The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing (8 page)

Shrugging, she pulled out the Van Helsing model #2 and closed her bag. The smell of garlic thankfully faded, and Jane breathed easier.

“Sometimes, I can be such a ninny,” she despaired. Not often—well, not as often as her cousins accused her of—but sometimes. She should have checked her bag before leaving home. But there had been that yellow-bellied sapsucker outside the window, and Cook had brought those delicious apricot tarts…

“Well, no use harping on missed stakes,” she decreed fatalistically. She would have to stick the great big, very handsome Earl of Wolverton with a very short, very thin weapon. If she was lucky, she would succeed. If she was even luckier, she would be carried away by a giant yellow-bellied sapsucker to live with him in the clouds.

Time passed, and Jane grew restless squatting on her tree limb. She began to feel like that Tars fellow, Lord Graystroke, who had lived in a hut with baboons for many years. Only recently had he returned to England, forced by his father to reluctantly do his familial duty. Lord Graystroke had come back with incredibly bad manners, such as scratching himself in public and gulping down bananas. Still, the man had a nice smile and good looks that had many women pining for him. Jane had felt an instant kinship with him for having to live a life solely for the benefit of others and never himself.

Some members of polite society complained that Lord Graystroke had a chimp on his shoulder. To Jane, this made perfect sense. The titled nobleman had lived among apes most of his life; if he wanted to carry one around, who was she to judge? Besides, Jane understood exactly how Lord Graystroke felt with a monkey on his back, as she herself felt the quite cumbersome weight of her ancestors frowning down at her from above—or, it could very well be possible, frowning up from down below.

Jane pictured the generations upon generations of Van Helsings. The portraits situated in the family galley always stared down at her, their hawklike features judging, waiting for her to make a mistake. And they never had to wait long, she had to admit.

The distant sound of a horse’s hooves on the cobblestones drew Jane from her thoughts. The Earl of Wolverton was on his way to the home of his yellow-ribboned mistress. He was taking this route along Berkeley Square, under the old oak tree, just as her father’s spies had predicted, and at the right time of night.

“ ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,’” she quoted in a near whisper, recalling from vampire physiology that the Nosferatu could hear remarkably well for being dead.

Jane herself could distinctly hear the coming horse on the cobblestone street. Closer and closer the man and his horse came, and Jane peered into the inky blackness. Squinting hard, at last she could just make out the earl and his stallion. Asher was riding his favorite steed, an impressive dappled-gray brute with a solid white mane and tail. The horse was almost as impressive as his owner.

Lord Asher was on his way to his latest paramour’s house to give her an emerald necklace—his way of apologizing for running off to Paris a few months back. He had fled in order to escape having to watch Baron Ian Huntsley marry Clair Frankenstein.

“Clair,” he muttered to himself. “How can that silly woman be happy in her marriage to that nodcock?” The whole conundrum disturbed his sense of order in the universe. “Has the woman no sense of good taste?” Patting his dappled stallion’s neck, he added, “I’m much more handsome, wealthier, more fashionable, and my title is greater than Huntsley’s!”

He shook his head, thinking that if he were not quite so self-assured of his own superiority, he would be downcast. But when someone had looks like his—he shrugged philosophically—it was hard to be too Friday-faced.

“Clair Frankenstein Huntsley will end me in Bedlam,” he remarked crossly to his horse. “I’m even reduced to talking to you.”

The stallion lifted his head and snorted.

“My sentiments exactly.” Kneeing the beast slightly to increase its stride, Asher added, “Perhaps a good roll with my latest mistress will drive the doldrums away.”

Up ahead and high above, Jane waited. Her heart rate was increasing. There was now no time for a reprieve. The earl was dead in her sights. She crouched, feeling a deadening of her heart. Clair would never forgive her. Jane would never forgive herself, she realized darkly as she prepared to leap. But as she threw one leg over the limb, her head jerked back. It took her a frightened moment to determine that her waist-length braid was caught on several branches of the oak.

“Horsefeathers! Will nothing go right this night?” she murmured, yanking at her hair and finally managing to free it. But approaching the massive oak, Neil Asher, the Earl of Wolverton, was in innocent bliss of his impending doom. So that was going well.

