The Hunger (6 page)

“I like it,” he murmured. The music whirled to a halt. He held her for a moment longer, though he lowered his left arm to ease his shoulder.

His lingering touch said she had hooked him. Good. By the time he dropped the arm clasping her waist and turned into her, taking her other hand and laying it along his arm, she knew he was fascinated. His refusal two nights ago was only because of his health.

They walked toward the great windows, cracked open to let air into the room. She felt flushed. Ponsonby was nowhere to be seen. Beatrix dismissed him without another thought.

“No hazards on the way here tonight?” she asked.

“Ponsonby would have it that they were dragons. Believe me, they were not.”

“Ah, the young are overawed by someone of your reputation.” She waved a hand.

He reached for glasses from the silver tray of a passing footman. “Champagne is your drink, I believe,” he said, handing her a glass. “And what is my reputation?”

“A sportsman. What does one call it here in England? A buck, an out-and-outer. And of course, they say you are the most decadent man in England.”

He nodded. “Yes. That.”

“What could you possibly have done that someone such as I would consider depraved?”

His countenance darkened. He frowned briefly before he consciously smoothed his brow. He said in a light tone, “I expect it has to do with the affair I had when I was eighteen.”

“Affairs,” she said with a small snort. “What boy of eighteen does not have affairs? I suppose it was with an
older woman. What will these country squires not think decadent?”

“She was older by a few years. But I expect the scandal was that she was my half-sister.” He laid it out cold in order to shock. His mouth was hard.

She paused. “Well, country squires
would
consider that decadent.” She shrugged.

“I suppose one who bathes in milk, and ‘entertains’ the cream of London society would not think that out of the ordinary.” His voice was bitter.

She examined his eyes. They were hard, but not with cruelty. He had been hurt. He had done things he wasn’t proud of. He had been buffeted by his short life. But he had trueness, a center. It was in his eyes. He glanced away. How touching that it still hurt him! She had resolved that nothing would ever hurt her again, not Asharti . . . not Stephan . . . not even her mother. “What I think,” she said, “is that young men of eighteen fall madly in love with quite unsuitable partners, and it is up to their parents or a mentor to guide them and protect them from the consequences of being young and highly sexed and romantical into the bargain. It seems someone failed you.”

His eyes widened, almost imperceptibly.

She continued. “I’ll wager you didn’t even know she was your half-sister. From what I know of your aristocracy, the country could be littered with half-siblings. I have heard Lady Jersey’s children called “the Miscellany” they have so many different fathers.”

He swallowed, apparently not sure how to respond. Then he mastered himself. “You are very critical, for one of your reputation.”

“What you mean to say is ‘very hypocritical,’ ” she observed. “And
you
are very critical of yourself. I’ll wager you threw yourself into being just as bad as everyone thought you. The Continent? That’s the usual refuge for brokenhearted young men.” She saw she had hit home.
She could not help the softness she felt creeping into her smile. “Reputations . . . Well, if my reputation is no more deserved than yours, perhaps we should call a truce.” His eyes expressed his consternation clearly. She raised a brow.

For a moment she thought he might shoot back some recital of her own reputation, trying to shock her. But apparently he realized that while very rude and satisfying, that would be a losing game. He breathed out, looked at his feet, then up, straight into her face. “Done.” He paused, and cleared his throat. “In that case, we should start over—”

At that moment Ponsonby returned with two of his friends. “My apologies, Countess, but I was waylaid by these rogues and held at the champagne fountain at knifepoint.” The puppy had never been less welcome. He introduced Lord Sherrington. Melly she already knew. Sherrington looked eager. He was obviously angling for an invitation to her drawing room.

Beatrix was suddenly tired of being all the rage. What were all these young admirers to her? Their adulation was so easily won it had no value. Still, they would prove a willing source to fill her Companion’s needs. She sighed. “You must come to see me. I shall send round cards, if you could arrange to be free on Thursday next.”

“Ab . . . ab . . . absolutely,” Sherrington stuttered. His neck cloth was so high it poked at his cheeks. His blond, waving hair curled around his ears.

“I shall bring him with me,” Melly confirmed in a voice he tried to make deep and bluff. His attempt was ludicrous beside Langley’s rumble, but he wouldn’t recognize that.

