Sebastian had eaten his fill and moved from the table to the sofa by the fire, yet he had more questions. Everything Nathanial told him budded another three or four questions, and every answer Nathanial provided added a few more.
The vampire culture, like humans’, was old and complex. Nathanial was also old, although he had seemed coy about mentioning exactly how many years he had existed. His age, however, explained one other thing.
“The language you spoke in the lane,” Sebastian said. “I didn’t recognize it. Was that your birth tongue?”
“It was Latin.”
“You are Roman?” It seemed a very strange question to ask someone of the eighteenth century, but most of Sebastian’s questions and Nathanial’s answers had been the stuff of fantasy.
Nathanial shook his head. “I come from the land that eventually became Italy, but Rome was a crumbling ruin when I was born.”
“I do not understand why you remain hidden,” Sebastian said finally, for this had been puzzling him all along. “Why not tell the world that you exist?”
Nathanial’s expression was wise and sad, making him look as old as the centuries he had hinted he had lived. “Humans have proved over and over again that they cannot tolerate a competitive race – a dominant society will destroy another that it thinks might be as strong. It subjugates a weaker one. How do you think humans would react to a species that is more powerful, faster, and lives far longer than any human?”
Sebastian sighed. Nathanial spoke truly. Human history bore him out. “It is sad that you must hide away, but I cannot dispute the wisdom of remaining secret. Perhaps, one day in the future, things might change.”
“Perhaps,” Nathanial agreed. “Humans have grown steadily more civilized as time goes on. That is for the future, though.”
Nathanial was standing by the fire once more. It was as if the flames comforted him, although Sebastian had learned that Nathanial didn’t feel heat or cold the way humans did. He was still wearing the robe and his feet were bare.
“Come here,” Sebastian told him and pressed his hand against the sofa cushions next to him.
Nathanial’s eyes narrowed, but he moved slowly forward. “What do you have in mind?” he asked, his voice low.
“I would have thought that someone with your superior skills and centuries of wisdom would have deduced for yourself what I intend.”
Nathanial settled on the sofa, but he wasn’t as close as Sebastian would have preferred. “Are you sure, Sebastian?”
Sebastian curled his hand around the lapel of Nathanial’s robe and drew him closer. “Why would you ask that?”
“I am a vampire. Many find that off-putting.”
“You were a vampire when we...had sex. Before. Nothing has changed except that I know more about you now.”
Nathanial smiled. “You really are an extraordinary man.” His smile grew. “And you simply must get used to words like ‘sex.’ I have a few more that I must teach you, too.”
“Latin words?”
Nathanial slid his hand around Sebastian’s hips, his fingers stroking the flesh above his breeches. “Anglo-Saxon words,” he replied and kissed him.
Nathanial was stroking his chest while Sebastian spoke. The light in the room was steadily growing as dawn drew closer. They were lying beneath the covers for the pre-dawn air was chilly.
“Life had been very simple and so very privileged, until I was thirteen. Then my father found out – I still don’t know how – but he learned that I was not his son. I was a bastard my mother had passed off as his. My father—I should say the earl—tossed both of us off the estate with only the clothes we were wearing, and ordered the staff to ensure we did not return. We were run off.” He recalled the cold winter day, and standing upon the road that led to the gates of the estate, while John the Bailiff stood at the gate with his legs spread and his big hunting rifle cradled in his arms. The full depth of the betrayal had not made itself completely felt on that bewildering and frightening day. As he grew older and looked back on that day and his life before it, Sebastian had understood better the choices the earl had made.
“We started walking and eventually found a village that could offer us shelter. It was a village that did not know who we were, and that was the beginning of our new life. My mother had no skills other than embroidery, but we had no money for the linens and threads she would need to create anything. So I found work as a farm hand and learned as quickly as I could.” His hands had blistered and bled for a month and his mother had cried over them, but she had sent him out the door the next morning anyway because she had known just as he had that money brought them food and would let her work, too.
“It was a brutal winter,” Sebastian said. “My mother died only a few weeks later. They told me it was an infection of the chest, but she had said nothing about being ill. Her death was a complete surprise to me.”
“She didn’t want you to worry any more than you were,” Nathanial said quietly.
“I think she gave up,” Sebastian said. “She was high born, and had never worked in her life. Scrabbling for farthings and wondering where the next meal was to come from...she couldn’t stand it. All I was left with was this.” He lifted the chain from around his neck and showed Nathanial the lady’s ring hanging from it.
Nathanial raised a brow. “I wondered what the ring meant to you. I see, now.”
Sebastian drew in a breath. “Then I met Einrí Fitzgerald.” He paused, wondering if he could speak of this.
“Fitzgerald was a swindler?” Nathanial asked, his hand growing still.
Sebastian nodded. “He...liked my looks.” He looked at Nathanial.
