Dawn Thompson (2 page)

Cassandra stared. How lovely she was with the candlelight picking out the sun-painted streaks in her honey-colored hair, with that touch of color in her cheeks and her hooded eyes glazed with the shimmer of leftover tears.

“I see what you see,” she said. “It is too soon to tell. It may be years before we know for certain. If Milosh were here, perhaps he could tell us. I miss our Gypsy friend, Jon. He knew I was with child before I did. . . .”

Jon embraced mother and child. He had a beautiful son, and his wife had come splendidly through a difficult birth. What more could he ask for? It was enough for now, and he thanked Divine Providence through a deep, heaved sigh. He would not share his morbid thoughts about the birth occurring during moon-dark.
Cassandra was radiant, gazing down at their infant son. He would not spoil her euphoria. It was contagious. He had a son—a beautiful, healthy, perfectly formed son. Yes, it was enough . . . for now.

Cumberland, England

January, 1841

Joss should have stayed in London. Here was the worst snowstorm in history, and he was abroad in it—on horseback, no less. Madness, but necessary madness, at least the way he viewed it. It would have been worth it all if his efforts had borne fruit, but they hadn’t. His parents, Jon and Cassandra Hyde-White, weren’t at the townhouse when he’d reached it. None of the servants knew where or when they had gone. It was passing strange; they had vanished in the night, and Joss was right back where he’d begun, with nothing resolved. He had to find them. Though he knew he’d been tainted in the womb, that he wasn’t exempt from the curse, he wasn’t a blood-lusting vampire as they were before the blood moon ritual, either. Now, there were new symptoms. Something in him was changing. He needed answers. Hence his journey back to Whitebriar Abbey in what had had all the earmarks of becoming a blizzard,
in hopes that they had tired of Town and decided to winter in Cumberland after all. This didn’t bode well. Only a Bedlamite would venture forth in such a storm, and at this moment, battling the cruel north wind, that was exactly what Joss considered himself to be.

His head bent low in the gale, he urged his mount onward. He might have stopped at an inn along the way, but the snow had just begun again—one storm having bred another—when he’d passed the last public house, and he’d been so close to home, he’d decided to press on. Now, his multicaped greatcoat and beaver hat were caked with snow, as were his eyebrows and the woolen muffler wrapped around his nose and mouth. Freezing moisture crackled in his nostrils, and he cursed the air blue. Cold melting snow was trickling down his back beneath his coat collar.

Night was falling, and the road was no longer visible. Joss had no choice but to press on. He would have known the terrain blindfolded, but it had disappeared; the swirling blasts of blowing snow had whitewashed the earth and sky into one continuous blue-white blur. The snowflakes, driven by the wind, stung like thousands of needles piercing what little of his face was still exposed. He began to daydream of the welcoming hearth in his study at Whitebriar Abbey, of propping the feet he could no longer feel up up on the little tapestry-covered stool before the fire and sipping his favorite French brandy, warming himself from the inside out.

Lost in those fantasies, he came so close to the obstruction ahead that he nearly plowed into it before he realized it was there: a carriage—a brougham, by the look of it, its horses standing like two ghosts, washed white in the snow. A faint snort from one as he climbed down from his mount was the only evidence that the animals
weren’t frozen statues. He had considered taking a carriage home. Now, looking at this, he was glad he hadn’t.

His top boots had scarcely sunk to the calf in the snow when something shaggy and black against the white world all around bounded through the open coach door and lit out over the drifts to disappear in the night—an unusually large dog, by the look of its paw prints, or a
wolf
. But that couldn’t be.

Joss reached beneath his coat for the pistol in its holster strapped to his leg, but the animal had disappeared behind a whirling curtain of snow by the time he’d taken aim. No use to waste the bullet. He jammed the pistol back in its holster and plowed through the drifts toward the carriage, dreading what he would find inside.

Hard-packed snow from the previous storm underneath the fresh blanket kept his feet from sinking too deeply. He lost his balance nonetheless in the slippery stuff, and floundered several times before he reached the gaping carriage door. It had been thus for some time, judging from the way the snow had drifted inside and begun to mount up and spill onto the floorboards.

