Bespelling Jane Austen

Introduction

Dear Reader,

I have never been a purist. I’m willing to consider all kinds of adaptations of my favorite stories, including those that are a little offbeat. I love Shakespeare plays set in modern times, and science fiction treatments of classic novels.

For me, Jane Austen’s works have an appeal that extends beyond the traditional Regency-era milieu. I’ve loved her stories for many years…particularly Pride and Prejudice, which I have enjoyed not only in the original novel form, but also in three distinct television and movie versions. Each, for me, has its own charms, though none can be considered strictly “perfect” adaptations.

So it was no stretch at all when, well before the current interest in Austen “mash-ups,” I became intrigued by the idea of combining the paranormal with Pride and Prejudice. I saw Darcy as a perfect vampire, definitely of the honorable variety, and a modern-day Lizzy as his perfect foil. I even had the perfect title: “Blood and Prejudice.”

The story came to me more quickly than any other I’d ever written. I submitted an anthology idea to my agent, which I called Bespelling Jane Austen. We collected three other terrific authors, each of whom chose a different Austen novel to “adapt,” and the anthology found a home at HQN Books.

I’ve been thrilled to be a part of Bespelling Jane Austen. I hope that readers, be they fans of Austen or paranormal or both, will enjoy this collection as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Susan Krinard

Chapter 1

Present Day

New Haven, Connecticut

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED, THAT every decent straight guy who isn’t dead broke, is in want of a good woman.

As my dear Grandpa Bennet used to say… Bull.

I should know. Not that I’ve been looking, mind you. My two younger sisters make up for the rest of us ten times over. But Jane…why no one has snapped her up yet is incomprehensible. Of course, no ordinary guy would deserve her. Not my sweet, adorable Jane.

I was thinking about the perfect husband for my big sister when the family gathered for Dad’s annual office birthday party at Bennet Laboratories. Dad, BL’s president and founder; Jane, head of Personnel; and Mary, assistant accountant, were already at the office. Mom had come in from my parents’ house in Branford, Kitty and Lydia from their “closet” in Manhattan, and I put up my out-to-lunch sign at Longbourn Books and walked the six blocks to BL’s modest headquarters and research facility.

Not that I’d lose many customers; Dad said it was only my natural stubbornness that kept me firmly planted in the struggling independent bookstore business. The same way he kept fighting to preserve some small bit of pride as he watched Bennet Laboratories facing a complete takeover by a company that didn’t give a damn about what he’d accomplished.

But I was thinking about Jane that early afternoon, wondering what would happen to her if BL went under. Not that she couldn’t find another job…at least so long as she stuck up for herself a little. Of course I was worried about Dad and Mom and Mary, too. I couldn’t imagine a world without BL—my world, at least. It had been at the center of my family for almost as long as I could remember.

If Dad hadn’t been so reckless with his investments, if he hadn’t taken a few too many risks in his eternal quest for new discoveries…

I tried to put BL’s problems out of my mind as I took the stairs to the second floor. The employees were standing around in nervous groups, trying to appear cheerful for Dad’s sake. Jane was beaming at everyone; even if she were nervous, she wouldn’t show it. She’d put up balloons and streamers and had laid out a feast of finger foods, sandwiches and drinks. Mary looked as if she’d much rather be at her desk buried in her account books, though that couldn’t be a very pleasant job these days.

As for Mom, she was chattering at an unfortunate lab tech who had wandered a little too close to her web. His face collapsed in pathetic gratitude when Mom saw me.

“Lizzy!” She held out her hands, grabbed mine and kissed me noisily on the cheek. “Have you heard? Mr. Bingley is coming!”

I was so surprised by her announcement that I was momentarily speechless. Mom didn’t waste any time filling the silence.

“Can you imagine?” she went on in a tone made up of one part indignation and two parts satisfaction. “Your father invited him. Mr. Bennet said that we should show that we’re not worried about the acquisition.”

“He’s right,” I said, though my thoughts were anything but calm. “So much of this depends on how you play the game. Putting up a confident front is—”

“I know that very well, Lizzy,” she said irritably. She leaned closer, as if the whole room couldn’t already hear her. “I haven’t met Mr. Bingley. You know how your father refuses to tell me anything that’s going on here…but I’ve been told that he’s a very handsome man. And extraordinarily rich.”

Trust Mom to think that was the most important thing, not the fact that BL was on the verge of going under. “What does that have to do with anything, Mom?” I asked.

“It must be obvious even to you, Lizzy. I’m counting on him marrying one of you girls. Then, if Mr. Bingley does take over, we won’t have anything to worry about!”

I’d been annoyed at Mom plenty of times in my life, but I’d learned how to hide it at a very young age. “Who did you have in mind?” I asked dryly.

“Well, Jane is the eldest, and she really ought to have first shot.”

“Did I hear my name?” Jane said, coming to join us. She smiled at Mom and at me with that unfeigned warmth I’d never been able to match.

“You’ve heard that Mr. Bingley is coming to the party?” Mom asked.

“No, I didn’t. But it seems like a good idea.”

“Why?” I asked bluntly.

“Well, he only inherited BP a few months ago. He’s never attended the negotiations himself, but I’ve heard good things about him. I’m sure he’ll want to reconsider some of his representatives’ more stringent demands when he really knows us.”

I shook my head. “Your faith in people never ceases to amaze me, Jane.”

“Oh, Izba,” she said, using the nickname she’d given me when I was a baby. “You only have to look a little harder. The good is always there.”

“How right you are, darling,” Mom said. “I’m sure that Mr. Bingley will be perfectly charming.”

I rolled my eyes. “Where’s Dad?”

Jane’s forehead wrinkled. “He had some last-minute call. I don’t think it was good news.”

Is it ever? I thought. But I smiled and squeezed her hand. “This is supposed to be a celebration, remember?”

She brightened. No one could keep Jane down for long. “Yes. Everything is ready. I have the champagne on ice, and—”

The absolute quiet in the room was so sudden that Jane stopped in midsentence. Mom turned around. Everyone was staring toward the door to the hallway as two men walked in, and I knew that Mr. Bingley had arrived.

Handsome. Okay, I’d give him that, though he wasn’t my type. Blond, blue-eyed, average height and smiling in a way that seemed almost as sincere as Jane on one of her happy binges. His suit was a little rumpled, as if he didn’t much care if he looked like the extremely rich president of a major pharmaceutical company.

He held my attention for about five seconds before his friend stalked in.

Now, I’m not the girly type. I don’t fall all over myself when a good-looking guy looks my way. But this time I held my breath and just stared.

Tall, dark and handsome. Check, check and check. He moved like a dancer, or maybe just a guy who was used to being noticed wherever he went. His athletic build and broad shoulders were admirably displayed in his impeccable custom-made suit, as faultlessly pressed as Bingley’s was rumpled.

And there was something else about him. Something dangerous. It radiated from him, casting everyone and everything else in shadow. When he glanced in my direction, I saw more than arrogance and self-assurance in his eyes. There was a glint to them that reminded me of a wolf strolling into a pen full of fat sheep.

Mom rushed over to Bingley and his looming shadow with a grin that would have frightened any man with brains. “Mr. Bingley! How very delightful!”

Jane sidled up next to me. “I didn’t expect Mr. Bingley to be so…” She trailed off and bit her lip, but I noticed that her eyes were very bright. “I mean, doesn’t he look like a nice person?”

My poor, naive Jane. He did look “nice,” our Mr. Bingley. Just the kind of guy who’d let others do his dirty work so that he could maintain his facade of “niceness.”

But maybe Jane was right. She often was. And if I’d had to pick the guy most likely to eliminate the competition by tossing out a life raft with a slow leak in it, it would be Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome.

“Who is the guy with Bingley?” I asked Jane.

“Oh, that must be Mr. Darcy. He’s on the Bingley Pharmaceuticals Board of Directors.”

Figured. “He looks like Bingley’s bodyguard.”

“I’ve heard they’re good friends.”

Well, I thought, they do say opposites attract.

I was about to reflect further on the subject when Dad came into the room. He looked a little like a mad scientist with his wisps of white hair sticking out at all angles and his preoccupied air. Like Mary, he’d rather have been back at his desk than partying, and I couldn’t believe he was thrilled about Bingley being there, even if he’d felt the need to invite him.

Dad greeted Bingley and Darcy with a smile and outstretched hands, introducing them to the other employees and to Kitty and Lydia, who had joined Mom in a froth of giggles and flirtatious glances. I stood well out of the way, watching Jane gravitate ever nearer to Bingley while Darcy hovered behind his “friend,” treating everyone who came within spitting distance to a sneer worthy of Edward G. Robinson.

Maybe they’re gay, I thought. That would certainly throw a wrench in Mom’s plans. But Bingley seemed to ignore Darcy completely, greeting everyone with the kind of friendliness that was hard to fake. He came to a dead stop when Dad introduced Jane. He looked at her, and she looked at him, a pair of angels heading for a fall.

Now, I’ve never believed in love at first sight. It makes for good movies and bad novels, but it really comes down to sex. And Jane just wasn’t that kind of girl.

I decided I’d spent enough time watching. I grabbed a couple of champagnes, served up in fancy plastic flutes, and joined them.

Jane turned to me with the most radiant smile I’d ever seen. “Lizzy!” she said. “Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy, this is my sister, Elizabeth.”

I raised one flute in salute. “Nice to meet you,” I lied. “Care for some champagne?”

Bingley grinned, showing a mouthful of gleaming white teeth. “Thank you, Ms. Bennet,” he said in a pleasant tenor. “I think I will. But please call me Charles.”

“Charles.” I glanced at the formidable Mr. Darcy. “Would you like one, Mr. Darcy?”

For the first time our eyes met, and it was like walking into a metaphor describing brick walls and immovable objects. I’d taken a step back before I even realized it, and the champagne sloshed over my blouse.

Darcy didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at me with his piercing indigo eyes as if we were the only two people in the room and he was about to eat me for lunch.

The picture that idea put into my mind made me feel…well, let’s just say it’s been a while since I had quite that reaction on meeting a guy for the first time. And I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with me. I’d met other tall, handsome guys before.

But not like him.

I wanted to run screaming out of the room. Instead, I tipped back the plastic flute and drank the remaining champagne in one swallow, then promptly fell into a fit of coughing.

Two seconds later Charles was pounding me on the back while Jane’s face swam in front of me like an old VCR tape copied one too many times.

“Lizzy! Are you all right?”

I straightened, blinking tears from my eyes. “Completely.”

Except I could feel Darcy’s eyes skewering me, haughty and contemptuous.

“How clumsy of me,” I said with a sharp smile. “You should have taken the champagne, Mr. Darcy.”

“I don’t care for any, thank you.”

His voice was crisp, formal and very English. My heart started to flutter like Marilyn Monroe’s white dress in The Seven Year Itch.

“I think I’d better clean up,” I said, pushing the empty flute into Jane’s hand. “Excuse me.”

I rushed out and ducked into the bathroom, as rattled as if I’d just woken up from one of those dreams where you’re walking around your old high school in your underwear. I skidded to a stop in front of a mirror and leaned over the sink.

Lydia used to tease me about not caring how I looked. For her, looks are everything; for me, not so much. But now I was thinking of Darcy staring at me, and I noticed that my hair was curling in all the wrong places, I had dark circles under my eyes from staying up late reading the latest Sue Grafton and the subtle lipstick I’d put on was smeared.

I hit the sink with my fist and instantly regretted it. I shook my hand until it stopped buzzing, combed my hair with my fingers, repaired my lipstick and examined my blouse. No help there, unless I ran back to the store and grabbed a T-shirt.

To hell with Darcy. I didn’t give a damn what he thought.

Did I?

In spite of my determination to pretend I hadn’t made a fool of myself, I hesitated outside the door to the meeting room. I could hear two men talking very quietly just inside, and immediately recognized the voice of my nemesis.

“You know how I detest such gatherings, Bingley,” he said. I have no interest in the affairs of this company’s employees, least of all those of the family.”

“You can be such a jerk at times, Darcy,” Bingley said. “You didn’t exactly refuse when I asked you to come. And anyway, these people should have your sympathy.”

“Bingley Pharmaceuticals belongs to you, I believe.”

“And I should have been paying more attention to how it’s being run.”

“You have carried on your father’s work in seeking cures for obscure diseases that no other company will touch,” Darcy said. “You need feel no qualms about acquiring a business that is on the verge of collapse.”

“Your business advice is usually sound, but in this case—”

“If you wish to succeed in the work you support, you cannot be sentimental in such matters.”

“I know how much you want Bingley Laboratories, Darcy, but this isn’t the place for one of your lectures.” He cleared his throat. “What do you think about her?”

“To whom are you referring?”

“Didn’t you see her? She’s so beautiful.”

“Tolerable.”

“What do you mean, tolerable? All that beautiful blond hair…”

“Ah. I fear I misunderstood. You refer to the elder sister.”

“Of course. What did you think I…” A chuckle. “Oh, I get it. You thought I meant Elizabeth. I should have known she’d be more your type.”

“Hardly. Unlike you, Charles, I am more particular in my choices. You can scarcely expect me to be engaged by a woman incapable of drinking a simple glass of champagne.”

Chapter 2

MY FACE WAS SO HOT THAT I KNEW I’D SCARE JANE half to death if she saw me now. Who did he think he was? No interest in the affairs… He was worse than I’d thought. Much worse. And where had he learned to talk, anyway? His speech was like something out of a Victorian novel.

“I am more particular in my choices.” It wasn’t just an insult to me, but to my whole family. He’d made very clear what he thought of us.

Girding my loins, I charged into the room, nearly knocking Bingley off his feet. I paused to apologize and batted my eyelashes at Darcy, who actually looked a little perturbed.

“Are you all right, Elizabeth?” Charles asked with a look of genuine concern.

“Fine, thanks. Would you like more champagne?”

Charles patted his stomach. “No, thank you. You have so much good food here that I couldn’t eat another bite.”

“You can thank Jane for that.” I glared at Darcy—who subjected me to a cool, cynical stare that consigned me to the ranks of scurrying, pestiferous hexapods—and walked away with my head high and my heart playing hopscotch under my ribs.

I went directly to Jane, who took one look at my face and pulled me into a corner. I proceeded to tell her what Bingley had said about her—winning a blush and a shy smile—and then filled her in on Darcy’s judgment of me and our family.

“He didn’t mean it, I’m sure. Though he does seem a little serious.”

“Serious!” I laughed. “‘You cannot be sentimental in such matters.’ He’s a creep, and you know it. But Charles…”

“Oh, Lizzy. He’s perfect. Bingley Pharma can’t be as bad as some of the others if he’s researching cures for rare diseases. It isn’t so different from what we’ve been doing for years.” She lowered her voice. “From from what you’ve said, Charles obviously hasn’t known what’s going on with the negotiations.”

“You may be right,” I said. “Darcy, on the other hand…”

“He can’t be as bad as he seems, Lizzy. Listen… Charles will be at the next meeting. I believe Mr. Darcy will be there, too. I’ll tell you what I observe.”

Through the most shocking pink of rose-colored glasses. If I hadn’t been heading off to the Frankfurt Book Fair—a trip for which I’d been saving for the past two years—I would have asked to be in on the meetings, too.

If Darcy were the real brains behind the takeover, Dad needed all the backup he could get. How could I blame my quiet, unassuming father for failing to stand up to such a…

Since this story is rated for general audiences, I won’t say what I really thought of Darcy. I tried to ignore him completely as I rejoined the party, pretending I didn’t notice him watching me when I offered a toast to my dear old dad and joined in the general conversation and good-natured ribbing. Once or twice I managed to watch him glaring at Jane and Charles, who were showing no signs of losing interest in one another.

Given the conversation I’d overheard, it didn’t seem unreasonable to assume that Darcy didn’t want his friend spending personal time with the daughter of the man whose company he intended to devour. I was almost tempted to go right up to him and challenge him on exactly that point—and a couple of others—but before I could get him alone, the party was over and he was striding out of the office, Charles trailing after him with mournful puppy-dog eyes.

“Did you see how much Mr. Bingley liked Jane?” Mom said, breaking into my thoughts with all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros. “Exactly as I suspected. I knew she couldn’t be so pretty for nothing!”

“Yes, but—”

“But oh, my poor Lizzy-girl! Jane told me what that awful man said about you. Let me tell you, my heart would be broken if he did like you. Everyone agrees that he is a conceited so-and-so who thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

For once Mom wasn’t exaggerating.

I saw Jane one more time. She was walking on air, a radiant Venus with Cupid’s arrow firmly stuck between her arched blond eyebrows. I didn’t see much point in warning her that she might be jumping the gun; I’d have to rely on the common sense that usually prevented her from making serious mistakes when her naturally trusting and gentle nature led her astray.

You’d better not let her down, Bingley.

And as for Darcy…the next time we met, I’d let him know exactly what I thought of his attitude. If I didn’t, I might actually become afraid of him. And that was a situation not to be tolerated for an instant.

THE WEATHER WAS FINE IN Frankfurt, and I’d managed to forget about Mr. Darcy for a whole twenty-four hours before I opened my inbox and found Jane’s e-mail.

Dearest Izba,

I’m more certain than ever that I was right. We have had two meetings since you left, and it’s clear that Charles had no idea what was really going on in the negotiations. He treats Dad with respect, and he’s already backed away from the other negotiators’ more unreasonable conditions.

Good, I thought. Maybe he could be trusted after all.

I have a very good feeling about all this, Lizzy. I’ve spoken to Charles privately after both meetings, and I only like him more each time.

“Of course,” I muttered.

On the other hand, I really don’t understand Mr. Darcy at all. He is quite an imposing person, even a bit frightening at times. I think he believes that Charles can’t take care of himself. Charles certainly listens to him whenever he actually has something to say, and I do think that Mr. Darcy would prefer to return to the previous way of doing business.

“Bastard,” I said loudly, earning the censorious glance of the English bibliophile sitting next to me in the Kaffeestube.

Still, I don’t dislike him, Lizzy. How can he be all bad if he’s Charles’s friend?

“Ha!” I exclaimed.

The bibliophile stabbed at his keyboard, closed the laptop and stalked away. I managed to finish reading the e-mail in silence. When I’d finished, I sat at my table until the coffee was cold.

There’s something else… You won’t believe this, Izba. Charles has invited me to come for a weekend at his mansion, Netherfield, in Westchester County. Oh, I know you’d say it’s too soon. But you also know that I won’t do anything stupid… Charles’s sister will be there, too. Both Mom and Dad think I should go, and I really don’t see the harm in it.

I forced myself to drink the coffee and swallow it. Dad must really feel they were making progress in the negotiations if he was willing to send Jane off to Charles Bingley’s estate. Mom must be thrilled that her scheme to catch a rich bachelor for one of her daughters was working out so well.

It did seem a bit soon. But could I object if Jane really cared about Charles, especially if Charles’s liking for her might be encouraging him to be more liberal with his terms? Jane could end up being the family’s salvation, which would delight her no end.

I sighed, closed my laptop and returned to the book fair. I salivated over first editions I couldn’t afford to purchase, attended fascinating lectures and mingled with eccentrics, collectors and aficionados who provided me with endless opportunities for study. Two days later, just as I was packing up for my Rhine River cruise, I got another e-mail from Jane.

Dearest Izba,

First, let me tell you how incredible Charles’s estate is, and what a wonderful host he’s been. I’d barely arrived when he introduced me to his sister, Caroline Bingley. What a beautiful woman! She must buy all her clothes from the top New York designers, and she wears them like a queen. But she’s very friendly, and made me feel right at home.

I have a little bad news. The evening after I got here, I slipped on the stairs (how embarrassing!) and sprained my ankle. Now Charles insists that I stay a few more days, until I can walk again.

Oh, my poor Jane! She was normally far from clumsy, but I guess that’s what love does to a girl.

You might be interested to know that Mr. Darcy is staying with Charles. He’s polite, but I think he’d rather not have me here. Can you believe that I still haven’t learned his first name?