“Ahh...” Nathanial rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. “Your first introduction to the ways of buggers and thieves. No wonder you were so wary, with me. I assume he was not at all considerate when he took you.”
“I did not know there was a gentle way to it, until I met you,” Sebastian replied.
Nathanial drew a breath and let it out. “There are some humans whose hearts I would happily tear from their chests.” He closed his eyes. “I will spare you the rest of the telling, Sebastian. I can see it all from here. He took you in, taught you his swindling ways, and in exchange, he used you whenever the mood took him. Is that how it went?”
“Close enough,” Sebastian said, trying to keep his voice even. “Einrí was a rough-as-guts Irishman, so his swindles were limited. But because of my accent and my manners, he could dream up swindles that targeted the upper class and their rich purses, using me as his entry pass. Because of me, he tripled his earnings every year, above what he had been able to gather before we met.”
“He is not here in Southampton,” Nathanial pointed out. “Did you kill him?”
Sebastian found he could smile at the jest. “He tried to fool the wrong man. I was seventeen by then and just about as tall as I am now. Einrí met what he thought was a gentleman, which he judged purely by his manners and speech, which is ironic when he used my accent and my manners for exactly the same thing.”
“The gentleman was a fellow swindler,” Nathanial guessed.
“He was a gentleman in fact. Lord Rueben Monday Montgomery lost his lands and his fortune because he liked to gamble and had risked it all on a hand that he thought was unbeatable. Rueben knew more about schemes and plans and tricks than anyone I have ever met. I suspect you know more, Nathanial, but you’ve had time to collect them. What I learned from Rueben was how to use a victim’s wants and pleasures against them. His swindles nearly always worked and it was only bad luck that caused the occasional scheme to go astray. I learned as much as I could from him. He used...well, sex, as one of his tools. The seduction of women and men, to lull them into thinking you could be trusted....I found it ridiculously easy,” he confessed.
“With your looks, and your manners and speech, that is not difficult to believe,” Nathanial replied. “You eventually parted, though,” he added.
“Reuben liked to travel. He had been everywhere, and for ten years we plied our trade around Europe and the east, as far as Constantinople. We never did go to Rome, though. I suggested it occasionally, but I think Rueben was a known thief there, for he refused to even consider Rome, or anywhere on the Italian peninsula. But after ten years of it, I wanted to return to England. Reuben did not, so he set me up with a stake of my own, and I arrived in Dover four years ago. I have been on my own since then.”
“You were in dire straits when we met. Were you just down on your luck, Sebastian? I would have thought, with such experience and skills, you would be very well-heeled indeed.”
“I grew tired of it. I didn’t simply want to return to England. I wanted to stop it all, just for a while. I wanted to stop and think and spend time being just me. But eventually, the money started to run out. I waited far too long because I was so reluctant to return to the life.” Sebastian shrugged. “But I know nothing else, and I do not have an income, so I did eventually return. Lady Wandsworth was to be my first victim.”
Nathanial pushed himself up so he was resting on one elbow and looked at him. “You know you can be yourself, with me.”
“I know that now,” Sebastian agreed. “It is...”
“Refreshing?” Nathanial suggested.
“A relief,” Sebastian told him, and kissed him.
It was only later, when they were bathing and dressing that Sebastian realized that nowhere in the night had either of them raised the question about the necklace and why the thugs had pressed Nathanial for its location.
Sebastian thought of Anne and her request that he help her steal it from Nathanial and was glad the subject had been put aside in favor of discussing Nathanial’s true nature. He was more than happy for it to remain unspoken forever.
Lady Wandsworth’s parlor was an ode to very expensive and very bad taste. It was dark, for the drapes remained closed over the windows, and the carpet smelled and was badly in need of beating. There was only one sofa, which the lady herself used, while other guests propped themselves upon hard, upright chairs, balancing their teacups upon their knees, with no place left to perch plates.
But Sebastian had been in far worse places, and this room at least was warm and held no drafts to chill the ankles. The tea was surprisingly good. He wrapped himself in patience, waiting for the moment when he could further his plans with Mercy Wandsworth. The portfolio of his false friend’s considerable business affairs in Spain was sitting in his coat pocket, ready to be produced at the proper moment. Nathanial had proved to be a remarkable forger.
The doors to the salon opened and were held aside. Anne Beecham glided into the room, a delicate-looking maiden with her eyes downcast, and her waist cinched in to a hand’s width, under the pretty cotton dress.
Anne gave Lady Wandsworth a smile and a gracious and modest nod of her head, but Mercy was busy talking to her pair of friends, and merely lifted her hand in acknowledgement. Anne did not seem to be offended by the dismissal, which had been identical to the way Mercy had waved off Sebastian. Instead, she moved around the chairs and settled on the empty one next to Sebastian, folding her hands on her lap.
“Have you thought about my proposition?” she asked him softly.
“When I have been able to spare a thought, yes,” Sebastian said truthfully.
