The smaller man slunk into the shadows from whence he’d come, but the larger man stood his ground.
An approaching carriage, turning from one dark street onto this one, crunched over the bricks. Victoria’s instincts sharpened when the back of her neck cooled, but she did not take her attention from the man who accosted her.
The man shifted, as if readying himself to launch, just as the carriage slowed alongside them. The chill over her nape was sharper now, definitely connected to the arrival of the carriage. Victoria’s fingers tightened over the knife when its door opened. Before she could react, a man jumped out, landing with two solid feet onto the uneven ground.
He was dressed in well-tailored clothing, more like one who resided on Hanover Square than here in St. Giles. His face was half-shadowed by the tall, brimmed hat, but she could see the impression of a long nose and square chin.
He spun, brandishing a pistol, and pointed it at the other man. “Oughta blow your brains out,” snarled the newcomer, “attacking a woman on the streets!”
A vampire? Speaking in a vaguely familiar voice and lecturing a hoodlum?
Surely not.
The chill was definitely raising the hair on her neck, heightening her senses, but this man wasn’t an undead. She knew it, yet her senses were still on alert.
Then Victoria saw the faintest shift of shadow—gray-black easing into ink black—behind the carriage.
Ah.
Stepping back from the altercation in which the newcomer’s cloak was whipping and churning about as he advanced on the bandit, she reached into her pocket and grasped her stake, then replaced the knife.
She turned and saw the faint glow of red eyes between two wooden buildings across the road—barely enough room for a man to walk through shoulder-square. Her pulse notched up and she smiled there in the night, slipping in front of the parked carriage and across the street…into the narrow space.
She heard an alarmed shout behind her, as if the newcomer had seen her walk into the dark alley, but she ignored it.
As she moved deeper into the slender opening, Victoria stepped on something that shifted and scuttled beneath her foot, sending her off balance, bumping into the brick wall. At least it was furry and squirming, not eight-legged and crunching. Her next step landed her boot in something soft, squishy, and putrid, and when she took one more step, she realized the red eyes had vanished, and that the back of her neck was warming.
The vampire had gone.
The sensation at the back of her neck was gone too.
Frowning in the dark, Victoria stopped and listened and felt. Deep breaths, as Kritanu had taught her, deep breaths to heighten her awareness, and to calm the singing of her nerves.
Nothing. She felt and heard nothing.
Unwilling to believe her chance for a fight had disappeared, Victoria waited still longer, and contemplated. This was the second time in two nights she’d found vampires, after months of nothing.
Last night she’d had the unsettling experience of being unable to kill one, or kill what she’d thought was a vampire. And tonight the one she stalked had simply slipped away, silent and quick, leaving her with stake in hand and an odd feeling of unfinished business.
She listened and felt again. Still nothing.
As Victoria turned to take the four or five steps that would bring her from the alley, she heard a shout coming from the street.
“Madam! Miss!”
It was the carriage owner, the one who had taken it upon himself to save her from the thugs. Again she thought his voice was familiar. She stepped back into what passed for illumination on this dark night, out of the alley, then darted across the street and around the carriage. “I am here.”
He spun and faced her, and their recognition was simultaneous.
“Mr. Starcasset!”
“Lady Rockley!”
Victoria could not believe her misfortune. Her would-be savior was her good friend Gwendolyn Starcasset’s brother. And he was staring at her with understandable shock and concern, frozen, as if unable to think what to do.
As would any other member of the peerage, if they found a widow just coming out of mourning alone in the most dangerous part of London in the middle of the night, not to mention garbed in men’s clothing.
Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Victoria could not help but be amused at how the man must be struggling to find so