The Burning (11 page)

It was over. Tears welled up from somewhere and overwhelmed Ann. She didn’t look back. She didn’t care whether they arrested Harris. She didn’t even care if they arrested Stephan Sincai. She was going back to Maitlands Abbey and its sheltering hills and never leaving them until they carried her out in a coffin.

The room erupted in startled speculation as the Van Helsing girl left. Harris was dragged from the room. The squire
called for order. Stephan Sincai melted from the doorway. What had come over him that he had felt compelled to get involved? The girl had nothing to do with his mission. She was a distraction. Defending her exposed him to the small society of Cheddar Gorge and needless risk to his purpose. She was vulnerable. What difference did that make? She had courage. She’d dared the squire to detain her. He shook his head. Irrelevant.

Time to focus. Estate agents. He had a name from Watkins. Pillinger. He was scheduled to meet the man at six in front of the town hall. It would probably take days to explore all the houses to let hereabouts. It was far more likely that the nest would be set up in a house with comforts than a cave. He would get a list from Pillinger, so he could make solo visits in the dead of night to the more likely candidates. Perhaps Pillinger could satisfy his other need. Let’s hope he was a red-blooded young man. Stephan strode out into the night, leaving the contentious denizens of the taproom behind to speculate on just what had happened to Jemmy.

It took some days sitting by her uncle’s side, reading to him between his bouts of sleep, for Jemmy to subside within her. Her nights were spent in her nursery disturbed by sensuous dreams all featuring Stephan Sincai. Jennings locked her in religiously at night. She dared not use the secret passage. Monsters and townspeople lurked outside, waiting for her to venture out. Ann’s only satisfaction was that her uncle seemed to be recovering, and that she managed to avoid her cousin. He hardly seemed like a sportsman, but he had been spending all his days at Bucklands Lodge and nights with brandy in the library. So she hardly expected to see him when she left her uncle’s room late one evening.

But Van Helsing was tripping up the stairs. “Cousin!” he called. “I have been meaning to speak with you.”

“Really?” Ann stopped on the landing so she would not brush him as he passed. “Do you require anything for your comfort?” That should daunt him.

He smiled slyly and cocked his head, undaunted. “Yes . . . I do,” he said. “I require something quite particular. Would you join me in the library?”

Ann felt a shiver go down her spine.
Nonsense,
she told herself.
If he so much as looks as though he might get frisky, you can just ring for Polsham
.

“Of course,” she murmured, and followed him down the hall. The library sported a cozy fire. The smell of burning pitch and, more faintly, old paper and leather bindings, was comforting. Van Helsing made directly for the decanters on the sideboard.

“Well . . .” he began, pouring himself a glass of the peaty, amber whiskey. “I thought I should declare my intentions before I approach your uncle.”

“Declare?” she murmured. One didn’t declare an intention to ravish people.

“I think I can relieve both your minds in this current sad circumstance. I intend to ask your uncle for your hand in marriage.”

Ann’s thoughts changed gears only slowly. He meant to offer for her. When her uncle was ill, and he’d practically threatened her physically in the very hall outside? When he’d injured a girl who was under her protection? “I can save you the trouble, Cousin. The answer will be no.”

“I realize we have known each other only a short time.” He waved a hand as though she hadn’t spoken. “But your uncle could die at any moment and he would want to see you properly disposed of.”

“Dis . . . disposed of?” Ann’s outrage almost closed her throat.

“He wants to ensure that you are provided for after his death. It would be a kindness to him to see you married.”

Ann drew herself up to all of her five feet. “A kindness he will have to do without. Marriage is impossible for me.” That was blunt enough if a direct refusal was not.

Van Helsing got that sly look again. A hint of a smile lurked around his mouth though it did not touch his eyes. “But it isn’t really up to you, is it?” he asked softly. “It’s for your uncle to say. A girl like you . . .”

What on earth did this man think he was doing? “I assure you I am of age. My uncle has no right to ‘dispose’ of me. You must have
my
permission, not my uncle’s, Cousin.”

He shoved at a log with his toe. Sparks shot up the chimney. “I don’t think so,” he mused. “No, I’m quite sure the whole thing can be arranged without your permission.” He threw back a gulp of whiskey and turned to her. The light in his eyes made Ann gasp. “In fact, it might be more interesting that way.”

