Wayren nodded. “Tell me about the dreams.”
Sebastian looked down at his hands. His fingers trembled in his lap. “I dream over and over again of the moment when I saw her… and realized she’d been turned undead. Her eyes turned red for only a moment, then dissolved back to normal mortal ones.”
Normal mortal ones that he saw every time he looked at Giulia’s brother. Max Pesaro.
“Your antipathy for him has not affected your work as a Venator… now that you’ve returned to us,” Wayren said quietly. It did not surprise him that she knew the trail on which his thoughts had gone. “I find that commendable.”
Antipathy? What Sebastian felt for Max Pesaro went deeper than antipathy. It had been Max who’d taken Giulia-as well as their elderly, crippled father-to the secret society of vampire protectors, believing that the Tutela could help prolong their lives. Even give them immortality, through the vampires.
Giulia, beautiful and gentle as she was, had always been a sickly girl, unlike her twin brother. Pale, delicate, and with a persistent cough that worried those who loved her.
In his more generous moments, Sebastian almost understood Max’s intent, naive as it had been: to protect and save his family.
But that empathy usually dissolved when Sebastian reminded himself that because of Max, he’d not only lost the woman he loved, but had been forced to send her to Hell by slamming a stake into her heart. Giulia had been the second vampire he’d slain, and she became the last undead he killed… until last autumn in Rome. Nearly fifteen years later.
Sebastian realized he’d been silent for too long, and looked up to find Wayren’s eyes focused on him. Patience limned her gaze, patience and sympathy.
“I dream it over and over: that her eyes turn red and her fangs… extend… and then moments later, she returns to normal. A mortal. Unchanged. But I slay her anyway. I slam that stake into her heart even as she opens her mouth to plead with me.” He swallowed. “And then the dream shifts, so I don’t see if she turns to ash… and I wonder if I was mistaken… if I was wrong, and she hadn’t been undead. And if I killed her for no damn good reason.”
He didn’t care that those last words came out tight and low and hard, that fury burned through him. Moisture stung the corners of his eyes and he closed them tightly.
And now he was about to lose the second woman he loved. To the man he hated.
“It is said that those turned undead have souls damned for eternity upon the destruction of their physical body,” Wayren said. Her voice remained easy, soothing. And despite the turmoil inside, the anger and pain, Sebastian felt a vestige of peace slide over him. “And that is why you turned from the Venators for years, is it not? The belief that you had no right to send any soul to its eternal damnation.”
“Yes. How could I make that judgment? How would I know who was… deserving? For if they had been good in life…” To his great mortification, his voice cracked with emotion. Sebastian swallowed and forced himself to go on. “If they had been good, and blameless in life, and then unwillingly or unwittingly turned undead… how could I thrust eternal damnation upon them?”
“You believe that there might be hope for those undead.” Wayren did not ask a question; she stated a fact, a hope that had been buried so deeply inside Sebastian that he’d never really allowed himself to think it. Let alone to bring it to life by putting it into words.
Emboldened now-or, perhaps only dispirited-by her question, he looked at her. “Is it possible?”
Her eyes remained clear; he could read nothing there. But she replied, “Anything might be possible, Sebastian. I may know much, but I do not know all. I suspect that divine judgment considers many factors that we cannot comprehend. And that all we can do here is what we are called to do. No matter how difficult it might be.”
Sebastian sagged back in his seat. An answer that was no answer. He stood, brushing self-consciously at his rumpled shirt. “Thank you, Wayren.”
Her smile held a tinge of amusement and a bit more of sorrow. “I thank you, Sebastian. I know it was difficult for you to return. And to have this conversation with me.”
At this, he allowed his lips to quirk on one side. “I’ve had many difficult conversations with women in the last weeks,” he said, recalling the moment when Victoria attempted to tell him what he already knew: that she loved Max in a way that she’d never love him. “I begin to think that it would be best for me to avoid females until such a time as when my luck has changed.”
“I am sorry for your pain,” she said. “Sometimes, it is through pain that one discerns one’s true path.”
Sebastian would have liked to return with a quip about figurative stakes through the heart, but something stopped him. He closed his lips and bowed, relieved to quit the room.
“We couldn’t find you anywhere,” Lady Melly shrilled.
