Giordan took the note, which was marked with Corvindale’s seal, and broke into it.“Meeting here tonight with Woodmore. Voss still in city. Come.”
He closed it up, a myriad of emotions running through him—the foremost and strongest being raging fury. Darkness. But Giordan drew in a deep, steadying breath and after a moment, his red vision and the pounding, trammeling need eased. His fingers relaxed.
There was a time when he’d have had no qualms, no hesitation about snapping the neck of someone like Woodmore—particularly since, several months back, he found the man in the rooms Giordan had let in London, preparing to hang his heart on a stake. Some sort of gray-black smoke was trickling from the fireplace and Woodmore was caught off-guard by Giordan’s wakefulness during the day—and, he learned later, a misfunction of some sort of smoke explosion.
But those days of quick, efficient violence had gone, and when Giordan learned that his would-be attacker was none other than Chas Woodmore, associate and friend of Dimitri, he’d allowed it to end as a misunderstanding. He’d even helped prepare the bastard for his mission to assassinate Cezar Moldavi.
But his easy assistance was before he’d responded to Woodmore’s request to meet him in Reither’s Closewell…and smelled Narcise. Everywhere. Everywhere on Chas Woodmore.
Even the information Woodmore had wished to share—that Cezar Moldavi had not, in the past decade, forgotten his obsession with Giordan—didn’t concern him.
After all, it had been a decade for Giordan as well. The ten years had been both interminable and all too brief, too close. Too raw.
Despite the change that had happened to him in that sunlit alley, Giordan still struggled and fought that bare, terrible need.
Now, he stood and made himself walk casually over to the chair where he’d removed his shoes, sit, and pull them on.
He’d known they were together, of course; that Woodmore had helped her to escape from Paris—or had abducted her. No one was clear on the details. But to smell her thus…so lush and rich and feminine.Narcise.
The moment was as if he’d slammed into a stone wall: he lost his breath, he felt the shock of pain reverberating through him, he turned numb.
After, Giordan wasn’t certain how he’d managed to make it through that meeting in the inn, once he’d caught her scent. It was the way itrolledoff Woodmore, the way it seemed to permeate him and mix with his own essence…mocking and familiar and horribly insidious.
Disgust turned his vision dark and red even now.
He didn’t know whom to thank that Narcise had decided to go with Woodmore to London instead of having Giordan take her to Wales. He doubted he would have survived that trip with his sanity intact.
“Is everything all right?” Rubey asked.
Giordan wasn’t certain how long he’d been silent—he’d finished dressing and was starting toward the chamber door before she spoke. “A summons from Dimitri,” he said with an ironic tone. “When the earl beckons, one must answer.”
She was watching him with those shrewd eyes. “When will I see you again?” she asked. Not with petulance, not even with invitation—but as a businesswoman, scheduling an engagement. Rubey was no man’s woman through her own volition, and not for lack of being wooed.
“When next I need to feed,” he told her smoothly, then moved quickly back to her side. Pressing a farewell kiss to her temple, he said, “With your permission, madame.”
“Of course,” she replied haughtily. But he felt the weight of her curious gaze following him out the door.
The trip to Blackmont Hall, the residence of the Earl of Corvindale, was hampered by a carriage accident on Bond. Giordan didn’t begrudge the delay, for it gave him more time to mull, to consider, to settle. To decide if he even meant to go.
The streets were relatively quiet, for the shops were closed this late at night, but the thoroughfares were by no means deserted. Carriages and hacks trundled by, many pedestrians skirted the shadows—some of them up to no good, some of them simply walking from one pub, club, theater, or party to another.
Giordan sat quietly in his richly-appointed carriage and considered how far the bounds of friendship reached. If it were anyone other than Dimitri, he would ignore the summons. When Woodmore sent him the secret message to meet in Reither’s Close, Giordan had gone—not realizing what awaited him.
But he did now. And he wasn’t certain he’d be able to handle being in the same chamber as Woodmore and not want to peel the man’s flesh from his body. Despite who he’d become.
Instead of dwelling on that, Giordan forced himself to review what he knew, wondering why Dimitri felt it necessary to have him present tonight.
Voss had abducted Angelica Woodmore, but he’d claimed it was to keep her safe from Moldavi’s men, who’d, predictably, followed Woodmore and Narcise from Paris.
Giordan had been in London—although with Rubey and not in attendance—the night of the abduction, when Belial and three others had entered a masquerade ball and murdered three people. That night and the next day, he and Dimitri had had to work together to enthrall witnesses and change stories. Otherwise, the news might cause a mad panic in London such as there had been in Brussels some years back after a similar occurrence. Shortly after, Giordan left to meet Woodmore in Reither’s Close and break the news of Angelica’s kidnapping.
But by the time Giordan had returned to London, with, presumably, Woodmore on his heels, Angelica had been safely retrieved by Dimitri.
Still, the earl was furious with Voss for taking one of the Woodmore sisters while he was responsible for them during their brother’s disappearance, and by the tone of his message tonight, he intended to find Voss and square things with him. Which, in Dimitri’s mind, likely meant to kill the bastard.
Ever since the incident in Vienna a century ago, when Dimitri’s house had gone up in flames, there’d been bad blood between the earl and Voss. This current situation involving Angelica—which the earl would interpret as impertinent and insolent, at the very least, and a grave insult at worst—made the situation even more untenable.
And therefore, Giordan would answer the summons if for no other reason than to reason Dimitri out of cold-blooded murder, and to help him find Voss if necessary.
