The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing (19 page)

Ian raised both hands imploringly. “You have to marry her. Imagine the consequences. Besides, being married to a mortal is only until death do you part. It’s quickly over. Why, it will be a drop in the bucket to you, the years speeding by on your way to eternity.”

“Ha! Every night will seem like an eternity shackled to that monstrous menace!” But he found himself a bit swayed. If she quickly died… But, no! He steeled himself. “Besides, her father will never agree. He loathes vampires. He wants us all to bite the dust. I presume he would rather see her dead first than married to me.” Realizing what he’d said, Asher quickly added, “Not ‘ then married to me.’”

“Major Van Helsing thought you were Dracul. You’re not. Jane can dissemble and maybe say you aren’t even a vampire. If the Van Helsing spies got the identities of you and the count confused, they could also be wrong about what you are. Right? Besides, Major Van Helsing has little choice.”

Asher glowered. “How surprising. I would never peg you as an optimist. Do you really think Jane would lie for me? She staked me, Ian!”

“And she’s terribly upset about the whole thing,” Baron Huntsley volunteered.

“She’s ‘terribly upset’?” Asher mocked. “I have a hole in my arse, and not where one should be! Bloody hell!”

Ignoring the vampire, Ian explained his plan of action. “I’ll send two messengers out early in the morning. One will carry a note requesting Major Van Helsing come here immediately. The other will be for your man of business to attend to the special license, since you can’t possibly ride in your condition.” Ian’s lips twitched. “Besides, you couldn’t make it to London before first light anyway.” He was glad to see that Asher’s fangs had retracted.

“How thoughtful you are,” Asher mocked him.

“Clair says Jane has cried herself sick. And… Jane remarked that if you hadn’t scared her by trying to give her a little love bite, she probably wouldn’t have staked you at all.”

“Ha! Measure for measure it’s a lie. Jane is a bloodthirsty wench. She’s a bloody backstabbing betrayer. I can see myself introducing her to my vampire friends: ‘My good fellows, meet my wife—she or her family have probably slain one of your kin’.” Asher shook his head slowly. His anger was gone, leaving him curiously detached. He felt all alone, afloat in the vast dark universe, where stars and events spun crazily out of control. He hated Miss Paine in the Ass; she was his enemy, an enigma and an eccentric. But, then, what could one expect from such a lineage? And to think, his exalted personage and hers would be linked in unholy matrimony. His ancestors would turn over in their graves, then rise and come yell at him.

“What a farce this all is. A tempest of dire proportions.”

Baron Huntsley smiled grimly. “You made your coffin. Now you have to lie in it with Jane,” he said.

Asher glared intensely at the man who was neither his foe nor really his friend. “You know, Ian, you always had a morbid sense of humor. But if you make sport of me right now, I feel I will have to do murder. Then Clair would despise me—if my beloved fiancée didn’t stake me first.”

Ian coughed, covering his chuckle.

Asher clenched his fists, longing to choke the breath out of the man. But that would start a vampire and shape-shifter war. Clair would never forgive him.

Honor was now a suit of armor so heavy he was afraid he’d come crashing to earth, right into a muddled puddle. Such was his look.

Resigned to the frightening, fantastic farce his life had suddenly become, he said morosely, “I guess what Shakespeare said is true. ‘Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’”

And it’s all a pain in the butt, Ian agreed mutely. Wisely he kept his amusement to himself.

Knowing
that a gathering of eagle-eyed Van Helsings awaited her filled Jane with trepidation as she sought out the Huntsleys’ sun filled parlor. The messenger sent for her father had returned early, with both the major and her brother, Brandon, in tow. The major had departed London before the messenger had even reached there, meeting him along the way and riding hell-bent for leather to reach Huntsley Manor. As for why, both Jane and Clair were in the dark.

Jane hadn’t seen either her brother or her father yet. Not twenty minutes earlier, Asher and the major had been closeted in the library with Baron Huntsley. Their voices had been raised, yet their remarks were undistinguishable. Jane and Clair had tried listening at the door, but to no avail; they could only make out a word here and there, but not sentences.

