He frowned. “The letter only demanded that I allow those schemers safe passage out of the city before they released you.” His eyes narrowed on the traitorous woman. “Now explain yourself at once, Rosetta.”
She gained her feet with liquid grace and took a shuddering breath. “I have been hiding John from you and the other vampires for a little over four months now. When he received an invitation from your wife to a writers’ gathering, I thought the duchess had set a trap for him. We captured Her Grace with intent to hold her until you gave us a letter of safe passage from London.” She fell back to her knees before him. “I truly believed that you meant to kill my Johnny. And when Her Grace told us you did not, I released her. I swear it. Please, Your Grace, have mercy!” Tears trailed down her ivory cheeks. “I love him!”
Angelica looked up at him with wide gypsy eyes shining in the candlelight. “Don’t you see, Ian? They are in love. You would do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
He sighed, overwhelmed with this unexpected turn in the situation. “I suppose I would.” Actually, he would probably do worse. If he thought someone intended to kill his beloved, he would slaughter them in the most brutal manner imaginable. “Did they hurt you, Angel?” he growled.
“No, not in the slightest.” She spread her arms and twirled to show herself unharmed.
“Were you afraid?” His eyes blazed like silver daggers at her captors.
Angelica snorted and shook her head, ever fearless. “Of course not. A duchess is more valuable alive than dead, you know.”
Ian scratched his chin thoughtfully and favored her with a stern gaze. “But if they let you go, then why were you still here, rather than safe at home?”
Her smile was sheepish. “I wanted to know about the famous writers’ gathering at Lake Geneva as well as how to tie a decent neckcloth. After all, you weren’t expected back for another day or so.”
He raised his eyes heavenward, though he could expect no aid from that quarter. “I might have known.”
Angelica skipped over to him, grasping the lapels of his topcoat. “Oh, Ian, John didn’t write ‘The Vampyre’ about you or other vampires at all! He meant the story to be a gothic lampoon on Lord Byron. They were lovers once,” she added with a blush. “So you see this whole thing was all a great and terrible misunderstanding.”
“I suppose it was,” he said, still frowning at Polidori in exasperation for all the trouble he had caused.
His duchess beamed and clasped her hands together. “Then everything is settled!”
John’s shoulders slumped with relief and he embraced Rosetta. Ian’s subject’s eyes were filled with gratitude as she bowed to him. “How can I ever thank you, Your Grace? I—”
Ian held up a hand. “I am afraid that everything is not ‘settled.’ As Lord of London, I cannot turn a blind eye to a subject’s betrayal.” His gaze shifted to Dr. Polidori’s solemn form. “And as for you, sir, I cannot countenance a mortal writer of your notoriety and subject matter gallivanting around with one of my vampires and holding the secrets of our kind to your breast.”
“Your Grace, I would never reveal—” Polidori began.
“Silence!” he thundered, a headache threatening as he turned back to his subordinate. “Rosetta, I am placing you under arrest for the crime of lying to your lord and revealing yourself to a mortal. You will accompany me to Burnrath House, and you may only feed under my supervision until your sentence is carried out. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she whispered, bowing her head.
He turned to the quaking mortal man, whose pen had caused all this trouble in the first place. “As for you, young physician, as much as I would like to let you go, your fame, coupled with your dangerous knowledge, prevents me from that course of action. Dr. John Polidori, you must die.”
Thirty-three
24 August 1821
Though the day was hot and sweltering, the crowd that had gathered outside the house on Great Pulteney Street shivered as if chilled. Death had visited here.
The coroner shook his head and wiped the sweat from his brow as he stepped back into the August heat. The victim had very obviously committed suicide. A bottle of prussic acid was tipped over by the body’s outstretched hand, and the substance was all over the corpse’s face. But the constable had put considerable pressure on the coroner to write “natural causes” on the report.
Besides consideration for the family’s reputation, the fellow had been something of a notorious writer and a friend of the infamous Lord Byron. That was sufficient cause for lengthy paperwork and irritating hounding by the press, which had already gathered outside like carrion birds. A suicide would send the lot into throes of ecstasy and scandal broth.