After Midnight

  Caroline rested her hand on Adrian’s shoulder, remembering that terrible moment when it had looked as if his brother had murdered her sister…and any hope of a future they might have shared.

  She expected Adrian to cover her hand with his own. But he rose from the chair instead, leaving her hand hanging awkwardly in midair.

  He paced over to the French doors and swept aside the heavy drapes, gazing out into the waning night. “What about Duvalier?” he asked, the name a poisonous oath on his lips. “What did Portia tell you about him?”

  Caroline felt her features harden. “She told me that he snatched her before she could even reach the ball, that he kept her tied up in some cave all night, that he tossed her into that crypt with Julian as if she was nothing more than a piece of raw meat.”

  Adrian swore. “Not once since all this began has that bastard dared to confront me face to face. I should have known this time would be no different. He’s probably leagues from here by now.”

  “His day of reckoning will come, Adrian. He’ll answer for every life he’s destroyed, every precious soul he’s stolen, including Julian’s. Together, we’ll make sure of that.”

  Adrian continued to gaze out into the night. “As soon as Portia is strong enough to travel, I want you to take her and Vivienne and leave this place.”

  “I’m sure Constable Larkin would be more than willing to see my sisters safely back to Aunt Marietta’s.”

  “Alastair has already agreed to escort all three of you to London.”

  Caroline smiled. “So the two of you have been conspiring behind our backs, eh? That’s not very sporting of you. You’ll simply have to tell the good constable that I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re going back to London and you’re going to pretend the last fortnight never happened.”

  Her smile faded. “You can’t ask that of me.”

  “I’m not asking.” Adrian turned to face her, his eyes meeting hers for the first time since she’d walked into the tower. What she saw in their bleak depths chilled her to the bone.

  Despite her growing apprehension, she managed a shaky laugh. “I thought we’d already determined that you haven’t the right to order me about. That can only be purchased with a special license from the archbishop.”

  He shook his head before saying softly, “I’m afraid I can no longer afford to purchase such a license. Not when it could cost the both of us so dearly.”

  “It’s a price I’m only too willing to pay.”

  “But I’m not. When Julian came staggering out of that crypt with Portia in his arms, both of them half-dead, I realized that I had been a naive fool to believe I could protect any of you. That’s why you have to go now…before it’s too late.”

  “How can you admit you love me, then in the next breath ask me to leave you?”

  He stabbed a finger toward Julian’s motionless form. “Because that could be you lying in that bed right now. Or worse yet, lying in your grave. No one I love will ever be safe until Duvalier is destroyed. And until that day, I can’t afford any more distractions.”

  “Is that all I’ve been to you?” Caroline whispered. “A distraction?”

  He strode toward her, his face taut with anguish. “If I say yes, will you go? What if I tell you that the night we spent together was nothing more than a passably pleasant diversion? That you were more easily seduced than most? That I found your lack of experience tiresome and much prefer the practiced caresses of whores and opera dancers to your clumsy fumblings and overwrought declarations of love?”

  Caroline backed away from him, unable to keep from flinching beneath the cruel lash of his words.

  He caught her by the shoulders, giving her a rough shake. “Is that what you want to hear from my lips? If I tell you that my only intention from the beginning was to seduce you, then discard you, will it make you hate me enough to leave me?”

  “No,” she whispered, gazing up at him through a veil of tears. “It would only make me love you more because I would know that you loved me enough to put your own soul in jeopardy by telling such a blatant lie.”

  Biting off an inarticulate oath, Adrian released her and paced a few feet away. “You might be willing to risk your own life to stay with me, but what if we should bring a child into this madness? Would you be willing to risk his life—his soul—as well?”

  Caroline touched a hand to her stomach. “Have you forgotten that I might already be carrying your child?”

  Adrian might be able to hide his love for her behind a resolute mask, but he couldn’t disguise the hopeless yearning in his gaze as it drifted down to her belly. Only then did she realize that she had made a fatal tactical error.

