was a vampire! Serena tried to resist, tried to fight, but she saw herself press her pointed canines to the girl’s fresh, clean skin. The pulse thrummed beneath, fervent and strong, and the rushing blood sang in her ears.
Against her will, she bent to the young girl’s neck…but everything tilted and a sudden light poured into her room. Havershire Manor. She was in her old bedchamber, and Mrs. Thornton was tossing her half-packed case out the window while Mr. Thornton paced in front of the fire. Neither seemed to care that she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing, and she desperately tried to cover her body with her long black hair.
“You are in love with her!” Mrs. Thornton screamed at her husband.
Serena fought to protest, but she could not force the words out. She had done nothing wrong…nothing but read poetry with Mr. Thornton, and walk with him, and fall in love with him…and let him kiss her once—but nothing more.
Mr. Thornton raked his hands through his hair. “The wretched girl bewitched me.”
His wife wheeled around and pointed at Serena. Her triumphant laugh rang out around her. “You’ll starve in a week, you little fool.”
She woke on a scream. Serena found herself bolt upright, sheets tangled around her legs, sweat pouring between her breasts. She pressed the flannel to her skin to soak up the rivulets as she gulped down air.
Not again! So much for dosing herself with laudanum—it hadn’t helped at all. Foolishly, she ran her tongue over her teeth. No sharp points, of course. No fangs. And she had never, ever hurt Anne Bridgewater.
Serena kicked back the covers and jumped down from her bed. She rubbed at her eyes, scratchy with sleep. She hadn’t slept properly for two months. Not since coming to London, meeting Althea—Lady Brookshire—and joining the Royal Society.
She flung open the velvet drapes. Her bedroom in Brookshire House overlooked Hyde Park. Beyond the line of trees, pink touched the sky, promising dawn. How could she look upon the rising sun if she were a vampire? How could she stand in the sunlight?
But the erotic dreams of the magnificent Lord Sommersby and that enticing rogue Drake Swift—didn’t they prove she was not a normal, proper Englishwoman?
She leaned against the window, staring out at the shadowy green park. She had promised she would not give in to her baser nature this time. Twice she had fallen in love and she’d ended up in disaster. She thought she’d loved William Bridgewater, Anne’s older brother. He’d come to her bedroom, kissed her senseless, and she wanted him. Wanted him with the same urgent fiery need she felt in these dreams. And that need had got her banished from the house. Then there had been Mr. Thornton, and his poetry, his brooding pain as they walked together, his stories of his wife’s madness and rejection. She, the simple governess, had fallen deeply, impossibly in love—
She was never going to do that again. She could never do that again.
With the daylight spilling over her, Serena folded her arms beneath her breasts and paced to her bedside table. She slid open the drawer and drew out the small stack of folded pages. The edges were torn and curled and smudged by tearstains.
My dearest A,
I am writing to express my fears in regard to the behavior of S.L. She shows an unhealthy interest in men; she is brazen and wanton and disobedient. Often she slips out of her room at night, and returns only at dawn. One afternoon, a fortnight prior to my writing here, S.L. pricked her finger on a rose’s thorn. She put the wound to her mouth and suckled—not of great concern perhaps—but I saw her return to the same place in the garden the next afternoon, deliberately wound her finger, and delight in suckling the blood from her flesh—
I greatly fear that your concerns are quite accurate estimations of the truth. You do see, do you not, why I beseech you to bring her to London, to keep her under your watchful eye? Dear Anne is devoted to her and the child is fragile and impressionable. I am not at all certain how to proceed—I have raised S.L. as a daughter, but she is not normal. Subhuman, in my opinion, and I fear, a danger to us all—
I must fervently await your reply,
Yours in devotion and admiration unsurpassed,
Mrs. Ariadne Bridgewater.
Every instinct inside her yearned to rip the words to shreds. But she couldn’t do that—she needed these copies she’d made. There’d been so many of these letters, written to dearest A. She’d found them last week, neatly filed away in chronological order, in one of the bookcases in the Society’s vast library. Letters written by Mrs. Bridgewater, the woman who gave her food, shelter, the woman who had raised her—the only “mother” she had ever known. A “mother” who thought her subhuman.
Who thought her a vampire.
Serena tipped her face to the weak strands of daylight, closed her eyes. Still hazy from the opiate, she struggled with the questions that plagued her day after day. “Dearest A” was the elderly Earl of Ashcroft—the most powerful man of the Royal Society for the Investigation of Mysterious Phenomena.
To think she’d believed every word of Lord Ashcroft’s story when he’d brought her to London two months ago. To think she’d believed he would teach her to slay vampires. A tragic secret has been hidden from you, Miss Lark…the truth is that vampires killed your parents…but I will help you learn the truth, if you serve the Society.
Lies. All lies. She’d been so thrilled to come to London, to stay with Lord and Lady Brookshire, to join the Royal Society. Ashcroft must have known she had been tossed out of the Thorntons’ home without a reference and had no place to go.
Worse, her parents hadn’t been killed by vampires. The letters had made it clear. Serena’s throat closed. She shuffled through the copies she had made but didn’t look down at the words. She didn’t need to; she’d cried over them so often the words were burned in her head. I suppose this is exactly the kind of behavior we should expect, Mrs. Bridgewater had written, from the daughter born of a vampire and a mortal.
Serena shoved the letters back into the drawer and shut it tight.
What did Lord Ashcroft want with her? Why had he kept her alive?
Was he waiting—waiting to see if she changed?
Would she? For all the books in the library she’d pored over, she didn’t know. She didn’t know if she could start out as a mortal and become a vampire without being bitten.
Serena stalked back to the window and pulled the curtains shut, filled with a sense of purpose. She was not going to wait; she would not be meek and docile and simmer in fear. If she wanted the truth she would have to bargain for it. And the journal of Vlad Dracul would be a temptation Lord Ashcroft wouldn’t be able to resist. Once she had it, she would trade it for the truth about her parents, the truth about herself. And her life, God willing.
All she had to do was break into the brothel to find the journal. It was a deadly risk, but worth it. She had to find out the truth.
Was she the child of a vampire or not?
2
Bound
“I do love a woman in stockings and garters.”
Serena