It was moon-dark, and there was no light save what reflected eerily from the snow. The coach lanterns had all but burned out, and he took one out of its bracket and held it high, peering inside. It gave off no more light than a firefly. Why did everything of a catastrophic nature always seem to happen to him in the dark of the moon?

There were five passengers in the coach. The coachman was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he had gone for help. There were no footprints in the snow, but that
wasn’t unusual. The way the stuff was falling now, it would have covered any tracks recently made. Jon’s heart sank. The passengers were all in a jumble on the floor of the carriage. Had they passed out, or fallen to the floor when the coach abruptly stopped? There was no use trying to make sense of the situation, so he set the lantern aside and began lifting the passengers back on the seats one by one.

There were three men and two women. How long could they have been bogged down there? They seemed to be frozen stiff. By the look of it, the wild dog had gotten to four of them; they were dead, covered with blood. The woman at the bottom, to Joss’s profound surprise, was alive, and she didn’t seem to have been bitten, though it was hard to tell in the bleak semidarkness called by the storm, through a veil of falling snow and so much blood.

The salty, metallic smell rushed up his nostrils despite his muffler. It was happening again—the same surge of euphoria, the same strange reaction to the scent of blood that had driven him to London seeking answers. He beat the bone-chilling sensations back. The woman needed tending. The others’ bodies had kept her warm by the look of it, and more than likely kept her from freezing to death. The carriage had evidently been bogged down there for some time.

All at once, the carriage lurched as one horse’s forelegs buckled and it fell forward, then onto its side in the snow with a mournful whinny. Dragging his feet through the drifts, Joss unhitched both animals, but the fallen horse would not right itself. Its crazed eyes were bulging, and its tongue had slipped out between its teeth and lay like a ribbon in the snow. Its breathing was heavy and labored.
The animal could go no farther. Joss couldn’t leave the horse at the mercy of wild dogs like the creature he’d just frightened off; that one would be back with the rest of the pack the minute he moved on, and the horse was in no condition to defend itself. His hand gripped the pistol beneath his greatcoat. He withdrew it, running his all-but-numb hand over the cold steel barrel, hesitating, but only for a moment. The horse was in pain. There was nothing for it, and so he raised the weapon and fired. The horse went limp in the snow.

A groan from the coach turned him back toward it, but when he returned the woman showed no signs of coming around. She was a little thing, wrapped in a chinchilla-lined hooded cloak, which had also spared her from the cold, and he hefted her over his shoulder, collected the other carriage horse’s bridle, and trudged back to his own mount. Laying her across the horse’s back before the saddle, he swung himself up and lifted her into the crook of his arm, meanwhile setting his mount in motion. The snow was falling more heavily now. He couldn’t see two feet in front of him. With a firm grip on the carriage horse’s bridle, he called out to the steed underneath him: “Home, Titus!” praying that the animal knew how to get him there.

Titus labored up the tor and into the flaying wind. They reached Whitebriar Abbey an hour later, and not a minute too soon for Joss. The carriage horse plodding along behind, they struggled to the flat summit, where he left both mounts in the hands of Otis McFee, the stable master, and plowed through the drifts carrying the woman to the Abbey.

It wasn’t until the door came open in the hands of Jonathan Bates, the antiquated butler, and lamplight
flooded the Great Hall, that he got a good look at his charge. She was as white as the snow swirling in around them, and caked with it just as he was. Her lips were tinged blue, the starkness of her whole countenance a shock against the wisps of chestnut hair spilling out from beneath her hood. She looked to be in her early twenties.

Limping on his lame leg through the little white whorls dancing over the threshold, Bates struggled with the wind in the doorway until he’d slammed the door. Joss was already streaking up the stairs, leaving a wet trail of melted snow and solid clumps that had fallen from their clothes behind him on the terrazzo.

“I shall take her to the yellow suite,” he called over his shoulder. “Send Grace and Amy up straightaway to attend her. The poor gel is nearly frozen stiff. I suppose we shan’t have Dr. Everett?”

“In this?” the butler barked. “You dream, sir.”

“I thought not. We shall just have to make do, then. Don’t just stand there, man! All four of her companions lie dead in their bogged-down carriage on the moor. Let us see if we can save this one, eh?”

