He sucked in a deep breath. “It ain’t that. Me levels ain’t ever come down before. It’s unheard of.” He slowly put his hand into hers. “What if it were just an error?”

Honoria stroked his fingers. “Then we’ll find out. Together.” She eased his finger onto the brass plate. The sharp little needle spiked down, driving into his flesh with a stinging ache. Blood welled. Honoria tilted his hand and held it over the small glass vial, squeezing the skin to encourage the blood to flow.

One drop. Two. Another for good measure. He watched it sluggishly spread across the bottom of the vial. Honoria stoppered three accompanying drops of hydrate of soda into the vial, then slid it into the spectrometer. Pressing a button, she toyed with the pair of dials until she’d found the right frequency. Depending upon the level of acidic reaction, the little brass cogs would whirl into place, giving them a readout of his virus levels.

It was a breathless moment. He couldn’t look.

“It will be all right,” Honoria murmured. “I still have my father’s notes if I need them. I know he was on the verge of something. He spoke of little else in the days before he died. And we have time, a little of it anyway.”

There was a sharp click. Honoria leaned forward, the sound of her weight shifting on the timber floorboards.

“Well?” The words stuck in his throat.

“Look,” she whispered.

The little dial hovered at seventy-six.

“I know I wrote ’em down right,” he said, the strength in his knees starting to give out. Honoria caught him under the arms as he looked down in surprise. “They was seventy-eight. I know they was.” The last was a whisper.

Honoria staggered back, guiding him to a chair. “It’s not the sort of mistake you would be making for months.” An enormous smile lit her face. “You’ve got columns of figures and dates. March the thirty-first was the last time you were at seventy-six.”

“The machine might be skewed—”

Honoria settled on his lap, her hands cupping his face. “We’ll buy a new one, but it looks perfectly fine to me. I don’t know how…” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Nothing has changed? Your dietary intake? Sleep patterns? Living habits?”

He gave a raw chuckle. “A lot’s changed, luv.” His hands were trembling. For the first time he allowed himself to hope. He’d long thought himself immured to the thought of what was going to happen. But then Honoria had come into his life. For the first time in years he wanted to live. “But nothin’ unusual. There’s always problems to deal with in the rookery. Me sleep falls by the wayside, and I drink more chilled blood, but it’s been done before. Ain’t never caused me levels to fall.”

She kissed him. “You stupid fool. You were going to send me away, weren’t you?”

It hit him then, like a circus performer’s mallet. If his levels were falling, he might be able to avoid the grim fate waiting for him. The hunger’s hold on him would lessen—though it might never ease completely.

Blade scooped her up and swept her toward the bed. “Absolutely not,” he replied with a straight face. “You come into me life and turned it topsy-turvy. I ain’t ’bout to let you go.”

He tossed her on the sheets and followed her down. Honoria laughed beneath him, fighting at his hands.

“Wait! Wait, let me think.”

Baffled by the sudden push—as opposed to her very recent pulling—he drew back, kneeling over her. “What for?”

That same burning intensity fired her dark eyes. “That’s it. I’m the only true difference in your life.”

“I don’t see as ’ow that’d make any changes to me virus count,” he said dubiously.

“I’m the only recent change to your diet.” She sat up. “Don’t you see? There must be something in my blood that created the change. The only thing I can think of is that I was vaccinated. That’s got to be it. Once father developed a vaccination that worked, he offered it to the staff and volunteer feeders at the Institute. Some accepted, some didn’t. Three of the test subjects started showing a decrease in their levels, but others didn’t. Perhaps those three subjects were feeding from volunteers who had been vaccinated.” Excitement shone in her eyes. She had never been more beautiful to him than in this moment. “Father must have guessed. He kept speaking of a common element in that last week. He could barely sleep, barely eat…”

Honoria could contain herself no longer. She bounded off the bed, hands gesturing wildly. “The vaccination doesn’t affect blue bloods. We tried that. Yet when a blue blood drinks the blood of a vaccinated person…” She looked around, raking a hand through her hair. “A notebook. Do you have a notebook?”

Blade let his head sink back onto the bed, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “I’ve just returned from the dead and you want a bleedin’ notebook?”

Her wide brown eyes blinked at him as she slowly returned from whatever mental plane she’d momentarily existed on. “You don’t understand. I have to get this down.”

“I’ve got time.” He rested his arms beneath his head and lazily surveyed her. “Charlie’s got time. It’s enough to know that me blood levels are goin’ down. But you and me, we needs to ’ave a little chat. I’m feelin’ awful lonely and neglected over ’ere.”

Honoria’s gaze dropped to his waist—and the tented suggestion beneath the sheet. Blazing intellect faded from her gaze, replaced by a sultry look that made him freeze. She climbed onto the bed, dragging her skirts up over him as she straddled his hips. “You poor, starved blue blood. Or should I refer to you as Sir Henry now?”

“Only,” he murmured, drawing her hand against his mouth, “if I may refer to you as Lady Rathinger.”

Her breath caught. A little hint of vulnerability shot through her eyes. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

Blade kissed her palm, stroking his tongue across the tactile skin. Honoria shuddered a little, her lips parting and her gaze blurring with desire.

“Aye. Whoever thought I’d get ’ammered for life? But it’s the only way I can be certain of reinin’ in your ’eadstrong impulses,” he replied. “No more facin’ down vampires, ravenous dukes, or a hall full o’ blue bloods. I’ve died a thousand deaths over the last few weeks. Me poor old ticker can’t ’andle so much trauma.”

“Then you must not face such dangers either,” she told him, leaning down and brushing her nose against his with a smile. “For I only do battle for those I love.”

Blade caught her face in his hands and kissed her. Hard. He was almost afraid to let her go, for fear that the words had been nothing more than a hallucination—like his memories of them from the Ivory Tower.

Mine, whispered the dark little voice inside his head. His darker half. Himself, he finally realized. The part that was ruled by his passions and hungers. A part he had once feared and fought.

I am the darkness, he thought wonderingly and tugged at Honoria’s laces. She laughed, the dress pulling free and revealing the crisp white cotton of her stays.

But the only ones who would ever have to fear him now would be his enemies. Not her. Never her.

Ours, he corrected, finally surrendering to the inevitable. Always ours.