When Twilight Burns (14 page)

Verbena's puff of wiry orange hair poked around the door. “Oh, thank'od my lady, ye'r awake. I'm so sorry to bother ye, but there's a man on the front stoop who's de-mandin' to speak t'ye.”

“Who is it?” Victoria swung her legs out of the bed and slid to the floor.

“I dunno, but says ye'd want t'talk to him. He says as he'll stay there all th'day if'n ye don' come down.” Verbena came in the room, carrying a fine white chemise and Victoria's corset. “The nerve o' him an' his sharp-edged beak. I d'clare, th' man looks like a ferret.”

Frowning, Victoria pulled her nightgown over her head as her maid ruffled quickly through the wardrobe for a frock that could easily be slipped over her corset and fastened quickly, without having to be pressed. Whoever it was, it must be important for him to call on her so early.

Many possibilities shot through her mind as Verbena helped her to dress quickly, then looped her thick, heavy hair into a loose knot at the back of her neck. Within minutes, Victoria hurried down the stairs.

To be sure, there wasn't another lady of the
ton
who could have been dressed so quickly, so early in the morning—let alone already be awake when the summons came. And yet, when Victoria opened the front door to the stoop, she found her guest pacing the small space with an air of deep impatience.

She recognized the familiar, sharp-faced man right away, even as, without a bow or even the pretense of one, he said, “Lady Rockley. I understand you had another harrowing experience last evening. How dreadful for you.” His tone, his countenance, and even his posture exposed his words as sarcastic. Instead, Mr. Bemis Goodwin's pale gray eyes appeared cold. “And I'm certain you'd want this conversation to take place inside, rather than here on your front stoop.”

Annoyance buffeted her, but she tasted a bit of apprehension as well. The look in his eyes held suspicion along with unfriendliness. She stepped away to allow him entrance, and gestured to the tiny parlor. “What do you want, Mr. Goodwin?” she asked, following him in and closing the door.

“I have some questions to ask in regards to your discovery last evening, at the home of Baron Hungreath.” He looked pointedly toward one of the chairs. Victoria ignored him. “Of course, the magistrate is quite concerned.”

Victoria, having been the one to suggest contacting the magistrate, felt like kicking herself. But she refrained, and instead replied, “As well he should be. Someone is attacking innocent women and leaving their mauled bodies for dead.”

“Someone? Or
something
?”
Mr. Goodwin's slender nose gleamed like the mother-of-pearl handle on a spoon.

“If you continue to make such vague statements, my butler will show you the door.”

“The magistrate has sent me to ask you some questions, Lady Rockley. It will be best for you if you cooperate. I should hate for you to end up in Newgate, waiting for the noose, due to some…misunderstanding…in regards to your involvement. I understand it's quite a loathsome place, even for a prison.”

“Who are you working for?” she asked.

“Why, the magistrate, of course. Although Miss Forrest's family is, and quite rightly, devastated and determined to find out who or what is behind the horrible attack on their daughter.” Victoria saw him glance toward the chair again, but perversely, she remained standing. “You came upon this young woman's body hidden behind a gardener's shed. Her name, incidentally, was Bertha Flowers.” He looked at her as if to challenge whether she cared that the woman had a name.

“Yes, I found her behind the shed.”

“What were you doing in the garden during a dinner party, Lady Rockley?”

“I had excused myself to get some air. The gardens were lovely.”

“But the other guests were playing cards. Why would you be so rude as to leave the party?”

“I thought I saw one of the other ladies in the garden, and I went to join her.”

“And who was that? According to Lady Hungreath, all of the other ladies were in the parlor with the exception of you.”

“Miss Sara Regalado, from Rome, was not in the parlor when I quit the room.”

“Miss Regalado returned almost immediately after you disappeared. Lady Hungreath noted it especially as she thought it would be you, and was quite confused when you didn't return.”

So that had not been Sara's pink gown, flashing behind the cupid statue? It was impossible for Sara to have returned to the parlor so quickly without Victoria seeing her.

