Her mother’s face turned a startling shade of purple. “And you have been in contact all this time? My dear, you are not yet betrothed!”
This was the part that would be difficult to explain, but Winifred hoped the offer of marriage would be enough to make her mother overlook any impropriety. “Yes. He had some interesting theories on how to better predict earthquakes based on the movement of tidal currents.” She stopped there, even though returning to the subject of her interest made her want to go on for hours. Talking to her mother about her recent discoveries would do nothing to help her situation, though.
The deep lines on Mrs. Belltree’s face eased. “Well, you cannot continue behave so improperly if you are to be a countess.”
She dropped Winifred’s hands. “I should have guessed you would find a bookish suitor. But at least he has a title.” She beamed. “This is excellent news. I will speak to your father at once.”
“So eager,” Felicity said, after Mrs. Belltree had left. “If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll book passage on the same ship as Aunt Ethel.”
Winifred ran her fingers over the folded edges of Marcus’s letter. It was happening. If things went according to plan, soon she would be settled far from her managing parents, with Felicity at her side. She wouldn’t have to promenade in front of suitors for hours each night, dressed in gowns that made her skin itch and her chest ache. She would have everything she wanted.
All she had to do was marry a man she’d never met.
Chapter Five
October 30th, 1867, Scotland
Marcus pulled backthe edge of a velvet curtain in his workshop as a cloud passed across the sun. He should have been with his valet preparing for the wedding, but he could not resist attempting to catch a glance of his bride-to-be as she arrived. He’d spent the past several weeks imagining what it would be like to see her for the first time. Perhaps he would wait for her family to retire to their assigned rooms and then surprise her by appearing from one of the secret passages. She would spin around, her lips parted, her unruly hair tied tightly behind her head, her spectacles falling down her nose.
He released the curtain and returned to his worktable. The hours until the ceremony were passing with agonizing slowness. If he did not occupy his mind, he would end up so nervous that he would suffer another attack and fail to speak his vows. He’d already sent his valet away twice because Marcus could not step a foot outside his tower without feeling as if he were going to faint.
There was a loud knock on his door.
“Let me in,” an irritated voice said.
Cordon again. Marcus allowed his brother inside. Unlike the last time he’d visited, he looked at Marcus with an expression so grave that he half-expected his brother to tell him one of their siblings had died.
“Come to offer congratulations?” Marcus asked weakly.
“Lucina sent me.” Cordon palmed a glass paperweight from atop a pile of papers on Marcus’s desk and rolled it around in his hands. “She wanted me to tell you several vampires were killed in Glasgow lastweek. There are rumors that hunters have returned to Scotland.”
Marcus straightened. “That’s impossible.” He trusted Lucina, his youngest sister and the leader of the ancient vampire council known as the Wild Hunt, but she had to be mistaken. “There hasn’t been a hunter sighting here in over a century.”
The humans known as hunters had once reigned over the Continent with an iron grip, dispatching any vampire that was unlucky enough to stumble across their path. The Wild Hunt had been formed to address the hunter threat; by limiting how many humans could be turned, the number of fledgling vampire attacks decreased until the hunters eventually faded into obscurity.
“Then you will do nothing,” Cordon said.
Something about the way his brother had said that made Marcus bristle. “There is nothing to be done.” He turned to the window. “Lucina is mistaken.”
He clenched his hands and forced himself to breathe slowly as the walls shivered around him. There could be no hunters, because if there were, every member of his nest was in danger while he remained stuck in his castle like a coward.
“Do you intend to turn Miss Belltree?” Cordon asked.
“Eventually,” Marcus said. “She will need time to adjust to the idea.”
He didn’t want to consider what he’d do if she reacted poorly. There was always his eldest nest sister, Seraphina, who could erase human memories, but there would still be the problem of Winifred being his wife.
“You should cancel the wedding,” Cordon said suddenly. “You hardly know Miss Belltree. It could be a trap.”
Marcus did not dignify that comment with a response. In reality, he knew more about Winifred than his own siblings. He knew she struggled with crowds and loud noises, that she always slept on her side, and that she was equally excited and anxious for their upcomingunion. Instead of talking to his brother, he should have been finding her and easing her worries. He could only imagine how terrified she must be, preparing to become the wife of a man she had never seen. She would be second-guessing her choices even now. Any rational woman would be.
“She’s not who you think she is,” Cordon said.
“Of course she isn’t,” a tall, black-haired man wearing a baggy sack coat said as he swaggered into the room from behind Cordon. “All women are tricksters.”
Marcus’s pleasure at seeing his youngest brother, Jonathan, for the first time in months was so overwhelming that he almost enveloped the man in a hug before remembering that Marguerite would never have done anything of the kind. Instead, he inclined his head. “It is good to see you, Jonathan.”
“Do not tell me you missed me.” Jonathan put his hands in his pockets, looking around as if evaluating the small space the way he might assess a museum or a bank vault. He was one of the most accomplished thieves in all of Europe, in part because he could walk into a business three times wearing a different disguise and never be recognized.