  “All the more reason for you to go,” he said softly, slowly raising his eyes to meet hers.

  She felt the tears in her eyes spill down her cheeks. “If you do this, Adrian, then Duvalier has already won.”

  And she had lost. That knowledge tasted as bitter as ashes in Caroline’s mouth.

  Determined to prove that she could be every bit as ruthless as he could, she crossed to Adrian. “If I were a whore or an opera dancer, you would at least owe me one last kiss.” Cupping his face in her hands, she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, much as she had that magical night at Vauxhall when she had offered him both her kiss and her heart without even realizing it.

  He was even more helpless to resist that offer now. As his lips parted to welcome the honeyed sweep of her tongue, his arms went around her, molding her soft curves to the hard planes of his body. When he began to walk backward, tugging her toward the dressing screen on the other side of the room, she willingly joined the dance.

  He sank down on the stool behind the screen and drew her into his lap, never once relinquishing his greedy claim on her lips. Caroline recognized the urgency in his kiss because it was the same urgency that was coursing through her own veins, a desperate hunger to celebrate life in the tender swirl of his tongue through her mouth, the heated breath of his sigh, the irresistible pulse that beat where their bodies ached to be joined. It was a rejection of death and darkness and all of the shadowy horrors courted by a monster like Duvalier.

  As he tugged down the bodice of her dress with one hand, her mouth flowered against the bold curve of his jaw, savoring the salty sweetness of his skin, the tantalizing scrape of his whiskers against her sensitive lips.

  She lifted her head to find the ivory curves of her breasts exposed to his heavy-lidded gaze. Her nipples were already as ripe and rosy as fresh cherries.

  “Your brother…” she gasped, tangling her fingers in his hair.

  “Will be dead to the world for hours,” he promised her, dragging her nipple into his mouth and suckling her with a fierce and tender hunger that left her panting with need and clenching her thighs together against a molten rush of desire.

  Shifting his position on the stool, he urged one of her legs over both of his so that she was straddling the rigid bulge that strained at the butter-soft doeskin of his trousers.

  Caroline bit back a moan, that exquisite pressure alone enough to send tremors of anticipation shivering through her womb. Those tremors deepened to shudders when Adrian’s hand disappeared beneath her skirt, his deft fingers gliding up the downy softness of her thigh to seek the narrow slit in her silk drawers. When she had spied on the lovers at Vauxhall, she had wondered what the man’s hand could have been doing beneath the woman’s skirt to make her writhe and moan so shamelessly. Now she knew.

  Since she was already dripping with desire for him, there was no need for Adrian to prepare her for what was to come. Yet his fingers lingered against her eager and quivering flesh, working their skillful magic until he was forced to capture her wild cry of abandon in his mouth.

  Still kissing her as if she was the only taste of heaven he would ever know, he tore open the front flap of his trousers and drove himself through the slit in her drawers and into her.

  This time he wa
sn’t content to let her set the pace. Cupping her bottom in his big, strong hands, he lifted her off the stool. She wrapped her legs around his waist, clinging to him helplessly as he braced her weight against the nearest wall and drove up and into her again and again, his long, deep strokes battering the very mouth of her womb as his tongue ravished her mouth with equal ruthlessness.

  Just when Caroline didn’t think she could bear another second of the mindless pleasure without letting out a scream loud enough to wake the dead, Adrian rocked back up into her for one final thrust that threatened to cleave both her body and her heart in two.

  She collapsed against his throat, still impaled by his shuddering length. She wished they could stay this way forever with their hearts beating as one, their bodies joined and throbbing with release. Adrian slowly slid down the wall, still cradling her in his arms.

  He could no longer feign indifference. When his voice sounded in her ear, it was rough with both urgency and regret. “Once you’re safely back home and we’re out of England and back on Duvalier’s scent, I’ll write you. I’ll send money, all that you and Portia could possibly need. You’ll never have to rely on anyone else’s charity again. I’ve already hired Alastair to manage some of my affairs in London so Vivienne will never have to worry about where their next meal will come from.”