Without giving it any more than a moment’s thought, I called the cruise line, canceled my trip and booked a flight straight home. Twenty-four hours after I arrived in New York I was on my way to Westchester County.

Charles Bingley’s mansion was every bit as amazing as Jane had suggested. It was a Gothic monstrosity made out like a European estate, suggestive of excess and the kind of money even the Depression hadn’t touched. It had its own miniature lake, a wood blazing with color and tennis courts.

I rang the buzzer at the gate, waited a few minutes and gave my name to the man who eventually answered. The gates swung open and I followed the curving drive up to the forbidding front entrance.

A man wearing an impeccable formal suit greeted me at the door. I guessed he was the butler or some kind of servant, hard as that is to believe in the twenty-first century.

“Miss Bennet?” he asked with an inclination of his graying head. “Mr. Bingley is expecting you in the grand salon. May I take your coat?”

I shrugged out of it and handed it to him, suddenly conscious of my jeans and baggy sweater. I hadn’t been thinking about my clothes when I’d raced out of my apartment. My mind had been full of Jane…and Mr. Darcy.

Now I realized that I’d made a strategic mistake.

“Thank you,” I said with a smile I hoped didn’t seem too nervous. I clutched my handbag tighter under my arm and followed the butler into a hallway adorned with marble floors and oak paneling so polished that it reflected me like a mirror. The driving rhythm of fast jazz echoed in the corridor.

As soon as I entered what I guessed was the “salon,” Charles Bingley shot up from the sofa near the huge flagstone fireplace and strode toward me, hand extended, smiling so infectiously that I felt myself grinning in return.

“How are you, Elizabeth?” he asked, pumping my hand. “It’s great to see you again. I know Jane will be very glad that you’ve come.”

I cleared my throat, more than a little overwhelmed by his enthusiasm. “I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead of time.”

“Don’t worry about that.” He tugged on my hand, pulling me toward the arrangement of handsome antique sofas and chairs that I knew weren’t just fine reproductions. “Caroline, look who’s here!”

My first glimpse of Caroline Bingley told me that Jane hadn’t been exaggerating. Elegant isn’t a word you hear often these days, but Miss Bingley wore it as easily as I did my favorite jeans. The dress alone must have cost several thousand dollars, and it fit her model’s figure like the proverbial glove. She wore a very tasteful pair of diamond earrings and a matching choker that could probably have bought a small country.

“Elizabeth, this is my sister, Caroline,” Charles said. “Caroline, Elizabeth.”

Caroline extended a languid hand and smiled just enough to look sincere without disturbing her flawless makeup. “How nice to meet you, Elizabeth. I’ve heard so much about you.”

I hadn’t heard much about her, but I disliked her instantly. I took her hand and squeezed just enough to let her know that her superior air didn’t scare me. “Jane has told me how kind you’ve been,” I said. “Thanks so much for taking care of her.”

“It’s no trouble, really,” Caroline said in that upper-class East Coast accent affected in the ’30s by the likes of Bette Davis, Norma Shearer and Katharine Hepburn. Her gaze fell to my slightly scuffed oxfords and slowly rose to take in the rest of my casual ensemble. “Would you like something to drink? A Shirley Temple, perhaps?”

She might as well have asked me if I’d like to take a good wallow with the pigs. “Water, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said.

“Champagne,” Charles said. “We’re celebrating Jane’s recovery.”

“Is she walking again?” I asked eagerly.

“The swelling has really gone down. She’s getting dressed right now.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go up and see her.”

“Please don’t deprive us of your company so soon,” Caroline purred. “Jane will be down at any moment.”

I couldn’t think of a good way to get out of it, so I took one of the chairs and accepted a glass of champagne from the butler.

“How is your family?” Charles asked, leaning forward with his hands dangling between his knees.

“Fine, thanks. A little worried about Jane.”

“There’s absolutely no reason to be. She’ll stay here until she can walk easily again.”

“That’s very nice of you, but—”

“I would advise you, Miss Bennet, not to contradict Charles,” a deep voice said. “He is accustomed to getting his way, in spite of all advice to the contrary.”

I crawled back into my skin and turned to look behind me. There, big as life and twice as aggravating, stood Mr. Darcy.

Chapter 3

“DARCY,” CHARLES SAID, HIS USUAL GOOD HUMOR sounding a bit strained, “why do you always have to sneak up on everyone like that?”

The older man strolled into the room and stopped beside the fireplace, his hands folded behind his back. Once again he wore what could only be the finest workmanship of the best European tailors, as crisp and formal as if he’d just come from a gathering of New York’s most high-powered financiers.

“Can I be blamed,” he said coolly, “if you prefer to surround yourself with so much noise that you are unable to hear anything less cacophonous than a chorus of jackhammers?”

“Darcy,” Charles said, addressing me, “doesn’t like jazz. I’ve had to drag him kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.”

“Don’t you mean the twenty-first century?” I asked, sliding a glance at the subject of our conversation.

“They had jazz in the twentieth century,” he said dryly.

“You shouldn’t make fun of Darcy just because he has better taste than you do,” Caroline said, easing her way toward Darcy with all the subtlety of a hockey puck slamming into a goal. “Mendelssohn still has many more admirers than Miles Davis.”

“I don’t think even Mendelssohn was around when Darcy was born,” Charles said.

Darcy seemed completely immune to Charles’s quips and continued to look down his nose at the room in general. Caroline was practically in his lap, but he didn’t pay her any attention—a fact that obviously ticked her off no end. You’d have to be as clueless as a bachelor at a baby shower not to see that she had a thing for him.

They deserve each other, I thought. But then Darcy looked straight at me with those dark, penetrating eyes, and I forgot my sarcasm. I knew he didn’t like me any more than I liked him, so I could only figure that he was trying to scare me off.

That, of course, was the surest way to make me stay.

“What kind of music do you prefer, Miss Bennet?” he asked.

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said that Darcy was being polite. “I like all kinds, Mr. Darcy,” I said. “You could say I’m eclectic in my tastes.”

“Yes, dear,” Caroline said, staring pointedly at my clothes again. “That’s quite obvious.”

Darcy cast her a glance that made her go a little pale under her artfully applied blush. “A wide range of interests is scarcely to be sneered at,” he said.

I goggled. Why was he defending me? “Mr. Darcy—” I began, and promptly forgot what I was going to say. “Do you have a first name?”

“He does,” Charles said, “but he doesn’t like to use it.”

“It’s not Egbert, is it?” I whispered.

“Worse,” he whispered back. “It’s Fitzwilliam.”

It would have been very rude to laugh. I risked a glance at Darcy and knew immediately that he’d heard the exchange. Charles noticed, as well.

“He’s been Darcy as long as I’ve known him,” he said aloud.

“How long have you been friends?” I asked, including both Darcy and Charles in my question.

“He was on the Board years before my father died,” Bingley said in a sober voice.

“The late Mr. Bingley requested that I continue to advise his son,” Darcy said.

You’d have thought that Darcy was twenty years older than Charles, when he looked about five at most. “I’m sure he’s lucky to have a mentor like you,” I said with more than a touch of sarcasm.

“He has worked miracles for Bingley Pharmaceuticals,” Caroline said sharply. “He is admired for his philanthropy, as well. I understand that you might not regard him quite as favorably, given your…situation.”

Darcy gave Caroline a black look. Charles stood abruptly and had opened his mouth to speak when Jane appeared at the top of the grand staircase, pale but smiling. Charles bounded up the stairs to support her as she began to descend.

“Lizzy!” she called. “I’m so glad you’ve come!”

I watched her anxiously, noting her slight limp as she reached the bottom of the stairs. “Are you all right?” I asked, hurrying toward her. “Sit down and let me look at that ankle.”

She complied, though her eyes were all for Charles. I knelt in front of her and pulled up the leg of her soft wool trousers.

“It’s still swollen,” I said. “Are you sure it’s only a sprain?”

“That was the opinion of the doctor,” Charles said, his fair eyebrows drawn in a frown, “but I don’t think she should leave until all the swelling is gone.”

I glanced at Darcy and Caroline. Darcy’s expression was neutral, but I caught Caroline in a strained and very fake smile.

“Of course you must stay,” she said sweetly. “And you, too, Elizabeth.”

“Thanks, but I didn’t bring much with me….”

“I’m sure we can find something…appropriate for you.”

“That’s decided, then,” Charles said, oblivious to his sister’s catty remark.

For a while, the rest of us stood or sat around awkwardly while Charles and Jane smiled idiotically at one another. I couldn’t say I was unhappy about it. Jane was delirious, and if Charles was sincere, I had nothing to worry about. Unless someone else chose to interfere.

Darcy moved in my direction and took a large leather armchair not far from mine. Caroline quickly pulled another chair close to his.

“And how is Georgiana?” she cooed to the object of her affections, all but batting her lashes as she took her seat. “I can’t wait to see her again.”

“She is very well,” Darcy said, though he was looking at me instead of Caroline. “Georgiana, Miss Elizabeth, is my sister.”

“And so very talented,” Caroline said with a glare in my direction. “Such exquisite taste. I’ve never known such a young girl to be as bright and gifted as she is.” She leaned over the arm of her chair so that the neckline of her dress gaped open. “If you met her, Elizabeth, you’d understand why Darcy is so particular in his choice of women friends.”

“Oh, does he have any?” I asked. I wanted to take the snide comment back as soon as I said it, but Darcy only stared at me intently, an almost puzzled look in his eyes. I wanted to sink deep into my chair, but sat up straighter instead.

Caroline laid her hand on Darcy’s sleeve. “Georgiana has impeccable manners,” she said to me waspishly. “A pity you didn’t have the benefit of her education.”

Well, I had deserved that. I decided on the better part of valor. “Charles,” I said, “I noticed that you have beautiful grounds behind the house. Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Hmmm? Oh, please be my guest. Darcy, would you mind showing her around?”

I sat frozen, my mouth dry as a quote from Oscar Wilde. “Uh, that won’t be necessary, really.”

“I would be delighted,” Darcy said, rising. Caroline clung to him like a boa constrictor.

“Please don’t interrupt your conversation on my account,” I said, sidling toward the French doors that looked over the sloping lawn. Darcy didn’t come after me.

Once I was outside I ran down the hill to the wood of ash and maple that had already turned bright shades of yellow, orange and red. I came up against one of the trunks, breathless and slightly dizzy.

I’d managed to insult Darcy almost as much as he’d insulted me and my family at the party, but he hadn’t taken the bait. To the contrary, he’d been downright courteous. And what had Caroline said about his philanthropic work?

Had I been wrong about him?

I was still chewing over the possibility after I’d made a complete inspection of the grounds and gardens and returned to the house. Low voices stopped me just outside the doors. For the second time in two weeks I held a brief internal debate about the propriety of eavesdropping. As always, curiosity beat good manners by a mile. I pressed my back against the wall.

“Well, Darcy,” Caroline was saying, “I can see now why you have such a low opinion of the Bennets. Jane is charming, but her sister…” She chuckled. “I suppose, working in a bookstore, she doesn’t have any reason to care about her looks. Still, you’d think she’d want to buy new clothes every once in a while.”

Darcy’s reply was too soft for me to hear. Caroline wasn’t finished. “And her hair! She must have had it styled with a cleaver. Well, what can you expect from someone whose father started out as a hospital janitor?”

“I was not thinking about her origins,” Darcy said, loud enough for me to hear. “Or her choice of clothing.”

“Oh? Do tell me. Have I missed some of her faults?”

“You have apparently failed to notice the beauty of her eyes.”

“Her eyes? If that’s all you can find to praise—”

“Shall I enumerate the other qualities I admire?”

“How can you admire anything about her? She’s been nothing but crass and rude since she walked in the door.”

“She is obviously concerned for the welfare of her family. One cannot but respect such loyalty in the face of one’s opponents.”

“How sentimental of you, Darcy. You have never previously had any qualms about acquiring any other failing company, regardless of the disadvantages to them. The Bennets were about to lose the business in any case. You’re doing them a favor!”

“You cannot expect Miss Bennet to share our views.”

“I see. Then I presume you intend to advise Charles to obtain the company at a loss for BP?”

“I do not. My concern is for the success of Bingley Pharmaceuticals. I am capable, nevertheless, of regarding Elizabeth Bennet with a certain forbearance.”

Caroline was silent so long that I thought they’d both left the room. When she spoke again, it was in a tone halfway between a whine and a snarl.

“So when do you plan to convert her, Darcy?” she asked.

“Why would you assume I have any such scheme in mind?”

“You don’t need her. You know I’ve wanted it for years. I won’t be a burden on you, Darcy. I—”

That was the last I heard from her. When I peeked through the windows, she and Darcy were gone.

I stayed where I was for a few minutes longer, trying to figure out what Caroline had meant. Convert me? To what? Darcy didn’t seem religious. Maybe he belonged to one of those crazy cults that pass as religion these days.

That was certainly a puzzle, but I was just as struck by his ongoing defense of me in response to Caroline’s insults. Beautiful eyes? Respecting my loyalty? Forbearance.

But he’d as good as admitted that he still didn’t care what happened to my family, as long as he got his way. “My only concern is for the success of Bingley Pharmaceuticals.”

I strode through the French doors, looked around for the bottle of champagne the butler had left in a freestanding wine chiller beside the sofa, and poured myself a glass. Maybe Darcy had a few nice things to say about me, but I’d be an idiot to feel flattered by the good opinion of someone like him. Let him “convert” Caroline, since she wanted it so much.

But as I finished the rest of my champagne, I kept seeing his dark blue eyes watching me, the firm jaw and aristocratic nose and thick, black hair…not to mention the lean, broad-shouldered body and perfect poise. And that something more I couldn’t name, that dangerous something that went beyond his plan to gobble up Bennet Laboratories and spit out the bones.

I still didn’t like him. But I was beginning to feel him in a way that made my feet itch to run and keep on running. Part of me wanted to kill him. The other part wanted him to kiss me.

As I started up the stairs to look for Jane, I began to believe there really was such a thing as the Devil.

Chapter 4

THE YOUNG LAWYER CLASPED BOTH MY HANDS IN his, leaning toward me with mischief in his eyes and a grin that rivaled Charles’s in sheer voltage.

“Please, call me George,” he said, finally releasing his grip. “I’ll be aiding Mr. Mason in the negotiations from now on, so you’ll be seeing a lot of me.”

I was charmed, I have to admit. I’d barely arrived at my parents’ home for our family’s monthly Sunday dinner together, and I hadn’t expected other guests. George Wickham had already proven to be a very pleasant surprise. Not only was he handsome, but he had a spark of danger about him…not as sinister as Darcy’s but far more interesting than Charles’s transparent “niceness.”

“Glad to meet you, George,” I said, grinning back. “I don’t know if you’ll be seeing a lot of me, since I don’t work at BL—”

“Oh, I’m sure there will be many occasions,” George said with a wink. “I would be distraught if we were to be kept apart.”

Normally I would have found that kind of talk ridiculous, but somehow it worked with George, maybe because I knew that our old family lawyer, Mr. Mason, must trust him implicitly to take him on.

“My store is only a few blocks from the office,” I said. “You’re certainly welcome to drop in, if you—”

“Don’t keep him all to yourself, Lizzy!” Lydia said, bumping into me as she maneuvered her way closer to George. She smiled dazzlingly at the lawyer, and his attention shifted to her—and no wonder. She was wearing a high-end cropped T-shirt that showed off her toned midriff, a short, tight skirt and boots that might have belonged to a dominatrix.

Not that Lydia cared what anyone thought. She dressed as she pleased and acted as she pleased; apparently her chutzpah—and choice of fashion, if it could be called that—was an advantage in her job at a trendy New York boutique. Too bad she had been living far beyond her means and probably had credit-card debt to match her extravagant lifestyle.

“Hey, Georgie,” Lydia said, striking a pose with one hand on her outthrust hip. “Has Lizzy been boring you talking about her books?”

“Boring me?” George said, managing to keep his eyes on her face. “Not at all.” He smiled at me. “Any man would be overwhelmed by all the beauty and intelligence in the Bennet family.”

Lydia pouted. “Elizabeth has no taste in clothes.” She looked George up and down. “I’ll bet you’d look hot in a red leather Ferragamo jacket.”

“That’s quite a compliment, coming from you,” George said. “But I’m just a simple country lawyer. I’m afraid I’m a little behind on the latest fashions.”

“I can take care of that,” Lydia said, grabbing his hand. “Come visit me in Manhattan, and I’ll take you shopping anytime.”

“I can help, too,” Kitty said, creeping up behind Lydia.

Lydia glared at my second-youngest sister. “I thought Mom wanted you in the kitchen, Kitty.”

“Not anymore.” Kitty sniffled and simpered at George. “Dinner’s ready.”

“The same old turkey and potatoes,” Lydia complained, rolling her eyes. “It’s like we’re still stuck in the ’80s.”

“I’m sure it will be delicious.” George caught my eye, and I could tell he found Lydia and Kitty just as empty-headed as I did. It was as if he and I shared a conspiracy, though about what I didn’t know. I had a feeling we were definitely going to get to know each other better. And that would certainly be an improvement over my “relationship” with Fitzwilliam Darcy.

The meal was pretty much the same as always, though I didn’t share Lydia’s distaste for turkey and potatoes. George seduced Mom with a few compliments on her cooking and the table decorations; I was pretty sure by the time dinner was over that she was calculating which of her daughters he should marry.

Jane, thank God, was out of the running. She’d been pretty far gone since we’d come back from Charles’s house, and I knew the two of them were e-mailing and texting every few hours. If the man didn’t propose to Jane in less than a month, I’d trade in my copy of Casablanca, with all the extras, for the latest teenage-kids-find-an-abandoned-house-in-the-woods-and-die-horribly-one-by-one slasher flick.

At least Darcy—if he did indeed have any concerns about Jane’s potential, if unwitting, influence on Charles’s decisions—hadn’t come between them.

Why couldn’t he stay out of my mind?

“Lizzy!”

Lydia, in one of her typical rapid changes of mood, had grabbed hold of my arm and was bouncing up and down so energetically that I was afraid her huge, dangling earrings would poke out my eye. “You have to come this time. George won’t if you don’t agree!”

“Agree to what?” I asked, prying her fingers from my arm.

“Come to New York, of course. This weekend. You can stay with me and Kitty…we’ll find room for you somehow.”

“And why would I want to come to New York?”

Lydia gave me an incredulous look. “Because Wickham has promised to take us to Brighton.”

“What does a city in England have to do with New York?”

My youngest sister had eye-rolling down to an art form. “Brighton Palace! The new Club in the East Village. It’s almost impossible to get in unless you know somebody, but George—”

“I thought George was just a simple country lawyer.”

“Oh, God. Can’t you tell when someone’s joking?”

So there was more to George than met the eye. “I’m no clubber. Why would George want me to come?”

“Don’t ask me. He’d have a lot more fun with just me and Kitty.” She grinned slyly. “Or just me.”

If George was interested in having “fun” with Lydia, I’d take back everything good I’d thought about him. But the fact that he wanted me along suggested that he didn’t find my sisters adequate company.

Going with them would give me a chance to see George in another environment, which wouldn’t be a bad idea. I hadn’t danced in a long time, but I wasn’t dead yet. It might even be fun.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Good! I’ll tell Georgie. Come on Thursday, and we’ll have time to find you something to wear.”

“That’s not necessary. I have a couple of—”

“I’ve already looked through your closet. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing any of your stuff.”

Right back atcha, I thought. But I knew this was a battle I couldn’t win. “I don’t have a lot of money to spare, Lydia.”

“Oh,” she said airily. “I can get you discounts.”

And that was that.

I spent the next few days going over my accounts and inventory, assisting my handful of customers—one of whom, fortunately, bought a very expensive first edition—and then did an online search for a special order. When I was closing up on Wednesday night, I saw the shadow of a man just outside the window, silhouetted against the light of the streetlamp. I knew without even thinking about it that this guy, in his long black trench coat, was no last-minute customer.