Girding herself for one of her father’s tirades, Jane straightened her spine, lifted her chin and entered the large room. She found the major sitting on the rose brocade settee in the corner before the fire. His right leg, slightly swollen with gout, was resting on a stool cushion of matching rose and green hues. His expression was indignant, his face ruddy, his eyebrows arched in blatant disapproval.

Brandon, Jane’s brother, stood to his father’s right, in one hand a glass of brandy, the other hand on the mantel. In spite of the terror and shame she was feeling, Jane was glad to see he looked his usual handsome self. His brown hair, the color of polished walnuts, was longer than usual, tied back in a queue. His eyes were almost the same shade as her own, except his held more green and they stared at her in sympathy. His smile was fleeting but heartfelt.

Jane started toward her brother to welcome him back from the continent with an animated hug, but he solemnly shook his head, his eyes darting to their father. Abruptly she halted, tormented contemplation tightening her chest further, making her want to run screaming from the room. With great resolve and trepidation, she held her ground, ready for the dressing-down that was soon to come.

“Well, Jane, what dustup have you gotten into now?” the major asked grimly. “What am 1 to do with you? How could you bungle such a simple stratagem? If I didn’t know your mother, I’d think you were born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

Jane blanched, moving apprehensively to her father’s left side. The major was going to ring a peal over her head that would put the great St. Paul’s Cathedral bells to shame. Not that that was unwarranted, just unwanted. Her future hung in the balance. Her whole life was turned upside down. She needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry upon—someone to tell her all would be right with the world. Someone to hold her tight and offer the comfort of knowing she was loved in spite of all the bad and scary things that would happen.

She lowered her head, hiding her tears since the major despised watering pots. Besides, she had spent the past day and night crying her eyes out. She was surprised that there was a single drop of water left in her overwrought body.

“I told you to pretend to seduce the earl, not for you to let the earl seduce you! I told you to stake him, not to be caught alone with him in the wee hours of the morning. I am deeply astounded and ashamed that a daughter of mine would act like a Covent Garden doxy!” The major snorted derisively.

Jane gasped, her cheeks burning. Anger flared inside her. Her nerves were tootling like a cavalry troop’s call to battle.

Brandon’s expression became one of anger. “Father! You sent Jane into this whole ramshackle affair. She’s no seductress—anyone can see that,” he said. He shook his head vigorously. His father never should have sent Jane to do a man’s job. Er, not that seducing the earl was a man’s job.

Jane gasped. She knew she was no femme fatale, but really! A brother should take up for his sister, not disparage her lack of sensuality.

Brandon glanced at her apologetically. “Sorry, Jane. But Father has no right to berate you.”

“Right? Right? I am her father! If I can’t point out her flaws, who can?” The major gave both his unruly children withering glances.

Brandon nodded fiercely. “And ‘tis a good thing she did. If Jane had succeeded, she would have been tried for the murder of an earl!”

“Murder?” Jane peeped.

Brandon nodded. “Didn’t you wonder why we made such good time? The messenger found us en route to Huntsley Manor.”

“I know,” she said. “Why?” She was so nervous, her queasy stomach was doing somersaults. She was about to cast up her accounts all over Clair’s Persian rug. It was only with a supreme effort of will that she forced the nausea to recede. Did Clair have any brandied bonbons lying around?

“Father got his information wrong. The Earl of Wolverton may be many things, but he is not our foe Count Dracul,” Brandon announced, giving his father an annoyed look. Then he added wrathfully, “Although, it’s apparent that Wolverton is a seducer of innocents!”

Jane ignored the latter comment. She hadn’t really been all that innocent. She was the one who’d instigated the whole rotten scenario, although with a great deal of help from her father.

“How did you discover the case of mistaken identity?” Jane asked, wondering if they knew Asher was a vampire with big, nasty, pointy white teeth.

His forehead bunched, clearly tense, Brandon answered. “Our spies were wrong. I found and followed Dracul in Transylvania, but lost his trail in Paris. So I came home in hopes that he might turn up in London. He used to live here over a century ago, for nearly forty years, but was forced to flee for his life. Now I believe he has returned, secretly, in spite of we Van Helsings who live here. Lady Veronique has not run off with her lover since he returned to Town yesterday from a brief trip to the country. The widow is definitely missing, and I have word that some ladies of the evening from White Chapel are missing as well. Although one was found with two holes in her neck, very much dead.”

