"I will be happy to accept a down payment." He had hardly blinked during the last moments, holding her there with his eyes. "I'm certain, based on your past demonstrations, that it will be no great hardship."

She could have argued, could have mocked him right back, could have become affronted… but she did none of those things. She deliberately chose not to; chose to take matters into her own hands as, in other areas of her life, she'd become used to doing.

Her breathing seemed to swell and fill her as she moved toward him. She leaned off the seat, her hands reaching for his shoulders, fingers curving around the fine linen broadcloth that shaped him.

He tasted like the clove that scented his clothes, and felt soft and slick and dangerous. It wasn't an easy kiss, a delicate buss of lip to lip. It wasn't gentle or tentative. It was hot and needy, the undamming of controlled desire.

When Victoria returned to herself, breaking the connection, she found her face close to his, held by her hands on the back of his head. He looked at her with an odd expression, then gently released her from his embrace around her upper arms.

"That will certainly do as a start." Despite the light words, his voice guttered like a candle flame in a pool of wax. "I shall be looking forward to collecting the balance."

She smoothed his tawny hair, made more wild by her reckless fingers. "You will have to wait a long time for that, Sebastian." And she slipped from the carriage.

Chapter 9

In Which Mrs. Emmaline Withers Annoys an Italian Contessa

Venice, Victoria learned, was not at its most pleasant in the late summer months. Although it was late September when she arrived at last, it was still hot and sunny. The city itself, shaped like a large fish with its tail pointing toward the Adriatic Sea, evoked dreaminess and calm with its bright gondolas easing up and down the canals. But the stench of refuse rising from the water was made worse by the heat."I fussed 'bout the smell o' London when it's hot," Verbena complained, checking to make sure Victoria's handbag included a small vial of salted holy water. Ever since her mistress had been bitten by a vampire and had to have the wound treated with salted holy water, Verbena had made it her responsibility to ensure Victoria always carried some. "This city is worse! Why, with the dead fish floatin' in the streets and the muck o' seaweed and that smelly green stuff that grows on top o' the water, I can't know why anyone would live here in the summer! But that Oliver. He says it ain't so bad, and he thinks the city ain't any smellier than a farm is. Well, that's a country boy for ye. He like as left his nose back on the farm in Cornwall."

She shook her head and replaced Victoria's reticule on her dressing table. "I still don' understand why m' cousin Barth didn't leave his hackney wi' someone else and come with us, instead of sendin' his friend Oliver. He might not be the best driver—Oliver takes a bit more care in my opinion—but he's certainly got his head on straight when it comes to them vampires. Wearin' his cross and carryin' holy water and a stake. He'd'a been a better man-about-town for us than this green'un from the farms."

"Oliver seems a gentle sort, for all his size," Victoria ventured. "Has he been giving you any trouble?"

"Trouble? Not him, no, my lady, trouble's the least thing he gives me. He's too accom'datin' is what he is. Always askin' what's to be done, how can he help. I say he's a green boy from the country and never been to the city before, and it shows." Verbena had moved to stand behind her mistress and began to comb through the long stream of curls. "I shudder to think what'd happen if he actu'lly saw a vampire… he'd prob'ly ask'm in for tea! Hmmph. Now, for yer debut here't'night, we must take care ye're lookin' yer best, my lady. An' I'm puttin' at least two stakes in your hair, just in th' case of runnin' into a vampire. Who knows if they're out 'n' about tonight."

"I haven't felt any sensation of their presence since we arrived," Victoria replied. "Not one cool breeze to the back of the neck except when it comes in from the sea. I'm beginning to wonder if the Tutela is here in Venice at all. And don't you always ensure that I look my best?" Victoria added with a fond smile.

She was in a happy mood tonight, the first time in a long time she felt like enjoying herself at a social event. Their first week in Venice had been slow and frustrating. They'd had to set up the household, announce their presence to any and all English expatriates, and wait for invitations.

In the evenings she'd been forced to sit in the house and practice her kalaripayattu in the parlor, for she didn't know the city well enough to patrol it in search of vampires. And there was the added complication that half of the streets were not streets but canals.

But at last Victoria had been asked to attend a gathering at none other than Lord Byron's home. She hadn't expected to have such success so quickly: a tea here, a dinner party there, before she made a connection with Byron. But apparently her mention of Dr. Polidori's untimely death had garnered her the entree into Byron's society she needed.

