Yes, Voss was more than ready to make the rounds in Society and take advantage of any offered—or coaxed— opportunities therein whilst going about his more urgent business, but there was a time for play and a time for business. To quote a book that he was only vaguely familiar with.
In most cases, however, Voss found a way to combine both business and pleasure.
Brickbank cared for little more than charming a few debutantes in a dark corner to see how far down their gloves would slip. Although Voss wasn’t averse to those challenges himself, he had a bit more on his mind than that. With Moldavi riding his tongue along Bonaparte’s arse crack, the Draculia cartel in London would be well served by preparedness.
And Voss was in the position to accomplish just that.
The door to the study opened and out tottered Brickbank, his eyes bright and his nose tinged red. Behind him strode Eddersley, his mop of thick dark hair a mess as usual and a bemused expression on his face. Voss met his eyes and Eddersley shrugged.
“Shall we?” Voss asked coolly, resisting the urge to look at the condition of his study. Morose would see to any disruption with pleasure. “The ball should be in full crush by now.”
“You’re certain the Woodmore chits will be there?” asked Brickbank, bumping against him as they both moved toward the front door. “Abhor stuffy crushes.”
“By all accounts they will. At least, the two elder ones. Unless Corvindale has locked them away already,” Voss replied, stepping back so that his clumsy friend could precede him through the front door.
Eddersley gave a short laugh. “Dimitri likely hasn’t yet met them. He’d be in no hurry to accept his responsibility as their guardian, temporary or otherwise. That would mean actually speaking to a mortal—and a female one at that—and removing himself from his study.”
Voss nodded, smiling to himself. He’d given Corvindale the news only two nights ago; even he wouldn’t have moved that quickly to get the girls under his roof and safe from Moldavi. And that was precisely the reason he was taking himself off to the Lundhames’ ball tonight.
There were rumors about the Woodmore girls and their abilities, of course—which was why Dimitri had become ensnared in a mess that he surely would prefer to be left out of—but whether those rumors about the sisters and their secrets had yet reached the streets of Paris, and thus the ears of Moldavi, was uncertain. Since the war and the new Emperor Bonaparte’s subsequent buildup of brigades ready to invade England, even those who were Dracule had a bit more difficulty with expedient communication.
Chas Woodmore had done his best to keep his sisters and their abilities under wraps while at the same time making himself indispensable to Corvindale and other members of the Draculia. It was too bad Woodmore didn’t trust Voss enough to turn the guardianship of his sisters over to him, instead of Corvindale. That would have made things much simpler.
The three men climbed into the carriage and Voss settled himself on the green velvet seat. Eddersley and Brickbank found their places across from him, and he rapped on the ceiling. The conveyance started off with nary a jolt and he peered out the window as they drove through St. James. As they rumbled along, the wheels quick and smooth over the cobbles below, Voss found himself less interested in the conversation of his companions than the sights outside the window.
A new moon gave no assistance to the faulty oil lamps illuminating the streets, exposing little but the shadows of random persons making their way along the walkways. The houses and shops, cluttered and clustered together in a jumbled-together fashion so unlike that in the sprawling Colonies, rose like unrelieved black walls on either side of the street. The only texture in that solid dark rise was the occasional alley or mews, just as dark and dangerous.
To mortals, anyway.
Voss felt oddly prickly tonight, as if something irregular were about to happen.
Perhaps it was simply that he’d not been out in London Society for years, although he would never ascribe his unsettled feeling to nerves. A one-hundred-forty-eight-year-old vampire simply didn’t have nervous energy…even when he came face-to-face with his own weakness, which, in the case of Voss, was the unassuming hyssop plant.
Each of them, each Dracule, had a personal Asthenia—an Achilles’ heel or vulnerability, or whatever one wanted to call it. Other than a wooden stake to the heart, a blade bent on severing head from body or full sunlight, the Asthenia was the only real threat to a member of the Draculia. And even then, the Asthenia caused only pain and great weakness—which often allowed for the stake, sword or sun to do its business.
Not that the Dracule ever discussed or even disclosed this frailty. It was a personal thing, akin to having a flaccid member at the most inopportune moments. Never spoken of, never acknowledged, never dissected. There was, as Giordan Cale had once said, honor among thieves, pirates and the Draculia.