“Of course,
you’ll
be there, dear Ponsonby.” It was almost comical to watch him brighten.

“Lady Lente, your servant.” Langley turned on his heel, and moved off to speak to Castlereagh and Perceval,
the prime minister. Disappointment pricked Beatrix. Did he regret his confidences? Resent her insights? She had gone too quickly, misjudged his reticence . . .

“What a rude fellow,” Sherrington exclaimed. “I wanted to ask him if what Ponsonby here says happened on Thursday is true.”

“And why wouldn’t it be true?” Ponsonby protested.

Beatrix let their quibbling fade into the background. Couldn’t Langley wait through a little flirtation? He must have known she was about to chance making him an unseemly proposition. Had he just refused her a second time? Indignation beat in her breast.

“Really, Countess . . .”

“What? What is it you’re saying?” She felt dulled and stupid.

“I . . . we . . . we wanted to invite you to Lady Jersey’s picnic on Wednesday. We’re all riding to Hampstead Heath. You have to give a hundred quid to her orphans’ asylum.”

“I never go out in daylight. If you ever plan a picnic at night, I shall be first in line.”

Faces fell around the circle. “But the orphans . . .” Sherrington protested weakly.

Beatrix thought she saw Langley still listening to the conversation with half an ear. He started when Perceval asked him a question. “I shall send round my contribution in any case.” She had done more for orphans than Lady Jersey dreamed of, but that was not what preoccupied her.

It was Langley. Damnation! If she abandoned these absurd young men and sought Langley out, it would look like she was chasing him. The evening seemed all at once like a stale repetition of a thousand other evenings, or a thousand thousand. And at none of them had there been anything she
wanted
except sometimes the blood. She would always need blood, but even that had grown stale. Art? Her love of the arts had always protected her, but
that seemed such a slender defense. Her stomach felt as though it was filled with a heavy ball of dough. Music began. A country dance. The puppies would begin clamoring. She wasn’t certain she could bear it. Did Stephan feel the darkness gathering as she did? He was much older. The darkness ate up feeling. Perhaps he was incapable of loving her. Perhaps none of them could feel after repetition had banged at their psyches for so long. Wasn’t Asharti’s mad cruelty just another attempt to find something to feel? Or was Asharti’s insanity what waited for Beatrix in the dark . . . ?

Beatrix looked around the room, desperate for an anchor. Slowly, the scene began to swirl as people partnered and moved into the dance. And then the colors whirled together, and the music assaulted her ears in a kaleidoscopic cacophony almost horrible in the way it warped reality. She swayed and put her fingers to her temples. The room and the crowds ran together like watercolors in the rain. She thought she could hear Asharti’s laughter in the music.

“Lady Lente.” Her name echoed around her. She couldn’t tell if it was one or many of the faces, stretched into inhuman caricatures, who spoke. “Are you well?” What was happening?

“I . . . I must go home.” Her own voice came out sounding like she was in a cave somewhere distant from herself. “I do not feel quite . . .”

“I’ll . . . I’ll get your carriage.” It was Sherrington. The colors whirled and the music wailed. Asharti chuckled. Was it Ponsonby who fluttered at her elbow? She might faint at any moment like some young schoolgirl. It was almost as though she hadn’t fed for a long time. But that wasn’t true, was it? She couldn’t think. Darkness flickered at the edge of her vision. What was wrong? Nothing was ever wrong with her. The Companion saw to that.

Strong hands gripped her arms above the elbows, under her slashed sleeves. The touch seemed to shatter her,
it was so electric. Langley’s green eyes were clear in her streaming vision. “Let me,” he said curtly, in that steady rumble.

Slowly, the whirling slowed around the weight of his grip on her arms. He steered her relentlessly toward the door. “Gentlemen, make way.” The crowds parted for her, of course. “I am quite able to navigate.” It came out petulant, but at least her voice didn’t echo in her ears.

“Of course you are,” he agreed. But he didn’t give over guiding her firmly down the stairs. As a matter of fact, he took most of her weight, so she couldn’t fall even if she stumbled. It was annoying. He seemed to think he was entirely in control. She was stronger by ten times. How horrible to display this disgusting weakness! What would Stephan think if he could see her?

