“May I speak, Dimitri? I hope that you’ll change your tack…but if not, please know that I am here because I love Angelica. And she loves me. We intend to wed, with or without Woodmore’s—or your—blessing. But I hope to gain your support. You of all people will understand, I believe.”
There was something different about Voss, the least of which was his almost placating tone. Dimitri had never known the man to show deference to anyone, nor to speak in a tone without that hint of conceit.
Curious now, yet just as wary, Dimitri scoffed. “I can understand my ward believing she loves you—isn’t that your forte, Voss? Wooing and coaxing and seducing? But you, love her? You love anyone besides yourself?”
Voss didn’t rise to the bait. “I can certainly see how you might look at it from that perspective. You know that even I would never have touched Lerina—or anyone else one of us was feeding and mating with, but—”
“You fail to understand, Voss, that it wasn’t the infidelity or even the loss of Lerina that has created my antipathy toward you. I knew who and what she was, and that’s why Moldavi even had the opportunity with her. She was trying to gain my attention, poor wretch. Why do you think I was with her?” Dimitri closed his mouth and clenched down hard. He needn’t explain himself. Not to him.
Not to anyone.
But Voss looked surprised. “And all these years, I thought it was because you loved her.”
Dimitri kept his face stony. He’d only loved one woman, and she’d left him long ago. “No, I never loved Larina—just as you never loved the scores of women you’ve been with. Don’t misunderstand—I didn’t wish her to die, of course. As for you—it’s simple. I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. I have no interest in interacting with you, Voss, because you aspire only to trick and manipulate, and to take from others for your own gain.”
Voss stared at him, and for the first time, Dimitri believed that the man might have actually heard him. “Indeed,” he said. And nodded, as if accepting what Dimitri had just said.
Voss took a breath and continued, “In spite of that, perhaps what I’m about to show you will change your mind.”
“Show me?”
“I mean to show you proof of my regard and intentions toward Angelica.” Voss drew off his coat and folded it neatly onto a chair.
Dimitri watched in morbid fascination as the other man then divested himself of a ridiculously tied neckcloth, which also joined the coat, and then untied the collar of his shirt. “Burning hell, Voss, what the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“Showing you this.” The man whipped off his crisp white shirt and turned away, giving Corvindale a full view of his back.
For a moment, Dimitri couldn’t speak. “Satan’s dark soul,” he whispered at last.
He stared at the smooth expanse of Voss’s back, stunned and disbelieving. A shaft of something dark and unfamiliar stabbed him in the belly.
Impossible.
“Your Mark is gone.”
“You have an uncanny knack of speaking the obvious,” Voss said, but his voice was filled with warmth. Delight, even. He turned and pulled his shirt back on. “There’s nothing of the Draculia in me any longer—with the exception of the fact that I still have an enhanced sense of smell. And could still fling three men across the road should I have the mind to do so, so consider that a warning, Dimitri.”
“Luce’s damned soul,” Dimitri said, still working on comprehension. Impossible. “I’ve studied and searched for decades.… No one’s ever done it before.…” He flapped his hand toward the shelves of books, the stacks of papers and manuscripts, the hollow, empty feeling growing in his chest. “How? How did you break the covenant?”
Voss looked at him, pity and understanding in his face. “I changed.”
Epilogue
Of Miracles, Siblings And A Final Request
Voss turned his face up to the sun, drinking in the warmth from which he’d been banned for more than a century. The prickle of a tear stung the corner of his eye at the beauty of it, the knowledge that he was, again, his own man.
With the woman he loved.
“My greatest fear,” he said, clasping Angelica’s hand as they strolled through the gardens—in the daylight, when all the flowers were actually open!—at Dewhurst, “was that Moldavi would have made you Dracule. All the way to Paris, I couldn’t allow myself to think of anything about why I was going, what I needed to do…because if I did, I would think too hard. And then I would have weakened, and he would have found that weakness.”
Angelica looked up at him, sunlight creating a nimbus of gold and bronze around her rich walnut hair. “That worry had occurred to me, as well. Along with the fear that he would just…attack me.” She gave a little shudder and he pulled her close against him—something he’d been doing as often as possible in the last week. “So I convinced him that I might lose my Sight if he injured me or changed me in any way. I hoped to at least stall any intentions he might have had until Chas got there to save me. I knew he would come, of course. I didn’t expect you, but, my lord…Voss—” she smiled “—when I opened my eyes and saw you…that’s when I knew. You were the only person I really wanted to see. I loved you.”
He dropped a kiss onto her lips, quickly and easily, as a man who is comfortable that he will have ample opportunity to do more than that with the woman he loved, whenever he wanted to. “I think you make it sound easier than it was—and yourself more tolerant than you were—but I wholly understand. I felt the same way, although I didn’t quite understand it for a long time.”
“What’s going to happen now? Will Moldavi come after us again? Now that you aren’t a vampire anymore, isn’t he more dangerous to you?” Her eyes were worried.
“Moldavi isn’t stupid—he knows we’re prepared for him. I’m still very strong, and I have something he doesn’t: the ability to move about in full daylight. And aside of that, there isn’t any way he’d know that I’m no longer Dracule. It’s not as if Dimitri is going to tell him, although I’m certain he’ll find out about it someday. But yes, there is a possibility he might attempt to come after you and Maia again—although Dimitri, Cale and I think it unlikely. He’s not about to risk more lives or resources when he knows we’re expecting him and have thus far evaded his attacks. And now that I can move about in the day, that gives me even more of an ability to protect you. Try not to worry, Angelica. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She nodded, but he could still see the concern in her eyes. There was nothing he could do to erase it, but what he’d told her was true: he and Dimitri felt no imminent danger from Moldavi—at least for the sisters.
The safety of Chas Woodmore’s arse was a different story entirely.
They walked for a while, Angelica identifying the flowers and plants he’d long forgotten. At last she asked, “Do you think Chas will ever come home again? To stay?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I suspect that as soon as he receives the message from Corvindale that we intend to wed, he’ll be arriving with a stake in his hand. I never did thank you for saving my life, in fact, darling. It’s very precious to me, even though it’s no longer immortal.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said with a smile. “I couldn’t read your future from your glove, and I’ve come to believe that I cannot read the future of a vampir that way. I don’t know why it is, but it seems that I can only see the future of vampirs in my dreams—and that those dreams are as random and unmanageable as Fate itself.”
“Perhaps they aren’t so random, after all,” Voss said, thinking of the mysterious blonde woman. “After all, if you hadn’t dreamed of Brickbank’s demise, as unpleasant as it was, perhaps we wouldn’t have found each other.”