“I was under the impression that the lock you designed for my door could not be opened without the key,” Miles said to Tristan tersely as his cousins ambled uninvited into his apartment. “And I have that right here.”
“I accidentally made two of them,” Tristan replied with an unapologetic smile.
“You know,” Sebastian explained. “In case anything should happen to you.”
“The only thing that is going to happen to me this afternoon is that I am going to be left alone with my thoughts. Now go away.”
“Your thoughts?” Sebastian asked, looking pointedly at the four decanters of wine that stood in the middle of the table.
Miles looked up to glare ferociously, but Ian moved into his line of vision. His expression was grim. “We have something to say to you, Miles.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Miles said, turning away from them. He had been staring at the decanters of wine he ordered from Corin since returning from his meetings at one o’clock. It was now half past three and he had not touched them. Somewhere inside he recognized that they would only make what he was feeling worse. But now, seeing his cousins, he stood, reached out for one of them, and poured himself a glass.
Ian’s hand closed over his before he could take a gulp. “You are going to listen to us, Miles. Sober.”
Miles put the glass down and regarded them bitterly. “You have nothing to worry about. I am not going to disgrace the family. I will behave with perfect courtesy tonight and go through with the betrothal tomorrow,” he said. “You have my word. Are you satisfied?”
“No,” Crispin replied for all of them. “That is not why we came. We—”
“Then what is it? Do you want my promise that I will not see Clio after I am married? You can have that, too. I would never do that to her. I could never treat her that way.”
“Damn it, Miles, sit down and let us speak,” Tristan said, and it was so unlike him to be serious that Miles did what he said.
“Good.” Ian, who had been designated as spokesman, nodded. “We have a proposal for you, Miles. We know that by the terms of your betrothal, if you do not marry Mariana you must sacrifice your assets, your property, everything. We cannot do much about replacing your title, although L. N. is working with the queen on that, but we will each give you a quarter of our fortunes to make up for what you will lose.”
“What?” Miles asked, thunderstruck.
“We want you to be happy, Miles,” Crispin explained. “We have never seen you as happy as you have been during these past nine days. And we are fairly sure it has nothing to do with the approach of your marriage.”
When Miles still looked dumbfounded, Sebastian spelled it out in clear language. “We want you to marry Clio Thornton.”
Craven and unworthy, the contract said he would be if he did not abide its provisions. “I can’t,” Miles answered plainly.
Crispin looked at him, uncomprehending. “But you will have plenty of mone—”
“It’s not about the money,” Miles interrupted his cousin. “It has never been about the money.”
“It’s about proving your worth to your father,” Tristan said, reciting the line they had heard from Miles so many times. “But damn it, Miles, your father is dead.”
“It is not my father. It is about proving something to myself.”
“What?” Tristan demanded.
“That I am not the man he thought I was. That I am not craven and unworthy. That I am not dishonorable.”
Tristan waved his hand. “Those are just words.”
“No,” Miles shook his head and his cheeks were flushed. “Not when they are said by your father. Not when they are said about you.” Suddenly anger edged his voice. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he went on, glaring at Tristan. “You don’t even know who the hell your father is.”
His words seemed to scorch the air, and Miles was immediately sorry. “Oh God, Trist, you know I did not—”
“You are right,” Tristan interrupted, not stiffly. “I am a bastard. And a thief.”
“That is not what I—” Miles began, but Tristan cut him off again.
“Perhaps you remember that I was fairly troubled by that when you all rescued me from the hanging cells at the Doge’s prison, what was that, sixteen years ago? Remember how I growled at you and told you that a thief and a bastard could never be accepted as one of the famous and honorable Arboretti? Remember how I tried to drive you away?”
Miles, chastened, nodded.
“Then maybe you remember what finally convinced me to come with you and assume my birthright. No? It was this very young and idealistic poet, one of my cousins, whose hair kept falling in his eyes and who was already at that time a half head taller than me, who would not accept my arguments. He grabbed me by the collar of my best shirt and said, ‘Honor does not mean blindly acceding to somebody else’s expectations, Tristan del Moro, it means making your own and living up to them. Stop acting like a fool.’ And then stormed off. Of course, he could not get far because the cell door was closed, but he had made his point.”
