Chapter Twenty-three
In Which the Truth Corned Out
Max would not let Victoria see to his wounds. He snarled at her when she tried to pull his jacket off to look at them, so she gave up and settled onto the threadbare seat of the hackney they'd been forced to hire to get them home.The edge of the horizon had just begun to color with the faintest gray-yellow of approaching dawn. Victoria couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. No more vampires to deal with until the night.
Now all she had to handle was her husband.
Despite the fact that he was growing gray and breathing more shallowly, Max insisted that the hackney drop Victoria off at St. Heath's Row before taking him home. And he wouldn't even consider coming into her house to have his wounds—whatever they were—attended to. Thus, when she climbed down from the hackney, she told the driver where to take him—not to his house, but to Aunt Eustacia's—and gave him an extra shilling to make certain he got Max inside and into her aunt's care.
It wasn't until she walked up the steps to the entrance of St. Heath's Row that Victoria realized she was still garbed in men's clothing, and that what was left of her gown was still in Max's carriage. It wouldn't seem so odd to Lettender, the butler, that she would arrive home at dawn in a hired hackney… but to arrive dressed as she was would certainly be cause for some comment and curious looks.
However, she was the marchioness, and though the austere butler might look at her askance, he surely would not dare to ask any questions.
The biggest concern Victoria had at that moment was whether Phillip was home. She rapped on the door, knowing that the household was already up, although perhaps Lettender was still snoring in his back room. One of the underbutlers opened the door, and from the bored look on his face Victoria knew that she had arrived home before Phillip.
Thank God.
She walked past the young man as if it were an everyday occurrence that she should leave in a ball gown and arrive home in men's clothing, and hurried up the stairs to her chamber. Verbena stumbled to her feet when she walked in, her springy hair smashed flat on the same side of her face that had sleep marks.
"My lady! You are home! How is your arm?"
"I am fine. Thank you for sending this clothing for me," Victoria said. "But quickly, now, I must get dressed in my nightclothes. The marquess should be arriving home shortly, and I do not want to him to see me dressed thus."
They worked quickly, and none too soon, for just as the sun began to show its glowing edge against the rooftops of London, Max's carriage pulled up in front of the estate.
Victoria flung on a cloak and dashed back down the stairs, skirts and hems held high.
Kritanu's nephew Briyani, a short, narrow-faced man with large muscles and the same bronze skin color of his uncle, was helping Phillip out of the carriage.
"Thank you for taking care of him," Victoria murmured to Max's driver. "Has he been awake?"
"Not so much, just as we were arriving home." He handed Verbena a bundle of frothy material—her ball gown, now crumpled and soiled beyond repair, but at least it would not remain in the carriage.
"Max is at your uncle's home, and he is injured quite badly," Victoria told him.
He nodded and climbed back into his perch, starting the carriage off. "I will go and see how he is."
"Victoria!"
Phillip was standing at the door of the house, looking bedraggled and exhausted. His eyes, always at half-mast, looked particularly weary.
"Darling! You are home at last." Victoria said brightly, slipping her arm around his.
"Max came to my club; he said you called for me to come home. And then there was some great altercation there—I left in the midst of it." He shook his head as if to clear it, and Victoria felt a renewed stab of guilt. "I must have fallen asleep on the way home."
Lies and more lies. Subterfuge and deceit. Phillip was an innocent bystander who just wanted to live a normal, happy life with the wife he loved… and he was caught up in a mess that he could not comprehend. And he didn't even know it.
How long could she continue to expend energy in making certain he didn't know? Making certain he was safe? Living a dual life?
Victoria drew him into her arms right there on the stoop of St. Heath's Row, just beyond the stone walls that separated their estate from the streets of London.
"I am fine. I am afraid there was no urgency for you to return home; I merely told Max, when I saw him at the Guilderstons' dinner dance, that if he should see you to let you know that I would be home early and would like to speak with you."
Perhaps another wife would have asked about his evening, about the altercation that apparently he faintly remembered at Bridge and Stokes, but Victoria could not take the charade that far.
"Come, you look exhausted. Why do you not take a rest?"
He slid his arm around her waist and propelled her with surprising strength into the house. "I will if you will join me, my lovely wife."