Ann almost shook with rage, but her voice was her own when she said, “I shall never marry you, Cousin.”

She did not wait for a reply, but hurried from the room. The man must be kept away from her uncle. She ran upstairs to where Mrs. Creevy sat by the fire crocheting while her uncle read in bed. She nodded to Mrs. Creevy that she could go. As the woman passed her, she said, “Please see that my cousin is not allowed access to Lord Brockweir.” Mrs. Creevy’s eyes grew big, but she dipped in a graceless curtsy and nodded as she left the room.

“What’s that, my dear?” her uncle asked. His eyes were tired. She gathered herself, swallowed, and then breathed in once and out. It would never do to upset him.

“Here, let me read to you, Uncle Thaddeus,” she said, gently taking the book from him. It was a book of sermons. Dry stuff. But what did it matter? She sat in his chair. The feeling of him sitting there countless times past washed over her. She wouldn’t think about what might happen if he actually died. Not only would she be bereft of her only friend,
but also her only ally. The town all thought her crazy. Would they care about her right to refuse Erich’s offer if she was safely tied up in the marriage knot, so someone would be responsible for keeping her locked up at Maitlands or somewhere decidedly less comfortable?

Mrs. Creevy came in with hot chocolate for her uncle and soon after that he slipped into sleep. She left him to Mrs. Creevy and crept up to the nursery like a fugitive in her own house. Polsham drifted up after her and locked the door behind her. She had forgiven the servants’ abashed performance of this task, giving them absolution by saying it was for her own security.

As soon as the door was locked and the house quiet, she slipped into the passage beside the hearth and wound down through the house and out into the garden. She cared not what she met tonight, monster or mob. She had to get out. The house was a prison with her cousin as chief gaoler. Running into the woods, she leaned against her favorite trees, gasping. The thrill of sunlight, the satisfaction of growing, the wild abandon of tossing leaves in the wind, sank into her through the rough bark under her hands. Such pure feelings trees had; untainted, untrammeled. They soothed the tumult in her breast.

When she felt calmer, she pushed herself up and wandered farther into the woods, up toward her cave. Stone would be even calmer.

Erich, as he wanted to be called, wanted her money, but he wanted her person, as well. She dared not even think about what would happen if a man wanted to claim the full rights of marriage with her, let alone the hateful Erich and his abnormal proclivities. All that touching . . . not to mention probably being naked. No. Conjugal relations were denied her. She must never know the act of physical love, even with a man she found congenial, or it would be the end of her. She would never have a child. Lord forbid! Even if she
managed the dreadful act itself with a partner she did not find repulsive, how could she risk having a girl-child who would share her disability and her curse? No. It died with her. Her own uncle had refused to marry in order to avoid producing someone like her.

That settled on her shoulders. A mistake, an aberration—that’s what she was. And more than that, a burden. She had ended her parents’ lives. She had twisted her uncle’s life into one of sacrifice for a niece he would never have wanted to beget himself. And now she might end with a man she hated raping her into madness with the full blessing of society. She started to run again. She raced up the path and then off through the trees toward her special cave. A scent hung in the air, spicy, like cinnamon. What was that?

She almost bumped into him.

Gasping, she took two hasty steps back. “What . . . what are you doing here?”

Stephan Sincai simply stood there. His black cloak blended into the darkness. He seemed strangely alive. His form loomed over her, tightly muscled under his clothing. She had never been so aware of a man’s body beneath all the fabric. In the light from the moon peeking through the trees, she saw how strong his face looked, how . . . bleak. He was a man who struggled with himself. There was pain in his past. He might have committed who knows what sins. But his expression said he struggled with it. That was something she understood, and something someone like Erich would never understand.

“I might ask the same,” he rumbled. The accent was . . . appealing.

Why she felt the need to answer him she couldn’t say. “I . . . I needed to get away.”

He simply raised his brows, as though to say his reason was the same.

Now she remembered why she should not simply turn
and run. He had come to her aid. Twice. She cleared her throat. “I’m glad I ran into you. Or almost. Well, I mean, I’m glad I encountered you. I never got a chance to thank you properly for . . . for the other night . . . and in the village . . .” That sounded so incoherent. The sensuous fabric of her dreams about him suffused her with a blush.

