Stealing Magic (Vampire Primes) (2 page)

Some mortals had natural barriers against mental intrusion, both weak and strong. Julien wondered how strong the red-haired maid was. He looked forward to finding out. But, first, back to his duty.

Julien turned to Lady Tatania. This time he caught her attention. He gave her a seductive smile as he saluted her with his wine goblet. “The vintage is in no way as delightful as you, my dear.”

* * *

“You! New girl. What is your name again?”

She whirled to face the butler in the hall just outside the kitchen. She just barely kept hold of the empty but still heavy silver platter. Dropping something so valuable could easily get a girl dismissed from service.

“Grace, Mr. Hornsby.”

For a moment Grace had the same fear as any maid addressed harshly by the house’s most senior servant. Had he noticed she was shaking after her encounter with the vampire? Had he realized she had not been hired and had no business being here? Although the potion she’d slipped into the tea pot in the servants’ dining hall last night should keep everyone’s mind muddled about her presence during the time she needed to be here. They were a rowdy bunch off duty, the staff of this noble manor. She liked them. But Mr. Hornsby was as formidable as a butler ought to be when on duty.

“You’re wanted at the dower house,” Hornsby informed her.

“Me, sir?”

“Not you specifically, girl. Another maid is wanted for this evening, and a footman. The ladies there are proving to be a demanding handful,” he added with a sneer. “Mrs. Hackett is not amused.”

Mrs. Hackett was the housekeeper, and Hornsby’s tone implied that her not being amused was more serious than if the Queen was not.

Grace knew that the “ladies” being put up at the dower house were some of the most expensive courtesans of the London demimonde. She didn’t mind, but for the sake of her role, she said, “But sir, they’re fallen—”

“I know what they are. They are also guests in our master’s home. Put that tray down and go make yourself useful to Mrs. Hackett.”

Bugger
, Grace thought, which was certainly not the sort of word a proper, shy, good country girl like she pretended to be should know. How was she supposed to seduce a vampire when she was attending to the wants and needs of beautiful professional women also available for servicing a vampire, should he prefer?

Maybe she should have stayed with the original plan.

Perhaps she could learn a few things from the girls quartered at the dower house, was her more cheerful thought as she joined a young footman waiting at the door to the kitchen garden.

“You’re Jimmy, yes?” she asked him. “We met last night.”

He grinned, though his face faded to shadows as the kitchen door was shut behind her. “We did,” he said. He stepped eagerly up beside her. “It’s good to finally have a pretty girl belowstairs.”

“All the girls I’ve met so far are pretty,” Grace said.

“All full of airs too. The master smiles and flirts and they get ideas above their station. You need to be warned about such things,” he added.

“The housekeeper has already lectured me about keeping myself to myself,” Grace said.

They walked toward the front of the manor, to the roadway paved in white stone gravel which led toward the front gate of the estate. The ripe moon overhead and the reflection of the stones helped them see where they were going. There was no reason for servants to have a lantern to light their way.

Jimmy glanced briefly back at the main house. “It’s a rum place,” he said. “Always has been. My family has served the master’s for generations. The tales my granddad tells would burn off your innocent ears.”

He went on to tell her some of the lurid history of the outwardly respectable McHeath family. She only listened with part of her attention. The vampire she’d seen in the dining room took up the rest of it.

I wanted to get a look at him, I didn’t expect him to notice me, to send shivers through me with only a flick of a gaze
, Grace thought.

Shivers of heat still flickered deep inside her. She recalled the amorphous details she’d picked up in her moon vision and compared them with the reality of the vampire. He had looked so right seated among the rich and powerful, so self-assured. There was no doubting he was the handsomest man in the room. And the most dangerous. Had anyone else felt this but her? The women, Grace bet. There was a primal reaction among females to males their instincts told them would protect them, and their babies. She doubted any of the ladies at the dinner table had read or approved of Mr. Darwin’s theories of survival of the fittest, but that didn’t keep them from instinctively being drawn to the creature who passed himself off as one of them.

