Ravensclaw (17 page)

“No, you won’t.” Emily aimed the pistol at Oxter. “Not without telling me why the three of you are making a habit of accosting me.”

Twitcher moaned. “It wis no’ me, I dinna.”

Oxter smacked him again. “The de’il will get ye for tellin’ lies.”

“Tha’s enow clishmaclaver!” Mowdiewarp interrupted sternly, one eye fixed on Drogo, and the other on Emily’s gun. “Twitcher’s in a richt pelter, lass. Not t’ mention he’s a windae-licker. Pay nae mind t’ anything he says. Noo aboot this wee stooshie—”

Twitcher might be embarrassed at having tossed the lass over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and also terrified by the vague notion that it would go the worse for him if he lay a hand on her; but there was a limit to the abuse a lad could take. “Wha ye callin’ a windae-licker, ye eejit?” he demanded, and popped Mowdiewarp in the nose. Caught off guard, Mowdiewarp fell on his own arse, blood streaming down his face.

“Haud on, ye sumph!” snarled Oxter, and grabbed Twitcher by the arm. Twitcher took offense at being grabbed. Mowdiewarp climbed to his feet. A proper stremach ensued. Emily and Drogo watched. Emily concluded that Jamie’s bajins were fools.

Fools with a mission. She raised her voice. “Stop that at once or I will shoot one of you!”

Twitcher pointed at Oxter. Before he could voice the suggestion that danced on the tip of his tongue, a tall figure appeared at the end of the close. Tall as a building, eyes as red as fire. A reluctant closer inspection, and Twitcher conceded that the eyes weren’t red
as fire. Yet.

The face was unnervingly familiar. Twitcher had a terrifying memory of being held far above the ground. Threats involving livers and intestines. Monstrous sharp teeth. “Ah dinna ken ocht aboot it,” he moaned, and sank into a swoon.

Emily was more interested in the newcomer than in her accostors, the other two of whom were cowering in the shadows of a building. She glowered at Drogo. “Traitor,” she said.

Val clamped a strong hand on her shoulder, and squeezed. Emily dropped both pistol and umbrella. “I told you to pretend to be a nitwit, not to act like one,” he snapped.

There was some justification for his comment. Not that Emily would admit it. She jerked her chin at the pendant. “I wasn’t in any real danger. Look, it hasn’t turned dark.”

Twitcher stirred. Drogo, who was sitting guard, licked his face. Twitcher opened one eye, moaned, and scuttled off to join his comrades by the wall.

All three were babbling at once. Emily snapped, “Now see what you’ve done!”

“What I’ve done is nothing like what I’d like to do to you.” Ungently, Val tucked her under his arm.

A second figure appeared at the opening of the close. In the blink of an eye he was beside them. Oxter goggled and gasped as Cezar grasped him by the throat. “Wrens making prey, Miss Dinwiddie? Shall I pinch off this one’s head?”

“Um.” Emily was distracted. Val’s body was solid against hers. Almost as solid as when she’d sat on his lap and nuzzled his neck.

When he’d given her her first real kiss. For good measure, she kicked him again. “Why is it males must meddle? I wished to find out who sent these men after me. Clearly someone sent them because they haven’t a brain to share among all three! There was no need for you to interfere.”

Val released her to rub his shin. “How inconsiderate of us. And just when things were going so well.”

Cezar surveyed the gibbering Oxter. “You believed they would confide in you?”

Emily bent to pick up her umbrella and her pistol. “Don’t bother pointing out that I can only shoot one of them.”

“Oxter!” suggested Mowdiewarp. Twitcher agreed. Oxter struggled all the harder in Cezar’s grasp.

Cezar tightened his fingers until the man’s eyes bulged. “Perhaps you will allow us to assist you.”

“You
assist her,” Val said coolly. “I’m still sulking. She called me a meddling male.”

Emily glared at him. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“On the contrary, Miss Dinwiddie.” Ravensclaw’s smile was feral. “I’m not enjoying this at all.”

He was truly angry with her. Emily felt like she’d been frozen by a blast of frigid arctic air. “Then go to the devil! I didn’t invite you here.” She turned to Cezar. “Yes, assist me, please.”

Cezar loosened his grip so that Oxter could gulp in breath, then fixed the man with his stern gaze. Oxter’s face went slack. His eyes rolled back in his head. After a moment passed, Cezar released him. Twitcher moaned as Oxter flopped to the ground.

