Ravensclaw (13 page)

Because I don’t want to. Because you’re as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks.
“Maybe because you want me to so badly. Why
are
you so determined that I leave Edinburgh?”

His face was white with temper. He opened his mouth, closed it, turned on his heel and stalked out of the box.

Emily leaned back in her seat, breathing in the familiar theatrical scents of oil lamps and candle wax. So much for the use of honey. Her nature was evidently less sweet than tart.

Even as she told herself she shouldn’t look, her gaze strayed to the opposite box, where Lady Alberta was now chatting with Lisbet Boroi and Ravensclaw.

Lisbet looked annoyed. Perhaps Lady Alberta was enlightening them about Dugal Stewart’s lecture on philosophy, which she had attended earlier this week. Mr. Stewart rejected metaphysics as a vain attempt to fathom the nature of the mind and in its place proposed inductive psychology, the patient and precise observation of mental processes without pretending to explain the mind itself.

Val glanced in her direction. Emily reflected that her own mental processes weren’t working as effectively as once they had.

At least, she had thought they functioned well. Now she was less certain. Not only her papa was guilty of character misjudgment as concerned Michael Ross.

She recalled the day they had first spoken, during the unveiling of the Phantasmagoria Machine. Michael had been one of many young men who attended demonstrations at the Society. She next encountered him during her father’s lecture on the Rule of Gradation. Michael had declared himself impressed by her comment that, though the variations seemed interminable, it remained uncertain whether they would delay rather than defy detection. Gradually, he eased his way into the professor’s confidence, and her own as well. She had enjoyed his habit of asking her opinion of all manner of topics, and complimenting the quality of her mind.

The quality of her mind, indeed.

Emily shifted positions. Her bruised muscles protested with a particularly painful throb. She looked up to find Cezar Korzha seated beside her in the no-longer-vacant chair. Andrei Torok stood sentinel-like at the back of the box.

Mr. Korzha might not be mentioned on a certain list, but Emily suspected he should be. Bluntly she said, “What do you want?”

He contemplated the opposite box. “Are you feeling contentious this evening, Miss Dinwiddie? You are welcome to vent your spleen on me.”

His voice was soft, spellbinding, seductive. Emily sniffed. “You
and Ravensclaw have beguilement down to a fine art. The two of you go back a long way together. To Sarmizegetuza, perhaps?”

“You are a very bold young woman,” Cezar said calmly. “Or a very foolish one.”

“I’m fed up to the teeth with this ‘young woman’ nonsense,” Emily retorted. “If I was a man, you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me.”

“You underestimate yourself.” Cezar nodded toward her necklace. “Are you familiar with Sir John Mandeville, a French traveler in the fourteenth century? ‘The owner of a remarkable ruby shall enjoy good relations with those around him and shall live his life in peace. He shall escape various disasters.’ Providing that he wears his ruby as a ring, bracelet, or brooch, and on his right side.”

“According to legend,” Emily retorted, “the Greek god of war dwelled in rubies, and therefore the gems are full of energy. Rubies are additionally associated with blood, birth, and death. I repeat, what is it you want of me?”

“Merely a few moments’ conversation. Concerning why you’ve come to Edinburgh. I know the d’Auvergne athame has been in your possession, Miss Dinwiddie. Mayhap it still is.”

All Emily wanted was a few moment’s conversation, if conversation she must have, with someone who wasn’t under the impression she had more hair than wit.  “And mayhap you can turn into a butterfly and waft about the theater. Has it occurred to you, Mr. Korzha, that if I had the athame, I would hardly need Ravensclaw?”

“If you had the athame, what better camouflage than to ensorcel one of us? I warn you, Miss Dinwiddie, I am less gullible than Val. Think before you answer. I could compel you to tell me the truth.”

Emily didn’t doubt he could. It was taking all her strength to maintain her defenses. Cezar Korzha must be very powerful, to affect her as he did. “I don’t know which suggestion is the absurd, that Ravensclaw is gullible or that I might ensorcel someone. If you think I could ensorcel Ravensclaw, you must have windmills in your head.” She grimaced. “That may have been a tad too blunt.”