Instinctively, I reached for the can of pepper spray I kept in my desk drawer.

“We’re closed!” I yelled.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t leave. He looked in the window, and there was just enough glow from my desk lamp to reveal his features and a strange reddish reflection in his eyes.

Darcy.

I slammed the can down on the desk and charged for the door, my stomach bubbling with an uncomfortable stew of fear, anger and excitement. When I yanked the door open, he was gone. There were several people on the street, hunched against the drizzle, but no sign of a tall, brooding guy in a black trench coat.

I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing fast. What in hell had he been doing here? Why had he been hanging around my window like some…some deviant, instead of coming in?

Shaken as I was, I finished locking up and walked as fast as I could to BL. Everyone except the janitor had already gone; Dad had taken to sending everyone home early—just more proof of his dejection at the prospect of losing the company he’d worked so hard to build.

Making my bad mood worse, the bus was late and crammed full, forcing me to sit next to a guy whose idea of cleanliness would have made a fourteenth-century privy-cleaner proud. It was pouring by the time I reached my stop. When I finally got to sleep, Darcy insisted on slinking through my dreams with a mustachio-twirling leer on his face. He was leaning over my bed, grinning maniacally with a mouth full of pointed teeth when my alarm went off.

I sat straight up, reaching for my neck. I didn’t know why, but I was sure something had bitten me. A spider maybe, or even a hardy mosquito.

But when I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom, I couldn’t find so much as a red spot. I groaned, splashed water over my face and wandered into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. I jumped at every sound, half expecting Darcy to sneak up behind me with a swirling cape, tall black hat and subtitles.

Damn. Apparently, I really did need a night out, dancing myself senseless with cute, nonthreatening guys who never thought about anything but their hair and abs.

I arrived at Lydia and Kitty’s tiny apartment at two-thirty that afternoon. Kitty seemed genuinely glad to see me, but Lydia was furiously texting and barely looked up when I set my bag down on the sofa. I’d just finished my glass of water when she came roaring into the kitchenette, made a scathing comment about my cords and oxford shirt and hauled me out the door.

At least she hadn’t been exaggerating about the discounts. I managed to get out of the last store with a total bill under $250, though I couldn’t believe that I, Elizabeth-the-boring, would be wearing such a short dress or such high heels. Lydia pronounced me acceptable, and we spent that evening and the next day catching up, though Lydia did most of the talking. On Saturday, after dinner at one of Lydia’s favorite sushi bars, we went to meet George at the club.

The line stretched around the block. The muscular guy whose job it was to pronounce sentence on the cowering supplicants didn’t so much as glance at us as we waited outside the rope.

“Where is Georgie?” Lydia asked irritably as Kitty shivered in her thin, cropped jacket. “He said he’d be here by—”

“There you are!” George appeared before us, arms spread as if he planned to embrace us all together. “Lydia, Kitty…you look fantastic.” His gaze settled on me, and I smiled weakly. “But Elizabeth…you’re gorgeous!”

So was he. I had the feeling that his jeans, jacket and silk shirt had cost multiples of what I’d spent on my dress and shoes, but I couldn’t really blame him; he wanted to make the most of his good looks, which was only natural, and I had a feeling he had a bright future ahead of him.

I expected him to escort us to the back of the line, but he herded us right to the front and spoke quietly to the bouncer. The man nodded, and—much to the obvious displeasure of the people on line—let us in.

The place was as noisy and garish as I would have expected. Lydia was in her element; she grabbed George and ran into the very thick of the crowd, gyrating wildly. Kitty, unwilling to be left behind, followed more diffidently. I wandered to the bar and ordered a light drink, content to observe the tribal mating rituals of twenty-first-century Homo sapiens Manhattansis.

Fifteen minutes later, as my eardrums were exploding, Lydia joined me at the bar, red and breathless. “Why aren’t you dancing, Lizzy?” she asked, waving to the handsome bartender.

“I’ll get to it eventually,” I said. By which I meant one more drink and I wouldn’t care if I made a fool of myself. The seething crowd opened up for a moment, and George emerged like a butterfly from a neon cocoon.

“Elizabeth!” he said, plopping down on the vacant stool between Lydia and me. “Why aren’t you dancing?”

“I was waiting for you,” I said with a smile.

Lydia, anxious to be included in the conversation, made a face of eloquent distaste. “Darcy would be the perfect partner for you, Lizzy,” she said. “He probably can’t even—”

“Darcy?” George repeated. “God, no. He probably hasn’t danced since the gavotte was all the rage.”

“What’s a gavotte?” Kitty asked, joining us.

I didn’t answer. I thought it was interesting that both Charles and George had made reference to Darcy’s being not only old-fashioned, but actually from another century.

“You sound as if you know Darcy pretty well,” I said, “but you’ve just started working for Mr. Mason’s firm. Have you met before?”

George picked up his whiskey and soda. “I’ve had that misfortune,” he said.

“Do you mind my asking…”

The whiskey was gone in a swallow, and George ordered another. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you sometime.”

And that was that. George knocked back his second drink, seized my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor.

For the next couple of hours I actually forgot to be self-conscious about my very short dress. Lydia flirted with anything in pants; Kitty followed her lead, as always; and I found plenty of willing partners, one of whom made a suggestion that sent me scurrying into the adjoining alley for air.

I found clouds of smoke instead, the stench of rotting garbage and a half-dozen sullen kids sucking on cigarettes. I pushed through them and discovered a very small area where some trick of the atmosphere provided the means to breathe. I was enjoying the respite when the kids suddenly disappeared, leaving the alley deserted.

All the little hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I’m not exactly the most streetwise girl in the world, but even I could tell that something was wrong.

Wrong turned out to be three unpleasant-looking guys of indeterminate age wearing hoodies and low-slung jeans. They definitely weren’t clubbers; in fact, they looked like they’d rather do some “clubbing” in the more traditional sense of the word. What they were doing in the alley I didn’t know, and I was much less interested in speculating than in escape.

I was halfway to the door when they saw me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. One of them grinned, showing a wide gap between his two front teeth. The other two were chillingly casual as they strolled toward me.

They wouldn’t try anything here, I told myself. They’d be crazy if they did. As I backed away, kicking off one shoe and grabbing the other to use as a rather pitiful weapon, the door burst open and George walked into the alley.

Suddenly I was in one of those old movies where they would speed up the film to make fights look faster than was humanly possible. I blinked, and George was on the nasty guys like a spider on a juicy fly. He sent the grinning gangbanger spinning away like a Frisbee. Another landed at the other end of the alley, and I heard the crack of breaking bones.

The last one was pinned to the opposite wall about two feet off the ground, George’s fists clenched in his hoodie. There was real terror in the kid’s eyes, and I knew George was going to hurt him. Badly.

“George!” I yelled. “It’s all right. I’ll call the police. You don’t have to—”

Without letting the kid down, George twisted to face me. His eyes were swallowed up in black like someone on heavy drugs, and his teeth…

They were pointed. And red.

Chapter 5

IT WAS A MOVIE. A VERY BAD MOVIE.

I scrambled back against the wall, sucking garbage-scented air through my nose. George snarled and dropped the kid, who fell in a heap at his feet. He glared at the grinner, who scuttled crabwise toward the mouth of the alley, grabbing his moaning friend on the way.

The third gangbanger crawled on hands and knees until he was out from under George’s feet and staggered after his homies. A dreamlike silence settled over the alley.

“Elizabeth?”

Going by the usual script, I should have screamed and flailed helplessly as the monster ripped open my chest and tore out my throat. But I was too stunned to move, and George looked more sheepish than batlike.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” he said, holding out very ordinary-looking hands in a gesture of apology. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

The rational part of me noted that his eyes were back to normal, and he didn’t have any blood on his mouth.

But I’d seen what I’d seen. A crimson smear on the kid’s neck. And George with his teeth sinking into flesh…

“Tell me I’m dreaming,” I gasped.

“I’m afraid not.” He sighed, and I got another glimpse of his…fangs. “You have every reason to doubt your senses, but in this case they did not deceive you. I am not human.”

“Did you just…drink that kid’s blood?”

He hung his head. “I did. But I assure you he was not hurt as a result of that.”

At times like these, all you can do is pretend you’re still sane. “You’re a…vampire?”

“Strigoi is the preferred term. Most vampires—”

“Most?” I squeaked. “You mean there are more like you?”

He became more serious than I’d ever seen him. “Not all are like me. I would never harm you, Elizabeth, or any human who did not attempt to harm me first.”

That’s very comforting, I thought, clinging frantically to my sarcasm as if it were the last lifeboat from the Titanic. “Well,” I said aloud, “I guess I should thank you.”

He glanced up, a convincingly contrite look on his face. “I’m ashamed that I resorted to such violence, but I could not let them attack you.” His eyes caught mine, sincere and full of pain. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, Elizabeth. I would give anything not to be what I am.”

I gulped. “You, uh…drink blood regularly?”

“Unfortunately, it is necessary for my survival.”

“But you said you don’t hurt anyone.”

“The process is not normally harmful for the donor, and can actually be very pleasurable for both parties.”

Donor. What a civilized word. It hadn’t been very pleasurable for the homeboy.

I touched my neck. “You aren’t thinking of… I mean—”

“No, Elizabeth. Never without permission.” He took another step toward me, and I saw something a little less benign in his gaze. “My control over this curse is the only thing that keeps me from ending my life.”

“It’s literally a curse?”

“I wish it were that simple.”

It was hard, in spite of my dazed state of mind, not to feel sympathy for his obvious distress. My world had turned upside down, but his…

“How did it happen?” I whispered. “Is it like the legends say?”

He looked up into the glare of the Manhattan night, and his shoulders sagged. “You asked how I knew Darcy,” he said. “It was he who did this to me. He converted me against my will.”

A dozen thoughts bounced around inside my head, whipping my brain to the consistency of strawberry Jell-O. Converted. That was the word I’d heard Caroline Bingley use when she’d been dissing me to Darcy. Something about when he planned to convert…

Me.

I have to admit that I got a little dizzy then, and might have fallen if George hadn’t caught me. His touch felt warm and safe, not dangerous at all. “Yes,” he said, “Darcy is also strigoi. But he delights in what he is.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Some strigoi wield unusual influence over mortals and even other strigoi. Darcy possesses such abilities. That power, in addition to virtual immortality and greater strength and speed, are features of this condition he exploits to the fullest.”

That explained a great deal, but certainly didn’t ease my mind, especially when I thought about my own unwilling obsession with him. Charles seemed to be defying Darcy’s wishes, but he clearly considered Darcy a good friend as well as an advisor. What had Charles said? “I don’t think even Mendelssohn was around when Darcy was born.”

He’d meant it literally. He knew.

“Whatever you may believe, I care about you, Elizabeth,” George said into my silence. “Being strigoi does not destroy all emotion or loyalty. I know Darcy wishes you only ill. I do not think it likely that he will take any direct action against your family, but I will do everything I can to protect you.”

Direct action. I didn’t even want to think what that could mean. But now I had an immediate choice: trust George, or not. I chose trust…for the time being. I had a thousand questions, but I knew this wasn’t the time or the place to ask them. I had to get Lydia and Kitty home first.

By unspoken agreement, George and I returned to the club. I could see right away that Lydia had drunk far too much, and it took some effort to pry her away from the bar. She complained loudly when George and I dragged her out of the building, Kitty trailing in her wake.

Lydia was still whining when we bustled her and Kitty into their walk-up and deposited her on the sofa. I asked George if he wouldn’t mind waiting outside while I sat with Lydia and made sure she wouldn’t go out again. The very ordinariness of the activities, and the knowledge that George had done no harm to anyone but the bad guys, gradually calmed my apprehension.

Once both Lydia and Kitty were asleep, I went outside to join George. He was pacing back and forth on the landing and looked up as I closed the apartment door.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

“She’ll get over it,” I said. I wondered if I would. “I think we should talk.”

“By all means…if you feel able to accept what you’ve seen.”

“I don’t know if I’m able to, but I don’t think I have any choice.”

He flashed me the old-George grin, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed the pointed incisors before. It was really true what they said: you don’t look for something out of the ordinary unless you have reason to.

Did I ever have reason to now.

“We haven’t much time,” George said, walking toward me as if he planned to take my arm. At the last minute he must have seen me flinch, because he backed off. “Strigoi are not fond of sunlight.”

I imagined him burning to a crisp and felt a little sick. “What does it do to you?”

“Some exposure is acceptable, but too much—”

I remembered that I’d never seen Darcy actually walking outside in daylight. “Does it take a stake through the heart to kill you?” I joked.

I immediately regretted it, but George took it well. “More than that, I’m afraid,” he said.

Warning duly noted. “Where should we go?”

“I know a place,” he said, and turned for the stairs.

After we’d gone a few blocks, I began to really accept that George didn’t intend to waylay me and suck me dry. He led me into a twenty-four-hour coffee bar and found a small table in the back. I ordered an espresso, figuring I wasn’t likely to get any sleep for what remained of the night. George ordered one, as well.

He didn’t wait for me to begin asking questions. He became very serious again. “What I tell you now must remain between the two of us.”

“Of course,” I said. “No one would believe me, anyway.”

He didn’t fall for my attempt at lightness. “First, you must know that we are not undead, as the stories claim. Conversion is not a mythical curse, but a biological process. We are every bit as alive as any mortal. We can eat and drink. Our hearts beat just as yours do.”

That was a relief. “But you said you’re virtually immortal.”

“Yes. It requires that we occasionally disappear in order to avoid dangerous questions. I have been many men in many times, though I always return to the name with which I was born.”

I could see the difficulty in such a life. “How often do you have to drink blood?”

“Regularly. But, as I said, donors are seldom unwilling.”

“They know what’s happening? How can you be sure they won’t tell?”

“As you said, no one would believe them. And most have no desire to expose us.”

Even if they did, I thought with a shiver, a man faster and stronger than any “mortal” could easily stop them.

George brooded over his coffee. “You wanted to know how I became the way I am,” he said.

“Darcy,” I murmured.

“Indeed. We grew up together, he and I.”

I hadn’t believed the night could hold any more surprises for me. “You’re kidding.”

“Unfortunately, I am not. We were both born in Derbyshire, in the northern part of England, in the late eighteenth century.”

I managed to get my natural skepticism under control, since it was pretty useless at this point. “And he did this against your will.”

His lips twisted. “Generally, converts seek the transformation. Darcy, like those of his ilk, offers no such choice. This is why I have dedicated my life to opposing such evildoers, that cohort of strigoi who treat humans as prey and are not above using violence.”

He went on to tell a story about growing up as a steward’s son on a large estate, loved by Darcy’s aristocratic father and granted an education equal to the younger Mr. Darcy’s. Fitzwilliam had been jealous enough to wish George ill from childhood. He’d seen to it that George had lost the inheritance intended for him by the former Mr. Darcy, and when they had grown to manhood and George had fallen in love with a woman “above his station,” Darcy had plotted his rival’s downfall. “He separated me from my betrothed, and then set about destroying my life, financially and physically.”

“Was he already a vampire?” I asked, obliviously gulping my cold coffee.

“He was converted by his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, at his own request. He has been driven by greed from childhood; he wanted even more power than his fortune and position already gave him. His ambition was, and is, limitless. He has accumulated vast wealth over the decades by the most ruthless tactics, including blackmail and forcible conversion. For Darcy, power and cruelty are the greatest aphrodisiacs.”

All the vampire legends I’d ever heard filled my head with visions of bloodless corpses and mouths gaping in silent screams. “Would he…has he killed anyone?”

“Most strigoi recognize the dangers of murder, but I would put nothing past Darcy.”

I shivered again and went back over everything I’d heard Darcy say since I’d met him, every conversation I’d been party to or overheard. He hadn’t sounded like a killer. And Caroline Bingley had known about conversion and what it entailed. She’d said she’d wanted it…

A sudden and alarming thought brought the coffee back up the wrong way. I coughed until tears spilled over my face.

“Is Charles a vampire, too?” I choked out.

George shook his head. “He is not, though he might as well be. You see, a man once converted becomes the virtual property of his patron, bound to his will.”

“But you…” Another terrible thought came into my head. “You aren’t—”

“No. I was one of the fortunate few able to escape that fate through a trick of the conversion process.”

“And Darcy…is he controlled by his aunt?”

“That I do not know.” He reached out to cover my hand with his. “I only know what I must do since I am free, which is to thwart Darcy’s plots whenever I can.”

“Did you join Mason and Associates to fight him?”

“That was a large factor in my seeking the position.” He touched my cheek. “I tell you all this to warn you, Elizabeth. Be wary. Never turn your back on Darcy.”

“But why is he so eager to get Bennet Labs?”

“He doubtless has some nefarious purpose. It seems unlikely that he will take the risk of exposing himself, and will first attempt to get his way by the usual means.”

“What about Charles? He knows Darcy’s a vampire, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s in love with Jane!”

“That will protect you, as well, since Darcy is unlikely to alienate Charles by openly forbidding such a relationship. Charles is a tool to be used, and a very useful one.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to convert him?”

“As a human, Bingley can move in places Darcy cannot. That is a benefit.”

“But what does Charles get out of this…‘friendship’ with Darcy? Does Darcy drink Charles’s blood? Does he…do they—”

“I do not believe so. Darcy’s advice has doubtless helped Charles increase his own fortune. And he can make most humans greatly desire his goodwill. But Charles is not entirely ruled by him. Yet.”

I was beginning to develop a splitting headache. “Where does Darcy get his blood?”

“In the usual way. I have no doubt that he takes from the unwilling, but he also has a harem of women who are flattered by his attentions and hope to become his protégées.”

“Uh…does he…does he do other things with them? I mean—”

“Vampires can have sex,” Charles said with the ghost of a smile.

It was way past time for embarrassment. “Jane was staying at Charles’s estate,” I said, my voice rising high enough to attract the attention of the slacker sprawled on the couch against the opposite wall. “What if Darcy drank her blood?”

Get yourself under control, woman. I swallowed and spoke more softly, though I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. “Could he have converted her?”

George gazed at me with gentle sympathy. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very clear. A strigoi may take blood from any donor he chooses, but conversion is a matter of deliberate will. You would see if she had changed.”

Oh, my God. “Would he go that far to keep her and Charles apart?” I asked in a deadly monotone.

“He certainly would disapprove of any relationship between them for any number of reasons.”

That was it. “I’ve got to get home right away.”

“Of course. But there’s something else I’d like you to see first.”

I was pretty sure he’d have let me go if I’d insisted on it. But I had to know everything I could about my enemy. And I had few doubts by now that Darcy was the enemy. The more I learned about vampires, the better equipped I’d be to stop him from hurting my family to get his way.

I pulled on my coat and charged out of the coffee bar, only a little surprised to find George at the door ahead of me.

“You must stay behind me at all times,” he said.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

I had come to realize that George could move faster than I could think, but he kept an easy pace to accommodate my heels. I chewed my lip to a pulp while we rode the subway back to the East Village. The streets were still alive with casual strollers and partygoers enjoying the unseasonably warm late October night; I noticed that they tended to step out of George’s way without seeming to realize they were doing it.

Did they sense that George wasn’t quite “normal”? I’d felt that about Darcy from our first meeting without understanding why, but George had done a very good job of blending in. In a way, that was as scary a thought as any I’d had since we’d left the club.

After we’d gone about four blocks from the station and turned several corners, we reached a narrow side street so dimly lit that I could barely discern the people congregating around the door halfway down the alley.

“Where are we?” I demanded, pulling my coat more tightly around my shoulders.

George took my arm and pushed me behind him. “Do you see those people?” he asked.

My vision had begun to adjust and I could finally make out the individual figures in the clump: three young, very pretty women and an equally handsome young man, all dressed to the nines.

“Are they vampires?” I whispered.

“The male is,” George said in an equally low tone. “The women are his—shall we say, his ‘groupies.’ They enjoy exchanging their blood for the sexual pleasure his bite—and other skills—gives them.”