And wanting to have his babies.

At least she was aware of the necessity. It was just that she hadn’t expected it might become a yearning. Dangerous that. Best not to let instinct take over. At least humans could control their animal selves. She would mate where she must for the good of her own people and not get emotionally entangled. Or so she had vowed before coming to McHeath Manor.

She hadn’t expected to be drawn to Julien Weaver herself. She knew what he really was. Predator. She was no sheep. She couldn’t let herself be mesmerized by his aura of ultra-alpha male. But, oh, he was a handsome boyo!

* * *

She thought he was handsome. Julien was quite pleased at the impression he’d made on the copper-haired maid. He smiled, his fangs extending a bit as he did so. He wondered how she’d react if she turned and saw a vampire in the moonlight. Would she scream and run? The chase would be pleasant. Assuaging her fear even more so once she was caught in his embrace.

What else did she think of him? he wondered.

He wasn’t reading her thoughts as he followed silently behind her and the chattering footman, but he was closely attuned to her emotions. He was under no illusion that those emotions centered on him. As his emotions had centered on her from the moment he saw her.

He knew he was vain to think her deeply attracted to him from such a brief encounter, but he was Prime. He had no doubts about his sexual attractiveness, or prowess. He would bring this girl all the pleasure she could bear, and beyond. It would be a lovely interlude for them both.

He was delighted she ignored the mortal boy’s efforts to win her attention, but a hint of jealousy that the boy could walk so openly by her side curled inside him. It was not because he was a vampire that there was a divide between him and the girl, but because of the differences in their class.

Perhaps he should sweep her away like a lost princess in a fairy tale.

Perhaps he should get back to the house party before his absence was noted. After all, it was too early in the evening for trysts. The gentlemen had just barely finished their brandy in the dining room and joined the ladies waiting in the drawing room. There would be flirtatious chatter while the card tables were set up, and then the gambling would begin. The gaming would grow more and more serious as the evening wore on. The flirtations would proceed to liaisons. He had repeated this scenario for at least a thousand nights in his long life. Starting in the era of the Regency and on up until tonight. It was ever the same among the noble class. Though there were many not quite so decadent as the McHeaths, the festivities of a house party remained the same. As if it never occurred to them that there might be something better to do with their time.

The advantage of all these years of boredom was that Julien had won huge fortunes at the gaming tables. Most of the time he hadn’t even had to use his psychic gifts in the course of fleecing the men he played against. Most of the time it was easy to tell if mortals were bluffing or lying.

Thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the wise investments made by Family Weaver’s Matri and Elders he had been relieved of the need to be a professional gambler. Having gone into the spy game, Julien occasionally found himself making the same old round of noble house parties. He much preferred facing off with a Tribe Prime working for the Russians in the wilds of Afghanistan to his current assignment to this placid activity.

This is the last time
, he vowed.

At least he had his new acquaintance—though they had yet to actually meet—to relieve the boredom of his assignment.

The girl wasn’t boring. Julien absorbed her lively humor, intelligence, and awakening sexuality as a type of heady perfume heated by the warmth of her flesh, the strong beat of her heart, the hot rush of her blood. He could sense all this, see it with his psychic vision, and he longed to hold her and breathe her in.

How odd that he should be so attracted so quickly. He knew there were incidents in vampire society where a Prime’s bonding instinct had been triggered by mortal women, but Julien didn’t personally know anyone this had happened to. He’d done his duty to sire children, but had never felt the urge to join a House harem no matter how lovely and sensual vampire females were. Did his destiny lie with a mortal?

“Nonsense.”

The word was whispered so low no mortal ear could detect it, but the girl whirled around anyway.

Chapter Three

“Shhh!” Grace demanded as Jimmy kept on talking.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She slapped his hand away when he touched her arm. No man was going to touch her but—!

She peered into the darkness. Her stomach fluttered, her heart raced, but she saw nothing. The bright moonlight would have showed if someone was there, wouldn’t it?