Miles’s expression was distant. “I had forgotten about that.”
“I hadn’t. And now, even though you are still taller than I am, I’m going to do the same thing to you.” Tristan dragged Miles up by the collar and looked in his eyes. “If you love Clio Thornton, you should marry her, Miles Fraser Loredan. And if you don’t, I’ll marry her myself and then you’ll really have a reason to call me a bastard. Personally, I do not want to be the only Arboretti not wed to a woman who was once wanted for murder.”
All of a sudden, Miles found that he was smiling. And laughing. He hugged Tristan around the neck. “Thank you,” he said.
“It was the least I could do. If it wasn’t for you, I would not be here now,” Tristan told him. “Now I think it is time you introduce us to your bride-to-be.”
He was going to marry Clio. Unable to contain himself, Miles let out an enormous celebratory holler.
Corin burst into the room then as if he had been fired from a cannon.
“Corin, listen to the news,” Miles began, but the expression on his manservant’s face stopped him cold. It would have been enough to sober Miles even if he had drunk all four decanters of wine. “What has happened?”
“I think there is something you should hear, my lord,” he said, stepping aside to let one of Miles’s handpicked footmen enter the room. He was panting.
“We found Doctor LaForge, sir,” the footman said between breaths.
“Where?” Miles asked in a voice none of his cousins had heard in years. They exchanged perplexed glances.
“He was in one of your coaches,” the boy elaborated, still breathing heavily. “Apparently your betrothed’s maid, Jocelyn, borrowed it for him. That was how we found him. Coachman passed the word to Arnold when he saw us on the street.”
“Did you know about this?” Miles demanded of Corin, who shook his head and looked gray. Miles returned his attention to the footman. “Go on.”
“We caught up with him in Whitefriars, waiting outside some old house. When he started to move, I came to inform you. Arnold is still following him, on foot.”
“Good work. Stay with him. Keep us notified.” Miles began to turn away.
“Yes sir. There is just one thing, sir.”
Miles turned back. “What?”
“There’s a lady with him. A lady with a monkey.”
“Is it Lady Thornton?” Miles asked and his voice was deadly calm.
“I did not get a perfect look, sir, but I am almost certain that it was.”
Clio realized four things at once: the figure hunched opposite her had no accent and no beard, but there was no mistaking that he was Doctor LaForge; she was alone with a man who brutally killed women; he had a pistol aimed at her forehead; and he looked like he knew how to use it.
That meant she had two choices. Pray the coach hit a bad spot in the road, upsetting LaForge’s aim long enough for her to get away. Or learn what he intended to do with her and start planning an escape.
The coach bumped over something then, and swerved abruptly, but Doctor LaForge’s aim did not waver.
One choice.
“Where are you taking me?” Clio asked in what she hoped was an engaging tone.
“Shut up,” Doctor LaForge replied.
No choices.
Clio did as he said, pressing herself into the corner of the coach. Toast huddled against her, every now and then peering at the man with the pistol, then turning and hiding his face. Nor could she blame him. Doctor LaForge’s expression was one of such complete malevolence that it was chilling just to look at him.
Clio felt his eyes boring into her, seeing but not seeing, almost feverish in their menace. But she would not be afraid. She would not give him the benefit of her terror.
Not until she could not help it.
Unhelpful thoughts flitted through her mind. How many victims had he taken? Two dozen? More? Would he kill her with the pistol or with poison? Which would be more painful? What was going to happen to Toast? Would she at least get answers to her questions before he killed her? Would Miles still get married the next day?
This last thought rattled around her head, preoccupying her, until the coach drew to a stop. She was astonished to see they were at the Painted Lady. And relieved. Surely, Lovely Jake would be able to help her.
But he was nowhere to be seen as they entered and ascended the back stairs, and before she could even think of calling out she felt the pistol pressed hard against her back. She did as LaForge indicated and pushed open the door of a room, but when she saw what was inside she almost could not make her feet cross the threshold. It was some combination of Toast’s running ahead and the pistol at her back that propelled her.
LaForge shoved her into a chair that had been set up opposite the door. As soon as she saw it, she knew that he had been planning whatever was about to happen, because the chair had been modified. Attached to each of the arms were leather straps, with which, despite her attempts to stop him, he managed to bind her wrists. She flexed her hands and pulled against the straps, but they held fast. She was immobile. There was no way for her to escape.