Yet, in an attempt to keep his mind occupied and in a bid for personal amusement as well as leverage in the event he needed it, Voss had made a sort of game of it to determine the Asthenias of his Draculian brothers. He considered it nothing more than each man’s unique puzzle, and by craft, cunning or mere observation, he had determined the weaknesses of many of his associates.
It was nothing he hadn’t been doing for years, for Voss had long been a trained observer. He’d grown up the youngest child and long-awaited heir, and he spent much of his youth eluding tutors and spying on his five elder sisters.
At an early age, he discovered that information was power and that secrets were leverage. His sisters doted on him, spoiled him and easily succumbed to his manipulations, paying him in sweetmeats or playtime when he threatened to divulge who was kissing whose beau, sneaking into the barn with a footman and “borrowing” another sibling’s clothing and shoes. The price became even higher when said beau belonged to another sister, or when the gown in question mysteriously reappeared in the owner’s wardrobe, torn or stained.
He considered it all in good fun, and as a result, Voss ate plenty of jumballs, candied rosemary and rosewater fritters as well as earned games of chess or backgammon from his sisters or their beaus.
When he turned fifteen and went off to school, Voss realized that his tendency toward observation and manipulation was no longer a simple matter of entertainment, but personal security, as well. The upperclassmen at Eton leeched almost immediately onto the pretty blond boy who tended toward the scrawny side, tossing him into the privy on his second day of school. That shock, after having been petted and fussed over for his young life, caused Voss to look at the world of men quite differently.
Although he spent more than seven hours in the privy that first week, it took Voss no longer than that to skulk around the college, spying and observing and gathering information. He learned that the biggest and most fearsome of the upperclassmen, Barding Delton, had a terrible secret that he could not allow to be divulged. When Voss approached him and indicated that the next time he was thrown into the privy, he would be more than pleased to share with the entire school that Delton couldn’t raise his prick to pleasure a woman no matter how hard he tried and how much he boasted about doing so, Delton decided to find someone else to toss into the muck.
And so it went. The mathematics professor who tried to coerce Voss into dropping his breeches for him in a dark corner was deterred by the threat of exposure to his wife and father. The priest who couldn’t remember where he’d put the consecrated hosts after a serious drinking bout was induced to give Voss the highest marks in Latin, even when he refused to attend class.
The most attractive of women fell prey to his seduction as well, long before he had the ability to enthrall them with his vampiric eyes. The wife of his science teacher, the sister of one of his classmates who’d been promised to another—even the mistress of the city’s mayor—all found themselves sharing a bed with him.
And that was even before he finished at Eton.
When he became Dracule and realized that each one of his “brothers” had the penultimate secret of a life-threatening Asthenia, Voss found it an amusing pastime to learn what it was for as many of them as possible. He used whatever method it took—deduction, trickery or bribes—and for this reason he found himself all but ostracized by the rest of the Draculia. They simply didn’t trust him.
The ostracization was unfair, if not highly amusing to Voss, for he’d rarely sold the information or otherwise utilized it. Nor did he intend to—unless his own life was at stake. The collection of knowledge had become a personal triumph. Some men collected horses or women or wine. Voss collected information.
He was rich, titled, handsome, powerful, could bed any woman he wanted whenever he wanted and he was never going to die. What else was he to do with his infinite amount of time?
What else?
Voss pursed his lips as the carriage trundled along. His companions were conversing about some twilight horse race in which he had no interest, while he must consider wooing a Woodmore sister out from under the Earl of Corvindale’s nose.
Just another challenge. Just another puzzle.
Now, Voss’s eyes narrowed as a movement in the shadows caught his attention. The carriage rolled speedily along, but he could see well into the dark recess of the alley and he straightened in his seat as they went by. The flutter of a skirt, a tall, bulky figure swooping. His eyes narrowed and he rapped sharply on the vehicle’s roof to signal the driver to stop.
Pleasure rushed through him as he sprang from the conveyance before it came to a full stop. Ignoring the exclamations of his companions, Voss was out the door and streaking back down the street toward the long, dark passage between two close-knit buildings.
It was a matter of a breath before he arrived in the engulfing shadows that, nevertheless, appeared to him only like green haze mottled with gray. Although the details were obscured, he could still clearly see shapes and some texture in the dark. His fangs he kept retracted and he knew his eyes glowed faintly, but he didn’t allow them to burn very hot. Not yet.
The muffled sounds of struggle filtered through the silence and Voss smiled in anticipation. Just a bit of a diversion before the propriety of the ball.
