Page 26 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Scholar
“I am not sure what you mean to accomplish, my lady,” Mrs.Gillanders said in halting tones. “How is the master intended to interact with these…” She flicked a frayed edge of burlap. “Guests?”
“It is only for practice. When he is comfortable with this, we can add other elements. Such as…”
“Dancing, my lady?” the butler asked.
Winifred nodded. “Precisely. Dancing, music, gossip. Those are all the things my husband needs to reacquaint himself with.” They were also activities he could have engaged in at the wedding, but she’d assumed he’d been overwhelmed. She would venture to take him outside when he could successfully use the techniques she would teach him to manage these theatrical situations.
Gillanders smoothed his hands over the front of his jacket. “You could have the maids and footmen take the place of the guests.”
She shook her head, having considered that option already. “He is much too accustomed to ignoring servants, and I would not ask them to pretend to be something they are not.”
The soft click of heels from the hallway followed by the creak of a door opening made her turn. Marcus stepped inside, wearing a very fine black suit with a bowler hat tucked beneath his arm. It was almost as if he’d been warned. She turned to Gillanders and pouted. “You told his valet.”
Gillanders tugged on the curly edges of his moustache. “Mr. Smith asked what we were preparing. I could not lie.”
Marcus strolled forward, looking every inch the proper gentleman. He’d been handsome in his loose shirts and rumpled trousers, but if he’d approached her at a ball in Toronto dressed so fine, she would have swooned.
She licked her dry lips and began their evening charade by feigning that they were mere acquaintances and dipping into a curtsey. “My lord.”
When she rose, he took her offered hand and kissed her fingers. “Your beauty has rendered me breathless, MissBelltree. Your eyes shine like raging wildfires, and your chestnut curls are as perfectly tumbled as the earth after a landslide. When you enter a party, all eyes fly to your form as surely as the residents of a coastal city watching the horizon when the tide suddenly recedes.”
His use of natural disasters to compliment her made her cheeks warm with pleasure. She flicked open the fan clutched in her other hand and waved it gently in front of her face. “Such flattery. Whatever would your wife say?”
She almost wished she’d met him in Toronto. Exchanging witty banter with him might have made those long nights in crowded ballrooms more bearable.
The skin around his eyes crinkled. “I am certain she’d agree. The countess and I share an appreciation for all that nature creates, both spectacular or devastating.”
She barely suppressed a giggle.
Chapter Fifteen
“Your hat is,ah…fluffy,” Marcus said to the sack of flour tilted precariously on the chair next to him.
“Thank you, my lord,” Winifred said, in a squeaky falsetto.
He steadfastly kept his gaze on the lumpy bag. The last time he’d addressed Winifred instead of the “guest” with whom he was supposed to have been making polite conversation, she’d kicked his shin beneath the table.
“I am s-seeking a milliner. No, not a milliner. A, er…” What was the term? His grasp of language departed, leaving him tongue-tied before the contents of his cook’s pantry, and his cravat became a noose around his throat. There were so many things he should have been doing. Continuing his experiments. Keeping his siblings from squabbling. Figuring out why hunters were lurking about. Preventing Winifred from figuring out why he slept through the day and rarely ate. He was capable of consuming food but did not enjoy the experience, as it often caused him to feel unwell for days after.
A repetitive clicking invaded his mind. His teeth were chattering.
If he didn’t stop the hunters, he would be responsible for the next headless vampire that appeared. It might even be his Cordon, killed because Marcus had sent him to investigate. It would be as if he’d wielded a dagger and sliced it across his brother’s throat himself. Blood would spray in an arc, splattering the dusty bricks on either side of the dark alley that was the scene of the ambush. The image was so clear in his mind that itfelt like a memory.
A teacup rattled off the edge of the table and shattered on the floor.
“Breathe,” Winifred said. “Then count, like I taught you.”
Marcus inhaled slowly through his nose and out through his mouth.
One… two… three.
“Remember where you are,” Winifred said.
Crouched in a dark alley far from the safety of his home, holding his brother’s dying body in his arms. Cordon had called him, begged him to come, but Marcus had ignored the summons out of fear. Now it was too late. His siblings would never know how much he regretted pushing them away, even though it had been necessary to protect them.
“Marcus!”
He blinked and suddenly he was back in the music room. Winifred had come to his side and wrapped her fingers around his numb wrists.
