Before she could pull away or otherwise respond, the carriage gave the fortuitous lurch that announced their arrival.
Victoria stood quickly, causing Sebastian to release her hair. Max had the same idea and they fairly collided in the center of the small carriage, shoulder to chest.
“In a hurry, my dear?” he asked with a grim smile. “Don’t let me get in your way.”
He settled back into his seat as the carriage door opened. Barth was there to help Victoria climb down, which she did with little fanfare—and without waiting for Sebastian.
The dawn had come, and her mind was spinning.
As she walked up the house’s walkway, she heard the low murmur of a male voice behind her, and the carriage door close again. A quick glance behind told her she was alone, and that Max and Sebastian had remained in the carriage.
Only hours later, with the sun blasting its heat through a rare, cloudless London sky, Victoria was awakened by a knock on her bedchamber door.
With bleary eyes, she looked next to her. The bed was empty, but rumpled. No, she hadn’t dreamed it—the warm slide of Sebastian’s body next to hers, the hands on her hair, the gentle kiss before he gathered her close to sleep. He’d murmured something unintelligible into the top of her head.
She’d drifted off thinking how unlike him that was . . . and wondering what had transpired between him and Max after she left the carriage.
Verbena entered at her bidding.
“My lady,” she said, her lips pursed in a tight circle that barely moved when she spoke. “I’m sorry to wake ye, but that Ol’ver claims he needs to speak t’you right away.” She shook her head, tsking in disgust. “I told him you’d only been abed for a few hours, but he ’nsists.”
“Send him up to me,” Victoria said. An uncomfortable feeling opened in her stomach. Any news from Oliver would likely pertain to Mr. Bemis Goodwin.
“Up here?” Verbena fairly screeched, her eyes springing wide open. “Why, m’lady, it’s not proper. That man can wait while I dress ye, for sure, my lady. ’E has no call t’be—”
Victoria shook her head. “No, it cannot wait, I’m afraid. Call for him to be sent up, and if you’re quick, perhaps you can help me into a day frock before he gets here.
Verbena muttered something about Langford, who happened to be the personal maid to Duchess Farnham and who most likely would require smelling salts should her mistress have ordered her to bring a man to her bedchamber. Even, Victoria suspected, the late duke. But Verbena disappeared from the room for a brief moment, and her mistress heard the reverberation of her voice and its direction to Oliver. Then she returned and threw herself into Victoria’s wardrobe.
“I never heard o’such a thing,” she muttered as she bustled about, pulling forth a clean chemise and a new corset for her mistress. Victoria had bathed the night before, to cleanse herself from the smoke, blood, and soot, so the small ewer of water on her night table would suffice for her to freshen up.
“ ’Avin’ a man no better’n a footman into the lady’s chamber! Why, the on’y time I ever knew o’ such a happenin’ was when Lady Meryton was tuppin’ her groom on the sly o’ her husband, y’know. An’ it wasn’t long afore such was all the talk o’ the belowstairs!”
She pulled the cotton shift down over Victoria’s head, jerking it into place as she emphasized her words. “An’ the groom, well, ’e was no prize, if ye ask me. I seen’im once an’ he had big eyebrows that looked like spiders. I’d not be wantin’ that face too close t’me, ye know, wit’ them squiggly things. An’ on ’is ears, too! But”—she pulled on Victoria’s corset to hook it in place beneath her breasts as there came a knock on the door. “Ye can jus’ wait a minnit,” she hollered.
“Come in, Oliver,” Victoria said.
Verbena straightened in shock, barely missing clipping Victoria’s chin. She fairly flew to the chair over which she’d hung the chosen frock. “Do not come in here, Oliver,” she ordered as the door cracked. “Only one more—” Her words became muffled as Victoria’s ears were filled with the swoosh of fabric and rustle of lace and other gewgaws. She wouldn’t have chosen such a decorated dress, but it was too late now.
At last Oliver came in, the large red-haired man half skulking as if in fear of Verbena’s wrath. And rightly so. Victoria wondered what would become of them if they ever admitted their attraction for each other and actually had a normal conversation. He hunched a bit, twisting his cap in his large hands, and gave three bows in a row. “My lady, I’ve come wi’ some news.”
“O’ course ye have,” Verbena railed, tugging roughly at the buttons lining the nape of her mistress’s neck. “Else why would we let ye in ’ere? Now, spit it out, my lady’s not got all the day to wait for ye to figger out what t’say.”
“Come in, Oliver,” Victoria said. “What have you to tell me about Mr. Goodwin?”The process was excruciating, working around Verbena’s bossy interjections and Oliver’s hesitant narrative, but Victoria at last reeled the information from his depths.
It wasn’t the least bit comforting.
