Keenan pulled open a thin drawer, selected several pairs of gloves, and tucked them into the trunk. “Will my lord be joining you?”
Winifred straightened. Keenan’s careful tone suggested there was more to the question than initially appeared. Every servant Marcus employed knew he’d remained trapped inside its walls for a decade.
“The earl will remain here,” Winifred said.
Keenan did not reply but uttered a soft sigh. That was not a surprise. In the short time she’d spent at the castle, she had quickly realized how much the staff were concerned about their master. She could not blame them. It was not healthy for anyone to spend so much time alone.
She fiddled with the fabric of her dress. She had been raised to believe that a lady did not converse with their servants about casual matters, but talking pushed back her growing unease that there wassomething very important she was forgetting. “What was the earl like before I arrived?”
Keenan was quiet for several seconds before she lifted her chin and met Winifred’s gaze. “We were quite anxious, if I am honest, my lady.”
“How long have you worked here?” Winifred asked. Now that she had started the line of questions, she felt compelled to continue. Other than the few stories he’d told through their letters, she knew so little about him.
“Four years, my lady,” Keenan said. “I was a housemaid prior to your arrival.”
Winifred turned to the window. The last rays of sunlight had turned the sky into a lovely canvas of pinks and blues. Marcus would soon awaken, and she needed to tell him about Glasgow. She left Keenan to pack and made her way through the halls to his room until her feet suddenly stopped in the same place she’d seen Marcus embracing his valet. Her husband had claimed Smith had been helping him recover from weakness, but her memory supplied something different, an image of Marcus with protruding fangs and a blood-stained mouth.
No. That was impossible. Despite her parents’ stories, vampires were nothing more than a folktale spread by superstitious villagers who interpreted anomalies in the natural world by inventing impossible creatures. Even her occult-obsessed cousin would likely find the idea of Marcus being a vampire preposterous.
But the more she resisted the idea, the more she remembered things she’d tried to forget.
Her uncle showing her how to sharpen a wooden stake. Marcus cringing away from a beam of sunlight. Felicity whispering warnings on the day of the wedding. Vincent Sorrow sneering as he’d called Marcus a “monster.” Her husband moaning as he’d licked blood from her cut and from between her legs. The way hiseyes had glowed bright blue as he’d bared his fangs from behind Smith.
Oh, God.She’d known at some level for days but had refused to acknowledge it. The tales her mother had told her were true. Vampires were real, and her husband was one of them. She’d taken his kindness as evidence that he differed from the men she’d considered as potential husbands in Toronto, but this difference was far worse than she’d imagined.
“So, you figured it out.”
Winifred stumbled back against a wall, but it was only Marcus’s brother Cordon leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The tightness of his features and his posture were so familiar that she was overwhelmed with the sense she’d lived this moment before. Then she realized she had. After she’d seen Marcus with Smith and collapsed, she’d found him outside her room, looking precisely as stern as he did now.
He held out an envelope.
She accepted it. “Is this…?”
“The letter I took from you?” His lips quirked. “Yes.”
Her pulse pounded in her head as she tore it open.
Winifred,
I can only express my most sincere apology and assure you that no harm will come to you while you remain in this castle. Nor is my valet injured, and he has assured me he is prepared to speak to you to confirm that fact.
You deserve the truth. I have lied to you, my dearest. My human life ended many years ago. What remains in this body is a creature of darkness.
Her knees buckled. She thumped to the floor and touched her chest, where the burn rested beneath all those layers of fabric. Even though she had rejected her ancestors, they remained with her, their blood pumping through her body, as unchangeable as the mark emblazoned on her skin.
Marcus was a vampire, and she was a descendent of vampire hunters.Her uncle had only claimed there was a feud between their families because he’d known she would not have believed the truth.
A hysterical giggle traveled up her throat. No wonder her uncle had been furious at her marriage. They were like Romeo and Juliet, although she hoped their fates weren’t heading in the same direction as Shakespeare’s lovers.
Lucius Sorrow had killed dozens of vampires. How many had her uncle killed? Did Felicity know? Was that why she’d acted so strangely before their uncle had taken her away?
Winifred leaned so that her head rested against the cold, stone wall. Dwelling on what might happen next would not help her. If she was to become a scholar, she must approach this new information rationally.
If vampires were real, then they must be a different species. Perhaps, like Darwin’s finches, humans had evolved to adapt to different environments. The pounding in her head faded. Yes, that was much better. Thinking of Marcus in scientific terms took him out of the realm of mythology and into something much more logical. After all, society often feared that which it could not adequately explain, and there were still things being discussed regarding electricity that defied explanation. She cracked her stiff shoulders and returned to the letter.
What I have not lied about is how much I care about you. From the moment I received your first letter, I felt a strong connection between us. That is the reason I now write. If what you now know about me means you can no longer abide my presence, then I will do as I have done several times in my long existence and arrange my own “death.” The title, granted to me by Queen Victoria, will pass to one of my siblings, but you will have a generous widow’s portion. You will be free to do as you wish and shall have the means to support yourself for the rest of your life.
Her eyes burned. The words could not have been penned by a monster. She could practically feel the sadness radiating from the page. She skimmed through the last of what he’d written before shelost her courage.
