Rubies.
He looked up and around, already feeling slow and weak, already hardly able to breathe, trying to maintain an empty expression even as he felt his strength draining away. Where in the dark hell are they?
Then he saw them, dangling from Angelica’s ears. Ruby earbobs. Large ones, too. She was watching him, as if she noticed his sluggishness, and he pressed his lips together to hide the affliction. The gems were strong, but they weren’t enough to kill him or even to burn him…unless they touched his flesh.
But they made him feel as if he were deep in a pool of hot, red water…slow and murky, his limbs heavy. Before they came to Blackmont Hall, he’d made certain none of the women had rubies; all of his staff understood that no gems were to enter his home without approval from him.
How had Angelica come by these, then?
Miss Woodmore shifted at that moment and Dimitri saw that she, too, was wearing them. Ruby earbobs.
And then he knew precisely how they’d come about getting the stones, for his brain worked just fine even if his body was leeching into bonelessness.
Damn Voss to his dark hell.
He’d done it. Probably when he visited Angelica’s chamber that night. It would be just like the man to leave them for the sisters, mainly as a jest to Dimitri—to let him know that Voss had breached his residence and found a way inside.
He wouldn’t have expected them to all be confined in a carriage together, where the proximity made the potency of the jewels even worse.
“Lord Corvindale!” Angelica said, as Dimitri tried to fight back the fury at his realization, strangled and weak.
“Are you ill?”
All three women suddenly fluttered about him as if he were an injured child, and everything became a flurry of pastel skirts and perfumes and wide eyes. Which of course made the whole situation worse, as the rubies swung closer, and Dimitri angrier, resulting in an even more heavy strangling and crushing of his torso.
“A…way…” he tried to say, trying to push the girls and the four robins’-egg-size jewels away.
Then all of a sudden, there was a huge thump and a crash and the landau lurched to a halt. They all tumbled every which way, dislodged by the great force. Dimitri, still pinned in the corner, struggled to pull to his feet, getting a bit of a reprieve as the girls with the ruby earrings jolted away from him.
But before he could gather up his immense strength and master control of his ribbony limbs, the carriage door whipped open and he saw the flash of glowing red eyes. The next thing he knew, screams and scuffling and flying skirts filled the air and in the midst of the melee, Angelica was gone.
Taking, thank the Fates, half the paralyzing rubies with her.
Miss Woodmore was shouting orders and thrashing about on the floor of the carriage, tangled with Mirabella and Dimitri’s legs and shoes, and he barely managed to grab on to her ankle or she would have lunged out the ajar door after her sister.
He yanked her awkwardly back into the carriage in an effort to get away from her, the rubies and the mess inside, and to fumble his way out and after Belial. But by the time he managed to get free of the rubies’ hold and into the night air, it was too late. They were out of sight, out of scent, and any sounds from their flight were mingled with every other sound of London at night.
Damnation.
Tren, Dimitri’s groom, was lying on the ground, his face bloodied and his limbs unmoving. The horses had been cut free and were gone, leaving all of them stranded with the landau and no way to give chase. A small group of street urchins stood in the shadowy gap between two brick buildings, likely up to their ankles in the mucky waste that Dimitri smelled. They watched with wide white eyes. And behind him, standing in the doorway of the carriage, was Miss Woodmore, looking decidedly less fresh and smooth than she had moments earlier. And her mouth was moving.
Oh, was it moving.
Cursing, furious, still trying to shake off the last of his weakness, Dimitri blocked out his ward’s recriminations and questions and demands and checked on Tren—who was alive and likely to remain so, as evidenced by his eyes opening and the curse words spilling from his lips—and then looked over to the children watching in the dark.
None of them were able to give him a clear answer on where the vampires had gone, and despite the fact that Dimitri was relieved that Belial had only seen fit to take one of the carriage’s occupants, he was incensed that he’d been caught by surprise.
Yet another unfortunate event caused by Voss and his games and jests.
Frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t leave the women and go off after Belial immediately, Dimitri sent Tren off to find a hackney or some horses so he could get them home. Then he could start combing the city for Angelica and Belial. While the groom limped off, Dimitri circled the area around the accident, sniffing, observing, listening intently in the distance for any clue that would lead him after the younger Woodmore sister.
