“Did you send Giordan to me? When you left for Paris?” Narcise asked.
The bit of levity drained from Chas’s face and he sat upright. His expression had gone carefully blank. “I don’t know exactly what occurred between you and him,” he said, “but it’s clear to me that whatever it was has made you unwilling to trust or love.”
Not quite an admission, but close enough.
A spike of anger shot through Narcise, and her Mark eased in agreement. “What happened with Giordan has nothing to do with how I feel about you,” she responded sharply. “I care about you…I desire you and enjoy being with you. But, as you’re fully aware, Chas, I’m a Dracule. I am a selfish, self-serving, damned soul—and I’m immortal. Loving anyone besides myself is in direct opposition to who I am…to who we of the Draculia are. Who Luce has forced us to be.”
His face tightened and she saw the flare of hurt and anger in his hazel eyes. “You made the choice.” He spoke hardly loudly enough to be heard over the rumble of the carriage. “To be that way.”
Pain sliced through her, not from her Mark—it was strangely quiet—but from her heart, down to her deepest core. A choice? The thought was ludicrous. How could anyone make a clear decision when they were tricked and manipulated in their dreams by the most cunning demon of all?
In her case, it had been the choice between living a forever youthful, immortal life as a great beauty or one with a no longer perfect face, burned down one side of her cheek. The result would have been one of horror, with ropy, burned-away flesh where her smooth skin had once been.
In her dreams, Lucifer had helpfully shown her the image of what she would have been like after the burn healed…and offered her a way out. For a twenty-year-old girl whose vanity knew no bounds, there was hardly a choice. She had no real comprehension of the deal she’d made.
And…she realized later that Cezar must have arranged the incident that caused hot oil to splash and spill on her. It came from a lamp mounted high on the stairwell she frequently used. Her brother didn’t want to live his immortal life alone…he wanted to live it with her.
In spite of his controlling, abusive ways, he worshipped her.
“Don’t you ever regret it? Don’t you ever want to change it?” Chas persisted, drawing her back from those horrible memories.
She held back a snort of disgust. “Do I want to be beholden to Lucifer? Do I want to be damned?” She shook her head, suddenly empty and dark everywhere. A cold knot sat heavily in her stomach. “Just because Voss claims a miracle happened doesn’t mean it will happen to me. Hasn’t Dimitri been trying for a century to break his ties with Lucifer?”
Her Mark was throbbing now, and she could feel its rootlike lines raging through her skin like tiny rivers of fire. She breathed deeply, trying to send the pain away.
Chas sank back into his corner, his expression weary and shadowed: another tacit admission. “Yes. There seems to be no way.” His voice was bitter and soft. His eyes were closed and he became bathed in gray shadow.
“Chas,” she began, then her voice filtered away. What was there to say? Her heart stirred for him in some soft, unlustful emotion, and her Mark raged so sharply that she had to smother a gasp. Lucifer had no patience for sympathy.
They trundled along in silence, the cloudy day filled with the sounds of city life: shouts, calls, barking, rumbling, clashing and rattling. The smells of baking bread, of coal smoke, of wet animal and roasting meat, of stagnant water and rotting waste.
Chas looked at her suddenly, from where he brooded in the corner. His eyes gleamed in the shadows and they fixed on her, dark and steady. “You once said you knew of no one who was visited by Lucifer and who yet declined the Devil’s bargain. But that isn’t true. You do know someone who has.”
Somehow, Narcise was able to ignore the shuttle of renewed heat blasting over her shoulder’s Mark. “Who is that?” she asked, suddenly feeling light of head. Suddenly afraid she understood.
“Me.”
They arrived at Rubey’s late in the afternoon of a dreary, foggy day.
Narcise was still stunned and silent from Chas’s confession, and he, for his part, had offered no other details. When she pressed him, he merely shook his head, closed his eyes and replied, “I’ve never told another soul. There’s a reason I don’t want to talk about it.”
But now, at least, she understood his consistent, barely concealed disgust toward those of her race—those who had made what he clearly saw as the wrong decision.
How fitting, in a terrible, ironic way, that he should be judge, jury and executioner of those very people. For he could have been one of them himself.
Inside Rubey’s, Narcise was whisked away for a warm bath—something their hostess was particularly fond of herself, according to the maid—and Chas disappeared in another direction, presumably to eat and clean up after the grueling journey.
As she settled in the large vessel of steaming water, Narcise was offered a sip of dark red libation from her choice of three small decanters. The cup was no larger than a sherry glass, fluted with tuliplike edges, and hardly taller than her little finger.
Narcise smelled the three options and selected the lightest of them. It wasn’t until she actually sipped that she realized the drink was laced with… “What’s in it? Some sort of elixir?” she asked the maid, who’d begun to wash her hair.
“Mistress Rubey’s finest,” was the vague reply. “She ’as a few such for the likes of ye. Some-at for rest, some-at for waking, some-at for…ye ken-at.”
Narcise blinked. Her English was still that bit better than her French, but this moon-faced young woman’s accent was so thick and her slang difficult to follow that she wasn’t at all certain what she’d just been told. But she settled back into the hot, scented water and sipped as her hair was scrubbed and her head massaged.
Sometime later, the water had cooled and the maid had gone. Narcise settled in an armchair in front of the hearth, swaddled in a thick quilted wrapper with her damp hair drying in the fire’s heat. From the street below, the sounds of living wafted up through the half-shuttered windows.
The sun was nearly gone, and Narcise imagined there were young ladies like Angelica and Maia Woodmore preparing for visits to the theater or to dances…and the men to visit their clubs or to escort their women to parties. There would be courtship and romance; perhaps erotic interludes in dark corners, gossip and rumors, giggling and whispering…
And the tradesmen were closing up their shops, and the businessmen their offices, and the mamas were sending their children off to bed with or without a governess—depending upon in which area of town they lived—and the lords were leaving Westminster after a contentious day of arguments and debates.
Narcise breathed deeply of the fresh air, which was rapidly cooling with the loss of the sun. Although it was only late September, the air was damp and bone-chilling, reminding her of her girlhood in Romania.
Despite the cold and damp, she’d had a comfortable life there, for her father was a close confidant of the ruler of their province. With two older brothers, one of whom married the
She’d thought to marry one day, and the young, virile Rivrik had been her first real lover. She likely would have wed him if things hadn’t changed…if Cezar hadn’t found his savior in Lucifer and manipulated their lives into what they were now.
She closed her eyes and thought about where she’d been, what she’d dreamed of…and what was to become of her now.
There would be no wedding a man and bearing children, which was what she’d always hoped for as a girl. No family, no household to run. No friends with whom to gossip.
During the years of captivity with her brother, her only goal had been freedom—she’d never thought about what her life would be once she had her independence.
But now that she had freedom, now that she no longer had a goal to strive for and to dream about…what did she have?