Heat surged into Lord Asher’s groin, his mind ignoring the slightly strange ambient sounds as he focused on reaching his paramour. Once there, he would coax her into kissing him all over, soothing his battered heart. His mind involved with such racy delights, he dismissed the noisy thump behind him, never looking back to see the spread-eagle figure leaping from the tree above, her skirts flying and her eyes closed, clutching a Van Helsing model #2 stake; nor did he see her hit the ground.

Yes, hurrying his horse along, the Earl of Wolverton was oblivious to all that went on behind him—a rare occurrence. And he missed one major thing go bump in the night.

“Vampires,
vampires everywhere, and not one dropped. To think!” the major accused, his tone full of anger.

Oh no, Jane thought. Her father was getting worse. He was always seeing vampires here, there and everywhere, but lately his obsession had gotten so bad that the manor halls were decked with boughs of garlic.

“You rushed, daughter. And once again you fell flat!” the major growled.

Yes, she had failed at her task of destroying the Earl of Wolverton. But really, did her father have to get so red faced about the whole affair? She was the one who’d taken the plunge.

“It may not have been one of my finer moments. In fact, it might be considered one of my lowest moments,” Jane conceded ruefully. Still, she was the one whose labors had borne no fruit after risking her life to go literally out on a limb. She was the one with the broken fingernails and bruised hip and elbows. And not forgotten was yet another gown ruined in her trek through danger.

“If I keep ruining gowns like this, I shall soon have nothing to wear,” she complained.

“Gowns! Who cares about gowns at a time like this? Dracul is in town, Jane, and you speak of clothes?”

“I feel rather like that nursery rhyme—Humpty Dumpty.” And all the prince vampires and all the major’s men couldn’t put her back together again.

“Nursery rhymes and vampires don’t mix, Jane,” her father retorted curtly.

Jane nodded. She was heartily sick of everything. She was tired of feeling less important than the clueless humanity amongst whom she lived. She was sick of not being pretty enough for society, a duckling in a world of swans. She was bored of never being clever enough or enough of a Van Helsing to suit her father’s staunch convictions of what she was and should be. If only women had more rights: the right to decide their own futures, the right to be heard. Well, Jane amended, she could be heard, but the men in her life rarely listened—except for her brother Brandon and Frederick Frankenstein.

Sometimes she really hated being under her father’s’ thumb, just like all good daughters and wives everywhere. She was tired of treading water, close to drowning at all times. If people could only accept her for who she was. But, then, who was she if not her father’s disappointment, the butt of her cousins’ jokes?

To the gentlemen of the ton she was a wallflower. She was Clair’s dear friend, Brandon’s sweet sister and Spot and Orville’s beloved mistress. It was strange, she thought ruefully, that she could see the reflection of herself in other people’s eyes, but never quite clearly in her own.

“Now pay attention, Jane. The whole art of war with the undead consists of getting at what is buried on the other side of the graveyard,” the major insisted. Jane knew that he had stolen the quote from the Duke of Wellington, giving it a slight revision.

“So, we had a slight setback, Papa,” she admitted softly. “I am sorry. It’s just that my braid got entwined in the tree limbs, and I lost my timing. It could have happened to anyone.”

Bitterly resigned and in a foul humor, the major barked, “No, Jane, it could only happen to you.”

“I made a mistake, Papa. It’s not the end of the world,” Jane said, her back still aching from her ignominious leap. She knew that, in spite of all his harshness, her father cared for her. Perhaps not as much as he did for Brandon, but he did care—although he rarely acknowledged it.

She would pay for her incautiousness. Outraged, the major’s face turned even redder under his silver-brown hair. “Not the end of the world? Not the end of the world! It very well could be if that dastardly Prince of Darkness decides to suck the human race dry!” the major spluttered.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit melodramatic? Even Dracul couldn’t drink England dry. No one has that big an appetite.”

The major shook his head. “Jane, Jane, where did I go wrong with you? I took you to the crypts when you were still in swaddling. I lined your nursery with garlic, gave you padded stakes and dolls that bit, yet you choose to look out the window at birds. Birds! I gave you the best education a vampire hunter could buy. What do I get for my troubles? A calamity, Jane!”

