The edges of her vision tinged with black and white spots flashing before her eyes, and finally Ian released her. Though he still had an alarming pallor, the deathly cast of gray had abandoned his flesh. He might live. Triumphant relief surged within her being that the hunter hadn’t murdered her love.
The hunter… Angelica peered over at the mutilated corpse on the stone floor. Its glassy, dead eyes stared at her in eternal accusation.
I killed him. The world tilted, began to spin. I killed a man. Her body trembled in shock as dizziness overtook her. Angelica’s muscles turned to water and she pitched forward. Just before blackness closed over her, Ian’s strong arms enfolded her and she heard one last word from his beautiful voice.
“Angel.”
***
Ian’s heart constricted as Angelica’s blood coursed through his veins, a heart-rending sacrifice. She’d been willing to die for him.
When he saw the vampire hunter poised over him with her standing nearby, he was ready to die to be spared the agony of his wife’s apparent betrayal. He’d thought she hired the hunter to kill him. As the stake plunged deep into his heart, the pain was so agonizing that he lost consciousness and greeted death and oblivion with open arms.
Then he awoke to the sweet, unforgettable taste of his Angel’s blood flowing down his throat, quickening his body and healing his wound.
“I love you,” she’d whispered achingly before fainting across his chest.
Ian extracted her wrist from his mouth and bit his lip to place a healing kiss upon the wound. He carefully rolled Angelica off his body, laying her reverently on the cool marble, and sat up to take stock of his injuries. She’d stuffed her dress into his wound, he realized. Ian shook his head in wonder as his wife’s heroic efforts to save his life struck him anew. He pulled out the fabric before the bones and flesh could knit around it. He tied the muslin around his torso, wincing at the combination of pain and the tingling of healing that rushed through his immortal body. Yet still, he needed more.
Slowly, he eased her on her back and rolled off the slab, his face contorting in agony as his chest seemed to rip apart.
With impossible slowness, he dragged his body to the crumpled form of the hunter. The man was dead, but the blood would still be warm. Ian swallowed with revulsion at what he had to do; then he plunged his fangs into the man’s neck, draining the corpse dry of what sustenance he could gather.
When he had taken all he could, he looked at the gaping cut on the man’s throat and the rest of the shallow wounds covering his face and neck. The top of one ear had been sliced clean off. It was obvious that his wife had fought like a demon for him, and his heart ached anew at the pain he had heaped upon her.
He looked at the corpse one more time, and his eyes widened as recognition speared him. The vampire hunter was no amateur. He was none other than Ben Flannigan, the bane of the vampire world, who had more than a dozen kills to his name. The man had become such a threat that the Elders had lifted their ban on killing humans and put a price on his head. And his tiny, mortal wife had been the one to take him down.
As the blood revitalized and healed him further, he was able to return to his bride much quicker. Though he could ill afford it, Ian bit his finger. Gently Ian coaxed Angelica’s lips to part, giving her a meager amount of his power back. Her color improved, but still she did not awaken.
“God, I have been such a fool,” Ian whispered.
For the first time in centuries, tears burned his eyes. He should have known she did not marry him with the intention to expose and destroy him with her writings, or even to become rich and titled. He now remembered what she had said when she’d announced her willingness to wed him and her confessions of her attempts to escape the match.
“I was not going to marry you at all! I have been doing everything I can to avoid it and I was going to run away!”
“And just where were you planning to run to?” he’d accused.
“I was going to use the money I made from my stories to rent a flat somewhere in the city, and support myself with short stories until I finished a novel. I heard the lady who wrote Pride and Prejudice made one hundred forty pounds.”
“That would not be enough to buy your pretty gowns.”
“Gowns can go to the devil! Besides, they are not sensible garb for an author, I should say.”
She had been so irritating but so magnificent in her rebellious pride and naivety.
He held her closer, kissing her brow as he remembered her words the first night they’d made love.
“If I had known it would be like this, I would have insisted you marry me the very night of the Cavendish ball!”
“Oh God, I hurt her so unbearably,” he whispered. “I hurt her and yet she still loves me! And she risked her life to save mine. What have I done?”