The Rest Falls Away (25 page)

That, at least, drew his attention from the passing scenery. He looked at her, dark and angry from his corner across the narrow space. “Rockley had no idea what he'd walked into tonight. This is exactly the reason you cannot marry, Victoria. Your two worlds simply cannot intersect as they did tonight. Continuing on this path will only cause more destruction.”

And with that, he turned back to the window and said nothing more.

 

 

+ + +

Victoria did not sleep well that night. Her dreams were filled with a storm of images melding together: Phillip and Sebastian, Aunt Eustacia and Max, and words and voices running together:
I've always wanted to taste a
Venator…You
cannot marry
…
That is something I would pay dearly to see
…
Does he know you walk the streets at night?
…
What else did he take?

She woke to find sun streaming through the window, nothing at all like the dark dinginess of her clash of memories. It was nearly eleven o'clock. Madame LeClaire would be arriving in two hours for her gown fitting.

Her wedding gown fitting.

Victoria passed a hand over her eyes. Was Max right? If she married Phillip, was she attracting more destruction?

Emptiness clawed her belly, and it was not because she'd had nothing to eat.

How could she not marry Phillip? Charming, funny, handsome Phillip? The man who made her laugh, who jested with her, who helped her to see the humor in the society she was forced to live in. Who'd brought her flowers after she lectured him. The man who did the right thing, who did what was expected.

A man she could understand.

He'd followed her last night. Followed her into a den of vampires with little thought for his safety and no understanding of the world he was entering. A world she was part of.

If she married him, would she be able to keep her secret? Would she have to? If he knew she was a Venator, and safer than anyone on earth, would he understand?

He had told her the truth. Did she owe him the same?

Sebastian's words haunted her.
Does he know that it means his love walks the streets at night? That she must mingle with those from the dark side to learn their secrets? That she kills every time she raises her weapon? That she has a strength he cannot hope to possess?

How could he understand? It had taken Victoria weeks to understand, and she was called to this duty.

He was so good, so proper. How could he be married to a woman who stalked evil? Who was violent…who killed? He could never accept that in a wife. He shouldn't have to.

Phillip couldn't understand her world. Aunt Eustacia, and Max, and Kritanu…even Verbena and Barth…they understood. They were all a part of that world, that life.

Phillip was not, and could never be.

She drew a deep breath, knowing what she must do.

A heavy knot settled in her middle as she began to consider life without Phillip. It would be a life that consisted of lurking in dark streets, in subterranean pubs, the need to always hunt and kill. The end of dancing and laughing and no hope of having someone to love, someone to care for her.

Perhaps that explained Max: his demeanor, the undercurrents of anger, and his ripping sarcasm. He was so alone. Victoria had believed it was by choice. Perhaps she was wrong.

Perhaps she had no choice either.

A loud slam from below, and the sound of pounding footsteps rushing up the stairs, caused her to turn toward the door to her bedroom.

Shouts; they sounded like Jimmons, and even Verbena, and suddenly her door flew open, slamming into the wall.

Phillip.

“Victoria!” He stood there, tall and wild, his cloak whirling about him and his hair falling over his brow. “You are here, and safe!”

She was so aghast she did not move even to close her mouth. Verbena, Jimmons, and Maisie the housekeeper were standing in the doorway, all speaking at once, explaining how it had happened that Phillip had made his way up here.

“Send them away,” he said to her, striding toward her where she remained in bed, blankets pulled over her nightgown. “I am your betrothed. We are to be married in three weeks…send them away!”

She had never seen him like this, the unruffled and proper Phillip in such a stir. And so very determined and strong. “Go ahead; you may go.” She waved at Jimmons and Verbena. Then, amazingly, considering the situation, she had a logical thought. “Is Mother up and about?”

“She will be now,” replied Verbena.

“Keep her from me, then. Tell her whatever you wish, but keep her from here until the marquess leaves.”

“But it is not proper—” began Maisie.

“Go. Please. It will be fine if no one speaks of this.”