Normally I wouldn’t care how consenting adults got their kicks, as long as it didn’t hurt anybody. But the idea of willingly becoming a vampire’s sex slave…

“Just inside that alley is a club frequented by strigoi and their human adherents,” George said. “Any mortal may enter Rosings, at his or her own risk. Darcy is a frequent guest.”

“You said he has a…a ‘harem.’”

“As he is among the most powerful strigoi in Manhattan, he draws many admirers.”

“And how many…how many besides you…has he converted?”

“Who can say? He believes himself to be discreet, and would keep his protégées under strict control.”

“Do you think we should go in?” I asked in a small voice.

He smiled, lips closed. “Ah, my brave Elizabeth. I would not subject you to such an ordeal. I will see you back to the apartment to collect your things, and then—”

His sudden silence grabbed my attention, and I followed his stare. A man was looking back at him: tall, dark, his features unmistakable and unforgettable. A trio of women were clustered around him, and in the dim light I thought I could see the darkness of blood on his mouth.

I wanted to run. Instead, I yanked George’s arm and pulled him to safety. “Are you all right?” I gasped.

“I’m fine.” He frowned. “I do not know if he saw you, Elizabeth. Be very careful.”

Neither of us spoke as we took the subway back to Washington Heights. Only when we were nearly to Lydia’s apartment did George speak again.

“Darcy would kill me if he could,” he said.

I tried, and failed, to imagine what a fight between two vampires would be like. “He wouldn’t dare attack you openly,” I said. “Would he?”

He took my hand in both of his and gazed into my eyes. “Don’t worry. I shall carry on the fight regardless of what he threatens to do to me.”

His words not only increased my admiration for him, but also gave me the feeling that even I could stand up to Darcy. Elizabeth Bennet, Fearless Vampire Hunter.

Until I remembered Darcy lurking outside the window of my bookshop, gliding away into the darkness before I could confront him.

What had he wanted from me? Was it really possible that he did want to convert me? In heaven’s name, why? Was it another way to get hold of BL? Was the “admiration” he’d expressed for me strong enough to make him want to drink my blood…or worse?

Maybe Jane wasn’t the only one in danger.

I ran up the stairs and let myself into Lydia’s apartment. She and Kitty were asleep, so I grabbed my things and called a taxi to take me to the train station. George saw me off, and I turned to watch him recede into the distance, thinking about how much had changed in just a few hours.

I was still looking over my shoulder when I arrived at my apartment door.

Chapter 6

I TRIED TO TELL JANE. I REALLY DID.

I caught her at BL during her break the very next morning and locked us into the small meeting room, where we could talk in private. But as soon as we sat down, Jane started in on Charles.

“You can’t believe how happy I am, Lizzy,” she said, taking my hands. “It’s like a miracle!”

While I’d been away in New York, Charles had called on Jane twice, once with Caroline and once by himself. He’d taken Jane on a picnic at East Rock Park, had dinner with Mom and Dad and sent a half-dozen bouquets of roses to Jane’s apartment just before he returned to Westchester. The latest negotiations had gone spectacularly well, and it appeared that a deal was about to be struck…a deal outstandingly favorable for BL.

“It’s so wonderful,” Jane said, her eyes tearing up. “To think that everything is working out so well for our family—I feel as if I’m living in a dream.”

You are, I thought. I smiled and gave her a long, hard hug, examining her neck for any signs of bite marks.

Nothing, not even a freckle. How was I supposed to explain to Jane that I was afraid she might be in danger…that the man she loved, who seemed to love her so passionately, might be in the thrall of a two-hundred-year-old vampire?

Or was he? George had said that that Charles wasn’t entirely “ruled by Darcy. Yet.” If Bingley Pharma had offered such favorable terms, didn’t that mean that Charles was getting his way?

Was it possible that Darcy had some respect for Charles’s obviously genuine feelings? Could he have changed his mind so quickly about Bennet Labs if he was as ruthless—as evil—as George had made him out to be?

No. I’d seen and heard enough of Darcy to believe that he wouldn’t give up control once he had it. Maybe it was all some sort of game, letting Charles have a little freedom and then yanking back on the chain. Maybe he’d convert Jane and use her like a puppet to force Charles to—

I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. If I hadn’t thought I was going crazy before, now I was sure of it.

“What’s wrong, Lizzy?” Jane asked.

This was my chance. Jane would believe me. She tended to trust everyone anyway, and she’d never suspect me of—

“Is it Darcy?”

She’d always known me far too well. “Why should you think that?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it almost seems as if he likes you.”

I laughed. “I don’t think so.” I recognized the note of hysteria in my voice and deliberately softened it. “I’ve been talking to George Wickham.”

“Really?” She leaned toward me. “He is nice, isn’t he? Do you like him, Lizzy?”

Like was a loaded word. “He’s pretty likable.”

“And handsome,” she said with a sly smile.

“But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.” I took a deep breath. “Did you know that George and Darcy used to know each other when they were kids?”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish I were. According to George, Darcy isn’t a very nice guy. In fact, he’s a lot worse than we suspected.”

“But Lizzy, I never thought—”

“All right, worse than I expected.”

“In what way?”

She was really listening now, her eyes serious and her expression thoughtful. I forged ahead, explaining about their mutual past, Darcy’s jealousy and his malicious interference in George’s life without mentioning how long ago the events had taken place…or that the principals weren’t human.

“This is very hard to believe,” Jane said, leaning back.

“If you’d heard George talk about it, you wouldn’t be so skeptical.”

Jane digested all this in silence, rubbing her hands over her arms as if she’d taken a sudden chill. “It doesn’t seem as if George would lie about something so important. But isn’t it just as likely that there’s been some kind of misunderstanding?”

“The truth doesn’t always lie in the middle, Jane. It’s a lot more likely that Charles has been fooled than that George made it all up.”

“Still…”

This was the moment when I should have told Jane about vampires. But my throat clogged up, and I couldn’t get the words out.

I had to have proof, though I had no idea how I was going to get it. I reached for her hands and held them tightly.

“Promise me that you’ll stay away from Darcy,” I said.

“You can’t really think he’d bother me, Lizzy! We barely know each other!”

“He’s a control freak. If he thinks you have more influence over Charles than he does…”

“Even if Darcy is as bad as George says, he’d never see someone like me as any kind of threat.”

I knew then that nothing was going to convince her. Nothing short of the truth.

“Okay. Then promise me that you’ll keep an eye out, and try not to be alone with him.”

“Oh, Lizzy.” She hugged me, drew back and looked into my eyes. “You’ve always had such a vivid imagination.” She pushed a stray strand of hair away from my forehead. “You’ll be seeing Darcy as soon as I will, anyway. The Halloween party, remember?”

Oh God. I had forgotten about it. Halloween was this Saturday, and everyone in my family, and from the office, had been invited to Netherfield.

“You’re white as ghost, Lizzy!” Jane exclaimed. “Are you that worried about seeing Darcy again?”

“I’m not worried.” I grinned crookedly. “I just haven’t figured out what to wear.”

AS IT HAPPENED, I FOUND the ideal costume at a local community theater. When I walked into Netherfield’s “grand salon” with Jane, Mom, Dad, Lydia, Kitty and Mary, we found it festooned with garlands of autumn leaves and lavishly supplied with crystal vases of orange and yellow chrysanthemums, dahlias and zinnias, all very tastefully arranged. Not a hinged paper skeleton, plastic pumpkin or animated ghost in sight.

Immediately, I looked for Darcy, but he wasn’t to be found. I was pretty sure that George had been invited, along with Mr. Mason, but would he show up?

“Elizabeth!” Caroline Bingley came gliding up, dressed in a silver lace gown that skimmed over her slender figure from a high waist below a neckline that emphasized her swanlike neck. She looked me up and down with a barely disguised sneer.

“I see that we had the same idea,” she said. “Bullseye must have a wider selection of costumes than I would have imagined.”

I curtsied. “Thanks for the compliment, Caroline. You’ve done a wonderful job with your own costume. Did Darcy dig it up in his attic?”

Her perfectly controlled features slackened as she considered how much she should be insulted and then wondered what other meaning I might have intended. I sailed away before she could respond, looking for Jane or Charles or both.

Of course, they were already together, Jane radiant in a Marie Antoinette getup and Charles wearing very authentic-looking cowboy duds. Their heads were together, and they were laughing. Clearly, Jane wasn’t taking my warnings about Darcy seriously.

There were a number of guests I didn’t know, including several very good-looking guys. My first thought was that they might be vampires, but there was no indication that they were any different than anyone else—nothing of that weird charisma Darcy, and, to a lesser extent George, possessed. I finally acknowledged that I was on the verge of becoming paranoid.

Lydia and Kitty, both dressed in variations of Goth-medieval dresses, were running from one potential victim to another, evidently trying to decide which man was most worthy of Lydia’s attention. Mom, in a 1920s gown much too small for her, was quivering with excitement and Dad—as usual—was looking a bit bemused in his Roman centurion’s armor.

After a while I was sure that George wasn’t there. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I wandered over to the open bar and chose a glass of expensive chardonnay.

“Good evening, Miss Elizabeth.”

My stomach made another attempt to jump out of my throat. Darcy was beside me; I hadn’t even heard him coming, and in light of what I’d learned I knew I shouldn’t be surprised.

But I was. And I was already wondering if he was going to admit he saw me outside of Rosings, or pretend he hadn’t.

“Hello,” I said casually, sipping my wine. I eyed his costume…a fantastically detailed, early-nineteenth-century coat, waistcoat and breeches that showed off his physique superbly and made my plain Regency dress look shabby.

He definitely got that out of his attic, I thought. “What made you pick that particular costume, Mr. Darcy?” I asked.

“I might ask the same of you.” He settled on the stool beside me, every motion grace itself. I risked a sideways glance at his face. I kept forgetting how stunningly handsome he was. But it was his eyes I was drawn to. I couldn’t mistake the predatory gleam in them, or the faintest trace of red.

“Oh,” I said airily, “it’s all they had left at Bullseye.”

My joke must have gone over his head, because he didn’t show any sign of amusement. “It suits you very well,” he said.

He was being nice again. Too nice. Was that the way vampires—evil ones, that is—set up their victims?

“Another glass of wine?” he asked, signaling the bartender.

He’s trying to get me drunk. I shook my head.

“Thanks, but not right now.” I fell silent, trying to think of something to say. Should I come right out and confront him? The very thought—which I had considered seriously for the past several days—made my mouth feel like the inside of a vacuum-cleaner bag.

“It’s your turn to say something, Mr. Darcy,” I said stupidly.

“What would you like me to say?”

I laughed, hoping he wouldn’t hear my incipient panic. “I guess we’re alike in one way. Neither one of us much cares to talk unless we can think of some bit of wit or wisdom to impart.”

He frowned. “I doubt that is a very accurate representation of yourself.”

“You mean I talk too much?”

“You put words into my mouth, Miss Elizabeth.”

For some strange reason I found myself looking at that part of his body. His mouth. His firm, masculine lips. And what they hid beneath them.

What would it be like to be kissed by that mouth? What had George said about vampire groupies? “They enjoy exchanging their blood for the sexual pleasure his bite…gives them.”

What would it be like to make love with a vampire?

The room had begun to feel like a sauna. The stool was definitely rubbing me the wrong way. I had thoughts in my head that would have made Lydia blush. And Darcy was staring at me as if he knew exactly what my mind and body were up to.

My only hope now was to go on the attack.

“I’ve been talking to an acquaintance of yours, Mr. Darcy,” I said, deliberately meeting his indigo gaze.

“Indeed?”

I knew he knew what I was going to say. “It’s funny that you never mentioned knowing him when he came to work for Bennet Laboratories.”

“You refer to George Wickham.”

His voice had gone cold enough to turn the sauna into an ice bath. “You were with him in Manhattan, were you not?” he asked.

So he had seen me with George in the alley. Well, George had warned me. Darcy must realize I knew what he and George were. What in hell was I getting myself into?

There was nothing to do but keep bluffing my way through to the end. “George had some interesting things to say about your mutual past,” I said lightly, circling my finger around a ring of condensation on the marble counter.

“I have no doubt.”

I glanced up again. Darcy was no longer just handsome and remote and dangerously sexy. He looked the same way George had just after he’d thrashed those guys outside Brighton: implacable, savage and deadly.

“Wickham has a glib tongue, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “and a certain skill in convincing new acquaintances of his honesty. Whether he can keep their good opinion is another matter entirely.”

“He certainly lost a lot more than just your good opinion, Mr. Darcy.”

“Yes,” he said. “Wickham is always the innocent victim.”

Oh, I badly wanted that second drink now. “I think victim is a very appropriate word.”

His hand came down over mine with all the leashed fury of a tiger deciding to play with its prey before dispatching it. “You had better take care,” he said very softly, “that you do not become his next one.”

Chapter 7

MY BODY WENT BONELESS, AND IT TOOK ALL MY willpower to stay upright on my stool.

“Funny thing about me,” I said, shaping each word with the greatest care. “The more someone tries to scare me, the braver I get.”

His fingers curled over mine. “It is not my intention to frighten you, Miss Elizabeth, but to warn you.”

My eyelids were getting heavy, and I wondered if vampires used some kind of hypnosis as one of their hunting techniques.

“You don’t have to warn me, Mr. Darcy,” my voice sounding slurred and very far away,

Darcy’s was sharp and clear. “You would be well advised to remove Wickham from your employ, madam.”

Madam. I giggled. “Now that’s funny.” I rolled my head around to look into his eyes. “Why were you hanging around outside my window the other night?”

I wasn’t so far gone not to take some satisfaction in Darcy’s expression. For a second he actually seemed taken aback.

“Oh, yes, I saw you,” I drawled. I poked him in the center of his white brocade waistcoat. “I didn’t know you liked bookstores, Mr. Darcy. You should have come in…I’d have picked out something just right for you.”

His expression changed again. Not deadly this time, or surprised. Just intense enough to fry the sun to a cinder.

“And do you know what is just right for me, Elizabeth?” he asked.

Sanity was beginning to return. I tried to wiggle my hand from under his. “I…um…don’t suppose you’re a fan of the romantic poets? Byron, Shelley, those guys?”

“I am not averse to poetry,” he said. “What else can you offer me?”

Oh, boy. “Frankenstein?”

He leaned closer. His breath didn’t smell the way you’d expect the breath of a blood drinker to smell. It was actually very nice. So was the warmth that washed over me, and the steady sound of his breathing, and the way his thumb rubbed up and down over the back of my hand. Oh, so not-undead.

“I did not come to your shop for a book,” he said.

I wasn’t imagining the change in his tone, or fooled by the coolness of his expression. Just as I wasn’t imagining the crazy drumming of my heart or the chemical reactions tearing my willpower to shreds.

“What did you have in mind?” I murmured.

“Darcy!”

Caroline Bingley jostled into my shoulder, nearly knocking me off the stool. Darcy let go of my hand, and I snapped to full alertness. For once I had reason to be grateful to the wench.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” Caroline said, ignoring me completely. “You can’t just sit here when everyone else is having a good time.”

The woman really was blind if she couldn’t recognize the contempt in Darcy’s gaze. “I am having a good time,” he said.

“Oh?” She gave me a vicious, dismissive glance. “Do you enjoy talking about George Wickham, Darcy?”

So she’d been eavesdropping. I should have known, since I’d become so good at it myself. Darcy stared at the counter for a moment and then slid from his stool.

“If you will forgive me, ladies, I have business to attend to.”

Caroline stared after him as he strode away, her skin flushed. When she turned back to me, her smile had become a blunt instrument.

“Elizabeth, dear,” she said, “you should know that Wickham is a very bad man. You won’t get anywhere with Darcy by mentioning him.”

“I’m not trying to get anywhere with Darcy. I leave that to you.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but I was already on my way to find Jane. I hadn’t expected Charles to leave her side for a second, but at the moment she was alone, beaming at the room in general.

I rushed over to her. “How’s it going?” I whispered.

“Oh, Lizzy.”

“I guess that means Charles is as much in love with you as ever.”

She laughed out of sheer happiness, took my arm and pulled me around a corner. “What about you? I saw you talking with Darcy. What did he want?”

I made a face. “I don’t know, but he didn’t exactly defend himself when I brought up George Wickham.”

“You didn’t! What did he say?”

“Some stuff about George having a ‘glib tongue’ and not being honest.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Jane said with a frown. “I mentioned it to Charles, and he seemed to believe that George had done something bad enough to warrant Darcy’s dislike.”

“Does he know what happened?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then all he’s doing is defending a man he considers a friend. That’s only natural.”

“Maybe, but…” She bit her lip. “I guess we’ll have to withhold judgment until we have more facts.”

“Fair enough,” I said. The small band in the corner of the grand salon was tuning up; people were gathering in the central area that had been cleared of furniture. “Here comes the dancing. I think I’ll make myself scarce.”

“Why? I’m sure a lot of the guys here would like to dance with you.”

I didn’t tell her that I’d had enough of dancing at Brighton. “I’d rather watch. You go on and have fun.”

Just then Charles came to claim my sister. So I was spared further arguments for a little while as Jane danced with Charles, the two of them grinning at each other with the vacuous expressions of people in love. The only thing that clouded the picture was Darcy, who stood on the sidelines and stared at the couple with a grim look on his face. It was all I could do not to charge up to him and demand to know what his problem was.

Hadn’t George made that clear enough? I turned around, thinking that what I really needed right now was time to myself. Time to get my messy feelings under control and figure out just what I had to do.

The “ladies’ room” was a huge bathroom with scads of imported marble and fixtures, conveniently situated at the end of the wide corridor. I was halfway there when Darcy literally appeared in front of me. Again.

He bowed. “Miss Elizabeth,” he said formally, “Are you not in the mood for dancing?”

The band had struck up a slow jazz tune for its second number, and the back of my neck began to prickle. “I wouldn’t take you for the dancing type, Mr. Darcy.”

He came closer. “It depends upon the partner.”

“I, uh…” I backed away. “I really have to—”

“Surely you can spare a few minutes.”

Darcy was gazing at me in that scary way, reminding me that I refused on principle to be intimidated by guys like him. Even if the guy could snap my neck like a wishbone. And he wouldn’t dare bite me in such a public place.

Would he?

Risk or not, if he focused on me, Jane was sure to be safe from his resentment. I let him take my hand. I let him pull me into his arms. I tried to keep my body stiff enough to keep him from holding me too close, but it was a useless defense. He was strong. I could feel the strength in the muscles of his shoulders and biceps and pecs through his shirt, waistcoat and jacket. He rested his hand on my back just above my waist, sending shock waves all the way to the virtually nonexistent heels of my ballet flats. When he moved, guiding me in a slow, hypnotic circle, it was like being carried out to sea by a riptide.

We didn’t talk. I couldn’t think of a single impertinent thing to say. Especially when Darcy lowered his head and rested his cheek against mine, breathing softly in my ear. His mouth was very close to the base of my neck.

And I wasn’t afraid. I was too busy experiencing the exquisite ache in parts of my body that hadn’t been active in a pretty long time. I couldn’t really be sexually attracted to him. All this was just more proof that he had some superhuman skill to drive women wild. Look at those women at the vampire club. Look at Caroline, making herself a fool over him, wanting him to…

Darcy’s hand stroked my back. I wanted him to move it a little lower. I wanted to escape. I closed my eyes, aware that he was aroused under his close-fitting breeches. Aroused and very large.

A chasm was opening up under my feet. Another step and I’d be dragging him into an empty bedroom.

“Darcy? Darcy, are you down here?”

We jumped apart. For the second time that evening I owed Caroline a big favor. I didn’t wait to see what Darcy thought of the interruption; I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. My lungs felt like deflated balloons, and I had to lean against the door until I could breathe again.

Someone knocked on the door. I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes had passed, and I’d been standing in the same place the whole time.

Not daring to look in the mirror, I opened the door and let the woman in. She gave me an odd look. “Are you all right?” she asked.