The butler loped off at a pace consistent with his age and disability despite the directive for haste, and Jon carried on to the yellow suite and burst inside. Stripping off the girl’s snow-caked mantle, he laid her on the sleigh bed, trying to ignore that her frock beneath was covered in blood; he prayed not hers. Chucking logs into the hearth, he engaged the tinderbox on the mantel, producing a spark that ignited the flammable bits inside and singeing his numb fingers in the bargain. Cursing, he dropped the flaming tinder on the hearth-stone and waved his hand about, making matters worse. Sucking on the most painful of the burns, he fed the ignited
matter into the pile of logs with the help of a hearth shovel.

He was breathing life into the fire with the bellows when Grace Bates, the butler’s wife and housekeeper at Whitebriar Abbey, marched over the threshold, through the door he’d left flung wide, with the housemaid, Amy, in tow.

“What on earth are ya doin’, sir?” the old woman asked. “That’s no chore for you. Get up outta there afore ya burn yourself.” Then to the maid: “Don’t just stand there, girl. His hands are like two cakes o’ ice. See to that fire before he does himself a mischief.”

“We shan’t have the doctor till the roads are passable,” Joss said, straightening up and slapping ashes from his buckskins. “So we must make do. The young lady has been exposed to extreme cold for God alone knows how long a time in this blizzard. Do what you can, and report to me once you’ve done. I shall be in the study after I’ve changed. See that there’s a fire there as well. I’m chilled to the bone.”

Shuffling to the bed, Grace Bates threw up her arms and screamed. “Heaven save us! Where is she bleedin’?”

“I do not know that she is,” Joss said. “The others in the coach with her were drenched in blood and she was underneath them; I believe it’s theirs. Just . . . do what you can, and burn her clothes—all but the mantle, which can be saved. You may fetch some of Mother’s things; they should fit. Are they at home: Mother and Father? Have they come on from London?”

The housekeeper gave a start. “In this?” she said. “No, sir. We’ve had no word to expect them.”

Joss nodded and said no more. Briefly, his gaze fell upon the huge sleigh bed and the unconscious girl covered with blood, and his nostrils flared with the evocative
smell. His heart began to race and his sex leapt with an unexpected arousal. He dared not remain. It was happening again.

Riveting chills raced along his spine, setting him in motion. Streaking past the slack-jawed servants, he marched down the hall to his own apartments, flung open the door and stripped off his wet coat, muffler and beaver, which he left in a heap on the floor for Parker, his valet, to deal with. The soggy top boots and hose came off next, and he chose a clean shirt and trousers from the armoire. His wet ones soon joined the pile. Then, shrugging on a bottle-green satin dressing gown over the dry togs, he went straightaway to the study, drawn by visions of that French brandy he’d been fantasizing about. Minutes later, the dream was a reality. He had done all he could for the gel. Lounging in his favorite wing chair before the fire, with his long legs fully stretched out, the neck of his shirt undone, feet propped up and snifter in hand, he viewed the world through the amber liquor in his glass and waited.

Slowly, his toes stopped tingling. Feeling was returning in his numb limbs, and with it, pain—throbbing, aching pain. At least his sex was behaving. Away from the scent of blood he was no longer aroused, though the sight of the girl in the yellow suite upstairs literally covered with it would not fade from his mind. What had she been doing out in such a blizzard in the first place? Who were her companions that now lay dead for their foolhardy decision to venture out in such weather? The other woman in the party had been older; a plain-looking woman with a large hairy mole above her upper lip. From her black twill costume, Joss assumed her to have been the girl’s abigail. Two of the dead men were portly, considerably older as well, and the third was a
younger man who appeared to be in his late twenties—younger at least than Joss’s thirty. The dead youth was well-dressed gentry from the look of him: a country squire, perhaps, or the son of one; or full-fledged aristocracy. It hardly mattered now. They were all dead, and horribly. The strange girl upstairs in the yellow suite was the sole survivor—if indeed she survived. One thing was certain; she would have met the fate of her companions if he hadn’t blundered onto that carriage when he did and chased off the animal that had savaged the others. He would just have to wait to see if he’d been in time to spoil Mother Nature’s assault.