“And regardless of what you might think you feel, Miss Woodmore,” he said, “love has nothing to do with whether you wed Bradington or not. Is it not all about the match? The income, the family, the title? Whatever you might think you feel has no bearing on your reputation or your marriage.”

Something glinted in her eyes and he thought for a startled moment that his feisty Miss Woodmore might be tearing up. But she blinked and the shininess was gone.

“Nevertheless,” she said, “I will tell him the truth. And either he’ll wish to go forward with the wedding, knowing that not only do I not love him, but I don’t come to him untouched, or he’ll drop me and our engagement will be broken.”

“There will be a scandal,” he said, despite the fact that he would ensure that Bradington didn’t drop her. “Your reputation will be ruined.”

“Please refrain from stating the obvious, Lord Corvindale,” she said in a parody of an admonishment he’d once given her. “I’m willing to risk it. I will not live a lie with Alexander. He needs to know the truth. And that is why I felt compelled to tell you the truth of how I feel, even though I knew precisely how you would react.”

“You don’t understand, Maia,” he said, keeping his voice cold so that it wouldn’t break. “I’m immortal. I live forever. And when I die…I belong to the devil. I belong to him even now. I have nothing to give. That,” he added nastily, thinking of Wayren and her stories, “is what makes me different from the fairy-tale beast. I own nothing of myself. I have nothing to give.”

19

OF IRONY, UMBRELLAS AND INFERNOS

After his icy pronouncement, Corvindale swept out of the chamber into his adjoining dressing and bathing room, leaving Maia sitting alone on the bed. Numb.

Moments later, she heard the door open onto the hall from that room, and then shortly after that, he returned, stalking into the bedchamber, his hands filled with garments. He was dressed simply in an untucked shirt and trousers.

“I suppose you’ll need assistance dressing,” he said, placing the clothing on the bed with surprising gentleness. She’d expected him to throw them.

“No,” she said, snatching up a chemise. She refused to ask how he’d obtained the garments. It was impossible to imagine that the earl would have gone into her chamber and dug through her wardrobe and drawers. “I don’t need your assistance.”

The chemise floated down over her shoulders and hips.

Maia disdained the corset and drawers and pulled on the simple day dress he’d provided. Fortunately the empire-waist style allowed for her to go temporarily without the corset. She would thus be able to return to her chamber and then get properly dressed with Betty’s help, appearing as if she had just returned from a walk if anyone encountered her in the meanwhile.

Then she could go down and have a difficult conversation with Alexander.

After she found a way to cover her vampire bites.

Once his grudging assistance was refused, Corvindale turned away and stood in front of a curtained window, his back to her, while she finished dressing.

As she did so, Maia reflected on the amazing fact that she was in the earl’s bedchamber, alone with him and dressing after spending several hours wrapped in his arms. Naked. And now he would hardly acknowledge her presence. They’d talked so coolly and calmly about everything that had happened, as if it were a story that had unfolded on the pages of a book instead of to them. In real life.

Looking at the bedraggled mattress, she gave a little shudder of remembered pleasure tinged with regret. She would never forget the feeling, tumbling onto his nude body, warm and hard, rough with wiry hair and firm with planes of muscle, his arms closing around her. His mouth taking from hers.

She belonged there.

“The only time I loved a woman,” he said suddenly, still turned away, “I gave everything for her. My heart. My life. And, quite literally, my soul.”

Maia’s movements were arrested as she bent to pick up the unused bundle of clothing. Her heart thumped. She had so many questions. “Lerina?”

“God and the Fates, no. Do you think I’m completely mad? Her name was Meg. It was because of her that I…that I am what I am today.”

“You made a pact with the devil for her?”

He nodded, fingering the heavy drapes that still cloaked the window. “I thought I was saving her life. Our lives.”

“What happened?” Maia asked, imagining that she’d died of old age in his arms as he remained forever young.

“She left.”

Oh. “I’m sorry.”

“I was, too.”

Something soft swelled in her chest and it was all Maia could do not to reach for him. Even with his back to her, she could see the tension in his shoulders. She imagined she could make out the black lines of the horrible marking on his skin, the writhing black veins as thick as rose stems, through the cotton of his shirt.

“Did you love Lerina, too?”

“I’ve loved no one since.”

Maia swallowed. Including me. “I’m sorry for that, too, Corvindale.” She held the bundle of clothing to her chest and paused.