But he wouldn’t see her. She would never see him again.

Sherrington hurried over after ordering the carriage. The bucks from the ballroom trailed her. She might suffocate if they clamored after her. Langley seemed to know what she was feeling. He brushed them off, saying in a most commanding voice, “Give her air, lads.”

A footman presented her sable wrap. Langley draped it over her shoulders and guided her out the door to the waiting carriage. The wheels had spokes picked out in her signature electric blue. The gold crest on the door from her imaginary count looked impressive. Another footman opened the door and Langley pushed her up into the carriage in a most ungentlemanly way. She sank gratefully into the blue velvet squabs.

“Berkeley Square, man,” Langley called up to her driver.

To her surprise, he stepped up into the carriage and sat opposite her. She was so exhausted she could not protest. Did she want to protest? Her eyes closed without her permission. Her stomach still felt queasy.

They were more than halfway to the square when she came to herself. Langley was quiet, though she could see him gazing at her in the gloom of the carriage.

“Feeling more the thing?” he said, his baritone husky in the darkness.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat and sat up. “I can’t think what came over me.”

“Perhaps a touch of the influenza,” he remarked. “It often comes upon one unawares.”

“It’s nothing physical, I’m afraid,” she said. It couldn’t be. The Companion gave her perfect health. Then she realized what she had just admitted and felt sick all over again. What was coming over her? She could not let it get about that she was a madwoman subject to fainting spells. She had always despised the weak. Now she might well be one of them.

“Still . . . May I call you a doctor? I am fairly well connected in Harley Street.”

She shot him a glance. The best defense was a thrust direct. “I should think you would be, what with being patched up from wounds like the one in your shoulder. Does that happen often?”

“Do you often become faint in the middle of balls?” he lashed out in return.

This thrusting at each other would get both of them nowhere. “Think of it as a killing preoccupation with the past,” she said as lightly as she could. He would think she was joking, or insulting him. Who would guess she was telling the truth? “The past can be deadly, you know.”

His eyes narrowed. “You want me to believe you are making up a cause, when most probably you are not.” He paused. “Just as you realized I threw doubt on the story of the footpads the other night so everyone would think I was in a duel over a woman. So that means you really think it is a kind of memory sickness. Is that what you’re saying?”

Oh, she did not like this. This man was dangerous. “How ungracious,” she muttered.

He raised his brows. “I hate to think we have that in common. In your case, I expect the easy repartee and gracious conversation is a ruse for the young bucks who need a goddess and the old fools who want a beautiful and intelligent woman focused on them. But that is not the real you, is it? There is nothing easy about you.”

“I do not know who the real me is,” she snapped. “And in any case I do not care to discuss it with someone who has quite as many secrets of his own. Do you know who
you
are?”

He clutched the breast of his coat. “Ah, a thrust to the heart!”

Hmph. He hadn’t even claimed his cloak at Bessborough House. He was bareheaded, no gloves, no cane. She flushed. She was snapping at him when he had saved her from certain embarrassment. She cleared her throat. “If you are cold, there is a lap rug in the corner.”

“Thank you for your solicitous impulse,” he said, mocking her.

“I could say the same.”

The carriage slowed. They were already in the square. Would he ask to come up? Her dread of meaninglessness and memory had retreated. Her head was clear. Dangerous as he was, with his ability to observe and his intuition, he was at least interesting. A flash of imagination showed his naked body lying across her bed, his eyes on fire. He would be strongly built, with the bulky muscles of full manhood, not like the youngsters she usually took. How long since she had allowed herself to take blood from the kind of body she enjoyed most? She would be so careful with his shoulder. The sweet richness of his blood, the feel of his rising sex against her belly . . .

Fear washed over her. Such thoughts were not for her! Where had that impulse come from after all these years?
Blood must never be mixed with sex. That way, she lost control.

But probably he would not come up. He had walked away from her twice. She looked at his shoulders and remembered the feel of them under her hands as they danced. She could make him come to her, of course . . . A shudder of Asharti shivered through her. No! She definitely did not want him to come to her under compulsion. What was she thinking? She didn’t want him to come up at all. Not now. Not when she was vulnerable to . . . to what? The carriage stopped.