“It was nothing.” His face was quite inscrutable.

She remembered that he had seen the episode at the tavern when Jemmy touched her. He’d witnessed her using information she couldn’t know in her defense. “I’m not a witch.” Was that true? Why should she feel compelled to tell him that?

“What are you?”

Was that a smile lurking around his mouth? How different a smile from her cousin’s! She lifted her chin. “I . . . I have a disability.” That should make him stop his questions.

He frowned. “What kind of disability?”

How rude! She bit back her first retort. She was, after all, in his debt. Should she tell him? Could she? No one had ever asked her straight-out like that. “I know things about people if I touch them. Objects too, though the effect is fainter.”

“That would be useful.”

Useful?
He couldn’t know that she knew
everything
about a person, that the whole being of that person drenched her until she did not even quite know herself from the other. And she couldn’t tell him. She managed a rueful smile. “Useful. I can’t honestly say that is the first description that comes to mind.”

He nodded there in the dark in the middle of the forest. “Yes, well, perhaps you wouldn’t.” The cinnamon scent was his—like the lavender water men used for shaving, but spicy. And underneath the cinnamon was some other scent, fainter, harder to identify. The air held some sort of vibrant expectancy, as though anything could happen. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen, but she didn’t want him to go.

“What brings you to Cheddar Gorge?” Inane! She made idle conversation as though they met in the village street, when what she wanted was to get away, from Erich, and the future, and all the dreadful possibilities circling her like wolves. She should want to be away from him as quickly as possible. But she didn’t.

He seemed to consider her. “I am looking for a suitable house to lease.”

Perhaps she could be helpful. “Mrs. Simpson says the Sheffields want to let Staines.”

“It must be a vacant house.”

“Oh.” That made no sense. “I assume you’ve seen Foxdell near Rooks Bridge? It has been vacant for years. It would need renovation.”

“I want something closer to Cheddar Gorge or perhaps near Winscombe.”

“Oh.” She knew of nothing near Winscombe except Maitlands’s hunting lodge. Then she smiled. Why not? Erich obviously coveted it. The prospect of throwing a spoke in his wheel was appealing. “Hmmm. One of my more disreputable ancestors built a tidy little hunting box about three or four miles outside Winscombe. Bucklands Lodge. It hasn’t been used since my father died. My cousin has been renovating, so it should be in fair shape. I could see my way clear to renting it out.”

He inclined his head. “Should I see your agent?”

“Henry Brandywine is my father’s steward. Mr. Watkins at the Hammer and Anvil can give you his direction.”

He looked around as though someone else was present. “I should escort you home.”

“I am not ready to go home.”

“Do you think wandering in the woods alone at night is wise?”

“I go out often. I have a special spot I like to visit.” She expected him to protest.

But he said only, “Then I shall leave you to it.” He walked carefully around her.

Well! She found herself gazing after him, cinnamon slowly fading in the air.

So, she was the one who left the candles in the cave and had made the fire. He’d found what must be her lair earlier this evening. It was not well enough provided to be the place where vampires hid by day. There had been no traces of food, or bedrolls, nothing but the candles at the entrance to a remote branch off a branch off the main cave, a torch in a rough rock holder, and a stack of neat kindling gathered from the forest. And a book and a crocheted pillow. The book was by Jane Austen. Hardly fodder for hardened creatures planning to create an army in Asharti’s memory and destroy the balance of the world.

No, the only lair he had found tonight was Miss Van Helsing’s. Strange girl. No wonder one had the impression she looked right through one. She could do just that if she touched you. Dangerous for a man with secrets. He must steer clear of Miss Van Helsing.

And yet, he was drawn to her. It felt almost like alchemy.

Nonsense,
he told himself sternly. It was because she was an outsider among her own people. It was because she knew secrets and had secrets of her own. Those were things he understood. He felt a certain kind of kinship. That was all. For all her otherworldly attributes, which he, of course, did not doubt for a moment, she was curiously down-to-earth. It must take courage to live with the gift she obviously thought a curse. And she tried to use it well. He had seen her compassion for Jemmy Minks today even though she knew the worst of him. Was that just her naïveté? Perhaps. But it spoke well of her. He shook off his thoughts of her.
No distractions, remember that
.