"I saw some of your drawings yesterday in the library. You are quite talented," he admitted.
Jane blushed becomingly. "A compliment from my husband? Is this the 'for better' part of our marriage, started at last? I want to be sure and note it, if it is."
Emptying his wineglass, Asher decided that two could play at such teasing. "I am sorry that I didn't have the wine you were looking for this morning. But I prefer red, not white. Please remember in the future." He studied her closely, waiting to see guilt creep across her face.
Jane managed a faint smile. Humbug! Renfield, the bloody tattletale, had told her husband about the cellar visit. "Thank you for that sage advice. I must thank your servant also. Renfield has been so solicitous of me. It seems I can go nowhere without his helpful personage putting in an appearance."
Asher cut to the chase. "You won't find my coffin, Jane," he warned, forgetting his plan to get her to betray her secrets. The thought of his wife searching diligently for his resting place, so that she could stake him when his back was turned and he was dead to the world, was an unforgivable breach of every etiquette there was.
His eyes glinted with fierce blue light as he warily studied his wife. He detested betrayal, especially that of a wife betraying her husband. In his pique, Asher forget the hundreds of wives of other men he had seduced into betraying their own wedding vows. But, then, the horse was a different color when it was in his stable.
With remarkable aplomb, Jane kept her expression neutral, hiding her hurt, having learned long ago that a woman's pain did no good in the world of men. She hated that Asher thought her capable of hurting him. But he did, as was evidenced by his stiff manner and the silence with which he held himself in check.
"I'm sorry. I was curious. I have never been married to a vampire before. I just wanted to watch you sleeping."
"So you could kill me?" he asked. His voice held a hint of ennui, meant to hide his true feelings, which were anything but placid.
His words struck deep into Jane's heart, but she didn't flinch. She pleaded, hoping to reach his deadened heart, "Asher, think. If I wanted you staked, I could have told the truth to my father."
Asher fingered the glass of wine in his hand and continued to study his plain wife, to look into her remarkable eyes. He could see the hurt in their green, murky depths. "I must admit, I have been curious why you didn't."
His wife looked so innocent. She was a marvelous actress. But of course she would be. The vandalous Van Helsings, who broke into crypts and staked his kind, causing the ends of many innocent vampires, were highly trained in many different arts: why should acting be excluded? No, death never took a holiday when the Van Helsings were in town.
"Would you believe I look beastly in black?" she teased. "Would you believe that I meant to make the most of this marriage? To be the very best wife I could be? I would like to make your life easier in any way that I can, if you will only let me. I know we have had a rocky beginning—"
Asher interrupted her. "A rocky beginning? Ha! More like an avalanche. And I don't intend ending buried alive."
Jane pursed her lips, straightening her spine. "Charming. Thank you for your confidence."
He arched an aristocratic eyebrow, his expression one of patent disbelief. "By a cruel twist of fate, I find myself married to one of the vigilante scourges of vampires everywhere. You are not only a source of danger to me and my friends of the supernatural world, but an embarrassment." Yet her skin looked so soft in the glow of the candlelight. Her neck begged to be tasted, savored, sipped like the finest wine.
Jane shook her head, responding emphatically. "Why, you big bag of dirt! I owe my loyalty to you after you selflessly saved my honor. Can't you believe that? If I was taught nothing else, I was taught to hold duty close to my breast. I'm hardly going to go around staking you and your friends, no matter what my last name used to be!"
"Well, I am sure my chums will be vastly relieved. As am I," Asher responded.
Jane held her temper by the barest thread, a false smile on her lips. Asher didn't believe her. But then, why should he? What was his incentive?
"I am the Countess of Wolverton now, my duties lie with you. Although, I must admit, staking you in the arse right now does hold a certain appeal. Did it hurt much?"
Asher lifted his lip in a contemptuous sneer. But, studying her from the top of her head to the bottom of her slippers, the word "lie" conjured up images of Jane's naked form in bed waiting for him. Distracted and angry, he retorted, "Shall I show you? Perhaps I can return the favor too. I don't have a stake with me, but I can use my hands."
Jane held her ground. If he touched her, she would scream bloody murder. She hadn't been spanked since she was nine, and her husband wasn't going to start now. "I am the Countess of Wolverton," she repeated. "Countesses are above that sort of thing."
Asher stood and rapidly paced over to the fireplace, pointing to the large portrait above the hearth. The picture was of a beautiful woman with flowing chestnut hair, in an outdated costume of the seventeenth century. "That was the fifth Countess of Wolverton, who was married to my grandfather. She was not only a beauty, but descended from kings! You are not. Shall I tell you if she was spanked? She deserved it less than you."
Dignity in place, but her temper reaching the boiling point, Jane threw her napkin beside her plate. Enough was enough. She might not be a raving beauty; so hang her. She might not be a princess of royal blood; so chop off her head. "Bull's blooming ballocks?" she cursed, using her father's favorite phrase. Ladylike decorum be damned; Asher had just met his match.
"I am descended from a venerable, valiant line of barons and marquesses. My lineage may not be quite as exalted as yours, but it is a proud one. My family line was saving the world when you were just a gleam in your father's fangs!"
Asher seethed, lifting his glass of wine and taking a gulp, his thoughts murky and nasty. He knew her entire Machiavellian ancestry. Murderous and sly, they were. "Jane, Jane, you are treading on thin ice. Don't make me lose my temper with you," he growled.
"What will you do, play the big bad vampire, and bite me on the neck?" Jane laughed.
Asher blinked. The image of sinking his teeth into his wife's lovely neck was enticing; her blood would go to his head like bubbles in a glass of champagne. But he didn't want to do that, and he hadn't survived this many years without learning a thing or two. When all else failed, change the subject. "I heard your brother came by. What did he want?" he asked.
"Excuse me?" she replied.
"Your brother. He was here today."
"He brought Spot."
"What did you tell him about me?" Asher pried, wondering what plots Jane and her sibling had hatched while he lay sleeping like the dead.
"I lied. I said you were kind to me," Jane hissed, her eyes pools of turbulent emotion. She and her brother had talked at great length about the proposed hunt for Dracul in October, since it would be of grave importance. They had discussed Brandon's good friend's death. But she had revealed very little about her marriage, not wanting her brother to become suspicious of her husband.
"That's not what I meant. Does he know what I am?" Asher asked.
"That you're a stubborn jackass? No. I didn't tell him that. I told them you're a man. And I will continue to lie to my family about what you really are—even the jackass part."
"How very noble of you," Asher mocked, ignoring the look of wounded dignity in his wife's eyes. "Such surprising thoughtfulness, for a Van Helsing."