Only after they left did Victoria allow herself to look at Phillip. The knot in her stomach had twisted tighter. She had thought to have more time to decide what to do…how to respond to Phillip. How to tell him she could not marry him.

But her decision was made. It was the right one.

“Victoria, Victoria.” He stood next to her bed, hands behind him, as if trying to keep himself from reaching for her. “I am so sorry, but I could not wait. I needed to make sure you were here, were safe.”

“Phillip…” She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment. What could she say? “Phillip, I am fine. You see me; I am safe. I only had the headache.”

Where had that come from? She hadn't planned to continue her charade.

He looked at her from above, standing over her, his blue eyes sharp but still wild. “Victoria.”

“Phillip, sit down. Here.” She smoothed her hand over the French-knotted coverlet, making a space for him next to her hip.

“I don't know if I…should.” He looked at her, and she saw something in his gaze she'd never seen before. “If it's proper.”

Victoria laughed. She couldn't help it. “Phillip, don't be absurd .. .you are already here, in my bedchamber. In three weeks I will be in yours.” Their eyes met and her mouth dried. Had she really said that? That lie?

He sat, his solid weight heavy on the edge of the bed, tilting her toward him. Through the layers of blankets his leg touched hers.

“In three weeks. I don't know that I can wait so long.” He reached over, touched her unbound hair, and let his hand trace her cheekbone before curling it back next to him. “But I must know, where did you go last night, Victoria? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“I wasn't feeling well,” she told him. Why was she still lying? She had to let him go.

“Victoria, I love you and you will be my wife, but one thing I cannot tolerate is dishonesty.” He was angry, an emotion she'd never seen in him before. True anger, layered with a sort of desperate concern. But not frightening. No, this was an anger she could live with. “What were you doing in St. Giles last night? Tell me the truth.”

Then her tears burst forth. Everything she had held back in the last weeks, since she had had those dreams. Since she had learned of her calling.

Wracking sobs, shaking, and trembling—the results of fear she'd submerged so deeply when fighting for her life—everything poured out of her into Phillip's shoulder, for he'd gathered her close, the bedsheets falling away as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Ah, Victoria…Victoria,” he crooned, smoothing a hand over her head, down over the tangled curls of her hair, bumping along her spine. “My God, Victoria, what is it? I will fix it; just tell me. I'll make it right. I'm not without resources. I'll use them all if I must.”

When she pulled away from his drenched coat, he had a handkerchief ready to mop her face and wipe her nose, as if she were a child. She felt like a child being cared for. For the first time in almost two months, she felt as if she didn't need to be in charge. In control.

The strong one.

She had never loved Phillip more than she did in that moment.

“Thank you,” she said with the soft hiccup of her last sob.

He dropped the handkerchief and grabbed her shoulders. “What is it? Tell me. I cannot bear to see you like this.”

“I cannot.” She drew in a long, hitching breath. “I cannot tell you, Phillip, but I swear it is nothing you can change. Even if you had all the money in the world, and you reigned over this land, you could not change this.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes darting from side to side as if to get a better view inside her own gaze. The whites of his eyes were pink, cracked with red. “You must tell me.”

“I cannot.”

“Last night I came after you. I know it was you, despite the arguments your cousin made. At first I was afraid you were meeting a lover, and I followed you…because I had to know. I had to know if your heart was given to another. I thought even then that if it were, if I just knew it for certain, I would still want to marry you. I would find a way to drive him from your mind.

“But when your hackney—my God, Victoria, don't you know how dangerous it is to use a hackney?—stopped in St. Giles, I didn't know what to think. You wouldn't meet a lover there, no matter who he was. I saw you get out of the hackney and go through a door into one of the most dangerous-looking places I've ever seen.
I
would not have gone there if I hadn't known I must protect you. I had to use my pistol to convince some of the street men to let me by.

“Your cousin saved my life. I am not sure what happened; it is all quite a muddle in my mind. I just know I left to look for you, and then I woke up at home. How I got there is very unclear. I dreamed about red eyes….