It was one thing to sit across the coach from a madman and remain calm, she realized as she became aware of her growing panic, but quite another to stay tranquil as he tied you into a chair.
“I am not afraid of you,” Clio told him, as much as herself, and was surprised by his unconcern.
“Your feelings are of no importance to me. You are merely a pawn.”
Had she misunderstood? Was he not interested in her fear? “A pawn? What game are we playing?”
“The game of revenge,” he explained smoothly, testing the leather thongs holding her hands to ensure they were tight. “A game that requires you to die. Preferably in a great deal of pain.”
You will pay for this Dearbourn, Clio remembered the vampire saying before he plunged into the river last time. “Revenge on Viscount Dearbourn?”
“That is only part of it,” he told her, lifting a satchel from under the bed and opening it.
“Tell me the rest,” she urged. “Tell me how you survived after Dearbourn shot you.”
“I swam,” LaForge answered plainly. “Then I went to Europe, where I had the pleasure of meeting up with your idiot cousin and that bitch you call your grandmother.”
“How? Did you seek them out? Did you know Mariana was betro—”
“I don’t like your questions,” he interrupted, removing three rusty knives from the satchel, each one longer and thicker than the other. “The only sound I want to hear from you is the sound of the life draining from you as you cry out, in vain, for help.” He spoke entirely without emphasis or inflection, which only made his words more hideous.
Her one chance, Clio saw, was to find a way to delay him. “But I want to know,” she said, and she allowed a hint of desperation to creep into her voice. She had read in a book once that leather became malleable when warm, and she wriggled her wrists slightly to create friction around her bonds. “I want to understand, Doctor LaForge.”
“My name is not Doctor LaForge.” He turned and stared at her now. “My name is Samuel Rightson.”
Samuel Rightson. The name was familiar to Clio, but—“You are Theolinda Rightson’s brother,” she blurted suddenly. “The one she inscribed the book to.”
“Ah, you found that,” he said in a disaffected voice. “I figured you would.”
His coldness was horrible. She had to slow him. “Tell me about your sister. What was she like?”
For a moment something like emotion whisked across his face. “She was wonderful. She had come to London to visit me. She—” his face grew black again. “She died.”
“It sounds like you loved her very much.”
“I did.”
“Then how could you do it? How could you suck your own sister’s blood? How could you kill her like that?”
His face became a hard mask. “I did not kill her. Dearbourn killed her.”
“What are you talking about? You bit her neck. You sucked her blood.”
He bent down and brought his face close to hers, so that she could feel his spittle on her cheek as he spoke and the pressure of a knife against her throat. “You think you know everything, but you know nothing. Nothing. Mark my words, Lady Thornton, you have been blind. Crime is a virtue and virtue is a crime. You will understand that soon enough. But by then you will be dea—”
The sound of a pistol shot rang out in the air, startling them both.
“What is that?” the man formerly known as Doctor LaForge demanded, spinning toward the door. “It is too early. I am not ready.” Silence followed the loud noise. He opened the door an inch to peer out.
And then came crashing backward into the room, falling in a crumpled heap beside Clio. The knife he had been holding flew from his hand and nicked her on the shin, but she barely noticed, her relief was so great.
“Thank God you have come,” she panted, twisting against the bonds in her chair. “He was going to kill me, Miles, he was—”
“Good afternoon, Clio,” a voice, not Miles’s, said from the threshold of the room. “I hardly expected such a warm welcome.”
Clio stared at the person standing in the door with cold horror. One by one the thoughts that had been tickling her mind clicked into place. Blood! There was none around Inigo’s sister, but Kimberly had been soaked in it. Doctor LaForge, the man known as the Vampire of London, was right. She had been blind.
Doctor LaForge had not been killing his sister when Miles came upon him, he had been trying to save her, Clio comprehended. He had not been sucking her blood but rather the poison in it, trying to stop it before it took over her body, just as he had done with Kimberley. He had been ill the morning they found no body, not because he was the vampire and had failed to drink enough blood, but because he had saved Kimberley’s life and the poison, diluted, was in his body. That was why there was so much blood around both women, why Miles had seen blood on his face and on his lips. Because he had been sucking the poison out. And that was why there had been so little blood around the other victims. No one had tried to save them.