I mumbled some kind of answer and beat a hasty retreat. The music had stopped. I didn’t search for Darcy but went straight to Mom, who was chatting loudly with Dad’s secretary, Mrs. Lucas.

“I’m sure Jane will be picking out a wedding gown any day now,” Mom was saying. “Can you imagine? She’ll be rich, and Bennet Laboratories will be safe. Jane will make sure of that.”

Even I, never known for my reticence, was embarrassed at Mom’s public gloating. “Mom,” I said, smiling at Mrs. Lucas, “I think a button on the back of my dress is coming loose. Can you help me fix it?”

Mom gave me a blank look, blinked and smiled beatifically. “Of course, Lizzy. Will you excuse me, Gladys?”

I flashed Mrs. Lucas an apologetic grin—though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be too disappointed at being relieved of Mom’s incessant gossip—and dragged Mom off to the bathroom. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Darcy staring after us.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS after the party, time seemed suspended. I went through the motions at the bookstore, absurdly grateful that business was a little off. I found myself reaching for Gaiman instead of Grisham and shelved Geometry in with Gardening. I waltzed in the narrow spaces between the shelves, enfolded in imaginary arms.

Then I’d snap out of it again, and remember everything George Wickham had said. The deadly look in Darcy’s eye when I’d mentioned him. The way he’d watched Charles and Jane.

But his voice had been so gentle when he’d asked me to dance. He hadn’t hurt me. He hadn’t hurt Jane. He hadn’t hurt anyone that I knew of. And he’d let Charles come up with an acquisition plan that wasn’t going to cripple my family and my dad’s employees.

How could I have such starkly opposite feelings about him? My head said one thing, my heart another. At closing time I was staring blankly at my computer screen, trying not to look out the window. He hadn’t shown up last night or the night before, and he wasn’t coming tonight. I didn’t want him to come.

The computer chimed, letting me know that I’d received an e-mail. I almost let it go until tomorrow, but at the last minute clicked it open.

Dearest Izba,

I don’t know what to think. Charles has left for England with Caroline. She just e-mailed me from the airport; they’re off to London on some business for the company, and she doesn’t know when they’re coming back.

Oh, Lizzy… I can’t believe this is happening! Why would he go without saying anything to me?

I’ll be at Mom and Dad’s tonight. Please come!

Love,

Your Jane..

Chapter 8

I GAPED AT THE WORDS UNTIL THEY BEGAN TO make sense, shut down the laptop and grabbed my coat and handbag. My hands were shaking as I locked the door.

Left for England? With no word to Jane? It was unbelievable. There was no comfort in reminding myself that vampires had once seemed unbelievable, too.

Without stopping by my apartment, I drove straight to my parents’. Jane was sitting in the living room with Mom and Dad, both of whom wore long faces…though Dad was a lot more subtle about it than Mom, who looked as though she’d lost her credit line at Saks. Even Mary had apparently dropped by to provide her own idea of moral support.

“No woman,” she said gravely, “should ever rely on the consistency of a man’s heart. It’s always a mistake to assume that just because a man seems to like you he plans to marry you.”

“Oh, stuff it, Mary,” I said, throwing my coat over the back of a chair and sitting beside Jane on the love seat. It was pretty obvious that she’d been crying, though she tried to smile in her usual way.

“I’m all right, Lizzy,” she said with a very soft sniff. “I was disappointed at first, but now—”

“Disappointed!” Mom shrieked. “You are heartbroken, darling, and no wonder! He led you on. Oh, I can’t bear it!”

I put my arm around Jane’s shoulders. “Was there more in the e-mail from Caroline you didn’t tell me?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.” She glanced at Mom, who was too busy with her own frustration to pay any attention to us. “She said several times that she and Charles had no intention of returning this year. In fact, she made it pretty clear that they might not come back at all.”

“But that’s ridiculous! Isn’t his business in the U.S.?”

“He lived for quite a while in England before he inherited the company. Darcy has many business interests in London. Caroline said that they’d be staying at Charles’s London flat and at Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire.”

Darcy. I growled, and Jane patted my hand.

“Really, Izba, it’s not necessary—”

“Not necessary! What is going on with these people?” I looked at Dad. “What about the acquisition?”

“On hold,” Dad said, removing his glasses and wiping them with his handkerchief. “There is no guarantee that the same deal will be offered again.”

“That’s the worst of it,” Jane said. “I just hate to think that everyone at BL will suffer because—”

“Because Charles is a heel?”

“Don’t say that.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue. “There must be some good reason.”

Somehow I controlled myself. “What else did Caroline say?”

Jane rose suddenly. “Come with me.”

“Jane!” Mom cried, sitting up. “Where are you going?”

“We’ll be right back, Mom,” I said as Jane pulled me down the hall and into her old bedroom. It was still unchanged from years ago, pink and frilly and neat as a pin.

“See for yourself,” Jane said, pushing a printed sheet into my hand.

It didn’t take long for me to understand why Jane hadn’t wanted Mom around. The e-mail was a lot more explicit than Jane had hinted to me.

Caroline spent a few paragraphs saying how much she’d miss Jane, and then got to the meat of it. She said that she was looking forward to seeing Georgiana, Darcy’s younger sister, at the Derbyshire estate, and went on to rhapsodize about Georgiana’s manifold charms and accomplishments.

I don’t know if I’ve every mentioned this, but I’ve always thought that Georgie would make a wonderful sister. It seems more likely than ever that I’ll get my wish. Charles has always adored her; he’ll be seeing so much of her that I’m sure he’ll realize how happy they’d be together.

I sat down on the bed. “That little—”

“Keep reading, Izba.”

My brother’s marriage to Georgie will make everyone they know very happy and join two prominent and honorable families across the Atlantic. Think how much the combination of these fortunes can achieve. With this money and Charles’s good heart, our company will be able to continue with our cutting-edge research and create the advances that will change the lives of so many people for the better.

“Ha!” I said. “As if she gives a damn about making anyone’s life better. Except her own, that is.”

“Charles told me about Georgie,” Jane said, looking away. “She does sound wonderful.”

“But Charles isn’t in love with her!”

“We don’t know that, Izba.”

“We only have Caroline’s word for any of this. It’s obvious that she didn’t want to see you and Charles together, no matter how much she pretended to be your ‘friend.’ We’re— You’re—not rich or high-class enough for her. But that doesn’t mean Charles’s feelings have changed. If she nags him as much as she nags Darcy, he probably went with her just to shut her up for a while.”

“Maybe you’re right, Lizzy.”

“I am right.” I crumpled the paper and stood up. “This is all talk right now. The woman’s clearly a shrew, and you can trust her just about as much as you can trust a piranha to pass up a succulent set of toes. In a few weeks Charles will be back, and all this will be forgotten.”

I WAS WRONG. A FEW weeks later, Jane got another e-mail that made it very clear that a wedding between Charles and Darcy’s sister was imminent. I’d tried to convince myself that the mastermind behind this separation had to be Caroline, but I couldn’t fool myself any longer.

Darcy had to be at least partly responsible. Whether it was because he wanted to undermine the negotiations, to simply keep Charles under his heel or to see his friend marry his sister, he had more than a little to do with it.

It occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about Georgiana. Was she a vampire, too? I presumed that her parents—and Darcy’s—were long dead, and she wouldn’t still be alive if she weren’t the same as her brother. It was the most logical explanation.

Apparently, vampires married just like normal people. For eternity. In that case, wouldn’t Charles have to be converted, too?

Maybe that was another reason for Darcy’s interference…if he let Charles and Jane get together, a lot more people would know, sooner or later, that vampires existed. If Mom found out, there would be no shutting her up on such a juicy subject.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if the vampires I’d seen at the club seemed particularly nervous about being exposed. According to what George had said, there was an entire subculture of strigoi and their followers in New York.

What if I’d found the courage to confront Darcy outright and make him own up to what he was? Would he have denied it? Would he have felt the need to take some action to silence me?

There wasn’t much point in brooding about that now. Darcy was in England with the others, no longer an immediate source of danger. Jane was safe, too.

But while the rest of the world might have been fooled by Jane’s stiff upper lip, I wasn’t. Mom gnashed her teeth, Mary offered unwanted advice, Kitty and Lydia urged Jane to come to Manhattan and find a “real” man. Jane bore it all like a champion, and in time even the rest of my family conceded that Jane had gotten over Charles.

“Everything will go back to normal now,” Jane said, her eyes shadowed by dark circles like bruises. “I’ll remember Charles as the nicest guy I’ve ever met, but that’s all.”

I smiled and nodded and pretended I didn’t see her pain. Charles had proved to be a huge disappointment; if he couldn’t stand up to Darcy—or his own sister, for that matter—as far as his own happiness was concerned, Jane was well rid of him.

As for George Wickham, I’d hardly exchanged more than a few words with him when he announced that he’d been offered a senior position in a friend’s Los Angeles law firm, an offer he couldn’t refuse. I can’t say that Mr. Mason seemed that sorry to let him go.

I still liked George, vampire or not, and was sorry that I couldn’t continue to quiz him about strigoi life and habits—anything that might give me a basis for fighting Darcy if it ever came to that. George promised me that he’d answer my questions by mail (not e-mail, he said, because he didn’t want that kind of information floating around the internet) and assured me that he hadn’t forgotten his commitment to the battle against Darcy’s kind.

He’d told me the day he left that Darcy would do anything to destroy him. And that he wouldn’t have me or my family suffer because of his history with the man.

I thought that was a very noble attitude, and felt a definite regret after he was gone. I couldn’t really blame him when my letters went unanswered after the first two I wrote. He was incredibly busy, he said, and while vampires didn’t have much need for sleep and had stamina beyond that of the most talented human athlete, even he was beginning to feel the heat of living up to expectations. I knew I had to let him get settled, and managed to turn my attention to other things. Just as I managed, by the end of every day, to stop thinking about Darcy. Until I started all over again.

I finally recognized that I had to take some action, no matter how pointless it might seem. I began to research Darcy’s public background, finances and business interests, hoping to turn up something useful. Everything I could find was rock-solid and completely aboveboard.

Jane and I both had a welcome distraction when our aunt, Sally Gardiner, came over from England to visit. She was a smart, sensible woman who saw things as they were, and her brisk, warm good nature cheered Jane considerably. When she invited Jane to go back with her to London and stay in her and Uncle Edward’s flat until New Year’s, Jane quickly agreed.

If the Bingleys and Darcy were really on a country estate in Derbyshire, it didn’t seem likely that they’d meet Jane or the Gardiners in London. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles, anyway. And though I told myself that Charles would never break ranks to see her on his own, even if he somehow found out she was there, part of me hoped he would.

I didn’t know that Jane had already e-mailed Caroline, telling her she’d be in London. Jane, of course, still hadn’t been able to blame the woman for encouraging Charles into leaving the States. She was bound and determined to give the harpy another chance.

So, for the first few days after Jane and my aunt and uncle arrived at Heathrow, I haunted my computer from five in the morning until midnight. The first few e-mails were all about how much she loved Aunt Sally’s flat, London and England. There was a long stretch when I didn’t hear from her at all. Then, at the end of the third week, she gave me the bad news.

Dearest Izba,

Please don’t tell me, “I told you so.” I know you’ve been trying to warn me about Caroline, but I just couldn’t believe she was as bad as you implied.

Well, I was wrong. Caroline had written back after my first e-mail, mentioning that she’d love to see me. I didn’t hear from her after that—she never came to visit me—so I went to see her at Charles’s flat. Charles was still at Pemberley, but Caroline answered the door.

She was polite. She made it very clear that I wasn’t likely to see Charles anytime soon…he was busy with Mr. Darcy and their business interests in England. She didn’t invite me to stay long; she was off to dinner with friends.

Still, I thought she might finally come to visit me before Christmas. And she did, but it was a disaster. She didn’t even try to be polite. She kept talking about Charles’s forthcoming wedding to Georgiana Darcy, hinted that Charles knew I was in town and made it very clear without actually saying so that she didn’t expect to see much more of me.

So now we know. I don’t understand why Caroline was so friendly with me when I was recuperating at Netherfield, but any friendship we might have had is over. I haven’t seen Charles once, and now I know I never will.

But don’t worry about me. I’m having a great time with Aunt Sally, and Christmas in London is wonderful. I can’t wait to see you again on the second.

Write soon.

Love,

Your Jane

I shoved my chair away from the desk and made a few choice comments that would have made a Hell’s Angel blush. Nothing Jane had said about Caroline had surprised me, but my opinion of Charles had sunk beyond recovery. Jane was better off without him.

And I, as it turned out, was better off without George. Lydia, who had gone to L.A. to spend Christmas with our other aunt, Daisy Phillips, sent a newspaper clipping announcing George’s engagement to one Mary King.

If I felt any regret, it didn’t last long. I was more interested in wondering if Mary King was a vampire, too, and how many laws would be passed against vampire marriage if people knew strigoi existed.

But there was still precious little I knew about vampires. Maybe we’d never see Darcy again. I could only hope so. Still, I was presumably one of a select few “mortals” who realized that such nonhuman creatures haunted our world. Wasn’t it still my duty to learn more as long as there was the slightest chance that Darcy wasn’t through with Bennet Labs?

My resolve hardened when I received another brief e-mail from Jane.

Dearest Izba,

I don’t know what to make of it. Today I saw Mr. Darcy at Harrods. It seemed like a coincidence until I saw him again at the British Museum the next day.

What does he want? He didn’t talk to me…in fact, he disappeared both times when I saw him. I can’t think of any reason he’d be spying on me, can you?

I’d worried that Darcy had some kind of evil interest in Jane, and now I was sure of it. If he’d just wanted to keep her away from Charles, well, he’d already succeeded in that, hadn’t he?

I could think of only one thing to do. If the vampires wouldn’t come to me, I’d have to go to the vampires.

Chapter 9

I HAD BOOKED A HOTEL IN MANHATTAN TO BEGIN my quest, and from the looks of things, Rosings was hopping tonight.

I pulled my shawl around my shoulders, shivering in the frigid December air. Thank God it hadn’t snowed; I’d have fallen in my spike heels. As it was, I’d had to leave my puffy down coat behind; I didn’t think it would make a very good accessory to my little black dress.

Most of the women I saw hanging around the alley were just as inappropriately dressed as I was. Some were wearing a lot less than a skimpy dress. A few milled around in nervous-looking groups, as if they weren’t sure they should be there. The rest were fawning over the guys—and one woman—who obviously regarded the human’s abject worship as their due.

I swallowed, twice, and reminded myself why I was here. George had said that most vampires didn’t hurt humans when they fed—too risky—and preferred willing partners—of whom there were clearly plenty available. I realized there was a chance that one of the “bad” strigoi would be present, but I’d already resolved that gaining knowledge was more important than practicing caution.

I took a step, stumbled, found my footing again and started for the door.

“Hello, beautiful.”

The guy wasn’t handsome. At that point I’d come to believe that being attractive was a requirement for any self-respecting strigoi, George and Darcy being prime examples. This guy was homely at best—short, chubby and balding—and he was so lacking in the charisma of the vampires I knew that I wondered for a minute if he was a vampire at all.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked.

I smiled in what I hoped was a simpering fashion. “Yes.” I leaned toward him, letting him have a look at my cleavage. “Are you really a vampire?”

He showed his teeth and licked them sensuously. I couldn’t mistake the pointed canines.

“Oh!” I said with a shiver that wasn’t completely faked. “I’m so glad to meet you!”

“The pleasure is mutual.” He preened, brushing off the sleeves of his tux. “Do you want to go inside, or have a quickie here?”

My hands had begun to tremble. I buried them in the shawl.

“Inside, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

He grabbed my arm. “Not everyone gets in, you know,” he said. “Especially new donors. But since you’re with me…”

“Thank you so much,” I purred. “What’s your name?”

“William Collins, at your service.”

“I’m Elizabeth. Elizabeth Barrett.”

“I think we’re about to become very good friends, Elizabeth.”

I sincerely hoped not, but I didn’t really have much choice at the moment. I went with him, concentrating on each step. We got up to the door, and the doorman—a beefy guy who didn’t look any more like a vampire than Collins did—passed us through with hardly a glance in my direction.

The place was like one of those grand drawing rooms in nineteenth-century novels, complete with mirrored walls (which reflected everyone in the room, thank you very much), a high ceiling painted with cherubs and classical figures, portraits of glaring ancestors, and intimate arrangements of overstuffed chairs and sofas. Red doors running along two of the walls indicated the presence of other rooms, and I formed a picture of vampires and their groupies enjoying a little bite in blissful solitude. Did Darcy take his entire “harem” with him at once?

There were about a hundred people in the room, but it wasn’t as noisy as you’d expect. In fact, the quiet was downright creepy. Presumably mortal women—and men—draped themselves over strigoi of both sexes (who definitely could not, among so many humans, be mistaken for anything but vampires). There were no orgiastic revels that I could see, no blood on the floor or furniture. None of the groupies seemed to have been hurt in any way. It was all supremely civilized.

“What do you think?” Collins asked, his chest puffed out with pride.

“It’s…it’s incredible.”

“All the doing of my patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

If I hadn’t been firmly planted on my towering heels, I might have fallen on my posterior. George’s words leaped into my mind: “He was converted by his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, at his own request.”

The woman who had changed Darcy into a vampire was here, in this very room.

“There she is, Elizabeth,” Collins said, gesturing toward the head of the room. “Behold!”

I followed his pointing finger. A middle-aged woman with a long, haughty face sat in a high-backed chair raised on a stage-like platform. A smaller chair beside hers was occupied by a sallow younger woman, and several gorgeous young men stood behind the chairs. I noticed right away that the women were dressed in the same kind of high-waisted, Regency-style gowns that Caroline Bingley and I had worn to the Halloween party.

“Is she not the very height of elegance and beauty?” Collins said rapturously. I noted with half my mind that his language had suddenly changed, becoming more formal and accented very much like Mr. Darcy’s. “My patroness,” Collins had said. Were he and Darcy literally blood brothers?

Somehow I managed to gasp out an answer. “She’s…very impressive,” I said in what I hoped was an appropriately awestruck voice. “She runs this place?”

“Runs it?” Collins said, staring at me in indignation. “She does not merely run it, my dear Elizabeth. She presides over the strigoi assembly in Manhattan whenever her duties do not demand her presence in England. She and her daughter, Miss Anne De Bourgh, are admired, feared and loved wherever they appear.”

I cast Lady Catherine de Bourgh a more searching glance. I still had almost no idea how strigoi interacted with each other on a daily basis. How much did conversion change a person? George had indicated that emotions didn’t change afterward, and vampires could obviously hate. Could they love, as well? Did Darcy love his aunt? Could he love anyone?

“I had thought to seek privacy at once,” Collins said, oblivious to my thoughts, “but I believe I shall do you the honor of presenting you to my patroness.”

The last thing I wanted was to have such a woman’s attention drawn to me. “Oh,” I said, shuffling backward, “If you don’t mind, I think—”

“Come, I insist. You need not be afraid. You will find her most obliging to those who recognize her superiority of mind and breeding.”

In other words, if I groveled enough, I’d probably be okay. I let Collins grab my arm again and he pulled me toward the platform.

I expected to be intimidated by a woman who could convert a man like Darcy and lord it over a city’s worth of bloodsuckers, but as I got closer to the platform I started to wonder if Collins had been exaggerating. There was nothing really remarkable about her—except maybe in the size of her nose, which she looked down very skillfully.

Collins almost crawled up to the platform, bobbing and slobbering as he made the introductions. Because I was more than a little scared, I looked straight up at Lady Catherine.

“Hello,” I said, resisting the urge to curtsy.

She said something I couldn’t quite hear, her eyes cold, and Collins replied obsequiously on my behalf. I was occupied with fighting off a severe sense of disorientation and looking for some resemblance between her and Darcy.

It was there, all right, though Darcy seemed to have gotten all the good looks in the family. From the way she was staring, I had a sense that Lady Catherine saw something in me she didn’t like. Could she have some idea who I was? I’d changed my last name, but not by very much. It wouldn’t take a great leap to figure out that Barrett was pretty close to Bennet.