Emily surveyed the fallen man. “Will he be all right?”

“No, but he’ll be no worse than we found him,” Cesar told her. “This one knows nothing, not even how his instructions were received. He experienced them as a compulsion in his mind.”

Val looked at the other men. “They know even less.”

“Don’t hurt them,” Emily said quickly. “As you say, they’re merely dupes, and they did me no real harm.” She turned to Cezar. “Perhaps a strong suggestion that they find another line of work?”

“It’s hardly that simple. Their employer won’t be pleased when he learns his plans were foiled.” Oxter had wakened, and Cezar contemplated the quivering trio. “I suggest we implant some suggestions of our own.”

“Such as that this never happened?” Val frowned at Twitcher. “I already tried that.”

Twitcher clasped the top of his head. “Ye’ll no’ chop it off!”

Emily pushed up her spectacles. “No one’s going to chop off your head. Why would you think that?”

“Bogeys!” wailed Twitcher, and buried his face in Mowdiewarp’s coat.

Mowdiewarp patted him. “ ‘Twas no’ these lads. Look ye, Twitcher, they’re tae tall.” His eyes narrowed. “Lest they can shrink themselves.
Than
bogey wis shorter, smaller. We couldnae see his face, bein’ as he wis wrapt in a dark cloak. An he glowed. Something in his hand.”

“The d’Auvergne athame,” murmured Emily. Val and Cezar exchanged a glance. She opened her mouth, but Val turned his frown on her, and she closed it with a snap. Clearly he was in no mood to tuck her up against him again. A pity. She was feeling unaccountably cold.

Cezar made further inquiries. The trio knew only that they had interrupted what they called a bogey at his work not far from that spot. Cezar sent them on their way with the understanding that they had neither seen Emily nor had this encounter, that they weren’t going to see Emily again even if they fell smack on top of her. The three of them shambled down the street.

Cezar turned to Emily. “Perhaps you will explain how is that
you
can close your mind to us, Miss Dinwiddie.”

Emily was feeling ill-used. “Perhaps I won’t.”

Two pairs of cold eyes rested on her. Drogo bumped against her knee. “Oh, very well! My papa taught me from the cradle how to block my emotions.” She glared at Val. “So that no selfish supersensible creature could make me his dupe.”

“Enough.” Val moved, and somehow the pistol was no longer in her hand, and her arm was in his grasp. Emily tried to jerk away from him. His fingers were like iron. “We are going home now, Miss Dinwiddie. I am going to lock you in the dungeon until I cease to be annoyed.”

Emily paused in her struggles to peer up into his face. Val looked as if he might well carry out his threat. “I’ve never explored a real dungeon,” she confessed. “Does yours have a torture chamber? A scavenger’s daughter? Thumbscrews?”

Val clamped his teeth together. Cezar murmured, “ ‘Where eagles dare not perch.’ ”

Better some of a pudding than none of a pie.

(Romanian proverb)

Lady Alberta frowned at Val over the top of her teacup. “Tsk!” she said.

Val closed his eyes against the pain of the first headache he’d experienced in decades. “Tsk?”

Lady Alberta selected another piece of shortbread. “It was not well done of you to make Emily cry.”

Granted, Val had lost his temper, also for the first time in decades. Granted, he had said things better left unsaid. Even so, surely the most critical of observers must admit he’d had sufficient provocation to test the patience of a saint.

Apparently not. The various members of his household were treating him as if he’d brought home the plague. Zizi, Bela, and Lilian had turned a collective cold shoulder, while Isidore informed him sternly that no garden was without its weeds. Jamie had damn near dumped the tea tray in his lap. All this despite the fact they had all been so caught up in helping — or in the case of Lady Alberta, hindering — Mrs. MacCamish create a hotchpotch that Emily had been able to slip away unnoticed from the house.

Lady Alberta was still glowering. Val bowed to the inevitable. “Where is she?”

“In your study.” Lady Alberta pushed the tea tray toward him. “A peace offering might be in order. I know for a certainty Emily has had nothing to eat today.”

Val picked up the tray. Clearly, Lady Alberta considered Emily’s refusal to take sustenance his responsibility. He supposed he would also be blamed for whatever folly she might next commit.

He couldn’t fairly fault her for impatience. She must feel that he’d done little, despite her request for his help. Life — or his existence — had been simple once, before Miss Dinwiddie came knocking at his castle gate. Val climbed the stair and pushed open the study door.

