grimly then. He had been a fool to think it would be that easy to persuade her. He realized that what struck him most, besides the depth of her belief in her wickedness, was that her concern was not for herself, but for the people she might hurt.

Miles’s concerns were precisely the opposite. Whoever was setting out to frame Clio had done it with a perfection bordering on the obsessive, right down to the risk they had run in hurting her ankle. The fact that no constables had been alerted by an anonymous tip to check her house for bodies told Miles that the vampire’s plans for Clio Thornton were not as simple as having her arrested for his crimes. He seemed determined not merely to get her into prison, but to convince her that she was a vampire so she would turn
herself
in.

“He is like a hunter setting a trap, but a trap you must spring yourself,” Miles had mused aloud before they went to bed—damn he could use some wine—and his words came back to him now. Even as he spoke them he had known that was only half an explanation, and it left a crucial question hanging: Why? Why was it important to the vampire that Clio think herself guilty?

Answering that was the key to understanding—and catching—his enemy, Miles knew. And there was only one way to find out. Sitting up in bed, his mind roved over different plans until he found the one he liked. It was simple, and, with Clio locked in his apartment, would be both easy and safe to implement. Plus it should get quick results. Which would mean that soon she could be home and he could get on with his life.

He told himself that this was a pleasing thought.

With Clio locked in his apartment.
Yes. That was the key. Lock her up so she could not bother him anymore, could not distract him, or worry him or… S’teeth he wanted a drink. With her out of the way, he could finally undertake a real investigation. From now on, this would be between him and the vampire.
You failed,
he heard Beatrice whisper in his head.
You failed.

But not this time. This time the vampire would die.

Clio’s leg brushed his then and her bare foot came to rest on his calf, taking him by surprise. Undoubtedly it was not the quiet pressure of her foot against his leg, the feel of her arch curving around his muscle, the warm touch of her body on his, that made him relax. Undoubtedly it was not the nearness of her, the softness, the canny comfort of her proximity, not the knowledge that she would be there in the morning, next to him, just as fiery and stubborn and antagonizing and beautiful as she had been that night, that made his tension, his anger, his pain, drain from him in a rush, as if it had never been there. It was the fact that he had a plan he liked, the fact that he was about to catch the vampire, that affected all that. Undoubtedly.

For a moment, he stayed very still, unable to move. Then, carefully so he would not disturb her, Miles lay back down on the bed.

In ten minutes he was asleep. He had forgotten all about wine.

4 hours after midnight: Moon—one degree less than half-full. Waning.

Chapter Twelve

“Try to explain again what you mean by the words, ‘she just slipped away’?” Miles demanded that evening as the clock struck seven.

“Just that, sir,” the footman said, his voice quivering. “She was here one moment and then the next, no one.”

A muscle stood out on the side of Miles’s jaw and inadvertently the footman flinched. “Do you think you could explain how one woman could get by all six of you?” he asked, directing his scorching gaze at the group of men assembled before him. “Three of you were trained by the queen’s guards. If this is the best England has to offer, we would do well to surrender to our enemies right now. Answer me!”

A gangly youth with bright red hair stepped forward. He was the newest, and therefore the most foolhardy. “I believe she must have sneaked out behind one of them crates when we was watching the monkey, Your Lordship,” he offered.

“Really?” Miles’s voice could have flayed the skin off a rhinoceros. “I thought perhaps she had jumped from the window.”

“No,” the youth said, perking up. “I was watching the windows. No one got out that way.”

“This room is on the third floor,” Miles pointed out to him, his voice cool as iron. “Anyone ‘getting out that way’ would be lying splattered on the ground.” He turned from them and faced Corin. “Where did we get these bloody idiots?”

“Now, sir, I think you are being over harsh. T’was your order that sent them unpacking the boxes. ‘Might as well be useful if they’re going to sit around guarding her all day,’ were, I believe, your exact words.” No member of Miles’s family, let alone his household, would have dared to do what Corin had just done, but then none of them knew the man Corin had adopted as his master three years earlier quite as well as he did. “If I might make a suggestion, sir,” he went on, “her monkey is still here. I am sure she will come back soon if we just wait.”