But would Darcy have talked to her about me? George had said he didn’t know if Darcy was under his aunt’s control. Maybe he reported everything to her. Maybe I’d inadvertently walked into a trap.

At least I knew Darcy himself was in England with Charles and Caroline.

Whatever my fears, I was allowed to walk away from Lady Catherine none the worse for wear. I was so shaken, however, that when Collins led me toward one of the red doors I climbed out of the pit and walked right into the pendulum.

“Does Lady Catherine have relatives in the city?” I blurted.

Collins stopped and looked at me in surprise. “Relatives? Are you speaking of protégées?”

“Um, I meant other vam…strigoi.”

He gave me a thoughtful look. “She has a nephew who occasionally appears at Rosings. Why do you ask?”

“Is he called Mr. Darcy?”

“You know Mr. Darcy?”

“I met him once.”

“But how extraordinary!” He frowned. “Did he invite you here?”

“No. No. I mean, I heard about this place after I met him, and wondered…if he comes here sometimes.”

Collins took a step away from me. “You have donated to Mr. Darcy?”

I didn’t know if the chill I felt came from horror or excitement. “No. Some of the girls I know…they were talking about him. He’s supposed to be—”

“He is, of course, one of the most illustrious strigoi in England or America,” Collins said with a sniff. “But he does not bestow his favors indiscriminately.”

Irritation was beginning to overcome my nervousness. “His donors must be very grateful to be chosen.”

“Naturally. Mr. Darcy is known to be extremely generous with his mortal adherents. Many have benefited greatly from his condescension. Perhaps you have heard of Mr. Charles Bingley?”

“The head of that big pharmaceutical company?”

“Indeed. Bingley’s success is entirely due to Mr. Darcy’s guidance.” He drew near me again. “Only recently, he extracted Mr. Bingley from a very infortuitous alliance.”

I stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“His friend was about to offer marriage to a young lady who would have been entirely unsuitable for such a favored mortal, both in breeding and in understanding. Mr. Darcy took steps to ensure that such an alliance would not take place.”

I didn’t hear whatever else Collins said. I was too furious.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, heading for the door.

“But you just arrived!”

“I’m sorry.”

Collins wasn’t the kind of vampire to inspire fear in anyone, and I didn’t expect him to stop me. But he grabbed the trailing end of my shawl with easy strength, and I was too surprised to shrug off the shawl and keep going.

“You must not leave just yet, Elizabeth,” he said in a menacing voice that reminded me of a certain decaying intergalactic emperor. “Not so soon after I introduced you to Lady Catherine. It would not be at all proper.”

“Maybe some other time.”

“I think not.” Collins flashed his teeth at me. “This need not be unpleasant. I flatter myself that I can please my admirers.”

“Believe me, Mr. Collins, I don’t admire you, Lady Catherine, Mr. Darcy or anyone else in this place.”

Collins’s mouth fell open. Then he pulled me against him, and I was reminded that even a wimpy-looking little vampire was still a vampire.

“You will enjoy my company, I think, better than you would greater scrutiny by Lady Catherine,” he whispered. His hot breath blew over my neck. I resisted, but it was like trying to break out of a straitjacket. His teeth grazed my skin.

“Let her go.”

Darcy loomed behind Collins, his expression so lethal that I expected Collins to vanish in a puff of smoke.

But Collins didn’t disappear. He let me go, bowed deeply and let loose a barrage of sickeningly subservient compliments and whining explanations.

I looked up at Darcy, my heart plunging to the polished parquet floor. He briefly met my gaze and then watched Collins scuttle away. Only when the smaller man was out of sight did he look at me again.

“What are you doing here, Miss Elizabeth?” he said.

If Darcy had seemed dangerous in an everyday setting, he was positively menacing here. Every instinct told me to cringe and scuttle away, just like Collins.

But not even mortals are creatures of instinct alone. “I must say, Mr. Darcy,” I said with a defiant smile, “you do have a way of popping up at the most interesting moments.”

Chapter 10

DARCY DIDN’T DIGNIFY MY QUIP WITH A RESPONSE. When he put his arm around my shoulders and steered me toward a cluster of empty seats near the side of the room, I began to understand what those Victorian females felt like just before they collapsed into a graceful swoon. Only mine wouldn’t be so graceful. Darcy all but pushed me onto a sofa and sat beside me.

“Answer me,” he said softly. “Why are you here?”

“I might ask the same of you,” I said, edging away from him. “I thought you were in England with Mr. Bingley.”

“That is of no moment. I asked you—”

“My sister was in London,” I said, anger restoring my courage. “You didn’t happen to see her, did you?”

He seemed surprised at my line of questioning, and some of the arrogance went out of his face. “I did not,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear it. You and Charles left so suddenly that we were a little concerned.”

“You need not have been.”

“Of course, you were taking very good care of Charles, weren’t you?”

Maybe I was getting better at reading his feelings, or maybe he was less skilled at hiding them, but I could have sworn that he looked embarrassed. “He is often in need of care.”

“How lucky he is to have you.”

Darcy shifted on the sofa. “You are obviously in need of advice, Miss Elizabeth, or you would not have come to Rosings.”

“Whose advice should I have listened to, Mr. Darcy?”

He released his breath and glanced around the room, his gaze briefly settling on Lady Catherine. She was staring in our direction.

“Perhaps you are not aware of the perils you may face here,” he said.

“The worst thing I can lose is my blood.”

Could a vampire blush? Darcy looked over my head at the mirrored wall. “You have known for some time,” he said.

“Since before we met at the party. It was pretty clear that you knew I knew, and I knew you knew I knew.” I smiled defiantly. “I’ll admit it was a bit of a shock at first, but I’ve learned to deal with it.”

He looked straight into my eyes, and I knew what gave him so much power over people. Including me. So much so that my body was beginning to react in the same way it had at the Halloween party. If he touched me…

“Why are you here, Elizabeth?” he asked again, his voice gentle and hypnotic. I felt the overwhelming desire to answer honestly, to spill my guts without any thought to the consequences.

“I…I wanted to learn more about vampires.”

“You have chosen the most dangerous way of going about it.”

“I don’t think Collins could have forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”

“You deceive yourself. Even he is capable of compelling your cooperation.”

“I guess he’s like you in that respect.”

His eyes narrowed. “I have never compelled anyone to do my will.”

“No? You’ve resisted every temptation to use your vampire influence to make people do what you want?”

He was about to answer—with some heat, I thought—when Lady Catherine de Bourgh came up behind him. I hadn’t heard her approach, but Darcy was thoroughly composed by the time the woman joined us.

“What are you speaking of, Darcy?” she demanded. “I must know what you’re talking about.”

Darcy half turned toward her, emotionless and controlled. “The subject would not be of interest to you, Aunt.”

“Everything that occurs here is of interest to me.” She gave me a calculating, distinctly unfriendly glance. “I did not know this girl was of interest to you.”

“I was just leaving,” I said, popping out of my seat. “Thanks for your hospitality, Lady Catherine.”

Darcy rose with me. “She is most assuredly of interest to me,” he said, meeting his aunt’s stare. “If you will forgive us.” He bowed, ignoring the lady’s obvious outrage, and grabbed my poor, abused arm. Striding at such a fast pace that I had to run to keep up with him, he led me to one of the red doors, opened it and ushered me through.

I won’t lie and say I wasn’t scared. There was good reason to be. The room looked like a bordello, all red velvet, huge bed and very low light. Darcy released me as soon as the door was closed and kept his distance, but I didn’t feel reassured.

Giving the bed a wide berth, I edged toward the door, trying to think of some subject completely unrelated to blood drinking. I didn’t quite succeed.

“I’m surprised you didn’t need Lady Catherine’s permission to bring me in here,” I said.

He seemed distracted, and his voice was sharp when he answered. “She has no control over me,” he said.

“Didn’t she convert you?”

“There are ways to overcome…” He stopped, turning his darkest frown in my direction.

“I really do need to go,” I said.

“You are afraid of me.”

“Not at all. But I prefer to make my own decisions about who I hang out with.”

He moved his shoulders in a gesture I couldn’t interpret and began to pace from one side of the room to the other. “You must not judge all of us according to Collins’s behavior.”

“You just warned me that I might be in danger here, so there must be more where he came from,” I said pointedly.

“How is your family?”

Aha. A sudden change of subject. “They’re well for the most part, though my father is concerned about the family business. You know, the one Charles was about to acquire on terms favorable to Bennet Labs and its employees.”

Darcy paused in front of the far wall and took an audible breath. “Miss Elizabeth—”

“Mr. Darcy, I—”

He spun around so quickly that I was already running for the door before I’d even had a chance to think about it. He was there first.

“It will not do,” he said, his expression shockingly anguished. “My feelings will not be repressed.” He grabbed me, lifted me off my feet and kissed me.

Now, I’ve been kissed before. Several times. Sometimes I enjoyed it, sometimes I didn’t. But this time…

Oh, this time I shot straight to the moon, made a few orbits and crash-landed in the Sea of Euphoria. I tangled my fingers in his thick black hair, opening my mouth to welcome his thrusting tongue and meeting it with my own.

At some point we came up for air, and that was when I remembered where I was. Darcy loosened his hold just enough to let me wriggle free. I stumbled back until I reached the wall and tried to catch my breath, astonished and mortified.

“Elizabeth,” he said, hoarse and breathing just as fast as I was. “You must make me the happiest of men and allow me to take you under my protection.”

They say laughter is the best medicine. All that came out was a squeak. “Under your protection? Is that what you call it?”

I had meant to provoke him, but he actually seemed bewildered. It was a moment of weakness that almost—almost—made me sympathize with him.

He seemed to take my silence for encouragement. “I have admired you since we were first acquainted,” he said. “I have never met a woman like you in my two centuries of life. I offer you everything you could possibly desire: every comfort, every luxury and my complete devotion.”

It wasn’t easy, but I maintained my defenses. “In exchange for what? My blood? My body? My eternal obedience?”

His voice softened. “Not obedience, my dear Elizabeth. I shall never force you in any way.” He took up his agitated pacing again, his fists curling and uncurling at his sides. “It is not a request that I make lightly. I have fought my own feelings every day since our introduction. I am very discriminating in my choice of human companionship. I am well aware that you are from a common family of limited understanding, despite your many admirable qualities. Our association will require great circumspection on my part. My aunt will be deeply disturbed by such an alliance, and will frequently make her feelings known.” He turned to face me. “Nevertheless, I am willing to make such sacrifices if you will consent to my request.”

His request. I still wasn’t sure if he was offering to make me his mistress or his convert, but it didn’t matter. I’d heard enough.

“How many times have you made such a ‘request’?” I asked hanging on to my courage by a thread of panic at my own embarrassing instinct to accept him. “What about your harem of devoted fans? Do you plan to give them up, too?”

“My harem? What—”

“How many women—and men—have you converted, with or without their consent?”

He had been moving toward me, but now he stopped again and searched my face as if he were really seeing me for the first time. His eyes took on a cast I could only describe as feral, and his lip curled.

“Who has been telling you these lies?” he demanded. “Was it Wickham?”

“Are they lies? Isn’t it true that you converted George against his will?”

“You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” he snapped.

“Anyone who knew about what happened to him would be interested,” I retorted.

A vampire’s contempt was a terrible thing. “Oh, yes. What happened to him was terrible indeed.”

I moved a step away from the wall, my own fists clenched. “I’m glad you can joke about ruining a man’s life.”

He made a sound of disgust. “Then you choose to believe his story.”

“Maybe if that were the only strike against you, I might be more skeptical. But you’ve deliberately hurt my family, ‘common’ as it is, by separating Jane from the man who loves her. You’ve undermined Charles’s intentions for letting Bennet Laboratories keep some independence under Bingley Pharmaceutical’s ownership. Then you tell me that you want me against your better judgment. That’s a pretty strange way of showing affection!”

He looked away, his profile stark and his body rigid. “So this is your opinion of me,” he said quietly. “By this light my faults must seem egregious indeed. Yet I believe you would not have judged me so harshly if your own feelings had not been wounded.”

I edged toward the door again. “You’re wrong, Mr. Darcy. From the very beginning I’ve been aware of your belief in your own superiority, even before I knew you were a vampire. You’ve never given a damn about anyone else’s feelings. You pretend to be a gentleman, but your arrogance has just made it easier for me to turn you down.”

Without waiting for his answer, I opened the door and walked out. He didn’t try to stop me. I headed straight for the entrance, aware of Lady Catherine’s stare burning into my back, and practically ran all the way to the street.

I’ve never been a crier, but once I was in my hotel room, I threw myself on the bed and sobbed until my nose was stuffed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Even when I was looking at my puffy eyes and flushed face in the bathroom mirror, I was thinking that I was glad Darcy would never see me like this. Never again tell me that he’d admired me from the day we’d met. Never again ask to “protect me.” Never kiss me. Never make love to me.

There really wasn’t any other answer I could have given. I knew that. Darcy hadn’t denied that he’d worked to separate Jane and Charles. He’d made fun of George.

But he’d also accused me of “choosing to believe” George’s story. He was, in effect, calling George a liar.

Just another attack, I told myself. But I lay awake in bed, watching one of those endless thigh-buster infomercials, and wished I could order up a nice, all-consuming black hole from room service.

Chapter 11

BY MORNING I WAS MY USUAL SELF, DETERMINED to put last night’s fiasco out of my mind. But when I pulled on my robe and stumbled toward the bathroom, there was an envelope lying just inside the door. I opened it to find expensive-looking stationery painstakingly covered in an elegant cursive.

Be not alarmed, madam, that this letter contains any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten.

I nearly tossed the letter on the floor, but an obsessive curiosity kept me reading. I won’t repeat everything he said here; let’s just say that when I was finished, I was very tempted to throw myself on the bed and cry for a couple more hours.

It wasn’t an apology. It was a calm, cool recitation of facts laying out what Darcy had felt and done since we’d met. He talked about observing Charles with Jane, and noting that Charles had never showed such “partiality” for a woman before. He’d learned that there was an expectation of marriage and had watched even more closely.

Instead of concluding that Jane and Charles were in love, he became certain that Jane, open and friendly as she was, didn’t have the same regard for Charles as he did for her. He’d concluded that her heart “was not likely to be easily touched.”

That alone would have been enough for me to tear the letter into tiny pieces and flush it down the toilet, but he went on to admit that there was even more behind his objection to the potential marriage. He had come to believe that Charles’s generous concessions in the negotiations with BL were the result of a deliberate attempt by my family to influence him by getting him to fall in love with Jane. Because of this conviction, Darcy had persuaded Charles to leave America, avoid Jane in England and give up all idea of marriage to her.

I was seconds away from raiding the mini-bar for every tiny bottle of alcohol it contained when I read the bit where he admitted that he might have been wrong in his suspicions and his judgment of Jane—that, in fact, he should have known that any sister of mine would never consent to such deception. From a guy like Darcy, this was a major confession.

So I kept on reading. About George Wickham…almost the same story George had told me, but from a very different perspective. Darcy’s father had loved George as a son, put him through school and given him everything he could want. When Darcy had inherited the estate, George had lived in “idleness and dissipation” and thrown his money into gambling, chasing women and flitting from one career to another.

There was more about a “living” Darcy’s father had meant George to have, and George’s demand that he be given the worth of the living in cash. Sometime while he was off in London wasting the money, George had been turned into a vampire. Darcy later learned that he’d acquired a bevy of women followers and had converted more than a few against their will.

Once George had gone through all the money in his usual way, he’d returned to Pemberley to demand the living as his due. When Darcy had refused, George had decided to take revenge and had begun to work on seducing Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, who was only sixteen years old at the time.

That wasn’t the worst of it. When Wickham found out that Darcy had discovered what he was up to, he’d run off with Georgiana and forcibly converted her. Not only had Georgiana become a vampire like her elder brother, but she had nearly died as a result, falling prey to some rare disease that affects only one in a hundred converts.

This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together. If you accept any part of it as truth, I hope you will acquit me of any cruelty toward Mr. Wickham. I do not know how he convinced you of his lies, but considering how little you knew of him, and his natural ability to charm, I can hardly be surprised that you believed him.

My eyes were getting blurry by the time I read the last line. Maybe I should have been more skeptical of the things Darcy had revealed in his letter. He hadn’t said anything about how he had become a vampire, or why Georgiana wasn’t still under Wickham’s power. But Darcy didn’t want me anymore; he had no earthly reason to lie about anything.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let the letter fall from my hands. I had every reason to be furious with Darcy over his opinion of my family, his belief that Jane had conspired against Charles and his assumption that I’d be thrilled to offer my neck to him.

But Charles had told Jane that Darcy might have reason to dislike George, and I remembered that Wickham, for all his pretty words, had made promises he hadn’t kept. He’d run away rather than face Darcy as he’d claimed he intended to do. He’d dropped me, and my family, like a stone.

Darcy was far from perfect; he’d improve considerably if someone would take him down a few pegs. And at least he was sincere. He hadn’t forced me when I’d refused him, when he could easily have done so.

I fell back on the bed and covered my face with a pillow. I wasn’t fooling myself. There was one more reason I didn’t crumple the letter into a ball and consign it to the trash can.

I was in love. In love with a vampire.

I laughed until my throat was sore and my chest ached. The joke was on me. I barely knew the guy, and what I did know about him wasn’t exactly reassuring.

But that was why I couldn’t just sit here in my hotel room and wallow in emotional martyrdom, or return to New Haven and pretend none of this had happened. It had happened. And the only way to prove to myself that I hadn’t gone stark raving mad was to face the problem head-on.

Tossing the pillow aside, I sat up and scrubbed at my face. Darcy was in New York, which meant I’d probably be safe enough for the time being. Jane would be in London for one more week. I could catch a flight first thing tomorrow; the hope of finding some sort of resolution was worth the expense.

First I’d see Jane and tell her what I should have told her weeks ago. Oh, not everything—not until I was satisfied that I had a few more answers. I’d already done the research on Darcy’s public business connections in England; while in London, I’d talk to anyone I could find who was willing to be honest about his or her dealings with him. I’d scour the neighborhood around Charles’s flat for any clues about Darcy’s habits, behavior and treatment of the mortals he came in contact with every day. If that wasn’t enough, I’d take a trip up to Derbyshire and grill the people living around Pemberley.

I’d bluff, wheedle and lie my way to the truth about Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy—whether he was the monster George had described, or a basically good guy who’d been handed a raw deal two hundred years ago.

A guy I might actually be able to love without despising myself. Not that it would make any difference now that Darcy had made clear how much he despised me. If I had been wrong about him all along, I had only myself to blame.

JANE REACTED EXACTLY THE WAY I’d expected she would, but much more nicely than I would have done in her place.

The only thing that convinced her in the end was her absolute faith in me. Once she knew I wasn’t teasing, she could only sympathize with what I’d been through.

“Oh, Izba. And to think you’ve had to carry this secret for weeks! You should have told me right after you talked to George!”

Dear Jane. Once she was with me, she was with me all the way. I naturally didn’t tell her how Darcy had conspired to separate her and Charles, or what he’d believed about her motives; I was deliberately vague about Darcy’s proposition to me. But I explained what George had said, and how Darcy had refuted Wickham’s claims.

“It’s unbelievable!” Jane said, completely unaware that she seemed far more shocked by George’s apparent lies than by the fact that he wasn’t human. “He seemed so nice. And you liked him, Lizzy!” She didn’t let me defend myself, but went on to sympathize with poor Mr. Darcy.

“Just think how awful it must have been to see his sister turned into a vampire against her will. I can’t believe that any friend of Charles would punish George by doing the same thing to him, or hurt people just for the fun of it! And Lizzy, he couldn’t possibly love you if he were so bad.”

I’d protested that he didn’t love me, but she’d made up her mind. And Jane, having made up her mind, was a formidable opponent. She insisted on helping me in my investigative work, but I begged her not to get involved and promised I’d give her regular updates as to my progress.