He shifted as if he meant to turn, then stopped suddenly and remained with his back to her, his fingers curling around the edge of the curtains. “You’re aware that my given name is Dimitri.”

“Yes. I see no reason to use that appellation,” she said stiffly. Lerina had, calling him “darling Dimitri” with such a false, sugary tone that Maia had felt ill. Aside of that, they weren’t intimates. Not any longer.

“I wasn’t suggesting that you do, Miss Woodmore.” His voice softened a bit as he continued. “My mother was a Romanian princess who married my father the earl, and she named me Dimitri Gavril. She called me Gavril.”

Maia’s lips twisted, for she understood why he’d told her. “Gavril, or the Greek, Gabriel. I believe it translates as ‘man of God.’”

As she looked at his dark head, held high, his shoulders broad and straight, and the hint of the black markings of the devil beneath his white shirt, she knew the irony must be that much more bitter to him.

“If you please, advise Mr. Bradington that Miss Woodmore is here to speak with him,” Maia said to Alexander’s butler, Driggs, as he took her umbrella.

“The master has been indisposed since last evening, miss,” Driggs told her gravely. “I shall attempt to rouse him.”

She swallowed her nervousness as Driggs gestured for her to wait in the small, private parlor. Alexander had left Blackmont Hall the morning after the “mix-up” with their appointment to go for a walk. And he hadn’t returned that afternoon, nor the day after.

The fact that he hadn’t done so left an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Maia’s being, and now today, when she finished dressing, eating as much dinner as she could stomach—which was to say, not very much at all—she decided to take matters into her own hands and call on him directly.

Calling on a gentleman wasn’t done, unless one were chaperoned, but in the case of one’s fiancé, it was much more permissible. Still, Maia didn’t particularly want to be noticed and so she was grateful for the heavy rain and dark clouds that gave her an excuse to hide under an obstructing umbrella as she hurried up the short walk to his front door. For that same reason, she’d ordered a hackney instead of taking one of Corvindale’s carriages. And, conscious of the warnings of both Dewhurst and Corvindale, she’d left Blackmont Hall through the back, servants’ entrance, well-cloaked and hidden under a hood. Anyone waiting for an opportunity to abduct her not only wouldn’t see her leave, but if they did, she would be assumed to be a maid or other servant.

Now inside, listening to the pouring rain, she adjusted her skirts neatly across her knees. They were weighted by their damp hem, which just skimmed the tops of her water-speckled slippers. They’d be ruined, but the state of her shoes was the least of her worries.

How was she going to tell Alexander? What was she going to tell him?

Did he suspect something, and that was why he was indisposed? No, certainly not. How could he suspect anything?

He must simply be unwell, which explained why he wouldn’t have come to call. Poor Alexander, always the gentleman. Likely attempting to keep her from getting his sickness. Perhaps…she hoped he wasn’t ill over worry for her. That would be simply too much for her to bear.

The parlor door opened suddenly, and Maia jumped at the unexpected noise.

“Alexander,” she said, calming her nervous heart and rising promptly to her feet. She scanned him closely, looking for signs that he had been ill or sleepless.

“Maia,” he replied, smiling at her. He didn’t appear to be unwell, his Scottish heritage showing in a handsome face shaven and faintly ruddy as it always was. His gray-blue eyes scanned her with appreciation and his chestnut-colored hair and sideburns were combed and pomaded as if he’d dressed for her. “I am so delighted to see you. I meant to call on you today, but I’m afraid I must keep an appointment this afternoon. Perhaps you would join me, and we could talk in the carriage? I believe we have much to catch up on.”

“Yes,” she replied, feeling a bit off center, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps, in his mind, nothing had.

In his mind. A very cold feeling settled over her. Corvindale. Had he come and persuaded Alexander that nothing was amiss? Had he enthralled her fiancé to force him into marrying her, regardless of what she told him?

Could he even do that?

Maia firmed her lips. She would have to have a word with the earl. Again.

“Very well, then, my dear,” he said, offering her his arm as he opened a large umbrella. “I promise our appointment won’t take long at all.”

He held the covering up and over as they fairly ran through the downpour to his waiting carriage. The rain came down so hard that it splashed up and under the umbrella, soaking the bottom third of her frock.

“There’s something I must tell you,” Maia said, gathering up her bravery as well as her heavy skirts as she settled into the carriage across from him. She was breathing heavily from the short dash. “There’s something we must talk about.”