“Infinitely too blunt. You appear to be in some discomfort. Permit me to make it go away.” Without waiting for permission, Cezar placed his hand on her belly, directly above the bruise. Emily was too shocked to protest.

He had not overrated his abilities. The pain did go away.

Cezar withdrew his hand. “A word of warning, Miss Dinwiddie: you are in out of your depth. Val may be amusing himself with you, but at the end of the day, he will remain a predator and you, my pretty—” He flicked her cheek with his cool fingers. “Will still be prey.”

Emily had endured quite enough male superiority for one evening. She stared straight into Cezar’s handsome, soulless face. “As Mr. Shakespeare puts it, ‘The world is grown so bad that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.’ This conversation is at an end.”

“For the moment, perhaps. You may be grateful that you also amuse me.” Cezar rose and left the box. Andrei followed. Emily let out a shaken breath.

So much for her mental processes.

Unless she mistook the matter, she had just defied a master vampire.

As you make your bed, so you must lie on it.

(Romanian proverb)

If Val usually enjoyed the theater — having been privileged to observe its progression from
Gammer Gurton’s Needle
to Edmund Kean’s
Hamlet
— he had not done so tonight, although he
had
derived some satisfaction from the parade of visitors to his box, each determined to make the acquaintance of his houseguest, and the sight of Michael Ross’s clenched jaw. Cezar’s interest in Miss Dinwiddie, however, left him uneasy. Cezar would act always for the greater good.

So was Val acting for the greater good, stretched out like a sacrificial victim while Lisbet ran her skilled fingers over the contours of his chest, down his belly; scraped her teeth over his flesh.

“Lisbet.” He wound his fingers in her hair, and tugged. “I must leave. It’s almost dawn.”

She raised her head. “You could rest here.”

“You know better than that.”

She rolled away from him. “You should have accompanied Cezar to Budapest. He was surprised to find me there.”

“Had I known—”
I
would have stayed a thousand miles away.
Val reached for his trousers. “I congratulate you. Cezar is not easily surprised.”

Naked, Lisbet lounged back among her pillows. “They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Is that true,
dragul meu
?”

 Val shrugged into his jacket. “I am
vampir
, remember? We have no hearts. And now I truly must go.”

She made no move to stop him. He was almost to the doorway when she spoke again.
“Iubiera ca moartea e de tare.
Love is as strong as death. Remember that,
baiat.”
Val stepped into the hallway and escaped into the night.

Or, rather, the morning. Edinburgh was already astir. By the time the bell of St. Giles had sounded seven times, shop shutters would be flung back on their hinges, the tradesmen leaning over half doors and exchanging gossip; and night soil men would be making their rounds.

The weather was damp and dreary. Fog wafted through the winding wynds and closes, wreathed the tall, forbidding tenements, crept down the cobbled streets. Easy enough to imagine Major Weir’s spectral coach drawn by headless horses rounding the next corner, to hear a ghostly piper playing beneath the stones of the Royal Mile.

Instead, what Val heard was the sound of a footstep; and what he sensed was the presence of a drunken young buck intent on making mischief. He paused, waiting for the man to stumble into sight. A shock of wheaten hair, a pair of unfocussed red-rimmed eyes, the smell of fresh blood, as if the fool had recently cut himself, a strong impression of intended threat—

Val fed when he must, discreetly, and made it his habit to provide more pleasure than pain; even were he not already sated, he would have had no interest in such easy prey. He placed his would-be assailant under a compulsion to present himself naked at the Goblin Halls, caverns claimed by legend to exist beneath the Calton Hill, where every Thursday night the Fairy Boy of Leith and his companions joined goblins and elves, witches and ghosts, in feasting and revelry. Let the fool wear off his aggressions searching for something that didn’t exist.

Val wondered if Miss Dinwiddie had heard of the Fairy Boy of Leith. It was the sort of tale that would appeal to her.