Jane shook her head grimly. This was not good news at all. Returning to her own problems, she grimaced, her foot tapping a sharp beat on the hardwood floor. “I could have killed an innocent man,” she scolded her father. Her instincts had told her that Asher wasn’t the Prince of Evil, and Clair had also championed the earl. If events had turned out differently, she would have dispatched an innocent vampire. Well, she amended, no vampire was innocent, but Asher certainly wasn’t the Prince of Depravity.

Furious with herself and her sire, she wanted to stomp her feet and scream curses. If she wasn’t such a lady, she would have. Her cursed father! He had sent her on her merry doomed way to destroy a Peer of the Realm on faulty information. Asher probably thought she was touched in the head. He had a case.

“Innocent? How do you know he’s innocent? Just because my spies were wrong about who he was doesn’t mean they’re incorrect about what he is,” the major argued.

Jane let that comment slide. “How could your spies have been so mistaken?”

“Well, if you’ve seen one vampire, you’ve seen them all. They all look alike,” the major said with a dismissive hand wave. “A simple case of mistaken identity.”

“Not so simple, Papa,” Jane reprimanded him bitterly. She sank into a rose-hued chair near where her brother stood resting his foot against the fireplace grate. “It has quite changed my life. Now I am ruined. Ruined.” She and Orville could go and hide their heads in the giant sandbox she had ordered especially for him.

Glancing down, Jane sighed bleakly. “Ruined.”

“Not quite. Your reputation may be slightly tarnished, but it’s not damaged beyond repair,” her brother said, leaning down to pat her on the shoulder. Jane knew he loved her dearly and hated seeing her so disheartened. He above all people knew her life had not been an easy one, most especially with the death of their mother.

“Your brother’s right, Jane. The earl has asked for the honor of your hand, and I have accepted,” the major pronounced. His voice was strained.

Jane smothered her gasp. She had been talked into. expecting the offer of marriage by what little Clair had explained of Ian’s conversation with the earl, but still it came as a shock. Even more shocking was her father’s permission.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. If she didn’t marry Asher, she was doomed to spinsterhood and shunning from society. If she did marry the hoity-toity earl, she would be doomed to a lifetime with a husband who despised her. Not to mention his fetish for blood. And his age! He was way too old for her, and way too experienced. Although, he did make her heart go pitter-pat whenever he was near.

Tears welled in her eyes, and Jane furiously blinked them back. Her life was never to be the same again. Yet, wasn’t that what she longed for, a different life? But, what would the proud earl think of her lineage? Her antecedents had killed his.

Her tears dried up as she reasoned that being married to a vampire would have certain advantages. First and foremost, she would never again have to hunt the walking dead. Rather, married to the Earl of Wolverton, she would only have to watch out for the walking wed—the terrifying wives of other nobles. Second, there would be no more vampire training in the rain, sleet or snow. Third, the earl was handsome and very wealthy. She could buy as many pretty new gowns as she wanted, and jewelry. She did so love emeralds. And maybe they could travel—to the Dark Continent, perhaps—so that she could go exotic bird-watching. And perhaps she could have those delicious chocolates from Paris imported. Fourth, Asher probably didn’t have a speck of silver anti-vampire paraphernalia in the house. Never again would she polish silver chains or crosses as punishment.

Intrigued with the possibilities, she cautiously asked her father, “If the earl was a vampire would you let me marry him?”

The major waved his hand dismissively. “If he is a vampire, and if Dracul has come to London as your brother suspects, you will be our ears and eyes to the plans of those bloodsucking fiends.”

Brandon let out an exasperated sigh, shaking his head.

Unaware of his tactlessness, the major continued. “Of course, if he’s a vampire, then after you have gathered the information we seek and Dracul has been exterminated like the crawling vermin he is, then I imagine the earl will have an unfortunate accident. That will leave you free of the heinous, hideous creature, and you’ll be left a wealthy widow free to continue vampire-slaying.”

Once again, her autocratic father had insulted Jane. He did not care for her welfare, nor for her personal code of honor. All he cared about was slaying the great Count Dracul before his brother did. Her father had windmills in the head, but not the least clue what ill winds he was blowing.