The Vampire Dimitri (Regency Draculia 2)

“Dewhurst?” Maia said, staring at the door. And wasn’t the viscount supposed to be in Romania? “With my sister?”

“I’ll deal with him later,” Corvindale said grimly, grasping her by the arm and towing her toward the door. “Iliana’s waiting in the carriage. You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, and gestured sharply for Mirabella to follow.

“I’m not leaving without my sister,” Maia said, digging in her heels.

The earl’s response was simple, and it infuriated her further: he picked her up bodily and carried her out of the room and down the hall to the servants’ stairs.

The next thing she knew, Maia was shoved into a carriage along with Mirabella and their chaperone. No fewer than three footmen were to accompany them, which gave her a modicum of security. The door closed and clicked locked before she could speak, and the coach started off with a violent lurch.

She could barely catch her breath, she was so incensed. But before she could gather her thoughts to speak, she looked over at her two companions. Mirabella’s eyes were wide in her fair face, her fiery-red hair hanging in straggles around her cheekbones, her red lips parted.

But Aunt Iliana had a more composed, but intense, expression on her face. And for the first time, Maia noticed that the woman was holding a sharp wooden stake.

Maia had just finished opening the parlor drapes at Blackmont Hall again—for someone kept closing them and keeping the rooms so dark and dreary—when she heard the front entrance open. Her heart leaped, and she rushed to the parlor door to see if it was Angelica returning at last. But the low, sharp tones as the new arrival spoke to his butler indicated that it was the earl who had come home.

Determined to at least have some answers from him, she flew from the parlor and met him in the hall.

“Lord Corvindale,” she said, positioning herself in the center of the passageway so that he couldn’t walk to his study—where it appeared he was headed—without brushing past her.

“What is it, Miss Woodmore?” he demanded. His voice was flat and hard, and belied the disheveled, weary man in front of her. He’d either come home and changed into a new shirt (although she was certain he hadn’t been in the house since she returned from the masquerade last night; for she’d been waiting to accost him), or had somehow acquired a different one, for this shirt, though wrinkled and loose, seemed relatively pristine as compared to the one in shreds last night.

But his features were etched even more sharply than usual. His heavy dark brows lowered in a scowl, his mouth in a flat line, his thick, dark hair springing in erratic waves from his head and around his neck. He was well overdue for a shave, as well, she noted with a sniff. His coat was smudged with dirt and his hands were ungloved and one had a line of dried blood on the back of it.

Although Maia had filled her sleepless night by attempting to rest, then read, and then later when neither served to ease her mind, to bathe away the lingering bit of lint and dust from the curtains in which she’d been wrapped, she felt very little sympathy for the man in front of her…despite the fact that he seemed exhausted. Tension emanated from him like heat radiating from a fire, but Maia didn’t care. She needed answers, she needed to prepare, to take care of things and to address this situation—and she’d waited much too long for him. Aunt Iliana, who seemed to know much more than she let on, had merely assured her that they’d received word that Angelica was safe and that Dewhurst would be returning her shortly.

But the big question was: safe from what?

From the vampirs?

“It’s nearly four o’clock, Corvindale. I would like you to tell me precisely where Angelica is,” she demanded of him in return. “And when she is going to arrive here. But most of all, I require assurance that she is safe.”

His eyes flashed darkly. “Your sister will arrive here at Blackmont Hall when I am convinced it is safe for her to do so.” He made a clear gesture of dismissal. “Is that all?”

She drew in her breath and gave him an icy glare. “No, it is not. In fact, I wished to speak with you in regard to your conduct last evening.”

“My conduct?” Ice fairly formed in the air around his words.

Perhaps he assumed that the very tone of his livid, affronted voice would make her turn tail and run, but he was very wrong. “Not only was it abhorrent and crude, but you didn’t even take the moment to explain or apologize before shoving Mirabella and myself into a carriage and sending us off.”

“Indeed.”

“There was simply no reason for you to put your hands on me—” to her mortification, her voice dipped a bit with fury “—and toss me out onto the balcony like some sort of—”

Corvindale fixed her with icy black eyes. “In fact, I had sufficient reason for doing so. The least of which was the fact that you would not have obeyed me.”

“If you had simply explained—”

“There was no time for explanations, even if I had believed you might have heeded them, Miss Woodmore. You would have ignored them just as you have everything else since arriving here, including keeping the windows in this house shrouded, my library in order and my preference not to be bothered.”

Maia held her ground, despite the fact that his voice had risen enough that a nearby vase rattled on its glass tray. So he had noticed she’d been looking through his library…and doing a bit of organizing. Had he seen that she’d arranged his many copies of the Faustian legend by language and date?

“If you had simply explained that we were in danger and there was no time for discussion, I would have heeded your warning.” She drew in a breath and managed to count to three before continuing. “In addition to an apology, I believe it isn’t asking overly much to request an explanation for what happened last evening. I understand now that Angelica and I were in danger, but I would like to know why and from whom or what. And how it happened that you arrived in time to prevent whatever the outcome might have been…regardless of the clumsy manner in which you executed it.”

“Clumsy manner?” he repeated.

She pinned him with her eyes and made an impatient gesture. Why would he not give her a straight answer? “You pushed me out onto the balcony, wrapped up in curtains. Can you not give me the courtesy of telling me why?”

“Because there were some very bad men who want to take you away and I needed to ensure that you didn’t reveal yourself to them. That is why your blasted brother snared me into being your guardian. Because he knew there was no one else who could keep you safe.”