She’d actually asked if he was capable of sexual function. Val had come damned close to demonstrating that he was. He wondered if he’d survived all this time only for a curious, bespectacled spinster to drive him mad. A freckled, sharp-nosed spinster with a cloud of carroty curls that, unbound, must reach down past her hips. Val wanted to nibble on her neck, as well as other portions of her aggravating little person. To explore her with his lips, and fingers, and tongue. To kiss her until she was wild and then at last to drink her sweet rich blood. One tiny taste of her had left him ravenous with a hunger he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Val wouldn’t slake that hunger. He wouldn’t seduce Emily. Instead he let Lisbet believe she held him enraptured with her pale perfect body and her bedroom skills.

Had his performance been convincing? Because a performance it had been. Val had taken Emily to the theater and abandoned her, to demonstrate to Lisbet that she was of no consequence. Lisbet, and Cezar. Amusement had turned to affection, and Val found himself wishing to keep the exasperating Miss Dinwiddie locked safely away in his curiosity cabinet where she could come to no harm.

His home loomed before him. Isidore met him at the front door. In response to Val’s quizzical look, he shook his head. “ ‘Set a cow to catch a hare.’ Young Jamie’s guarding her door. Said if any bajins came around, he’d give them a right clout.”

In other words, the night had been free of excursions and alarms. “Well done, Isidore. Get some rest.” Val mounted the staircase. Jamie was indeed guarding Emily’s doorway. He and Machka and Drogo were sleeping in a pile, alongside a Scottish claymore almost as big as Jamie himself. Drogo opened one yellow eye and blinked. Val left them to it and retired to his own bedchamber, on the floor below.

He locked the door behind him. With the draperies closed, the chamber was dark as a tomb. Val pulled off his boots, his jacket, his trousers, unwound his cravat and stretched out on the bed. With sunrise, he fell into a stupor, and though sleep didn’t stay long with him, it truly was the sleep of the dead.

Usually he sank into peaceful darkness. Today the darkness was broken by a dream. A dream of a woman with gold-flecked eyes and a wild mass of flaming hair.

...

He lowered his face until his lips found hers, heard her quick intake of breath. Her hands clutched at his shoulders as he traced her mouth with his tongue, nibbled gently at her lower lip, teased her with feather touches until she opened for him.

His tongue slipped into her sweet, warm mouth. She caught her breath and stiffened, then relaxed against him. Her hands tangled in his hair.

He lowered his lips to the sensitive flesh of her throat, paused to taste her pulse. His lips slid along her silken skin to the soft flesh of one small breast. He tormented her rosy nipple with his tongue until she cried out for more. She shuddered and moaned as he covered every inch of her body with small close kisses; teased her slowly, mercilessly, with his tongue; laved her with long, slow strokes. She groaned. Her body pulsed beneath his hands.

His teeth scraped the inside of her thigh.

He smelled her excitement, felt her heartbeat.

His groin grew tight. He wanted her. The hunger made him burn.

She drew back. Not carroty hair now, but golden blonde. Amber eyes instead of brown. The d’Auvergne athame glowed in Isabella Dinwiddie’s hand.

…

Val wakened with a start, relieved to find himself back in his own bed, in the dark bedroom, alone with the shattered fragments of his dream, and his concern about what it might portend.

Or
was
he alone? Val sensed a presence. Not Zizi or Bela or Lilian. Emily, Isidore, or Jamie. Machka or Drogo. None of whom could have got past his locked door.

Recognition was slow in coming. “Please let me still be dreaming,” Val said.

“Is that any way to greet me after so long?” his visitor inquired.

Val screwed his eyelids shut. “Go away. You’re dead.”

“It’s not kind of you to point that out.” She sounded sulky. “I still have feelings, Valentin.”

Val had feelings too, any number of conflicting ones. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

She sniffled. “You called me when you told that little
roscat
my name. Names have power. You might pretend to be pleased to see me, you know.”

He
hadn’t
seen her, yet. “I didn’t tell the redhead your name. She took it from my mind.”

“You should be careful of that one. I’m amazed you’ve resisted the temptation to take her to your bed. I don’t recall that you were used to withstand temptation at all. Maybe I should warn her that you will break her heart.” A pause and another sniffle. “Like you broke mine.”

Val knew he’d have to let Emily go. Eventually. “I’m not having this conversation.” He pulled a pillow over his head.

And felt a swat upon his knee. “Oh, yes you are! It is the first of many conversations that we are going to have.”