“How did you know where to find the body?”

“As I wasn't looking for a body,” Victoria replied shortly, “I didn't know where to find it.”

“You had blood on your skirt and hands when the gentlemen found you. And your shawl, covered in blood, was found at the scene as well, as if it had been…discarded. Nor, again, did you scream or make any other sound of distress—according to the others. Who, certainly, should have heard you. It's almost as if you expected to find it, and knew where to look.” He rocked back on his heels, as if delivering some great pronouncement.

“There was blood everywhere, Mr. Goodwin. When I knelt next to the girl to ascertain whether she was dead—“

“Lady Rockley, I saw the condition of her body. You must be foolish in the extreme to believe that she might have been alive. Regardless, no woman would have the constitution to come upon a person in that condition and not make any sound of distress.” He didn't speak further, but exaggerated dubiousness was written on his face.

“Perhaps you could desist from dancing about the Maypole and say whatever it is you mean,” Victoria replied.

“Very well, then, Lady Rockley. I believe you are somehow involved in these attacks. Either you are the perpetrator, or are somehow involved with the person—or creature—who is.”

“Mr. Goodwin, do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?” Victoria found it easy to laugh, although an uncomfortable feeling had begun to settle in the back of her mind. “How would a woman such as I make those kinds of wounds on another person?”

“A woman such as you?” Mr. Goodwin's eyebrows turned into dark, inverted vees, drawing together above the bridge of his nose. “I have a feeling that a
woman such as you
just might be able to.”

Victoria's mouth dried. Who was this man? The discomfort in her middle turned cold and heavy. Yet she responded coolly. “Accusations toward me are merely a waste of your time and energy. The real monster who is doing this is escaping your notice while you point the finger at me.”

“Of course you would say that, Lady Rockley. You are very clever, I do give you credit for that. After what happened with your husband, I would expect you to react in such a fashion.”

She must have frowned in question, but, in truth, her anxiety was turning to anger at the skinny man before her. Victoria's vision blurred and began to pinken. She felt her fingers close in on themselves, her nails scoring deeply into her palms.

“Yes, indeed,” he continued in an unhurried voice. “The circumstances under which your husband disappeared are exceedingly odd, indeed. I shall not be overlooking them in my investigations. And do not think that your status will protect you, Lady Rockley.”

“Get out of my house.”

“Of course, Lady Rockley.” He started toward the door, moving as if he had all of the time in the world and as if Victoria wasn't ready to do something violent to his person. It must have showed in her face, despite the fact that she tried to control it. The anger bubbled and simmered and she felt it in the way her knees shook beneath the fall of her skirt, and her teeth ground down on themselves.

“Perhaps you recall the fate of Baron Clifton's heir? It wasn't even murder, Lady Rockley. He merely stole some jewelry.” Mr. Goodwin smiled with great pleasure. “Stealing is still a hanging offense. As is assault, and accomplice to murder.”

Now his hand was on the knob, and he turned it. Then he stopped, just like Max had earlier this morning. “Did I mention that one of the servants at St. Heath's Row told me Rockley had left the home days before you claim he left on
The Plentifulle,
after a great row between the two of you? And that the day you say he sailed on that ship, that same servant saw his master enter the house in the dead of night? The same night that you dismissed all of the servants?”

He stepped through the door as Victoria's vision began to burn. She felt her heart beat and her breath increasing in speed, and herself wanting to move toward him…to stop him. Stop him from these snide remarks, these thinly covered accusations.

He had one more thing to say. “I believe you had something to do with his disappearance, Lady Rockley. Just as you had something to do with the attacks on Miss Forrest and Miss Flowers. And a man left for dead in the Dials more than a year ago. He had been repeatedly stabbed.

“I've been awaiting your return from Italy for nearly a year now.” He smiled and slammed his hat onto sleek, smooth hair, looking at her with the same insolence that Nedas, the vampire son of Lilith, had. “I've seen many of your class behind the bars of Newgate, Lady Rockley, and watched them on the scaffold. It's my opinion you will soon join them, and then how long will your lush, dark beauty last?”