Victoria shifted her position slightly so that the high pitch of her mother’s voice didn’t go so directly into her ear. As she was sitting next to her, that was a bit of a feat, but she did the best she could. “I was there for a time, Mama,” she said, then glanced at their hostess. “The duchess saw me, indeed.”
Victoria had managed a brief nap after her bath and subsequent meeting with Sebastian and Max in her chambers, but she was still weary and achy. The only reason she’d left the house to join the triumvirate of ladies for an early tea was because the alternative would have been hosting them at her house.
At least here it was possible for her to make an escape.
“Lovely dress, my dear,” Duchess Winnie said, leaning forward to take up a little biscuit topped with strawberry preserves and a dollop of cream. Despite the fact that she’d hosted a dance the night before, it was her pleasure to have her dearest friends over the following day in order to scale through every bit of on dit or gossip that might have occurred. And aside of that, it was a well-known fact that her cook made the best, most unique biscuits and sweets. “A bit scandalous, to be sure, but you aren’t a virginal debutante anymore, are you?”
Lady Melly shot her a silencing glare and turned back to Victoria. “But where did you go off to? I never got to talk to you, and I intended to have Jellington introduce you to Davington’s heir, just returned from the Continent.”
“Mama,” Victoria began, but it was to no avail.
“Never say that you still harbor the idea that you might have an attachment to that Monsieur Vioget,” Melly said, her spoon clinking noisily as she stirred her tea. “Why, he wasn’t even there last night, and I just could not abide that your second husband should be French. And not of the ton. I simply would not permit it.”
“But, Melly, you cannot ignore that he is a handsome gentleman,” said Lady Nilly, who’d just returned to the room.
In light of her conversation with George Starcasset last evening, Victoria couldn’t help but examine the long, papery skin of Nilly’s neck for vampire bites. Unfortunately, Lady Nilly was wearing a wide choker that, as Victoria knew from personal experience, could work very well to hide fang marks. “What a lovely cameo,” Victoria said.
Her rising from the sofa, which she shared with her mother, had a dual purpose: one, to get her away from the shrill voice, and second, to examine the brooch… and its wearer ’s neck.
“Oh, do you like it?” asked Nilly, moving closer so that Victoria could see.
Victoria lifted the (quite ugly) cameo of a… well, she wasn’t certain what it was, but it wasn’t immediately recognizable… from the hollow of Lady Nilly’s throat under the guise of examining it more closely. As the wide lace lifted, Victoria saw that there were no marks on her mother’s friend’s neck, and allowed the cameo to settle back into place.
And now Victoria had no choice but to settle back into her place.
“And the other thing,” Lady Melly continued as though there’d been no interruption in her lecture, “I was certain you’d find it fascinating to hear that they have notified the new heir to the Rockley estate.”
“Indeed?” In spite of herself, Victoria was mildly interested. “After they’d searched so hard and long for James Lacy, I thought it would take much longer to locate the next in line.”
“But no, Victoria, for it wasn’t that they didn’t know who the heir was… It was where to find him,” Melly told her archly. “Surely you knew that.”
Victoria didn’t have the heart to tell her mother-who had memorized the lineage of every noble family in England-that her interest in Phillip had not extended to learning every branch of his sparse family tree. She’d been much less interested in his wealth than his generous and caring personality.
Blast. A tear pricked the corner of her eye. Would she never be able to think of Phillip without that happening?
“He has been living in Spain for the last ten years,” Melly told her. “But of course, now that the current marquess has disappeared and has not been heard from in weeks, the worst is believed to have happened.” She frowned thoughtfully. “What bad luck those de Lacys seem to have. Pardon me, dear,” she added hastily, realizing she might be infringing upon her daughter’s grief.
“He’s not the only one to have disappeared quite suddenly,” Lady Nilly said, lifting a biscuit genteelly to her lips. “Didn’t your friend Miss Starcasset-who was to marry the Earl of Brodebaugh-also go missing? After he was found dead in his own parlor?” She shuddered, but bit into the biscuit with gusto. Cook Mildred’s strawberry-cream biscuits were not to be missed for any reason. Since the berries were only in season for a short time, one could not squander the opportunity.
“Ah, indeed,” Victoria replied, wondering if Nilly had learned of that information about Gwendolyn through her interactions with her brother, George. “But, though I dislike spreading gossip”-she looked pointedly at the ladies three-“I do have it on good authority that Gwen has eloped with an exceedingly unsuitable man.”