Last night’s events had fixated Goodwin’s suspicions more sharply on Victoria—as if they hadn’t already been sharp enough. The fact that she’d been at the affair had been only part of it. Vague stories of her acting in an unladylike manner had blossomed. As Oliver told it, when Goodwin learned that she had been found crouched next to a ravaged man alone in a sequestered part of the garden with blood everywhere, including dripping from her mouth and an odd expression on a scratched face . . .
Blood dripping from her mouth?
It took her a moment to remember pushing the hair away from her face. Maybe blood had been on her hands and smeared near her lips.
And apparently the scratches on her face had been, not the result of blasting through a hedge of boxwood, but in self-defense from her victim as she’d bent to drink his blood.
Victoria had a healthy enough imagination to know that was exactly what Goodwin would be thinking.
“ ’E’s goin’ to come here an’ take ye right to the magistrate. Today,” Oliver concluded, still worrying his hat. “An’ he’ll listen t’Goodwin, and put ye in Newgate. M’lady, ye can’t go in there. It’s no place—”
“I have no intention of being put into Newgate,” Victoria said. “And I’ve no fear of the place anyway.” Yet a shiver skittered over her shoulders. Even for Illa Gardella, it would be unpleasant.
But the worst of it was that she wouldn’t spend much time in Newgate at all, for murderers were tried quickly. She’d be on the scaffold with a noose around her neck within a week, if Goodwin had his way.
She turned to Verbena. “I’m indisposed for the day. I will see no one. No one, Verbena. Not Max, not Kritanu, nor Sebastian Vioget.” She looked at Verbena sharply. “And don’t drink anything with Sebastian—or Max, for that matter. And you’re to tell no one of this conversation—either of you.” She glared at both of them, fixing the strength of Illa Gardella in her gaze. “I cannot risk having any of you carted off to Newgate for trying to protect me.”
“But what will you do, my lady?”
Victoria stood. “First, I will borrow your cloak. And . . . could you perhaps cut off a bit of your hair for me?”
The short puff of orange hair peeking from the low-hanging hood of Verbena’s cloak easily disguised Victoria out of the back of the house, through the mews, and onto the street nearby. She met Barth in his hackney a few blocks away, feeling as though she was making the secret assignation that Sebastian had suspected of her.
The ride to Gwendolyn Starcasset’s home gave Victoria a few moments to remove the disguising cloak, and to think about Bemis Goodwin. It wasn’t possible that coincidence kept bringing him to the places where vampire attacks happened.
Near the Starcasset residence, Victoria alighted from the hack and walked a half block to the walkway. She preferred not to have to answer queries as to why she used a public hackney instead of one of her own carriages. Victoria actually wondered why she even kept her own carriages. She never used them.
“Victoria!” Gwendolyn shrieked and threw herself into her friend’s arms. In any other case, a young woman such as Victoria would have staggered back under the force of her onslaught . . . but of course one as strong as Illa Gardella did not.
Gwen’s eyes were red-rimmed and her nose tinged pink. Her face looked as though she hadn’t slept all night. Her embrace included a damp handkerchief.
“Gwendolyn,” Victoria replied with as much heartfelt emotion as the other woman. “I just had to see for myself that you were uninjured.”
“I sent a message to your house this morning to ensure myself that you’d escaped the tragedy, but had no response! I’ve been simply distraught, Victoria. And George too,” she said, with a covert look at her friend.
Ah, a convenient opening. Victoria smiled inside but kept a sober expression. “Then Mr. Starcasset is well? I was able to learn that you’d left early—which surprised me, Gwen, for I know how you adore such parties—but I did not see your brother anywhere during the horrible fire.”
“Was it truly frightening?” Gwen asked. She looked sincerely upset—rather than greedy for the sordid details. “I’ve heard that at least eight people are unaccounted for, Victoria, and I so feared that you were one of them. And poor Mr. Ferguson-Brightley was burned so badly, it’s certain he won’t live.” Her eyes welled with tears. “I cannot fathom how I was so lucky as to have been called home early, even if it was a misunderstanding.”
“You were called home?” The pieces clicked into place. Had George made certain his sister was spared?
“It was quite Providential that George recognized me, for he had no idea that I was meant to attend last night. I thought . . .” Gwen actually blushed, looking away from Victoria for a moment. “I told no one that I was to attend, for I thought that it would be amusing . . . well, I am to be married in a few weeks, and though I do love Brodebaugh. . . but, Victoria, he is just not quite so handsome and dashing as your Phillip was . . . and, oh, I’m making a cake of this, am I not! You must think so poorly of me, but truly, it was a harmless thought I had . . . to spend one last night as a debutante. I was masked, so no one would recognize me, and I only wished to dance.” Her voice trailed off as Victoria nodded encouragingly.