And he closed the door so quietly it was ominous.

Despite the uneasiness from her meeting with Mr. Goodwin, Victoria was clearheaded enough to order Charley, Aunt Eustacia's trusted butler, to follow the odious man.

Once she was alone, standing in the foyer, Victoria shook off the foreboding and fury that had billowed through her during their meeting. Her vision cleared, and she looked down at her hands—one scarred and creamy, the other faintly blue, as though she'd been out in the cold for too long. They showed the marks of her nails, but none had drawn blood.

And her fingers no longer shook.

Despite his threats, she had no real fear of the Bow Street Runner. What could he do to her? Not only was she a member of the ton, but she was
Summa
Gardella. And most importantly, she'd done nothing wrong. She'd certainly not had anything to do with the deaths of Miss Forrest and Miss Flowers, and the situation with Phillip was utterly different.

But…there had been that incident in the Seven Dials neighborhood.

As she stood in the entrance of Aunt Eustacia's home, Victoria couldn't help but remember the night she'd come into this very same space. Well past midnight, nearing the dawn, only a month after Phillip's death, she'd eased through the front door, blood-spattered and insensitive.

There wasn't supposed to be blood.

That phrase rang through her memory again, just as it had done that night, over and over. Aunt Eustacia, roused by her niece's arrival, had listened with calm, dark eyes as Victoria described how she'd come upon a large man attempting to ravish a young girl in the filthy, poverty-stricken, and mean streets of the Dials. It was her first night out hunting for undead after Phillip's death, and grief for him and hatred toward herself had burst forth as she attacked the man bare-handed.

When he turned on her, a dagger in his hand, she'd wrested the unfamiliar weapon from him and used it against him—plunging it into mortal flesh and bone in an awful parody of slaying an undead. A berserker had overtaken her.

The man had been breathing when she left him, but, nevertheless, Victoria had inflicted grave harm on a human. A mortal, of the very race she was bound to protect.

After that incident, she'd removed her
vis bulla
and let it languish. She mourned Phillip for a year, struggling to contain and control her need to destroy and avenge. It was then she realized how terrible and dangerous her Venatorial gifts were—how they could be used to destroy those she was meant to save.

When she replaced the
vis bulla,
she did so with the full understanding of who she was, and what her limits were. And with the vow that her powers were not to be used against her own race. That was not her role to play.

She took a deep breath and unclasped her hands, stretching her fingers, tried to ease the tension. The oddest thing of all was that Mr. Goodwin even knew of the incident in the Dials. After all, in that area of town, violence and murder happened so regularly it was difficult for the authorities to bring the criminals to justice, if they were even notified of every death or injury—which was impossible.

I've been awaiting your return from Italy for nearly a year now.

Those words hung in her mind, leaving her with a greasy lump in the back of her throat.

She had to find out who—or what—Bemis Goodwin was.

+ Ten +

Wherein a Highwayman Engages in Social Frivolities

In Victoria's mind
masquerade balls weren't so terrible, as far as Society events went. After all, she wore her own kind of mask every day, and she'd only ever attended one other such Society event—shortly after she and Phillip had announced their engagement. The mystery and intrigue reminded her of a safer, more lighthearted version of her nightly hunts on the streets. Certainly, masked dances with many rich-blooded potential victims were liable to attract some of the undead, due to their ability to hide behind a domino or other facial obstruction, but it wasn't as though a vampire could enter a home uninvited.

That aspect did cut down on the number of vampires that crashed these soirees.

As she alighted from the sleek, midnight blue carriage, Victoria adjusted her mask and slung her small reticule over the other wrist. She'd purposely elected to use a plain carriage and arrive alone so her identity would remain unknown for as long as possible. Despite her mother's transparent attempts to engage James Lacy as her escort, Victoria had slipped firmly out of any such mazes, warning her mother not to reveal the nature of her costume to the new marquess—or even that she planned to attend. She didn't want anyone to know she would be there, particularly George Starcasset and Sara Regalado.