  Caroline felt every last drop of warmth in her soul cool to ice. Carefully extracting herself from his lap, she climbed to her feet. With all the dignity she could muster, she pulled up her bodice and adjusted her skirt. She was rather at a loss on how to proceed from there until Adrian reached up to a nearby shelf and handed her one of his cravats. Turning away from him, she performed the necessary ablutions.

  When she turned back to him, her face was as composed as it had been when she had stood in the doorway of the great hall and pretended to be Vivienne. “If you think I’m going to wait for you, then you’re wrong,” she informed him. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pretend this fortnight never happened. Now that you’ve given me a taste of the pleasures a woman can find in a man’s arms, I doubt that I’ll be content to spend the rest of my life in a cold, empty bed. You needn’t bother to send money. If I can’t find a husband, then perhaps I can find some kind and generous man who would be willing to make me his mistress.”

  Adrian buttoned the front flap of his trousers, his eyes as stormy and dangerous as she had ever seen them. “Just who’s going to hell for lying now?”

  Caroline smoothed the rumpled skirt of Eloisa’s gown, continuing as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’d like nothing more than to throw this gown in the rag bin, but I’ll have the servants launder it and return it to you. Perhaps it will bring you comfort when you have only your ghosts to keep you warm at night.”

  With that, she turned and left him. With Julian sleeping, she didn’t even have the satisfaction of slamming the French doors behind her.

  Caroline hurried down the stone steps and started across the bridge, swiping hot, furious tears from her cheeks as she walked. The stars were fading and the rain had stopped, leaving the world glistening with the promise of a new dawn. But without Adrian, she knew she would be forever trapped in some dreary night of the soul.

  Her steps slowed as she reached the peak of the bridge. She was in no hurry to return to her lonely bedchamber. There was nothing for her to do there but wash Adrian’s scent from her skin for the last time and start packing.

  “Bullheaded, impossible man,” she muttered, turning to rest her hands on the bridge’s parapet. She dug her fingernails into the rough stone, welcoming its harsh bite. The wind tugged at her hair, tried to dry her tears before they could fall. “I should have staked him through the heart when I had the chance.”

  “My my, Adrian likes his women bloodthirsty these days, does he not?”

  Caroline whirled around to find a hooded and cloaked figure standing in the middle of the bridge, blocking the path to her bedchamber. She would have sworn he hadn’t been there only seconds before.

  “How did you get up here?” she asked, her heart lurching into an uneven rhythm.

  He drew back his hood to reveal a fall of dark hair and a full-lipped smile that was both cruel and sensual. “Perhaps I flew.”

  Caroline struggled to swallow her burgeoning terror. “I hope you don’t expect me to believe such nonsense, Monsieur Duvalier. Julian already told me that vampires can’t turn into bats.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dawn was coming, but not for Adrian.

  Caroline had taken the last of the light with her, leaving him sitting at his brother’s bedside, draped in a shroud of gloom. Without the candlelit brightness of her hair, the tender glow in her eyes, the loving warmth of her smile, he was doomed to dwell in shadow, all but indistinguishable from the creatures he hunted.

  Adrian closed his eyes, but all he could see was Caroline waving his handkerchief at him in the drawing room of the town house; rising up on tiptoe to boldly press the enticing softness of her lips against his at Vauxhall; lying back among the pillows of his bed, her ivory skin bathed in moonlight, her arms outstretched to welcome him. Adrian rubbed his aching brow, already coming to realize that she was going to haunt him with a vengeance even Eloisa had never shown.

  Julian stirred, giving him an excuse to open his eyes and escape her, if only for a moment.

  Julian’s eyes had fluttered open. Licking his lips, he croaked, “Still thirsty.”