“I did my best.”

“Then do better,” the major retorted coldly. He rested his arm on the fireplace mantel and lowered his head.

Jane stared into space, somber. Her normally stoic father looked defeated. She hated the expression he was wearing, making her feel crushing guilt once again. She hated disappointing him as she was always doing, over and over. She was the only daughter in the Van Helsing family for over three generations, which had made growing up with her brother and cousins—all male, tallyho! vampire executioners— extremely difficult. She was never as strong or courageous as they. Where her cousins longed for more slaying, more sport, more gambling and other less gentlemanly pursuits, she longed for a family and children, or to fly free like her beloved birds. The major was proud of his son and ashamed of her. That fact rankled and hurt with equal intensity. Yet, Jane loved her father in spite of his cruelty to her. She loved and wanted to be loved by her family.

“You will go to the Huntsley house party you told me about,” the major ordered. “There you will be able to get the earl alone and strike.”

“That would be disloyal to Clair. One doesn’t stake one’s host’s guests,” Jane replied icily, her silver-green eyes shooting sparks. “It just isn’t done in polite society.”

Major Van Helsing sighed. His daughter looked petite and dainty, but she was a little devil when riled: a regrettable character failing that came from her mother’s side of the family. The girl was being silly—no doubt due to her foolish womanly constitution.

“Loyalty is a fine thing, but saving the world is more important. That diabolic, devious Dracul must be stopped. And you must be the one to do the deed! Clair will get over your bad manners when she realizes what a viper she has brought to her bosom.”

Jane scowled at her father. His assurances were hardly reassuring. “The house party will have many guests. Count Dracul will be surrounded.”

“You can get him alone, Jane. I know you can. You must act the mysterious seductress—without the seduction, of course,” the major clarified. “It’s the same plan as at the ball, but with no brandy.”

Jane arched her eyebrow. She had never been one to turn gentlemen’s heads, and this time she’d have no mask to hide behind. “Sir, you know well I hold little interest for gentlemen. I am almost twenty-three years of age, and in that time I have only received two gentlemen callers—and they didn’t really want me.” One was an author looking to write a book about the Van Helsings and vampires. Fiction, of course, since no one outside the business truly believed in such matters.

Her second suitor had family connections to several lumber mills. He had only been interested in a contract for producing Van Helsing stakes and mallets at a tidy profit. He had even wanted to introduce a new line of Van Helsing mallets called hammers, and to put them on sale to the great unwashed public. Her father had quickly vetoed both the idea and the suitor.

“You will do as I command, and I will have no shillyshallying due to ‘female sensibilities.’ Van Helsings do not have female sensibilities,” he assured her.

Jane shook her head. Seduction by a virgin? No. Make that seduction by a spinster virgin who was not a beauty. As a strategy, it was quite daring—and quite imbecilic. Once again, Jane would be made to play the fool, not to mention made to betray her best friend. She felt her eyes well with unshed tears, and her nose became stuffy.

“I don’t think I can,” she said.

“You will, or Spot will be turned out in the streets, and that infernal bird of yours will be sent to the butcher.”

“No.” Jane gasped in horror.

“Yes!” Absorbed in his scheming, the major began to pace. “This is war, Jane. And war is hell.”

Jane’s sniffles vanished. Oh no, she thought. Not the old war-is-hell speech. If she’d heard it once, she’d heard it a thousand times. Make that a thousand and one times, she accepted silently. Now her father would march up and down, limping slightly with his gout, gesturing into the air. He would get so carried away that he would go back to his earlier training days. Jane could almost hear “The Battle Hymn of the Van Helsings” playing in the background.

Restlessly, she picked up a training manual on the effects of silver chains on vampire flesh. Pretending to thumb through it, she instead looked at the catalogue of fashions for young ladies she had inserted inside. The colorful images were from the fashion magazine La Belle Assemble .

As her father continued his tirade, Jane would take a glance at the pictures and then at him as she pretended to listen and read. The major never noticed, caught up in his fervor.