Emily sat at the oak table, the
Orimorium Verum
open in front of her. Sunlight struggling through the ancient windows made a fiery halo of her untidy hair. Machka was curled up by her elbow. Drogo sprawled at her feet.

Even the animals regarded him with disfavor. Val set down the tea tray. “Out,” he said. Drogo padded toward the doorway, giving him a wide berth.

“You, too.” Val picked up Machka and deposited her in the stairway. Emily rose from her chair. “Not you,” he said.

She sat back down. He closed and locked the door. “Lady Alberta suggested you might like some tea.” Emily shook her head, her gaze fixed firmly on the grimoire.

He moved toward her. Emily glanced up with a combination of defiance and dread. Val plucked her up out of the chair and sat down, holding her on his lap. She was stiff as several fence posts. He set aside her glasses and pulled her against his chest.

Gradually, she relaxed against him. He waited patiently. At last a gruff little voice muttered, “You don’t have a dungeon. You lied to me again.”

“I do have a dungeon. It just isn’t here.” He experienced a sudden urge to take her back to Corby Castle, lock himself with her in the dungeon, and let the rest of the world go and be damned.

Emily’s feelings were firmly closed to him. Still, she moved one hand to rest against Val’s chest. “I suppose you expect me to apologize.”

“For what?”

“You said I was a nitwit. Among other things.”

“I said you
acted
like a nitwit. As for those other things—” Val rested his chin on the top of her head. “I was frightened for you.”

A pause while Emily mulled over this. “Were you, really?”

“Yes.”

Emily hesitated. Val felt her reach out to touch his mind. He lowered his guard and let her in. She was cautious, like a babe taking its first steps, exploring the parameters of this new world. It was both endearing and almost unbearably sensual. Val tamped down his emotions, and let her poke around.

She withdrew, shifted in his lap so that she might see his face. “I shouldn’t be able to do that, should I?”

“No.” Her soft little bottom was snuggled against him in a most distracting manner. Val stroked one hand along her spine.

She lowered her gaze to his chin. “I have learned from my reading that for each
vampir
there is an
ailalta,
one destined other, who must be proven worthy by meeting a challenge, a
provocare.
Rather like a knight of old slaying a dragon for his ladylove. Since you and I have a special affinity, I wonder if perhaps I am your
ailalta.”
She blushed.

The idea of Emily slaying dragons for him chilled Val to his toes. “I suspect this ‘affinity’ you mention is more likely because your ancestress and I— Well.”

She stared at him. “You and Iso—”

“Don’t say that name! I’m afraid we did. Curiosity seems to run rampant in the female members of your family.”

“I suppose it does.” Tentatively, Emily reached out and touched his lower lip; ran the tips of her fingers over his cheeks, his jaw, his throat.

Val held very still, and contemplated thwarted lust. If she didn’t soon stop stroking him, Miss Dinwiddie would find out for herself if vampires wept tears of blood.

Before he realized what she was about, Emily snatched up his letter opener and slashed her arm. A red ribbon flowed over her freckled skin. “I have come to the conclusion that if one desires something, one shouldn’t sit about waiting for it to fall into one’s lap. Taste me,” she said.

He truly didn’t wish to. Rather, he wished to — Val hadn’t experienced this ravening a thirst in all his countless years — but he tried very hard to refrain. And then Emily raised her bleeding arm to his lips, and the barriers between them came crashing down.

Val groaned and surrendered to his nature. Emily watched wide-eyed as he licked away the blood, then pressed his mouth against her flesh.

Her pleasure curled through him, her heat. Her heart sped up as his hunger shot through her, shocking and intense.

He bent to kiss her. Emily’s mouth was soft beneath his, eager, warm. Val bit gently at her lip. Her neck. His teeth found her pulse—

I am willing. Drink from me.

Those simple words stopped him. Val drew back, appalled at what he’d almost done.

Emily’s disappointment washed over him. She looked bereft. Val ran his thumb over her soft lower lip. “You can’t want this.”

Emily caught his hand. “Don’t tell me what I want!  I know from my reading that for you to drink the blood of another is the ultimate intimacy.
Dissertation on the Bloodsucking Dead
.”

Val was stunned. She trusted him. He couldn’t remember when he had last been given someone’s trust.

Not something he’d missed, trust, and the responsibility that accompanied it. Val clamped his teeth together and his sharp fangs nicked his lip. Emily caught the trickling liquid on her fingers and raised them to her mouth.