Crime is a virtue and virtue is a crime, he had said and suddenly she understood. His padded clothes and false mustache, the blood-soaked shirt in his armoire, his presence at the Curious Cat, they were not signs of his guilt but of his innocence. He wanted to revenge himself on Miles for the death of his sister. But he also wanted revenge on the vampire. Like she and Miles, he had been searching for the fiend. Indeed, she had no doubt that he had been following the vampire the night they followed him to the Curious Cat and that it had been him singing the song, to drive the vampire mad. It had all been in front of her eyes the entire time and she had misunderstood everything.
But not any longer. She no longer had that luxury. Because Doctor LaForge was lying in his death throes at her feet. And standing in the doorway, was the face from Inigo’s drawing.
The face of the real vampire.
“No one has come out,” Arnold whispered to Miles as he and his cousins joined him outside the Painted Lady. “They must still be inside.”
“Ian, you and Crispin go around the back. Tristan, Sebastian and I will enter through the front door… If you hear us whistle three times, come in as fast as you can.”
None of the Arboretti thought to hesitate. Miles waited until Ian and Crispin were out of sight, then he, Tristan, and Sebastian crossed the street and slid through the door.
The first thing they saw was Lovely Jake’s body stretched across the staircase. A sticky stain oozed across his doublet from the bullet hole in his chest.
Miles turned to say something to his cousins, but Tristan interrupted him. “Don’t even think of ordering us to stay down here,” he told Miles firmly. “We are going with you.”
Unwilling to waste any time arguing, Miles shrugged, then crept noiselessly up the staircase.
One of the doors was slightly ajar and a low moan came from behind it. Miles kicked it open with his foot, then pressed himself back against the wall of the corridor.
“Help me,” he heard someone call from inside. “Please. I am dying. Help me.”
Miles spent an eighth of a second weighing the odds that it was a trap, and went through the door.
The man known as Doctor LaForge was lying on the floor in a ball, clutching his arm. His hands were red with blood, and his face was entirely devoid of color. Miles stopped and stared for a moment when he saw him, astonished that he had been living under the same roof as the man for weeks and not realized he was the person he had fired at three years earlier, and even more astonished by his transformation.
Suddenly, Miles understood what Clio had figured out an hour earlier.
“The vampire has got Clio,” Doctor LaForge whispered as Miles entered and kneeled next to him. “The vampire took her.”
“Where?” Miles demanded, ripping a piece of his shirt and wrapping it around, LaForge’s arm. “When?”
LaForge watched with fascination as Miles bound his arm. “Why are you doing this?” he asked finally. “I hate you. Why are you saving me?”
“Because you are the only person who can help me find Clio,” Miles explained. “Where is she?”
“How do you know you can trust me?” LaForge asked, and madness gleamed in his eyes. “How do you know this is not a trap?”
“I don’t, but if it is I will no doubt be able to get out of it. Now, damn it, tell me where Clio is and how long ago she left.”
Doctor LaForge shook his head. “Arrogant. Too, too arrogant. I do not know where she is. It happened over an hour ago. I was going to use her as bait. To reel you in. And then the vampire.” Doctor LaForge’s eyes got a strange, serene look in them.
Miles knew that look. He shook LaForge hard, demanding that the man hold on to consciousness a few seconds longer. “Who is it? Who is the vampire?”
LaForge’s eyes focused slightly, but his speech began to slur. “You must find her before midnight or she will be dead. After midnight, she is expendable.”
“What are you talking about?” Miles demanded.
“You have not figured it out yet, have you?” LaForge told him, his head lolling to one side. He fixed Miles with an opaque eye and an eerie smile spread over his features. “Well I suppose I will have my revenge after all.” Something like a laugh escaped his lips, and then his body slumped forward, unconscious.
“Where is Clio?” Sebastian asked as he and Tristan pressed into the room.
Miles stood up and pushed LaForge away from him, wiping blood from his hands on his breeches. “I don’t have the damndest idea. But if our friend is to be believed, we’ve only got eight hours in which to find her and all of London to search.”