He spoke in French, rapidly and yet with his customary charm, to the maids. It took some time, but the bath was moved behind the folding screen and filled with steaming water by a small army of chambermaids. A second, smaller tub was brought in for Voss to use, and Angelica couldn’t help but appreciate his consideration.
There was lovely, scented French soap and warm towels, along with a clean robe and shift. One of the servants assisted Angelica in peeling off her filthy, worn clothing. She had taken Voss’s suggestion and stepped behind the folding screen, and now she slid gratefully into the tub. The choker-like necklace settled around her neck, plastering to her throat and dipping into its hollow.
“Take these filthy ones,” Voss directed from beyond the screen, still in French but much more fluidly than Angelica could speak, “and bring back some clean clothing for the lady.”
She thought briefly about arguing—Maia certainly would. It wasn’t proper for a woman to accept gifts from a man, especially something as intimate as clothing. But how ridiculous it wouldbe not to accept something so practical, and even more so to posture about it. Sometimes, propriety was so illogical.
So she said nothing, humming to herself to cover up the sounds of his own bath as she washed quickly. After, a maid assisted her in dressing in a loose lawn shift and long peignoir.
Her damp hair pinned up loosely, dripping occasionally down her neck or onto her shoulder, Angelica emerged from behind the screen to find that Voss had also finished his ablutions. Her humming stopped.
All at once, the maids were gone, and they were alone—now in a far more intimate environment of warm, damp skin that had recently been bare, the scents of lavender, lemon and orange in the air, and fewer layers of clothing.
“Explain this,” Angelica said, sitting on one of the chairs. She hooked a finger under the necklace and lifted it from her skin. Her fingers trembled but she kept her voice calm. Her belly was in knots.
Voss gave her a crooked smile. “Again with the irrelevant questions, my dear. All you need know is that it is a great deterrent to me.”
“To you? Not to anyone else?”
“I’m afraid not.” He turned away and Angelica gasped. The shirt he’d donned was not only worn so thin it was nearly transparent, but the fact that his skin was damp and caused the fabric to cling made it easy for her to see the ugly, dark lines through it.
“My God, Dewhurst…what is that?”
He looked back, frowning. “What?”
But she’d already risen from her chair, moving toward him automatically, reaching for the shoulder where she’d seen something that looked like horrible scarring. Twisting black lines radiating from the back of his shoulder and along his arm,down past where the shirt no longer stuck to his skin. It was no wonder he could hardly move.
“Don’t,” he said, but it was too late…she’d already moved close enough to touch him.
Remembering the necklace, she stopped and stepped back a pace. “Does it pain you?” she asked, once again lifting the leaf-entwined chain, smelling its mint, now damp from her bath.
His face drawn, his lips flat, Voss nodded, then gave a shrug. “A bit.”
She stepped back again and saw his chest moved in an easier breath. Odd, fascinating…and a bit frightening.
Angelica sat in a chair across from him, leaving what she judged was space enough for his comfort. “Is it the proximity? The smell? The sight? I thought it was silver that repelled vampires. That was the way Granny Grapes told us.”
Voss smiled and moved carefully to sit at the edge of the bed, leaving more space between them. “Your grandmother sounds like a fascinating woman. I wonder how she knew so much about the Draculia. That,” he added, “is what we call ourselves.”
“Her grandmother was my great-great-grandmother, the Baroness Beatrice Neddelfield, whose much-older husband died when she was merely twenty. The baroness fell in love with a blacksmith, who happened to be the son of a man from Romania.
“The way Granny told it, they fell in love at first sight and Beatrice would have no one but Vinio for her husband. Since she was a widow, she no longer cared what Society thought, and they wed—living happily ever after.” Angelica shrugged, thinking, as she had done many times in the past, about the way some people seemed to find a strong, intimate connection to another person so quickly and easily without any explanation or logic. And how, for others, it was something that seeded, rooted and eventually blossomed.
And how some people seemed empty and remote for all of their lives.
“That explains it, then,” Voss said. “The Romanian heritage…the first of the Draculia was Vlad Tepes, Count Dracula of Transylvania. And the rest of us are all descendants of his. For obvious reasons, if they choose to do so, Dracule tend to make very good marriages—albeit temporary ones, due to the immortality factor. Many of our antecedents wed titled members of European aristocracy. But the choice to become Dracule is only offered to some of us.”
“Such were my granny’s bedtime stories,” Angelica agreed. “Not of the variety commonly told to English children, however.”
“Thank the Fates for that, or how many more of them would grow up wishing to be like your brother.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Voss shifted. “Because you aren’t asking the ones you ought to, Angelica.” His eyes glittered and she felt warm and flushed again.
But no longer apprehensive.
“I’m certain I’ll learn the answers in good time. You obviously can’t leave the hotel during the daylight, so we are here for some time. And for now, I want to understand how this plant…whatever it is…affects you.”