“You see, my darling, I don't understand what happened last night, but I didn't come here with accusations or preconceived notions. There's nothing you can tell me that would change the way I feel about you. Please.”

She could give him something; maybe it would help him to understand. “Do you believe in destiny?”

He nodded, a bare hint of relief tangible in his face. “Of course. It was destiny that first brought us together years ago.”

“Destiny is unchangeable. It's indelible, written in stone. Power and money and resources cannot change it, Phillip. You cannot alter it. And that's why I cannot tell you, no matter how much you beg, what I was doing in St. Giles last night. Because it's my destiny.”

A destiny he could never accept or understand—a wife who killed, a world of evil and darkness. Phillip was too much in the light. She couldn't destroy his world.

“Victoria.”

She was shaking her head. “I love you, Phillip. But I cannot.”

He looked stricken. “Victoria, with all that I am, I ask you to please tell me. I vow I shall not be angry, no matter what it is. But I cannot have this between us if we are to marry.”

Now. Her hands frozen under the warmth of the blankets, she drew in her breath and closed her eyes. She would not look at him whilst she said it. “Then perhaps we should not marry.”

He was still, so still. Even his breath stopped. She could hear nothing in the darkness of her closed eyes but the faint voices from belowstairs. And the rapid, painful thudding of her heart.

“Victoria.” The anguish in his voice opened her eyes. Phillip was not looking at her. He looked out the window at the sunshine pouring on the rooftop of a nearby garret. A blue jay, with its unpleasant squawking song, fluttered to a stop on a nearby tree limb.

“I'm sorry, Phillip.”

He stood abruptly, spinning from the bed, stalking to the door. She watched him through pooling eyes, and he paused at the threshold. “If you change your mind…” He spoke to the door.

“I can't.” She forced the words from her throat. She wanted to call him back.

Phillip didn't look at her; he went through the door, closing it with a soft finality behind him.

Victoria didn't understand. She would have slammed it.

+ 18 +

Interlude in a Carriage

Victoria sent a note to
Madame LeClaire, canceling her fitting due to illness. The word would be out soon enough, she knew, that the engagement of the Marquess of Rockley had been broken. It would be in the paper within days—either the Society tattletale section, or the announcements. It depended who got the news first.

She didn't have the heart to tell her mother. Not yet. Perhaps in a day or so, when the pain wasn't so raw. Lady Melly was so happy to be bringing a marquess into the family, Victoria didn't have the courage to tell her she'd called it off.

Verbena tsked over her red eyes, but said nothing save, “I'm so sorry, miss. It's not the same, but I felt pretty bad when I lost my Jassie to another woman. Leastwise you know it ain't that.”

If that was supposed to make her feel better, it didn't. Victoria only sent Verbena from her room and stared out the window, watching the screeching blue jay as it visited the tree.

She begged off from attending a dinner party that night. Instead, as soon as her mother left to trade gossip and jokes with the other ladies of the
ton
, Victoria slipped out of the house through the back door. She was dressed in her split-skirt gown, specially made for hunting vampires.

That night she tracked and staked five undead.

The next night, three more.

The third night she only found one. It felt bloody good when she drove that stake into the vampire's chest.

But it wasn't enough, so she wandered the streets near Covent Garden and allowed herself to be accosted by several mortal criminals. After showing them her pistol and the expertise with which she could kick and punch, Victoria ran them off into the darkness and felt a bit more satisfied.

She didn't return to Grantworth House until after dawn. Then she fell into bed and slept restlessly.

When Aunt Eustacia sent a summons on the fourth day after Phillip burst into Victoria's bedchamber, she considered ignoring it. She didn't feel the need to meet with her aunt or Max, who would certainly be there. She was doing her job hunting and killing the undead. Besides, they'd retrieved the Book of Antwartha—which she had hidden at the chapel at St. Heath's Row before she and Rockley broke things off.