"That I will." Could he sense the relief in her voice? Could he tell that the tension had slipped from her as he appeared to accept so easily what had happened?
Victoria wasn't certain whether she should be relieved or disappointed that Phillip was too tired to make love to her, as he'd certainly intended. She curled up next to him and tried to sleep, knowing that something had to change before she went mad.
Her dreams were filled with the images and smells of the scene at Bridge and Stokes, of shredded flesh and pools of blood, vacant eyes and mouths sagging open in shocked and ecstatic screams… of red eyes and gleaming fangs and the whir of a metal blade, slicing and slicing and slicing…
When she awoke it was from a restless movement, and she was looking into the clear blue eyes of her husband. He was not smiling.
"You were there last night. At the club. At my club."
She was so taken by surprise, Victoria could do nothing but move her mouth, trying to speak, but her lips would not form words.
"You were with your cousin. Is he really your cousin?" He was propped on one elbow, half sitting. The sheet had fallen from his bare chest and showed the curve of his arm and the dip of his elbow.
"No, I mean, yes, he is my cousin," she stammered, pulling herself up to sit. Too late, she remembered the scar on her left arm... In their haste the night before, Verbena had dressed her in a gown that had no sleeves. The gash on her arm, though healing quickly, was long and red and impossible not to notice.
Phillip did notice it, and he reached for her arm, pulling her off balance. "What is this? When did this happen?"
Victoria pulled away hard and broke his grip with little effort. She hadn't taken off her vis bulla the night before. "A few days ago. It was an accident in the stables—I cut myself on one of the farrier's tools."
"That is a very deep cut," Phillip replied, his voice neutral. "When did you say it happened?"
Victoria swallowed. The last time he had seen her nude and with bare arms was when they made love after returning from the theater—just before she drugged him, only two nights ago. "I believe it was yesterday morning, after you left to go to your club."
He looked at her. "Yesterday? It appears to have healed quite rapidly."
Her heart was pounding rampantly. "Yes, I am quite surprised. My aunt gave me some particularly effective salve."
Phillip threw back the blankets so hard they whipped over her face, falling on her head then slipping down into her lap. He moved off the bed, naked and beautiful, and very, very angry.
He stalked over to look out of the window that spanned the height of the wall from ceiling to floor, crossing his arms in front of him. As he had done before, he spoke to the wall, not to her… though the words were for her.
"Victoria, I want to know why you were at my club last night dressed in men's clothing with that Italian man you claim is your cousin. And I want to know the truth of how you received such a dangerous injury that has healed so quickly."
She drew in a deep breath. She had wanted something to change. This would be it.
"I was at the club because we—Max and I, and yes, he is my distant cousin—learned that there was going to be an attack there. I wanted to be certain you were safe."
"You wanted to be certain I was safe?" He spun from the window, and the yellow sunshine cast a beautiful golden shadow over his skin and hair. Unfortunately she was in no position to appreciate it. "What kind of nonsense are you speaking, Victoria? What could you do besides put yourself in danger?" He gestured to her arm. "It appears you already have!"
She was angry at the derision in his voice, and exhausted, and over the top with stress. She should have ended the conversation there, told him nothing else. Let him be angry.
But she didn't.
"I work with Max. It is part of our family legacy."
"You work with Max? Marchionesses don't work."
"I do." She swallowed. "I hunt vampires."
He stared at her. And stared.
And stared.
And then he said in a terrible voice, "You are mad."
"I am not mad, Phillip. It's true."
"You are mad."
Her temper snapped. She vaulted off the bed and marched over to him, stopping so close that the hem of her night rail brushed against his bare legs. "Give me your hands."
When he reluctantly offered them, she grabbed his wrists and said, "Try to break my grip."
He tried, and he couldn't. She forced his arms down to his sides, watching the expression on his face turn from anger to shock to incomprehension.
She released him. "I am a vampire hunter. It is my family legacy. I have no choice; it is what I must do."
Phillip stepped away from her, bumping into the window behind him. "I don't believe in vampires."
"That is quite foolish of you, as one nearly bit you last night… just before you saw me. Max dispatched him whilst you were talking to me."
He shook his head. "Whether they exist or not, you cannot hunt vampires, Victoria. You are a marchioness. You are a pillar of Society. I forbid it. As your husband, I forbid it."