“Did you arrive at a decision?”
“There was no need to make a decision,” Sebastian replied.
She looked surprised. “Why not?” she asked.
Sebastian gave the tiniest shrug. “Because I do not believe you. I do not believe the necklace is in England and I most certainly do not believe that Nathanial has it. He would be far more circumspect in his behavior if he did have such a notorious and costly jewel.”
Anne’s expression did not change an inch. She sat staring ahead, her face sweet and innocent and her posture that of a modest young woman. After a moment of contemplative silence, she gave a small nod. “You are quite right,” she said. “He would most likely behave differently if he really did have the Queen’s stolen necklace.”
“Thank you,” Sebastian said dryly.
“I lied when I said he had the necklace.”
“Obviously.”
“I lied, but not the way you think. The necklace Nathanial has is a duplicate, made of glass.”
Nathanial, who was so good at forging things. Sebastian’s chest tightened. It had been Nathanial’s idea to create business documents that would suggest to Lady Wandsworth that his friend’s business affairs in Spain were legitimate.
Sebastian tried to ignore the suspicion curling through him and instead sifted carefully through Anne’s words, looking for falsehood, for anything that would proclaim Nathanial’s innocence. The affair of the stolen necklace was a sensation across Europe. There were people on trial for their lives, right now in Paris. Nathanial could not possibly be a part of such an international conspiracy.
But he has the experience and the skill to manage such a delicate matter.
Sebastian shook his head. “Why would you tell me you wanted to steal the thing, if you knew it to be a copy?”
“For the same reason that Nathanial had the copy made. I want to sell it to someone who doesn’t know the difference between diamonds and glass.” She waited while the butler handed her a teacup and saucer and filled it from the big silver teapot he carried. Once he had moved out of earshot, she said, “I have a fool who wants the necklace. He will pay five thousand for the thing.”
“For a copy with no real value?” Sebastian asked in disbelief.
“It has extreme value to the person who thinks it is real. Every day the newspapers report about the trial, the necklace grows in importance in the eyes of the beholder. You know this as well as I do.”
He could not dispute her. But he could deny her. “I will not help you steal from Nathanial,” he said flatly. “You must find another way if you intend to do this.”
“You will not help me, but you have not told Nathanial what I plan. Does that mean you believe me?”
Sebastian kept his teeth together. To answer at all would make him feel like he had betrayed Nathanial.
Anne smiled as she sipped her tea. “He intends to saddle you with the necklace, you know.”
Sebastian’s heart squeezed. “I am not nearly rich enough to buy that bauble, even if it was real. I am not Nathanial’s target.”
“Oh, he’s not going to sell it to you. He’s going to give it to you.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Think, Sebastian!” she whispered harshly. “The French police – the Marechaussee – will be turning England upside-down, looking for the real necklace. Queen Marie's reputation hangs in the balance, so they are determined to the point of obsession to find the necklace, no matter what obstacles present themselves. What do you think they might do, if they were to find that necklace in your possession?”
“The Marechaussee will be able to tell it is a copy. They’ll bring in experts to determine it is genuine and will know immediately it is not.” But his heart was thundering unhappily, anyway.
“And why would an honest man want a copy of the most notorious jewelry in Europe?” Anne asked. “You will be detained and questioned until your gums bleed. Then, if they are feeling kindly, you will be thrown into the Bastille and not decapitated for whatever crimes they might imagine you have committed. The Marechaussee want to produce results to show their queen. They want someone they can point to and say ‘he is to blame’. Nathanial is not a stupid man, Sebastian. He knows that to be found in possession of that necklace would be the equivalent of crying aloud his guilt. He is looking for a way to rid himself of it and you are the perfect victim, with your career as a professional swindler.”
It made horrible, nausea-inducing sense. Sebastian swallowed as coppery-tasting saliva filled his mouth. His temples prickled with cold sweat and he wiped at them with a shaking hand.
“I do not believe you,” he said weakly. “You have not been in communication with Nathanial since we met – not alone with him. You could not possibly know what he plans, even if he does have the necklace.”
Anne smiled. “I was there last night,” she said flatly. “Very late. You were sleeping. Nathanial told me of his plans for you, all of them.”
Sebastian bit back a moan, forcing himself to silence.
Anne’s smile grew larger. She tilted her head as she looked at him. “We had sex,” she added. “It was very good. Afterwards, he put on that robe of his and saw me to the door. He arranged another meeting, too.” Her eyes narrowed. “You were never going to be enough to satisfy him.”
Nathanial had been wearing the robe when Sebastian had seen him, just after awakening.
Sebastian held up his hand, just enough for her to see it. “Stop,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Please, just stop.”
“I can sell the necklace,” she said, “then you will no longer be useful to him and you can go back to your life. Nathanial asked me to meet him in his rooms tonight. That is when I will steal the necklace.”