Making progress was not as difficult as I’d feared. Not everyone was willing to talk with me—a strange American—about Darcy. But those who did had almost entirely good things to say about him. He was not effusive in his behavior but was uniformly generous, kind and pleasant with his employees, fellow businessmen and the people who worked in the surrounding area. I saw no indication that anyone knew what he really was.

I thought several times about visiting Charles’s London flat in hopes of finding him there, but that meant I’d probably meet Caroline, as well. I didn’t want to give Jane any further cause for humiliation.

I finally decided that I had to take a shot at Pemberley. Like so many historic estates in England, the place was open part of the time for tour groups. The odds of Darcy being there were small; I hadn’t heard that he’d come back to London.

I had just returned to Aunt Sally’s flat from my latest interrogatory outing when Jane told me that she’d been invited to spend a few nights in Paris with one of our English cousins. She didn’t want to leave me, but I convinced her that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Once she found out that I was going to Derbyshire, Aunt Sally insisted on coming with me. She’d been born in Derbyshire—in the very area where Darcy’s estate stood—and I couldn’t think of a good way to refuse her.

My first sight of Pemberley gave me a thrill I hadn’t expected. It was a magnificent stone structure set on a low hill amid an extensive wood of fine old trees, and I could imagine it having looked exactly the same way two hundred and more years ago, inhabited by elegant lords and ladies of the ton.

And vampires.

Part of me wanted to turn tail then and there. But Aunt Sally was bursting with praise and enthusiasm, so my sense had a chance to overcome my sensibility. Several tour buses were parked in a gravel lot off to the side, along with a dozen or so cars. We parked, bought tickets and joined one of the tour groups.

I could never think about that visit again without remembering how beautiful it all was, how well-proportioned and handsomely furnished the rooms were, suggesting that someone had good taste untainted by a need for ostentation. The views from the windows were astonishing. When the guide led us through a gallery filled with portraits of Darcy ancestors, I noticed right away that the last few resembled him to the point that they were almost indistinguishable except for dress and background.

“Mr. Darcy’s recent ancestors,” the woman guide announced with obvious pride. “His father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. All were painted at the age of thirty years. The entire family has been blessed with longevity as well as good looks, as you can see.” Some of the women in the group tittered, and I felt a spark of irrational jealousy.

“They do seem to show a remarkable resemblance to the current Mr. Darcy,” my aunt said. “Of course, I’ve only seen his photographs in the papers, and then only once or twice. Is he really as handsome as that in person?”

The guide looked at me with interest. “Does the young lady know Mr. Darcy?”

I could feel my face turning red. “A little,” I mumbled.

She looked very pleased at this admission, and quickly led the group to another portrait, this of a young girl with cascades of blond hair and a sweet expression.

“Mr. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana Darcy. She was named after a distant relation, a cousin of Mr. Darcy’s great-grandfather.”

“She’s lovely,” my aunt murmured.

She was. Like Darcy, she probably hadn’t changed a bit in two hundred years…perpetually sixteen, with no hope of getting any older, of having regular dates, a real boyfriend or any of the other growing pains most kids lived through before they were wise enough to know better.

“The Darcys have always had an excellent reputation in Derbyshire, and in the whole of England,” the guide said. “They have been excellent employers. Many charitable institutions have benefited greatly from their generosity.” She lowered her voice to whisper in my ear. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never known a better boy or man. Not like the wild young men today, who think of nothing but themselves. Some people think he’s proud, but in my opinion, it’s only because he doesn’t speak until he has something to say.”

I didn’t know what to think, let alone what to say. This was exactly what I’d wanted to know, wasn’t it? Didn’t it confirm what I’d already been told by the people in London?

The tour group moved on, but I stayed behind, staring at the portraits. When I found myself alone, I didn’t run after the others but turned straight for a door marked No Entry.

The door opened up to a corridor, and the corridor led to several rooms which I guessed must belong to the family. One of them held a huge grand piano; another was an office with bookshelf-lined walls and thick binders on a wide oak desk.

Feeling like a thief, I snuck into the room and closed the door. Some instinct drew me to the desk. It was neat, without a single random sheet of paper or loose pen anywhere in evidence. The blotter was spotless. I knew without looking any further that it must belong to Mr. Darcy.

I thought about it for a few seconds and then opened one of the binders. It was stuffed with page after page of sheets mounted behind plastic, letters and certificates that offered sincere gratitude to a man named Mr. F. Darcy. Some were honorary degrees, others formal acknowledgments, still others simple thank-you letters. Each one mentioned some liberal donation to a charitable institution or medical center, a children’s hospital or human-rights organization. One letter told of the work that would be done with the money: experimental research on the blood disorders and cancers of children. The amounts received were in the tens and hundreds of thousands.

Darcy had done this. A vampire, contributing to the welfare of the mortals he had seemed to despise. Caroline had said as much, and I, in my anger, had refused to believe it. I closed the binder and opened another one, my heart filled with a terrible joy.

“Hello?” a soft voice said.

I spun around, guilt pasting a stupid smile on my face. “Um, hello!” I said brightly. “I know I shouldn’t be in here, but—”

I stopped. The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen, with very pale skin and cascades of golden hair.

I’d met Georgiana Darcy at last.

Chapter 12

“YOU’RE MISS DARCY!” I BLURTED BEFORE I COULD think.

The girl smiled. “Yes, I am. Are you with the tour group?”

“I, uh…I’m really sorry. I wandered off and lost my way….”

“It’s all right.” She came nearer and laid her small, pale hand on the desk. “I don’t mind.”

My heart settled into a slow gallop. “I didn’t know the family was here,” I said.

“I’m here most of the time,” she said. “Usually it’s just me, Mr. Cavendish and my governess.”

A governess, for God’s sake. Poor kid. “Your house is beautiful,” I said.

“Yes, it is. My brother always makes sure it’s comfortable, too.” She pushed a strand of hair away from her gentle face. “You’re an American, aren’t you? How I’d love to see the Grand Canyon, and the deserts, and the Pacific Ocean.”

“You’ve never been?”

“No. I—” She lowered her head, covered her mouth and coughed. I remembered what Darcy had written about her having suffered from some kind of strigoi disease.

I started toward her. “Are you all right?”

She dropped her hand. “Yes, thank you for asking.” She looked at me as if she could see past all the defenses and peer into my soul.

She’s a vampire, idiot, I told myself. But there was no threat about her. She behaved like any ordinary teenager, except that she was a lot more polite.

And innocent. Could a vampire be innocent?

“Your brother,” I said cautiously, “seems to be quite a philanthropist.”

“Oh, yes.” Her face lit up again, nearly blinding me with the love that shone from it. “He’s such a good man.”

I looked down at the binders. “I didn’t know,” I muttered.

“Didn’t know what?”

“Um…I didn’t know…that anyone could be so generous.”

She cocked her head, and I had the distinct feeling that she didn’t believe my answer. “My brother doesn’t usually advertise it,” she said. “You’re very interested in him, aren’t you?”

I knew my expression was much too bland. “It’s always interesting to find out about the people who live in these mansions.”

“But you speak as if you know him.”

How she’d gathered that from what I’d said I didn’t know, but I was convinced in that moment that she had guessed at least part of the truth.

“I met him once, in New York,” I said.

“He goes there often on business. How did you meet him?”

“At a party.” That was the truth, wasn’t it?

The intensity in her blue eyes reminded me far too much of her brother. She stroked her hand over the surface of the desk. “Do you mind if I ask…what is your name?”

Someone else answered for me.

“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” Darcy said, walking into the room. I expected him to be disdainful, if not furious, but as his eyes met mine I saw only surprise and consternation. “I did not know you were in England.”

“I didn’t know you were at Pemberley!” I stammered.

“Elizabeth Bennet!” Georgiana cried, clapping her hands. “How wonderful!”

Darcy, dressed in an ordinary but superbly cut business suit, seemed more off balance than ever. “You have met my sister, Miss Elizabeth,” he said.

“Yes.” I smiled at Georgiana, not wanting her to feel the excruciating tension in the room.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Georgiana said, linking her arm through Darcy’s.

“You have?”

“Yes. So many good things.”

Darcy had been talking about me? Why? And why had I been so stupid as to risk coming here if there was any chance he’d be here, too?

Whatever Darcy was thinking, he didn’t let it show. He smiled at his sister and stroked her hair. “It’s time for you to rest,” he said.

“Oh, but I want to visit with Miss Bennet!”

“You will have your chance.” He glanced at me and quickly looked away again. “You may play for Miss Bennet after dinner.”

With a sigh and a nod of acquiescence, Georgiana left the room. Darcy cleared his throat.

“If you will forgive me, Miss Elizabeth, I must see to my sister. If you would be so good as to wait in the small drawing room at the end of the corridor…”

“I shouldn’t be here at all,” I said. “I should get back.”

He turned to face me full-on, and all the bones in my body threatened to melt. “My sister would be gratified if you would stay to dinner,” he said.

“Oh. Well, thanks, but I’m with my aunt.”

“She is also welcome.” He didn’t smile, but his eyes weren’t cold. Quite the contrary. “I would not ask for myself, but Georgiana will be most disappointed if you refuse.”

Not for himself. Okay, then I was safe. Just like all the other times I’d told myself I had nothing to worry about.

“In that case, my aunt and I will be honored.”

He stared at me a moment longer, bowed and left the room.

I collapsed into the desk chair. Was this really happening? Hadn’t Darcy made it clear he didn’t want anything more to do with me?

He didn’t exactly welcome you with open arms. But I didn’t want him to. Did I?

Finding my strength again, I rushed into the corridor and through the door to the public area, searching frantically for Aunt Sally. She was shocked at my appearance and worried that I had taken ill. When I told her about the invitation, she shook her head in amazement.

“Jane told me about Mr. Darcy,” she said, “But I was under the impression that you and he didn’t like each other.”

“Well, I…I don’t know what to make of it, Aunt Sally, but I don’t think it would be very polite to refuse, would it?”

She agreed, and so when a dignified gentleman—a Mr. Cavendish—met us at the front door to confirm that we were to attend dinner, we accepted. We returned to the bed-and-breakfast we’d booked for the night, washed and dressed (I’d brought one decent outfit with me, thank God) and were on our way to my rental car when a limousine pulled up, sent from Pemberley.

On our arrival, I clutched my aunt’s arm as the driver escorted us to a side door used as the family’s entrance. Mr. Cavendish led us down another hallway to a room that reminded me of Charles’s grand salon at Netherfield, but much more glamorous. Sitting on one of the sofas was Caroline Bingley, and across from her in a Directoire chair was Charles.

I stopped, stock-still, and only my aunt’s urgent whisper kept me going. Charles got to his feet with his usual, exuberant grin.

“Elizabeth!” he said. “I’m so glad to see you!” He pumped my hand, nearly detaching it from my arm. “You remember my sister, Caroline.”

I nodded in the woman’s direction, and she gave me an icy nod in return. She didn’t look at all happy.

I soon began to understand why. When Darcy and Georgiana walked into the room, Darcy ignored Caroline, and Georgiana walked right past Charles with only a brief glance in his direction. Not exactly an indication of the kind of “adoration” Caroline had implied she felt for Charles. Maybe he didn’t want to marry a sixteen-year-old girl (who wasn’t really sixteen). Or maybe they had never intended to get married at all.

I’d been prepared to be very mad at Charles, but it wasn’t possible to maintain the feeling. He asked several times about my family, and the way he skirted around any mention of Jane, in particular, told me that she was very much on his mind. He spoke ruefully of the good times we’d had together, and when I introduced him to my aunt, he seemed ready and willing to keep her entertained. Part of me was starting to hope that he was so interested because he still cared for Jane.

While Georgiana chattered gaily, pelting me with questions about America and my life there, Darcy stood by the mantel-piece and watched me. This time I didn’t feel any judgment from him, only a kind of melancholy. I felt the same way myself. I’d clearly misjudged him on most counts—I’d never done anything but mock him—and yet he’d wanted me to share his life.

The dinner was incredible. A round, cheerful woman served the dishes with the help of the butler, Mr. Cavendish, and the mood was almost relaxed. Even Darcy seemed in better spirits. He and Georgiana ate along with everyone else. Neither brother nor sister seemed to feel any particular urge to run out and find some willing mortal to bite.

Does Darcy keep a harem here? I wondered, determined to torment myself into indifference. It didn’t work. I was more aware of Darcy, and my attraction to him, than ever before.

Near the end of the meal Georgiana swayed in her seat, and Darcy jumped up to catch her. I helped lift her out of her chair, and Darcy’s hand brushed mine.

“She must go up to bed,” he said. “Please make yourself comfortable in the drawing room. Ask Cavendish for anything you require.”

I could barely finish my dessert because the hand he had touched had gone numb. When we all went to the drawing room, Aunt Sally sat down next to me.

“There is something very interesting in the way Mr. Darcy is staring at you,” she whispered.

“He does that,” I said, flustered by her perceptiveness. “And not just to me. At home—”

“Come off it, Lizzy. He’s obviously taken with you.” She lowered her voice. “He must be in love with you.”

I sputtered some answer, but she only gave me a knowing look and took the coffee Mr. Cavendish offered. At some point my cell phone rang; I was so discombobulated that I didn’t answer. When Darcy returned, we all went for a walk in Pemberley’s extensive gardens. Darcy set out to charm my aunt, smiling more than I’d ever seen him do before.

Could he be in love with me? He’d never said anything about love at Rosings. I’d wondered if vampires were even capable of the feeling, but Darcy and his sister clearly loved each other very much.

It wasn’t until we were back at the B and B and I, in a state of total confusion, was drifting through the evening’s ablutions that my cell rang again and I forced myself to pick it up.

Ten minutes later I was pounding on the bathroom door. My aunt came out, a towel wrapped around her hair.

“What in heaven’s name is it, Lizzy?” she asked.

It took a few minutes, because I was crying and had to start over twice. I explained everything, from George’s revelations about vampires to my own personal confirmation of their existence, finishing with the part about Wickham and his attack on Georgiana.

I didn’t expect Aunt Sally to take it all in as quickly as Jane had, but she surprised me. There had apparently been legends of nightwalkers in that part of Derbyshire for centuries, which she’d believed as a child. The Darcys had always had an aura of mystery about them that had led to much speculation through the years.

“I never thought it would be real,” she murmured. “But as vivid as your imagination can be, Lizzy, I know you are not insane. If you say it is true, I believe it.”

After a grateful hug, I told her the worst part. She got up, went downstairs and returned with a bottle of wine and glasses supplied by the innkeepers.

“Here,” she said. “We must think clearly, but first we must calm down.”

I gulped the wine and told myself I wouldn’t start crying again. When Mrs. Rainsford came up to tell us that we had a visitor, I dashed downstairs in a loose shirt and jeans, praying it would somehow be more news of Lydia.

Darcy was waiting in the sitting room. He jumped to his feet when I barreled in.

“Miss Elizabeth!” he said, starting toward me. “Good God! What is the matter?”

Unable to contain my worry, I repeated what Jane had told me, which she’d learned from Dad only a few hours ago. Lydia had run off with George Wickham in L.A. She’d sent an e-mail to Kitty boasting about it, and how George had promised to show her a new way of life that would make her rich and free her from the necessity of ever working again. Dad and Mom were upset, though not really worried yet. I was the one who knew the truth.

“When I think that I might have prevented it,” I said, pacing around the tiny little room. “I knew what he was. If only I’d told Lydia, my family—” I collapsed onto the sofa. Darcy remained where he was, and I was grateful that I couldn’t see his face.

“I am grieved,” he said. “Does any of your family know where she is?”

“No. Oh, God.” I pushed my face into the upholstery. “Even if I tell everyone the truth, how can they possibly stop a vampire who has already destroyed at least one life?”

He was so quiet that I thought he’d left, but he wasn’t quite ready to abandon me to my misery. “I am afraid you have long desired my absence,” he said. “If only there were something I could do that might offer consolation.”

I choked out some kind of thanks, and he drifted away. I had the feeling I’d never see him again. If it hadn’t been for my fear for Lydia, I might have raided Mrs. Rainsford’s kitchen for every bottle of wine she had.

But Aunt Sally was right. I had to keep my head. I ran upstairs and told Aunt Sally that I had to get to London at once, collect Jane and take the first possible flight back to New York.

We were packed and ready in half an hour. Aunt Sally went down to speak to Mrs. Rainsford while I went to get the car.

I didn’t hear the footsteps coming up behind me. I wasn’t prepared when a woman’s voice called my name, and I turned to see Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

“Elizabeth Bennet,” she said, baring her teeth. “How convenient to find you here.”

And then she bit me.

Chapter 13

I WOKE UP IN A DAMP, DARK ROOM, MY MOUTH tasting like mothballs and my neck aching like the devil. I touched the little puncture wounds. They weren’t very big, and they weren’t bleeding.

But a vampire had bitten me. I didn’t feel as if I’d changed, but then again I didn’t know how long a conversion would take…if that was what Lady Catherine had intended.

Oddly enough, I didn’t panic. I struggled to my knees and looked around. I seemed to be in some kind of cellar; the only light came from a half-blocked window set in one of the dank brick walls. From what I could see, the room was nearly empty except for a pile of rope, loose bricks and some broken pieces of wood. I heard squeaking and tried to pretend I hadn’t.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Last time I’d seen her, she was lording it over the vampire drinking club. She hadn’t shown any liking for me then. Now she was in England, and she obviously had it in for me. How she’d known where to find me, or what she wanted, wasn’t as clear.

George had said she’d converted Darcy, and Darcy had pretty much confirmed that. But Darcy had also made clear that he wasn’t under her control, and he hadn’t behaved as if he took her very seriously.

Still, this had to have something to do with his relationship to Lady Catherine. Maybe she was jealous of any woman, vampire or mortal, who got near him. It was all wild speculation at this point. And all the speculation in the world wouldn’t get me out of danger now. I knew in my heart that Darcy wouldn’t save me this time. Lady Catherine wouldn’t have done any of this if she thought I might be rescued.

Okay, Lizzy, I thought. What will get you out?

I got up, groaning at the stiffness in my legs. How long had I been here? Hours? A day? I had no sense of the passing of time, but my mouth was bone-dry and my stomach was growling.

Feeling my way, I explored the room. I crouched to examine the wood pieces. Several of them had been broken into sharp points. The rope, while a little mildewed, was still in one piece.

Maybe, as George said, it would take a lot more to kill a vampire than a stake through the heart, but I was willing to give it a try. Lady Catherine wouldn’t leave me here indefinitely. She’d be back, and I’d be ready.

Gathering up the stakes, I hauled the rope to the back of the room. I knew Lady Catherine was twice as strong as I was, if not more; I’d have to rely on the element of surprise. If I had to go, I’d go knowing that Darcy wouldn’t think I was a helpless little human female.

After a few hours the room got darker, and I guessed that night had fallen. I fell asleep, jerked myself awake and listened, my nerves stretched well past the breaking point. The door opened and a pair of hulking men came in, lifted me by my arms and dragged me out of the building. The sticks and rope stayed behind.

There weren’t any streetlamps in the vicinity, and I had no hope of breaking the men’s painful grip. I had the idea that I was still in the country, and I was convinced of that when the men half carried me across a field, past a tiny country road and through a wood to an estate at least as big as Pemberley.

Lady Catherine was holding court in an immense drawing room dripping with gold paint, red velvet and black drapes heavy enough to smother a dinosaur. Several young men lounged around her chair, all of them startlingly handsome. Lady Catherine’s daughter sat on a smaller chair beside her.

“So, Miss Bennet,” Lady Catherine said as the men threw me at her feet. “You can be at no loss to understand the reason for your being here.”

“All I know is that you’re guilty of kidnapping,” I said, climbing to my knees.

Lady Catherine snorted. “It is much more than that, my dear.”

I stuck up my chin. “You should know that people will be looking for me. My aunt—”

“Your aunt,” Lady Catherine said scornfully, “has been taken care of.”