“Hello?”

No answer, of course, because nothing was there. Yet she had heard….

Nothing.

Was the thought her own? If it was, why did it whisper through her like an inner caress?

She turned back around and continued onward with a firm step. “What were you saying about the house having secrets?” she asked her companion.

“There are secret passages that lead to all the guest bedrooms on the second floor, and spy holes in the passage wall so the master can look in and see what nastiness is going on. Secret doors as well as peepholes into the bedrooms. All this was built by our master’s grandfather. The McHeaths have always been bad.”

“Rumors,” she said.

“I’ve been in them myself. I’ll show you, if you like.”

Grace smiled, with her head turned away from Jimmy. All her senses tingled with eager pleasure at this news. She almost felt as though she was sharing a sensual secret with someone else. She resisted the impulse to turn around again, telling herself nerves were making for an overactive imagination. Nerves, or a guilty conscience.

“No, thank you, I don’t want to peek in on my betters.” she told the footman. She sounded prim and disapproving, when she actually planned to hunt for the vampire’s room on her own. Better for her assignment, safer to keep the young man out of it as well.

But first, there was work to be done. They rounded a stand of trees and a three-story brick house set in a rose garden was illuminated by the moonlight, the Dower House. Normally, a dower house was the place where the widow of a nobleman settled after her son took over the title and estate. Grace guessed that Lord McHeath’s mother was dead—or was going to be very annoyed when she found out the use her house had been put to when she got home from a trip.

* * *

“Iron these.”

Grace received the command a second after she walked in the servant’s entrance. A heavy pile of dresses were thrust into her arms.

“Though I don’t know why they want their dresses ironed when they’re only going to come off,” the maid who’d handed her the pile continued. She pointed down a dimly lit hallway. “Laundry room’s down there.”

“Ah, the glamorous life,” Grace murmured and trudged off under the weight to do her duty.

It was several hours before Grace got a look at any of the soiled doves she was serving. Her feet ached and she wanted to go to bed, never mind vampire seduction, but she was sent to carry trays of drinks around the sitting room where a late party was underway. Some of the gentlemen who were finished gambling and had not retired to their rooms with other men’s spouses had come to meet the alternative women provided for their pleasure.

The first thing Grace noticed when she entered the sitting room was that Lord Julien Weaver was not among the gentlemen present. Her emotions spun into a dizzying tumble of pleasure that he wasn’t patronizing the fancy ladies and disappointment that he wasn’t there for her to seduce—or even just look at. Frustration and impatience had their place in the mix of her feelings as well. She needed to get to the man and get him alone long enough to do the deed. Perhaps she should have continued with the original plan. Maybe she was only being arrogant and rebellious, deciding her way was the better one.

Well, she still had her trunk of fine clothes in the coach tucked away with Uncle Mungo in the stables, since her uncle had refused to leave. He said he wasn’t abandoning the plan, or her, for which she was grateful. Perhaps she could assume her other disguise.

In the meantime, she took a tray of full champagne glasses and made her way around the crowded room.

The room was lit with candles, giving a sensual golden glow to bare shoulders and bosoms exposed by the deep cleavage of the women’s gowns.

She was tempted to tell the men to keep their sweaty roaming hands off the silks and satins she had so painstakingly ironed, but she stayed silent and invisible and made the rounds of the room.

Most of the women were surrounded by men, but two women, one dark, one fair, stood alone together in front of a tall, gold framed mirror. The mirror doubled the view of their delightful figures, but the pair seemed more intent on conversation than attracting customers.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” the dark-haired one whispered as Grace approached. Her gaze swept the room impatiently.

Grace noticed the taut nervousness in the woman’s posture, the hot brightness of her eyes. Most of all she was struck by the woman’s aura, which radiated a psychic fury bordering on madness.

Grace wondered what
it
was that could cause such agitation. A stolen piece of jewelry, perhaps? A match for the ornately carved wooden hairpin holding up her elaborate coiffure?