“I still fail to see why you should be concerned about my affairs.”
“You misunderstand. It isn’t your affairs that concern me. It’s Zavier’s. I should hate to see a Venator incapacitated due to a broken heart. And you will break his if you continue on this path.”
“You’re so certain of this?”
“He’s not strong enough, Victoria. He’s an exceptional Venator, but he’s not equipped to manage his heart. He cannot see your faults; he will let you run roughshod over him…and, finally, he will bore you with his easy ways, his pathetic doggedness of wanting to make you happy—all the time knowing he could lose you to this dangerous world we inhabit. And that’s what I do not wish to see. For his sake. For ours, as Venators.”
Tears had begun to sting the corners of her eyes, blurring her view of the party below. Burning tears of anger and grief. She blinked and took a long, slow breath, resisting the desire to spin a slap onto his aristocratic cheek like the Society miss she no longer was. “You would have said the same about Phillip had I listened.”
“No.” His voice became sharper and more serious. “Phillip was strong enough. He just didn’t understand the world you live in. If he had…”
Max didn’t need to finish, and Victoria didn’t want him to. She released the curtains and slipped to the side, away from him. She knew very well that if Phillip had understood her life even a little, things would have been so very different. Her eyes stung and her throat felt as though she’d swallowed a ball.
“Victoria, you of all people know what it is like to suffer a broken heart. Take care not to bring the same onto one of your men. You have the power to do it.”
“You forget that this Venator wasn’t incapacitated with a broken heart.”
“Weren’t you?”
She drew herself up to reply…and then deflated. Oh, God, yes, she had been. For nearly a year after Phillip’s death she’d been afraid to raise her stake for fear she’d turn berserker and annihilate anything in her path. The gifts she had, the powers, the strengths, the instincts: They could all be wielded for bad as well as for good. And the rage that had simmered beneath her calm exterior—the rage and hatred and loss—could have brought her down the wrong path.
The tears, silent and thus hidden in the darkness, were streaming down her cheeks now. Victoria had moved away from the gap in the curtains, away from Max and his insistent opinions, his ruthless words.
She drew in a long, deep breath, struggling to keep it from hitching and giving away the fact that he had brought her to this, and moved farther away. She wanted to get away from him, away from his damned truths.
Max turned, and the small slit in the curtains closed, leaving them in total darkness. The only relief was a dark gray essence that came from the direction of the stairs up which she’d come.
“Victoria?” His voice was quiet.
“There’s nothing more to see here,” she replied, relieved at how steady she sounded. “And I’ve seen no members of the Tutela.” She was moving quickly and silently toward the exit and the stairs, focusing on the barest sense of light and her outstretched hands to find her way. “I’ll go down to see what I can find.”
“Victoria.” Max was moving behind her; she could hear him. But she kept going toward the stairs, moving as quickly as she could, her eyes now able to make out the faintest of shapes.
She came to the top of the stairs, her hand on the balustrade helping her to feel her way around the corner at the top of the landing. Suddenly something came out of the darkness in front of her.
It was strong and metal, and someone was poking it into the front of her shoulder. “How serendipitous,” came a familiar male voice. “What an unexpected prize our little trap has sprung.”
A candle flared to life in front of her, revealing Mr. George Starcasset…and Lady Sarafina Regalado.
Nine
In Which Three Ladies Are Set Loose upon the Villa
Max heard the soft click of a pistol being cocked, and he froze just as he realized the back of his neck had begun to prickle and chill.
Vampires…somewhere…but not in close proximity.
The sudden flare of a candle lent a soft yellow glow from down the steps, just out of his sight. Then the light grew stronger and more yellow as three shadowy people moved up the stairs, into his view.
“And who were you—Ah! Maximilian!”
He knew that annoying voice all too well. Blast the chit.
“Sara.” He couldn’t bring himself to sound as delighted as his former fiancée did. “And Starcasset. What an unpleasant—yet not wholly unexpected—surprise.”
He saw that Victoria—whose face was streaked with two narrow rivulets of…tears?—was under the control of George Starcasset and his pistol. She was also giving him, Max, a most loathing glare, as if it were somehow his fault she’d stormed into the barrel of the firearm.
Before he could move Sarafina came toward him. She was the buxom blonde, with pretty brown eyes and a head filled with little but fashion sense and coy comments, that he’d squired about Roma and engaged in many more tête-à-têtes with her than he’d cared to do. She was a lovely, fluffy piece—just the kind of woman he should marry if he ever actually thought he would do the deed, except for her affinity for the undead. But her voice and simpering mannerisms tended to grate on his nerves when he was exposed to her for any length of time.
Of course, at the moment, that simpering, fluffy chit had a pistol in her hands, so he was going to have to watch his tongue.
When she reached toward his right shoulder he merely looked down at her in annoyance and faint amusement, wondering if she was about to pull him into a reunion embrace. But when Sarafina yanked on his collar, pulling it back from Max’s neck and exposing the raw bites there, he pushed her hand away, heedless of the pistol flailing about in her other grip.
“Good gad, watch that thing,” he snapped, flipping his wretchedly stiff collar back into place. “You’ll hurt someone, Sara. Put it away.”
Unsurprisingly, she kept the pistol and steadied it, pressing it right into his middle. Painfully. “So it is true. You did go to her.”
Max remembered belatedly that there was no fury like a woman scorned.
“Perhaps you could settle your lovers’ quarrel some other time,” Starcasset luckily interrupted. He must have jabbed his firearm into Victoria’s skin a bit more harshly, for she winced and jolted. Looking at Max, he added, “I’m certain you can appreciate the benefits of coming along quietly.”
Max nodded. “Indeed. It would not be in our interest to involve the other parties below in a skirmish.” He glanced at Victoria to make sure she understood that she couldn’t go blazing into a fight, but she was studiously looking away, her lips firmed with annoyance.
Surely she wasn’t concerned about their current predicament.
“Well put, Mr. Pesaro. Now, if you and your jilted fiancée would be so kind as to lead the way, Lady Rockley and I will follow.”
Thus they moved down the steps in pairs, remaining out of sight of the presumed party in the chamber beyond the anteroom where the stairs ended, Sara prodding him along in the opposite direction from which he and Victoria had come.
Max was armed with several stakes, including his favorite black one, and his own firearm, as well as a dagger sheathed in his boot. It was the mark of the amateurs who led them away that neither Starcasset nor Sara Regalado thought to check either of the Venators for weapons. Likely they thought vampire hunters would merely be carrying stakes and little else.
He would make certain they were far enough away not to alert or alarm the partygoers in the parlor before making his move. The last thing they needed was a hoard of frithering ladies and blustering would-be heroes getting in their way.