I got about a half step toward her before her thugs hauled me back. “What have you done to her?” I demanded.

“She is unharmed. And you may remain so, should you give me certain assurances.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You ought to know that I am not to be trifled with. Do you deny that you have, by your arts and allurements, seduced my nephew into offering you his patronage?”

I laughed weakly. “Why would he do that? He’s been working against my family since we met.”

“I saw you at Rosings. I observed the nature of his infatuation, which would never have come about were he in his right mind.”

“You know him better than I do. Is he in his right mind?”

She surged to her feet. “Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? Mr. Darcy is my kind, bound to me. As he is shortly to be bound in matrimony to my daughter, Anne.”

Anne de Bourgh gave me a blank look. I stared back. “How lucky for him. Are you sure Darcy wants it?”

“You are an ignorant mortal of no understanding. While in their cradles, his mother and I planned this union. It was meant to be for a lifetime; now it will be for eternity.”

I was able, for a few seconds, to feel sorry for Darcy. “What do you want from me?” I asked, my teeth beginning to chatter.

“Tell me once and for all if Darcy has attached you.”

“I’m not anyone’s ‘attachment,’” I said.

“And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?”

I was too angry to be smart. “I will not promise anything.”

She descended from the platform, stretching her thin lips wide. “You have made a mistake, Miss Bennet. A very serious mistake.”

There wasn’t much hope of my escaping. The logical part of me knew I’d be lucky to be alive five minutes from now, and if I were, I wouldn’t be much more than a slave.

The emotional part of me was stronger. I turned and ran straight for the thugs, who were too astonished to stop me. The door was only a few yards away. I could hear the whisper of feet behind me, feel hot breath on my neck, a hand reaching…

I hit a hard, warm surface. Darcy steadied me and pushed me behind him.

“Kindly stay where you are, Aunt,” he said.

Lady Catherine skidded to a stop, her long skirts swirling around her legs. “Darcy!”

“Good evening, Lady Catherine. Had I known you would be inviting Miss Elizabeth to your little gathering, I would have been sure to make myself available.”

“But…but my dear nephew…” I peeked around the implacable barrier of Darcy’s body, and Lady Catherine smiled at me sweetly. “Miss Bennet and I were only having a pleasant tête-à-tête.”

Darcy glanced at me, unmistakable worry in his eyes. “You do not deceive me, Aunt. I know you too well.”

Her face hardened into a gorgon’s mask. “You are the one deceived, Darcy. Deceived by this puny mortal who thinks herself the equal of our noble lineage. She has dared to ask me to make her one of us.”

I could feel Darcy stiffen. “That is a lie.”

“Of course it is!” I said, my voice muffled by his coat. “I don’t know if she intended to convert me, but she wasn’t about to crown me queen of Transylvania!”

Darcy pulled me forward and held me close to his side. “You have made a mistake, Aunt,” he said softly. “Miss Bennet is under my protection.”

Lady Catherine gave a squealing growl of frustration. “Can you not see, Darcy?” she demanded. “Use her if you must, slake your thirst, but do not presume to consider her more than a thing to be used and discarded like any other mortal!”

Darcy’s smile was chilling. “Perhaps you have forgotten that you no longer rule me, Aunt. Nor are you, or those of your persuasion, likely to continue your forcible conversions much longer.”

Lady Catherine had already been pale, but now she was almost transparent. “Your cursed experiments!” she exclaimed. “You will not succeed, Darcy!”

“I believe I will, Aunt. Just as I will find the means to negate the strigoi need for human blood and produce a cure for my sister.”

I looked up into his face, a germ of understanding forming in my mind. How could I ever have thought this man was evil? How could I help but love him?

The few seconds of silence following his declaration didn’t last. With a shriek of rage, Lady Catherine flung herself at Darcy. He tossed me back, ordered me to run and met his aunt’s attack head-on.

Once I’d wondered what it would be like to see a battle between two vampires. I didn’t have to wonder any longer. It was complete, utter, no-holds-barred savagery. Their movements, as graceful and intricate as those of the finest martial artists, were hardly more than a blur to my human eyes. It seemed that Darcy and his aunt were perfectly matched, neither more likely to win than the other. Darcy wasn’t holding back because she was a woman; if he had, she would have destroyed him.

I was forced to stand on the sidelines with the boy toys and the handful of other people in the room. If I’d had any way of interfering, I would have gone after Lady Catherine in a flash. But I couldn’t even get near them.

I thought of the pointed sticks I’d found in my prison. Maybe I wouldn’t have to get near Lacy Catherine to make a difference.

One of the thugs made a halfhearted attempt to stop me as I ran for the door, but he was too absorbed in the fight to chase after me. I blundered down the steps and ran in the direction I thought the guards and I had come from. There was just enough of a moon to help me find my way.

I found the small brick building and, tripping and cursing, felt my way inside and to the rear. The stakes were still there. I gathered up as many as I could carry and ran back the way I had come. No one blocked my way as I dashed into the house.

Both the battling strigoi were beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Lady Catherine’s movements were slowing, her dyed-blond hair falling into her face, and Darcy had begun to breathe heavily. I dropped the pile of stakes to the floor, keeping the longest in my hand. One of the boy toys glanced at me, pretty lips curved in an O of surprise, as I aimed the stake in Lady Catherine’s direction and hurled it.

The first missile missed her by about a foot, the second one by a lot less. I got off the third just before the thugs tackled me. I heard Lady Catherine shriek. From under one thug’s arm I could see her breaking Darcy’s hold. She lunged toward me, scattering the guards, and almost had her hands around my neck when Darcy roared and leaped on her back.

It was as if some avenging fury had taken hold of him, and in seconds he had her pinned to the ground, crouching over her with teeth bared and muscles rigid.

Something happened then, an exchange I couldn’t hear or understand. Darcy stayed where he was a few moments longer and then suddenly sprang to his feet. Lady Catherine didn’t move; her face was slack, her body limp. She’d lost, and she knew it. The battle was over.

Darcy turned his back on her, put his arm around my shoulders and supported me as we walked through the hall and out the front door. As soon as we were outside my knees threatened to give out and I plopped onto the stairs.

“Is it really over?” I whispered.

He sat beside me. “Yes,” he said. “thanks to your courage. Lady Catherine will never trouble you again.”

“Are you…are you hurt?”

“I am very well.”

I covered my face with my hands. Now that it was really hitting me, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand again.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” I said.

“I will always come for you, Elizabeth.”

“But no one knew. She said she’d…taken care of—” I started up, feeling ill. “My aunt! I have to find her!”

“She is safe, I assure you.” He laid his hand lightly on my back. “We found her not far from here, under guard. Lady Catherine’s minions were quickly dispatched.”

“You didn’t… I mean, they aren’t…”

He removed his hand. “They have been temporarily incapacitated.”

I realized that I’d managed to hurt his feelings, as impossible as that seemed. “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I know you wouldn’t hurt them.”

He leaned forward to look into my eyes. “Do you?”

I glanced down at his hands, long-fingered and strong and elegant. “Yes. I’m sorry about this. About everything that’s happened. I owe you my life.”

“You owe me nothing,” he said grimly. “It was entirely my fault that Lady Catherine attacked you in the first place.”

He was referring to his proposition at Rosings…one he’d never make again. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” I said, feeling those treacherous tears gathering again. “Lady Catherine is obviously crazy.”

“Nevertheless, I knew she was angry that I had… I should have anticipated her reaction when she learned that I—” He broke off, looking away.

Unthinkingly I took his hand. “It’s hard for a sane person to know what a crazy person might do.”

He looked straight into my eyes in that mesmerizing way of his. I was so close to getting sucked in that I started to be afraid. I let go of his hand.

“When George Wickham told me about vampires,” I murmured, “he— Oh, my God. Lydia!” I succeeded in standing this time, but my stomach preferred to remain sitting. I swayed, and Darcy caught me. I could feel his rapid heartbeats, his cheek against my hair.

“George Wickham has her,” I gasped. “I have to get back—”

He picked me up as if I weighed as much as a goose-down pillow and strode away from Lady Catherine’s mansion, walking into the wood and coming out the other side without breaking a sweat.

A pair of cars were parked by the narrow road I’d seen earlier, my rental and another I didn’t recognize. Several people were standing beside them—Aunt Sally, Charles Bingley and—

“Jane!”

Chapter 14

DARCY PUT ME DOWN, AND I RAN TO MY SISTER. We hugged until both of us were breathless.

“Lizzy! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I turned to my aunt and hugged her, as well. “Are you all right?”

She smiled, though her face looked a little haggard in the moonlight. “Thanks to Mr. Darcy.”

I looked over my shoulder. Darcy was keeping his distance, the moonlight and shadow turning him into a hero from a romance-novel cover.

“We have much to thank Mr. Darcy for,” Jane said, turning to smile at Charles. He looked back at her adoringly, and I knew that somehow they’d gotten back together.

Jane’s expression grew serious again. “I was so worried when I returned to London and found both of you gone. I hadn’t expected to return from Paris so soon, and all I could learn was that you’d left six days ago….”

“Six days? But that means I was unconscious— Oh, my God.”

Jane hugged me again. “Mr. Darcy came to the flat last night,” she said. “He was frantic…. I’ve never seen him look so upset. Charles was with him. Darcy said he had been searching for you for two days, but had finally received some information that had given him an idea as to where you might be. I insisted on coming, of course.”

“But Jane…” I struggled to gather my thoughts. “What about Lydia? All this time—”

“Lydia is fine.” She moved closer to Charles, who put his arm around her. “Charles told me the whole story. The evening after I called, before he knew you were missing, Darcy had his private jet fly him to Los Angeles. I’m not sure how he did it, but he tracked down George and Lydia just before they were about to fly off to South America.”

I could feel the adrenaline draining out of me, leaving me limp as an overcooked noodle. “But…but was Lydia hurt?” I asked. “Was she…”

“No damage was done,” Charles said, an almost dangerous gleam in his eye. “Wickham may have planned to convert her, but he didn’t get around to it.”

“Where is he now?”

Charles shrugged. “Gone. And not likely to show his face again, at least not anywhere Darcy can reach him.”

I didn’t ask how Darcy had managed that. “Where is Lydia now?”

“Home with Mom and Dad. She’s not exactly sorry, but Darcy took her aside and talked some sense into her. I don’t think she’ll be running off with another vampire anytime soon.”

I couldn’t believe it. In less than a week, Darcy had saved Lydia and taken care of Wickham, then found and rescued me from a fate possibly worse than death.

“That’s not all, Lizzy,” Jane continued. “We don’t have to worry about Bennet Labs anymore. We just received a huge anonymous grant. BL will have full independence, and all the funding it needs for the next five years at least. Charles is in full agreement.”

“Should have seen it weeks ago,” Charles said, blushing. “BL can do better work just as it is.”

My heart was so filled with happiness that for a minute I couldn’t speak. All Darcy’s doing. I knew he had taken Charles to meet Jane on purpose. He’d given up his determination to keep them apart.

And as for the grant money… Maybe Charles had had something to do with it, but I was pretty sure that the funding had come straight from Darcy.

“Jane,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.”

She laughed. “Poor Lizzy. Not your usual state, is it?” She squeezed Charles’s hand. “I have one more piece of good news. Charles has asked me to marry him.”

I bounced. I couldn’t help myself. “Jane!” I shrieked.

Charles gave a sheepish grin, grabbed Jane and kissed her soundly. I backed away to give them a little privacy. And because there were things I needed to say to a certain gentleman vampire.

I turned to face him. He hadn’t moved an inch. Those few feet between us felt like miles.

“Thank you,” I said around the lump in my throat. “Lydia, Jane, BL… Your compassion and generosity…”

The sadness in his smile was very human. “Your sister should not have confided so much to you.”

“I’m glad she did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you have grateful we are. Jane, Lydia, my family—”

He sighed. “If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone. Much as I respect your family, I thought only of you.”

My face felt as hot as a sunburned jalapeño. “I… You must be tired. Do vampires get tired? Maybe you need a little…” I gulped. “I’d be happy to donate, if you—”

“That will not be necessary.”

“But I want to do something for you,” I burst out. “Isn’t there anything—”

“Yes, Elizabeth. There is.” He moved closer, gliding on silent feet. “You are too generous to trifle with me. If you feel the same as you did at Rosings, tell me so at once. My affections have not changed, but I will never mention it again if you say the word.”

My mouth fell open. I shut it again. “Your affections?”

“My pride,” he said with that same sad smile, “did not permit me to confess the fullness of my emotions. Let me do so now. I love you, Elizabeth Bennet.”

My legs had gotten into a bad habit of buckling, which was getting downright embarrassing. Darcy caught me again. His lips were nearly touching mine, but he didn’t kiss me.

“Do you fear me, Elizabeth?” he murmured.

I stared at his mouth. “No.”

“Have I hope?” He shifted his arms so that the whole lengths of our bodies were touching, chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. “You need do nothing that discomfits you. I ask only that you consider a life with me. You will have all the freedom you desire; I will not seek to bind you.”

“You mean,” I said, “you won’t bite me?”

“Not unless you desire it.”

“You won’t convert me?”

“Never.” He searched my eyes. “I would ask you to marry me, but—”

“Marry me? You’d do that?”

“If you would have me.”

I stretched my neck a little and kissed him. Still he didn’t kiss me back. He wanted to be sure that I was sure.

And I was. He could do whatever he wanted to me, and I wouldn’t complain. In fact, there were certain things I very badly wanted him to do to me. “I guess vampires aren’t any smarter than humans,” I said. “I’ve loved you ever since Charles told me that your first name was Fitzwilliam.”

“My dearest Elizabeth…”

This time when I kissed him, he most definitely kissed me back.

A LITTLE WHILE LATER—after we’d all returned to Pemberley, Georgiana had been told the whole story, my aunt was in bed and Charles and Jane were…occupied—Darcy and I made ourselves comfortable on one of the more welcoming sofas, my head on his shoulder and his arms wrapped around me as if he were afraid I’d change my mind.

“What made you decide to ask me again?” I asked. “I wasn’t exactly polite about refusing you at Rosings.”

“I hardly acted the gentleman,” he said, brushing my hair with his lips. “My behavior was unpardonable. No better, in fact, than Wickham’s.”

I bolted upright. “Don’t ever say that! You’re exactly the opposite of what he told me.”

“Your belief in my virtues is gratifying, but not entirely accurate. As a boy, I took my wealth and status too much for granted. When I was converted—”

“Against your will, right? George lied about that, too. You never wanted to be a vampire.”

He nodded. “When my aunt took my life from me—and from her own daughter—my distress was such that my pride and conceit only increased. I was ashamed of my needs and how I was compelled to acquire nourishment. It was many years before I was able to permit myself human company again. Even then I remained proud and arrogant, as your dealings with me so amply illustrated.”

“You never doubted that I’d accept your offer at Rosings.”

“Never. By you I was properly humbled.”

“You’re making me blush.”

“I intend to make you do far more than blush, dearest Elizabeth.”

I snuggled into him again. “Everyone’s asleep. We could go upstairs and—”

“After we are married.”

“Do you have to be so blasted old-fashioned?”

“Even after two hundred years, certain habits persist.”

I leaned back to better see his face. “When did you decide you loved me?”

“I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.”

“I guess you were sick of those groupies who fling themselves at everything with fangs.” I looked at him sideways. “Speaking of groupies… I saw you with those women outside Rosings.”

Yes, vampires could definitely blush. “As I said, I am not proud of what has been necessary to keep myself alive, but for Georgiana’s sake—”

I pressed my finger to his lips. “You did what you have to do, and I know you did it as gently as you could. But I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to live with a harem.”

His eyes widened. “Elizabeth, I swear to you—”

“Just promise you’ll tell me if you…have to see someone else. I’ll understand.”

Copper tinged his deep blue eyes. “They meant nothing to me, Elizabeth. I have already made arrangements to find nonhuman sources of blood, and my research—”

“It’s all right, Darcy. I know you can’t live on me alone. I won’t be jealous.” I pouted. “Well, maybe just a little.”

He hugged me until I cried uncle. “You will never have the slightest cause.”

“Humph.” I smiled to show him I wasn’t angry and began playing with his fingers. “So what did make you ask me again after I was so nasty to you?”

“It is difficult to explain. Your manner at Pemberley…your friendliness toward my sister gave me hope.”

“Your letter made me question everything I’d believed,” I said. “When I met your sister, and saw the binders with all the thank-you letters, I knew I’d been wrong.”

He shook his head with a wry smile. “When one has lived two centuries and possesses such considerable assets, generosity is easy.”

“But you’ve used those assets for good.” I sat up to face him, loving the strong lines of his face, the black hair that fell into his eyes, the sensuality of his lips. “You’ve given so much to medicine, to children.”

He ran a strand of my hair through his fingers. “It was not entirely unselfish. For two hundred years, Georgiana has suffered malaise and weakness so severe that she is seldom able to leave Pemberley. I have sought a cure since medical progress has made such exploration possible. It is why I have acquired interests in so many biological research companies, including Charles’s. I had already been encouraged by the discovery of a certain drug that could break the bond between a strigoi patron and his protégé.”

“That’s why Lady Catherine couldn’t control you. Georgiana took the drug, too?”

“Yes.”

“And Wickham?”

“He would not have known of it. I would not be surprised if he found a way to kill his patron, which is another way of breaking the bond.” He shook his head. “As for my obsession with acquiring Bennet Laboratories… I knew that your researchers had created and utilized innovative techniques and protocols that many larger companies would not have ventured to. I had hoped that one day, with my guidance, BL might have found the cure for Georgiana and perhaps even produced a blood product of sufficient efficacy to remove strigoi reliance on human donors.”

“But you couldn’t have told anyone what you really wanted.”

“It is possible to turn such work in certain specific directions if one is subtle.”

“You’re not always subtle,” I murmured.

“Not where certain subjects are concerned.” He kissed me lightly. I pulled him down. Sometime later I said, “What made you decide to give BL the grant?”

“Need you ask?”

I sighed. “You’re too good to me. And Jane… You gave your blessing to Charles, didn’t you?”

“I was a fool. My misjudgment of their mutual affection was egregious. Charles never suspected my deliberate interference. I made known to him my mistaken impressions of your sister’s intentions, and he was eager to go to her again.”

“If you were wrong, so was Charles. He should have stuck with the woman he loved. I wish I could have given him a piece of my—”

Darcy silenced me with another kiss. “That is all in the past. It is the future that concerns us now.”

The future. A future in which I would grow older, and Darcy would stay exactly the same. I knew he’d love me even when I couldn’t walk or see or hear. But the idea of giving him up, ever…

“I want you to bite me,” I said suddenly.

He sat upright. “Now?”

“Why not? I have to get used to it sooner or later.”

“I will not impose—”

“I’m marrying a vampire. ‘To love, cherish and donate.’ All those other women will just have to wait in line.”

He pulled me around on his lap and gazed into my eyes. “There are certain dangers inherent in repeated donation.”

“You mean I’ll become a vampire.”

“Theoretically, every strigoi can control the process according to his will. But instinct can be very strong, especially where affection is involved.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Think about what you are saying. You may not feel so sanguine once you are changed.”

“Sanguine. That’s a good one.” I grew serious again. “I don’t want to have you for one lifetime, Darcy. I want you for eternity.”

He gave me a dubious look, and I quickly convinced him of my sincerity.

Darcy, Jane, Charles and I flew back to New York a week later. Jane could hardly contain herself when I told her I was to be Elizabeth Bennet-Darcy. Georgiana begged us to be married at Pemberley, and Darcy immediately offered to fly my whole family to England.

Dad had tears in his eyes when I told him about Darcy’s proposal, though I wasn’t yet ready to tell him just what kind of proposal it was. He seemed to sense that Darcy was behind BL’s unexpected salvation. Darcy insisted on asking him for my hand, and he gladly agreed.

Mom was ecstatic. “Oh, my sweetest Lizzy! Oh, Lord, what will become of me? I think I’m going to faint!”