  Supporting Julian’s head, Adrian tilted the goblet to his lips. Julian swallowed, the muscles of his throat working greedily. Although Adrian’s first instinct was to grimace, he’d learned long ago that he couldn’t afford to be fastidious when it came to his brother’s eating habits. Blood wasn’t only sustenance to him, it was life.

  When Julian had drunk his fill, Adrian gently settled him back among the pillows.

  “Our plan,” Julian whispered, blinking up at him. “It worked.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, leaning closer to the bed.

  “Our plan,” Julian repeated. “Eloisa…Duvalier knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “About…Caroline. He called her…” Julian’s lashes drifted back down to his cheeks, his voice fading on a weary sigh “…your new whore.”

  Adrian slowly straightened. He didn’t realize the goblet had tilted in his hands until he saw the dark pool of blood spreading around his feet.

  “Adrian,” Julian said without opening his eyes.

  “What?” Adrian snapped, his panic swelling with every breath.

  Julian opened his eyes, looking straight at him before whispering, “You need more than your ghosts to keep you warm at night.”

  “Ah, so no introductions are necessary,” Duvalier said, a hint of a French accent burnishing each of his words with a continental flair. He took a step toward Caroline, making the bridge suddenly seem very narrow, if not impassable. “Good. I’ve always found them tiresome. I can generally learn everything I need to know about a man—or a woman—by listening to the sound of their screams as they beg for my mercy.”

  “Charming,” Caroline said briskly, fighting to hide her fear. She knew he would only feed on it. She desperately wished she was still wearing the cloak loaded with weapons. With her body draped in Eloisa’s flimsy concoction of satin and tulle, she felt worse than naked. “So how did you know I was Adrian’s woman?”

  His aquiline nostrils flared with distaste. “Because I can smell him on you, the same way I could smell him on Eloisa.” He caught the shadow that flickered across her face. “Oh, he may have loved her, but they were never lovers, mon cher. But that didn’t stop him from putting his hands on her, his mouth…”

  “That must have been very difficult for you.”

  He shrugged. “More difficult for her, I think. In the end I made sure that she died a virgin. Perhaps that was my greatest revenge of all. That she died never knowing the touch of a man. Never knowing the pleasure he could give her, only the pain.”

  Car
oline began to back away from him, desperate to retrace her steps back to Adrian’s bedchamber, Adrian’s arms.

  Duvalier followed her step for step, the hem of his cloak swaying around his booted ankles. “You can’t imagine what it was like to stand there with the taste of her blood in my mouth and watch every longing, every hope, every dream she ever had fade from her eyes as her heart slowed to a sigh, then a whisper, then finally stopped. I was going to have her then, you know, but he came and ruined it all.”

  Caroline shuddered. “How could you even contemplate such an unspeakable thing? I thought you were supposed to love her.”

  His indifferent façade cracked. “She wasn’t worthy of my love! Is that why you’re wearing that ridiculous gown? Because Adrian believed that when I saw you, I would clap a hand over my heart and cry out, ‘My darling Eloisa, I always knew you’d come back to me.’” He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe he actually thought I’d been mooning over the fickle bitch for all these years. He always was such an incurable romantic.”

  “Yes, I was,” Adrian said, emerging from the foot of the stairs behind Duvalier with a full-sized crossbow braced in his arms. “And I still am. Which is why I’m only going to ask you once to step away from the woman I love.”

  Caroline let out an involuntary cry, her heart surging with hope. Adrian must have slipped out of the south tower and circled around through her bedchamber.

  Duvalier slowly turned to face him, a cold smile chilling his features. “Bonjour, mon ami. Or should I call you mon frère?”

  “You’re no friend of mine, you bastard. And you’re certainly no brother,” Adrian said, his tawny hair blowing in the wind. “You relinquished your right to both of those titles when you embraced a brotherhood of monsters and murderers.”

  “While you were embracing the woman who was supposed to belong to me.”