"I could push something else," she replied impishly.
"Jane, Jane, what am I to do with you?"
"Cherish me," she whispered, suddenly serious.
Asher glanced down into his wife's silver-green eyes, feeling himself drown in their divine depths.
"Oh, Asher—how I wish I were beautiful like your other lovers were," she whispered wistfully.
Asher knew he had the power to deliver his wife an almost mortal blow. He'd done it too many times already. Tenderly, he pushed back a strand of her hair from her cheek. "'Nothing is beautiful from every point of view,'" he said.
Jane cocked her head. "Horace?" she asked.
He grinned. "Do you never miss a quote? You must be the best-read lady in England—and one of the most lovely," he said. He leaned back to stare at her pale naked breasts, gently rounded belly and soft white thighs. He even believed his own words.
Jane's eyes filled with tears as she laid her head on her husband's chest. Asher cared, and he thought her body was lovely—for now, that was enough. Within minutes she fell asleep, a self-satisfied, sated smile upon her face.
His wife sleeping like the dead, Asher tenderly pulled the covers over her and left to speak with Renfield. He had plans to make, and a vampire to track before dawn's early light.
The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Graveyard
Jane awakened with a strong sense of urgency. Something was wrong; she could feel it in her bones. Dressing quickly, she hurried to find Renfield. She found him returning from the cellar, a dark frown crossing his austere features.
Forgoing formality, she quickly asked, "Is Asher in his coffin?"
Warily, the valet shook his head.
"He went out last night, didn't he?" Jane probed, clasping her fingers tightly, hoping against hope that Asher was sound asleep, dead to the world in some secret casket. "He went after Dracul."
"Yes," Renfield admitted worriedly. "And he's not back yet. He promised he would sleep at home today, due to the seriousness of the circumstances, but…"
"Do you think he found that horrid fiend?" Jane didn't know what she would do if anything happened to him; her husband couldn't just up and really die, leaving her all alone. Not when they'd come so close to true marital bliss. How would she ever forgive him?
Yes, her stubborn husband was just now beginning to appreciate her and their marriage. The nodcock Nosferatu had better not have gotten himself fitted permanently for his coffin. She was too young to be a widow. Besides, she had only just gotten into her new life. She didn't want to have to go back to visiting cemeteries, especially to place flowers on her dead husband's grave.
"Yes, I think he found Dracul," Renfield said.
"Do you think he's…"Jane stopped, unable to voice the horrifying thought.
"No!" Renfield replied, his tone grim. "I would be quite ill if my master were… truly dead. But I think Dracul must have captured him. I imagine he will torture him for a while."
"Bloody fiendish bloodsucking swine!" Jane swore. She wanted to stick something with a stake—preferably Dracul's black heart. "But if you're correct, then Asher's alive. For now. We must rescue him!"
"How? We don't know where Dracul's lair is located," the valet complained.
Jane smiled. "But we will by day's end." She tugged at Renfield's arm. "You're absolutely correct about the torture. Dracul will delight in prolonging Asher's agony. He won't have had much time last night. So tonight's the night we must act."
Pulling Renfield with her, she slipped up the servants' stairs and hurriedly explained, "He'll want to add to the torture, and what better way than to make me his vampire bride in front of Asher's eyes?"
Renfield was amazed at his mistress's reasoning. But, then he shouldn't be, he surmised. She was a vampire hunter. She knew vampires. While he sometimes forgot the fact, the Countess of Wolverton had a deplorable lineage. Of course, it helped in this case. "What do you think Dracul will do?" he asked.
"Why, send me a note saying he has Asher, of course. Telling me to come somewhere alone," Jane explained, grabbing her cloak and gloves, and calling for her carriage to be brought around.
"Where are you going?" the valet asked, concerned for Asher's wife for the first time. He was getting too old to be breaking in another mistress.
"To get help," she replied. She wrote a quick note to her uncle Jakob. Then, motioning for the footman, she instructed it to be delivered immediately and in person.
"So, when the note comes from Count Dracul, what will you do?" Renfield asked.
"Why, I shall go wherever he asks me to," she replied. "You see, for this plan to work, I must be the bait."
And coffin bait she would be, Jane thought as she got into the carriage and it conveyed her to her father's house. This was irony at its best, she decided. The vampire hunters rescuing the vampire. But she could do no less; she loved her fanged, blood-drinking husband.
As the carriage rapidly traversed the winding roads to her father's home, at last pulling up before the massive front steps, Jane visualized Asher's pale, beautiful face, and how much it had come to mean to her. She could wake up completely happy now, satisfied with her life and her husband. She loved to listen for the sound of his first footsteps on the stairs in the evening, and hear his warm, husky voice for the first time each night. He made her feel complete, a woman unto herself.
Before him, she had thought she would end up an old maid, alone with her thoughts, her duty and herself. Comfort and love were words she'd only dreamed about. Then the big-fanged earl had come her way. He had found a place in her heart that was waiting for him—a special place where love lived and grew.
Yes, Asher was now her shining star, blazing just as brightly in day as at night. Some might say it was a fate worse than death to be married to the undead. Well, her husband might be dead in the day, but at night there was no one more alive.
They might not have eternity together, but Asher could bloody well love her until she was sixty-four, and old and gray, she reasoned as she entered her father's study. The major stood by the fireplace, along with her brother, Uncle Jakob and four of her six cousins.
The major glared pompously at his daughter. "Just what is the meaning of summoning your uncle and cousins here, Jane?"
Taking a deep breath, she spoke, her voice steady despite her frayed nerves. "I have a proposition for you all," she said. She watched their faces, their expressions ranging from disbelief to intrigue to indignant irritation. She was banking her future on this proposition, her life with Asher undead and well.
"I know how to find Dracul," she said slowly, letting the words fall upon the room like a heavy rain.
Everyone burst into shouts, her cousins and the red-faced major questioning where and how. Holding up her hand for quiet, Jane waited impatiently for the tumult to cease. Van Helsings were always a rowdy, rambunctious bunch whenever vampires where spotted on the horizon.
"Before I tell you how you can find the Prince of Darkness, every single one of you—and my two missing cousins—must promise on your very lives that you will do no harm to my husband." Jane did not ask; she demanded.
"And why should we wish to harm your husband?" her brother asked.
"Why do you think?" Jane answered.
Brandon cocked his head and studied her. "He is a vampire, isn't he? Our information might have been wrong about him being Dracul, but not about being one of the undead."
"Yes," Jane admitted.
Her father's face turned scarlet. Jane had never seen that particular shade of red on him before. "Damnation, Jane! You will tell us immediately where to find Dracul and that bloodthirsty ghoul you wed."