“What do you mean? You’re here, you’re back. There’s no reason for us to stay here any longer,” Maia said.
“Don’t disappoint the girl, Chas,” the earl said. “Take her home.” Then he glanced over. “Or perhaps Giordan would like to take on governess duties?”
Giordan snorted in return. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the honor, Dimitri.” He bared his teeth in a false smile and accepted a glass of much-needed whisky from the earl. It was all he could do to keep from slugging it down.
“But why can’t we go with you, Chas?” demanded Maia.
“Corvindale is and will remain your guardian for the foreseeable future,” Woodmore replied flatly, “but I wasn’t going to stand aside and let Voss compromise my sister.”
“I’m not compromised,” Angelica said stubbornly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Woodmore replied, glancing around the room. “We know he was here tonight, Angelica. Whether you invited him or welcomed him or?—”
“I certainly didn’t invite him!” The girl was clearly outraged and offended. “I wouldn’t invite a terrifying creature like him anywhere!” And apparently, she shared her brother’s distaste for the befanged Dracule...except, also apparently, for Narcise.
“It doesn’t matter,” Woodmore continued sternly. “Corvindale and Cale are going to help me find him. And then I’m going to kill him.”
Giordan kept his tickle of annoyance at Woodmore’s assumptions to himself, and felt rather than saw Narcise move to the other side of the chamber behind him. She stayed carefully out of his eyesight. Her essence stirred the air, still as lush and feminine as it had been in Paris…but yet not quite the same.
“Since it appears that you will be under this roof for some further time, Miss Woodmore, Angelica—perhaps you might find your way back to your chambers,” Dimitri said abruptly, standing from where he’d been brooding in a corner chair. “The night is waning.”
Giordan, who, in some ways knew his friend better than Dimitri knew himself, suspected the man had used up his not very extensive patience. The earl’s library and office had been invaded, not to mention his hermit-like lifestyle disrupted by the new additions to his household, and would be, it seemed, for sometime to come.
The earl wanted everyone gone.
In the flurry of the sisters Woodmore bidding good night and farewell to their brother, and the earl’s insistent ushering of them out of the chamber, Giordan managed to position himself so that Narcise would be unable to quit the room without passing directly by him.
As it happened, whether by accident or Dimitri’s intent, Narcise was separated from her lover and left alone in the chamber with Giordan. She would have slipped past him, the cowardly woman, if he hadn’t moved a half-step to stand in the way. Now she must brush against him if she meant to escape and avoid a conversation.
“Good evening, Narcise,” he said.
She was close, so close, that not only her essence but the warmth of her presence surged against him. Yet, he absorbed the assault as if withstanding the force of a blow and would not allow her to escape from his gaze.
“Giordan,” she replied in a voice as cool as her icy-sea eyes. An ink-black coil of hair clung to her temple as if it had been smashed there by the heavy hat.
For a moment, he wavered—the hatred, the loathing and disgust, shimmering, threatening to drop like a heavy curtain—but it was just an instant of madness. He recovered himself. “And so you have found your escape at last. My felicitations. I hope it is all that you’ve dreamed.”
Ah, his tones were so easy, so casual and absent of irony, devoid of the antipathy he felt. They were so loose, unlike his twisting insides, unlike the impossibly tight curling of his fingers.
“It is,” she replied in a matching tone. It was as if they’d settled at a cafe and discussed the weather over coffee and tea whilst overlooking the Palais Gallery.
He made certain he showed no hint of the bloodlust that simmered beneath his skin, throbbing, dark and hot and suddenly insistent.
“My only regret,” she said, still looking up at him with eyes as emotionless as a pair of black-mounted amethysts, “is that Cezar still lives.”
“What is this?” Giordan responded lightly, oh, yes, still so lightly despite the heaviness threatening his mood. “Your vampire hunter could not complete the task?” Faint surprise and polite regret tinged his words. “I was under the impression that he traveled to Paris for that purpose only.”
“Alas, no, for when he found there was a choice between having Cezar and protecting my well-being…well, of course you see how that turned out.”
Direct and sharp, her words and meaning stabbed him deeply. And twisted, as if the blade was in his entrails, raking a cross through his insides in the manner of the Japaneseseppuku.
Nevertheless, he kept his expression emotionless. “If only it were always so simple,” was all he replied.
“Narcise.” Woodmore’s smooth voice interrupted from behind them.
“Chas,” she said, brushing rapidly past Giordan as if he were a Corinthian column.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. My sisters are a bit overset,” said Woodmore, looking down at Narcise and then at Giordan. Comprehension shone in his dark eyes. “And Corvindale is fairly apoplectic that Voss has been inside Blackmont Hall.”