"Y' know I do m' best, my lady," Verbena said. "Not that it's a har'ship to make ye look beaut'ful. Ye've got that lovely skin, like a pret' pale rose, and them big green-brown eyes. An' all this hair! Who could find fault with this hair?"

"There have been times when I've thought of cutting it," Victoria confessed as her maid sectioned off a piece for her coiffure. "It gets in the way when I am fighting."

"Ye can't!" Verbena exclaimed, her blue eyes goggling like cornflowers in full bloom. "I willn't allow it, my lady. I'll find a way to dress't so it cannot fall int' your face. An' asides… if ye cut it, how can I put yer stakes in there? Nothin' to hold 'em up, then, if you cut it all off short! I know as some ladies are doin' it, but I won't let my mistress."

Verbena's chatter did not ease as she finished coiffing and dressing Victoria. This was lovely for her mistress, as it allowed her to sink into a quiet reverie that was pestered only by an occasional too-hard pull on her hair, or a pin stuck in too tightly, or a direction such as, "Now stand," or, "Raise your arms, my lady."

Unfortunately, her thoughts wanted to center on that last interlude with Sebastian in the carriage, and the way he'd looked at her when he'd said, I was giving you time to grieve.

Even now, remembering that look made her stomach feel like a ball of dough being kneaded. Not that she'd ever kneaded a ball of dough, but when she was young, she'd seen Landa, the cook at home in Grantworth House, do it with such verve and enthusiasm that she rather thought it must feel like her stomach.

But she would never stop grieving, not completely. The pain would ease, she would move on with her life—she already had, in a sense—but the grief would never completely go away. It would always mark her, somehow.

If she were different, perhaps she would find someone to love again. Widows did; it wasn't unheard-of. She suspected that her mother had developed a tendre for Lord Jellington, now, three years after Victoria's father's death.

But Victoria couldn't expect to do so.

Certainly, most people who lost a loved one would feel as if they never wanted to love again. Never wanted to go through that horrific pain of loss. But they could love again, when the grief eased. They would be able to.

Victoria couldn't.

Well, she could. It was possible and perhaps even likely that love would find her someday, as she was still young and attractive, and if her response to Sebastian was any indication, she appreciated being considered so by a man.

But she was a Venator. Her life was a patchwork of danger and deceit, night patrols, incessant hunting, violence, and matches with evil. A greater evil than most people would ever face.

Loving someone would endanger him—and endanger herself by dividing her concentration. The lies, the subterfuge, the lifestyle would pick away at and erode any chance of happiness she might imagine.

She couldn't allow herself to love—or, worse, truly worse, to be loved.

Her last words to Max had been to tell him he'd been right. He'd been right that she should not have married Phillip for all of the reasons that she now knew. Victoria would never finish grieving because she would never be able to forgive herself for marrying him anyway.

Yet, she missed the feel of a man's lips under hers, the steadiness of his embrace. The smell of masculinity and the broad height of shoulders, the race of her pulse when an attractive man looked at her like he wished to gobble her up whilst he was speaking of the weather or, as in Sebastian's case, about a secret society of vampire protectors.

She didn't have to marry, or even to love, to find pleasure in such a refuge from her world. She was a widow now, experienced in love and more experienced in life than most women her mother's age.

When she was lonely, she could find companionship with a man. Selectively, of course. Discreetly. Without the emotional attachment that could endanger them both.

She might be a Venator, a widow, a peer of Society. But she was still, and always would be, a woman too.

Being introduced at La Villa Foscarini was a most unusual experience for Victoria. Arriving at a small party where she knew no one, without a male escort, completely on her own, was something she could not do amongst the London haute ton without turning many heads and causing untold whispers of impropriety.

But Aunt Eustacia had explained that Italian Society was not nearly as rigid as that in England, and that their social mores were much more relaxed than what Victoria was used to. And this little clique of English expatriates that had become Lord Byron's miniature circle of Society were even more forgiving of accepted rules.

Still, it felt exceedingly odd to be announced as Mrs. Emmaline Withers and to face a small sea of faces that were unrecognizable to her.

In an effort to keep her identity as a Venator a secret, Victoria had agreed with Wayren's suggestion that she use an assumed name during her movements in Italian Society. Lilith most certainly knew who she was, and although many of the vampires she might encounter would recognize her name, they would not know her by sight. Thus, if Victoria were to penetrate the Tutela, she must take care not to be found out.