We have time. His mind was clear and calm. Belial would keep Angelica safe and protected until he got her to Moldavi, and getting a young woman across the Channel during wartime would be some challenge, even for the Dracule—but it could be done. If Dimitri could find them before they left London it would be best, but he knew exactly where Moldavi stayed in Paris and where they’d be taking her. So if he had to go to Paris and face down the damned child-bleeder, he’d do it.
With relish.
Cool and intent, his brain clicked through the steps to hunt down Belial and his victim, running through the possibilities—would they leave tonight, would they keep her somewhere until a boat was arranged, would they leave from the docks here or go by land to Dover—even as his eyes observed and he lifted his face to scent over and under the smells weaving in the world, searching for the one that belonged to Angelica.
When he realized she hadn’t stopped talking, trying to get his attention, and her insistence was interrupting his concentration, Dimitri turned and snarled at Miss Woodmore. To his surprise, she actually closed her mouth for a moment, looking up at him with wide, shocked eyes.
He drew in a deep breath, fighting to keep his eyes from burning red and from his fangs being exposed. And, staying his distance from the lethal rubies, as he met her gaze, he felt something inside him soften. She looked terrified and rumpled and, impossibly, as if she were about to cry.
“Surely you aren’t about to cry, are you, Miss Woodmore?”
His words had the desired effect, for she straightened her shoulders, which had begun to bow inside her silvery-blue gown, causing it to gap at the bodice. Her gaze flashed almost as hotly as Belial’s, except that it glistened with tears.
“Of course I am,” she said in affronted tones. One of the tears spilled over and ran down her cheek and she wiped it away angrily.
Dimitri clamped his mouth shut on the automatic response he’d intended to make after her denial and looked at her again. And then realized he really shouldn’t have done so.
That softening inside him started to twist and unfurl more quickly, like a sail gaining wind, and he couldn’t help but notice how lovely she was in her dishevelment…particularly now that her mouth wasn’t moving in demands and recriminations. The curve of her cheeks, soft and high, the point of her chin with its subtle dimple, and even in the faulty light, he could see dark lashes and brows enhancing the shape of her eyes.
And that mouth…his blood surged and he stopped himself cold from remembering the soft heat of it against his. And the cardamom-vanilla and sweet lily that wafted from her skin. Her hair looked silver-black in the moon, all of the nuances of color washed out and reduced to a simple chiaroscuro. Her coiffure was a bloody mess, but he found it much more interesting all tumbled about her temples and jaw and sagging along her neck around those earbobs than the way it had been forced into submission moments earlier.
“I should think that I’m entitled to a few tears,” she said in a voice that seemed…less hard. More bumpy, unsteady in its cadence. Firm, still, but with feeling. “I am a bit frightened and confused. After all, we’ve just been in a carriage accident, attacked by horrible, bloodthirsty vampir, and my sister has been abducted by them.” Now her voice began to rise. “And our very fierce guardian could do nothing to stop them. What was Chas thinking?”
The sail inside him lost its wind and Dimitri scowled. Damn her, she was bloody well right. Not that it was his fault that Voss had done something so foolish, presumably unaware of the potential consequences (which was always his excuse), but in all fairness, it had been Dimitri who allowed Angelica to be abducted.
And Dimitri wasn’t used to being at fault.
He opened his mouth to say something—likely something snarly and rude that would send her huffing off into the closed carriage, which was exactly what he wanted: her away from him—but he realized he had a mouthful of fangs, thrusting long and sharp and in no mood to be sheathed. It just didn’t seem to be the right moment for her to learn that he was one of those—what had she called them? Horrible, bloodthirsty vampirs.
At least she hadn’t said “murderous.” Although in the case of Belial and Moldavi, that would be more accurate.
Just then, Mirabella, who also looked as if she’d been tumbled down a hill and then dragged herself to her feet at the bottom, spoke. “Maia, where did you get those rubies?” She didn’t spare Dimitri a glance, but hurried over to Miss Woodmore. Tension oozed from her. “Corvindale despises rubies,” she said to her companion, under her breath presumably so that Dimitri couldn’t hear—but of course he could hear everything, including Miss Woodmore’s response.
“Rubies? The earl despises rubies? Why in the world should I care? He doesn’t have to wear them.” Her furious whisper broke at the end. “I want to find Angelica. We have to find my brother—at least he’ll be able to save her. He can kill those vampirs—”
“But you don’t understand,” Mirabella was saying, still in a low hiss, glancing covertly at Dimitri from over her shoulder. “The very sight of them make him furious. You must get rid of the earbobs, for he hates them.”