And yet, prudence would be the better part of valor, she decided, as she gazed down at the lack of material on her costume. The Countess of Wolverton could never be caught in such a compromised situation. Asher would never forgive her. The major would never forgive her. Society would never forgive her. Her cousins would think it a great lark and never let her hear the end of it.
She sighed, the dreamlike quality of being drugged starting to make her feel melancholy, but she saw a tall blond-headed man alone, watching her. The man had come out of nowhere, slipping from the shadows in the corner of the room. His demeanor was intense and unsettling. He was very tall and slender. He wore a mask that covered most of his face, like several other gentlemen in the spacious, garish room. The stranger's eyes were very blue, and they were directed at her prominently displayed cleavage.
Jane gulped and began to wobble over to a side door she had just noted. The stranger looked like he would eat her alive, and she was positive she'd seen those cruel blue eyes somewhere before. Taking a quick glance back, she noticed he appeared to be studying robin redbreast now, rather than herself. A rush of relief hit her as she thankfully backed into a hallway, leaving behind the chattering magpies and their customers.
Weaving slightly, she made her way to a room at the far end of the twisting hall. Jane glanced inside. It was a smoking parlor. Jane peered around the corner, trying to see if the room was empty, and if it had a balcony or exit to the outside world.
The room was empty. Breathing a sigh of relief, she noted there were French doors leading to a balcony too. Giddily Jane made her way inside, and had started for the French doors when a sound behind her made her turn.
"Wait, cherie. Where is my little bird flying?"
Jane reeled dizzily, almost falling over beak-first. The tall blond stranger stood there. His deep blue eyes were hard and glittering. He projected an aura of malignancy that made her skin crawl.
He approached so smoothly that it looked as if his feet barely touched the ground, and he arrived before her in all his splendid menace.
"What a rare bird you are," he said, his voice betraying a foreign accent. "Are you taken for tonight?"
Jane blushed. "I… I… y-yes," she stammered. This was even more embarrassing than she'd feared. She wished he would quit staring at her as though she was a succulent piece of fowl and he, the fox. She wished Asher would stare at her like this—without the malevolence, of course.
The stranger glanced around and then arched a brow.
"I… He'll be here soon," Jane finally managed to say, her heart beating furiously in her chest. This man was grilling her!
He smiled wickedly, taking her small hand into his. "Who is your protector?" he coaxed.
Jane tried to think it through. But the drugs clouded her mind, along with a black streak of terror. The man's touch was as cold as the grave. His eyes were strangely alien. Yes, he was a strange stranger. "I… The earl, Ash—" She gasped, cutting herself off.
Blinking her eyes shut, Jane wanted to pound her head against the wall. He was the man costumed as a dark knight at the masquerade ball. The one who had been whispering with Lady Veronique, who had left with her the night before she disappeared. She hadn't meant to say his name. With an instinct old as time, she knew the man standing before her was a danger to both herself and her husband. Could he be the Prince of Darkness; her quarry? But if he was, then why did her senses keep crying wolf? He gave off the energy of a shape-shifter, while his touch felt colder than the grave.
"Stupid, stupid," she muttered, criticizing herself. She didn't want this masked man to connect her to Asher.
It seemed the stranger took offense to her words, for he drew himself taller, and a strange animosity flowed off him, radiating to her in sinister waves. "Pardon," he said.
"No, it's nothing. I meant the Earl of…"Jane hesitated, her drugged mind scrambling for a name. "The Duke of Earl," she replied at last. Then she wanted to drop down dead. There was no such personage as the Duke of Earl.
The stranger ignored her, lifting her hand for a kiss. His frozen stare nearly caused Jane's heart to stop in her chest. Vampire or wolf? Vampire or wolf? Where were her stakes? Back at the Van Helsing manor. Humbug! she cursed silently. Where was a good stake when you needed one—or a silver bullet?
Jane tugged on her hand uselessly, feeling as if it were clutched in a stone vise. The man's strength was greater than a mortal's, but her senses, clouded by the laudanum, couldn't tell any more than that. Finally, as there was such a strong sense of wolf about him, she decided he was a werewolf rather than a vampire.
"I was correct," the stranger remarked, and oddly he gave a hideous smile full of both beauty and evil. He bent to kiss her hand.
Feeling a slight sting, Jane gasped as heat flowed through her. Jerking back on her hand, she tried to tear it away from this threatening predator… to no avail.
"No, my little one. Do not fear. You will be mine," he commented knowingly. Then he leaned in closer to Jane, staring at her neck as if fascinated by the rich blood flowing there.
He's going to eat me up in one bite, Jane thought with horror. And there will be no one to stop him. I am at his mercy, and I doubt he even knows the meaning of the word!
But before the stranger could do more than move a step closer, a loud man with a bulbous nose entered the smoking parlor with the Madagascar cock. "I say, the Earl of Wolverton is here," he commented. "Didn't he get married to that Van Helsing chit?"
"I 'eard 'he was married, but ye couldn't tell it by me. He's been here twice this week, he has," the lovebird chirped.
The masked stranger lifted his head, his eyes shooting blue fire at the interruption. Bowing gracefully to Jane, he smiled. It was a threatening look. "Until later."
Startled, Jane found herself suddenly watching the fearsome man exiting by route of the balcony. Dressed all in black, he faded into the night as if he had never been.
Jane began to shiver, instinctively realizing that she had been the quarry of the tall, eerie stranger. The arrival of the big-nosed man and his cock had possibly saved her life. But if she weren't careful, she was going to find herself in a quandary with her husband, if she couldn't manage to sneak away before he spotted her.
Trying to gather her befuddled wits, she fled through the doorway, straight into the arms of a well-muscled gentleman. Unsurprisingly, it was the one vampire in the entire world she was hoping to avoid: her husband, the Earl of Deceit and Lechery.
"Curses!" She had definitely jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. She wanted to crow to the heavens. This was just not her night.
The Earl held out his arms, carefully inspecting the feathered female who had run into him while hastily exiting the smoking parlor. Shaking her head, Jane deduced there was nothing to do but brazen it out, to pretend that she was what she was supposed to be and not what she really was. Maybe Asher wouldn't recognize her—if she could find a thimbleful of luck tonight.
Disguising her voice, Jane remarked, "I've got to go, me lord. I've got a protector awaitin' me."
Stunned, Neil Asher looked down at the woman in his arms.
He couldn't believe it.
He wouldn't believe it.
The Countess of Wolverton was in the Birds of Paradise Club, dressed as a feathered doxy. He ruled the roost at home, and yet here was his wife in a brothel. What else did he not know about his domestic matters? The question chilled him.
His wife!
"If you wouldn't mind letting me go, luv," Jane said, her words slurring slightly.
Dropping his hands from her shoulders before he wrung her lovely neck, Asher stepped back, getting his first full look at the total costume of this golden cherry lovebird. He narrowed his eyes in anger, yet his mouth watered. His wife was a kaleidoscope of many things: