“Good.” He released her and rubbed his hands on his trousers as if he had touched something loathsome. “I should be gone in a month’s time. I will leave you this house and all my other estates, as well as sufficient funds to keep you in luxury for the rest of your life. In the meantime I would greatly appreciate it if you stayed the hell away from me.”
He pivoted and left the room, slamming the door. The crack of the frame mirrored that of her heart.
Angelica fell to her knees in a heap of skirts, unable to stand any longer as the racking sobs tore out of her body.
“Oh God,” she whispered, gazing into the fire, her vision painfully blurred through the sheen of her tears. “What have I done?”
Twenty-four
Ian licked the blood of the drunkard from his lips and slipped a sovereign in the man’s pocket before propping him up against the wall of the inn. The sustenance was like ashes in his mouth. The long years of his existence felt like a millennia these past few days. Angelica’s betrayal had stung him deeply. He’d been a fool to allow himself to care for her. Not for the first time, he wondered if she had intended his downfall all along. He closed his eyes and remembered the many things she had said and done to indicate her duplicity.
“I heard that you are a vampire,” she had said the night they’d met.
“I am a man,” he’d replied, too captivated by her beauty to be wary of the trap she set.
The dark beauty nodded. “I assumed so.”
“And why is that?”
“I saw that you cast a reflection.”
“And if I did not, what would you do?”
“I would ask you what it is like to be a vampire.”
“Why would you want to know such a thing? Would you want to be one?”
“I did not think about that. I just thought it would make a good story.”
He growled at his foolishness. She had been even more candid the night she broke into his house.
“As you know, I have always wanted to be a writer…” And yet he’d still been beguiled by her, swallowing her Banbury tale of ghosts haunting his house like a wet-eared schoolboy.
And how could he have forgotten their courtship, when her questions about his kind had been relentless?
He cursed himself for being a gullible idiot. He had been blinded with infatuation by a bewitching slip of a girl who had made him feel like a mortal man again. But he was a mortal man no longer. He was a Lord Vampire, and his folly had nearly cost him his life and possibly the lives of the vampires under his protection.
“Bloodsucking fiend,” she had called him. Fool that he was, the words still stung.
He slipped his hands in his pockets and walked in the darkest shadows, avoiding the meager touch of the moon. Mortals noted the black look on his face and darted out of his path, as well they should have.
It was past time he ceased living among mortals. In truth, he had no idea why his maker had insisted that he do so. No other vampires were pulling off such a ruse to the great extent that he was. Though he would miss a few of his friends, like the Duke of Wentworth, he had been accustomed to losing mortal friends for centuries.
He strolled into White’s, deciding to enjoy the smoky haven while he could. It was time for him to leave this city, and most likely the club would no longer exist by the time he returned to England. Last night he had dashed off a letter to the Elders, requesting that Rafe stand in as Lord of London for the next fifty years.
Now all he had left to do was wait. He expected a reply within the month. He sighed and sat down at the faro table, his mind whispering, Only one more month until I never have to see her beautiful face again.
***
“Would you like anything else, Your Grace?” Liza asked gently as she brought Angelica’s breakfast tray.
“No, thank you.” Angelica managed not to snap her reply, though she felt like exploding in rage and smashing everything in sight. “You may go.”
When she was finally alone, she leaped out of bed and paced the room like a caged tigress. If I receive any more sympathy from anyone, I swear I will scream!
As she swept back and forth across the bedchamber, details of the past week chased through her mind like relentless banshees.
After Ian threw her precious manuscript into the fire and raged at her, Angelica had locked the door of her writing room and spent the night huddled in her chair, numb with grief. When she emerged the next morning, she was heedless of the pitying looks the servants gave her when they announced that the duke had commanded them to move all of her personal items to the adjoining bedchamber. She merely nodded as if nothing was amiss and retired to the chamber, sleeping for two days.