Page 4 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Curator
They were too slow.
The vampire brought the hilt of its dagger down on Mother’s temple with an awful crunch that made the back of Felicity’s throat burn with bile. She should have done something—screamed or called for help—but her words refused to come.
The sound of church bells in the distance drew Felicity back to the present. She tried to take a deep breath, but it was like the walls had closed around her chest. With great difficulty, she got her stiff, frozen legs moving until she could turn the handle of the door and fling it open. Only then did the tension in her body drain away.
She stumbled forward and bumped into an unusually pale, black-haired man wearing a shabby overcoat. It was the same man she’d seen in Scotland, at Winifred’s… Her head filled with static. No, that wasn’t right. The man in front of her had seemed familiar, but he was definitely a stranger.
“Hello there,” he said with a sly grin. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his black trousers and swept his gaze down her body as if assessing her like an artifact on display.
She tugged at the fabric of her bodice and clasped her hands together at her waist. “I apologize, sir, but the museum is closed.”
He snorted. “You need even more help than I thought.”
A chill passed through her. His voice was deeper than she’d expected. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
He let out a loud, booming laugh that echoed down the hallway. “No. I doubt you’ve ever met anyone like me.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Why is that?
The man’s sly grin returned. “Because I’m a thief.”
Chapter Two
That had beentoo close.
Jonathan leaned back on his heels. He’d nearly forgotten Miss Sorrow had been a bridesmaid at his brother Marcus’s wedding almost six years earlier. Had he not hastily erased his face from her memory, she’d surely have drawn the daggers strapped to her shins. She wasn’t an active member of the Sorrow patrol, the hunters who prowled the streets at night, but she was still the reason he’d been locked in a vampire trap alongside his brother Cordon. The damned woman had placed the wretched caskets outside his nest’s daylight resting place at the time. She was the enemy.
Or at least, she was supposed to be.
It was difficult to think of her that way after he’d been watching her for so long, at Marcus’s orders. He knew she always walked a different route each morning to the Sloan House, she drank her tea with precisely three teaspoons of sugar, and she preferred linen petticoats to wool. It was as if she’d crawled into his mind and would not come out. Now she stood before him dressed entirely in black, still mourning the members of her family who had died while storming Marcus’s castle years longer than society would have expected the show of her grief. She rather resembled a thief herself, with her black hair pulled into a tight chignon and every inch of her skin from her chin to her toes concealed by black fabric. The dark color made her already paleskin seem gaunt, a situation not helped by the deep bags under her eyes and the way her thin lips were pinched together beneath her sharp, upturned nose.
“A reformed thief,” he said. “I have given up my wicked ways.” He swept into a deep bow. “Mr. Jonathan Drake, at your service.”
She huffed.
Her skepticism was warranted. In truth, he’d been a thief for longer than she’d been alive, although he’d only recently resumed his former occupation as a vampire. It had started fifteen years ago when he’d seen a ruby-encrusted dagger displayed in theLouvre. The moment he’d recognized the spider emblem of the Wild Hunt, the ancient group responsible for training humans to be daylight vampire guardians, engraved on the blade, he’d known what to do.
Over the following years, he’d returned more than a thousand vampiric artifacts to their rightful owners. It was one of the few things that brought him a sense of purpose and distracted him from the chasm in his soul that had opened when the woman he’d loved more than anyone else in the world had abandoned him. That wound still festered, even after more than fifty years. Unlike his siblings, he refused to accept that she had perished. Not only had they never found her body, but the Marguerite de la Valencia he remembered could never have been felled by a mere illness.
Thinking about his maker made his heart clench. He had vivid memories of her lying next to him on the bare earth, stroking his forehead with fingers that always smelled like incense and beeswax, as if she’d just returned from evening mass.
Miss Sorrow put her hands on her hips. “What do you want, Mr. Drake?”
He felt his eyes widen. For weeks, he’d imagined confronting her, defying Marcus’s orders not to reveal himself. In each conjured scenario she’d swooned before him, compelled by his vampiric nature. He should have expected she’d be different. Taming her would be a challenge unlike any he had ever faced.
But from her clipped tone, it was clear she’d have no interest in accepting the service he’d intended to offer. That would make things more difficult. His task, assigned to him by Marcus, was simple: observe Miss Sorrow and report any suspicious activity. He was not to show himself, harm her, or interfere in her family’s hunting. He’d been unable to resist disobeying the first command but had no intention of continuing that trend, even though the Sorrow family had been responsible for the assault on Marcus’s castle six years earlier. As old and powerful as Marcus was, he did not thirst for revenge. This, at least, Jonathan could understand. When one lived for centuries, grudges were a weight that only grew heavier with time. It was better to forgive and move on.
Or failing that, seek vengeance immediately.
He assumed Marcus had spared Miss Sorrow because she was the cousin of Marcus’s mate, Winifred, and the two women had once been close friends. Were it not for Marcus’s command, Jonathan would have eagerly dispatched Miss Sorrow for his brother months ago.
The only good hunter was a dead hunter.
That was what he’d believed for decades, but now whenever he forced himself to consider killing her, something deep inside his chest ached. It had to be because he’d spied on her for so long. He was a damned fool for not demanding that Marcus assign someone else to the task.
Miss Sorrow edged backward, as if she expected him to attack. Before she could deem him a danger, he gestured toward the space behind her. “So, this is your exhibit?”
The only space she’d regularly occupied over the past few weeks that he’d yet to penetrate. He’d watched her carry all manner of paper-wrapped bundles inside but had yet to enter the room himself. That was the excuse he’d settled on to reveal himself. Marcus had insisted he report suspicious behavior and what was more suspicious than spending hours in a cramped, windowless room?
