Chapter Twenty-One
Less than five minutes after Jonathan’s departure, Charles came running down the alley, his cloak flying behind him, revealing his prized green tweed Norfolk jacket.
An odd choice for a hunt. Felicity glanced at the leader of the Sorrow hunters and took in the deep lines of worry on his face and the lack of a felt hat atop his head or tucked beneath his arm.
The old man never left the house unprepared.
Something was amiss.
Charles reached them and smoothed damp locks of blond hair away from his face. “The enemy was too fast, sir. We lost him.”
Great-Uncle Ezra scowled. “I am surrounded by incompetence.”
Felicity felt a strange desire to laugh. In less than a week, she’d gone from wanting to kill any vampire she met to being flooded with relief that one had survived a direct assault from her cousins.
“His haven must be nearby,” Great-Uncle Ezra said. “Find it! Knock on every door if you must.”
Charles’s cheeks reddened. “Sir, it is past midnight—”
Great-Uncle Ezra grabbed a handful of Charles’s jacket near his throat. “What did you say?”
Charles shook his head back and forth. “Nothing.”
The old man released his grip, and Charles scampered off. Felicity did not envy his task. Disrupting the wealthy residents of Mayfair at such a late hour was unthinkable, even if it would be annoyed servants who responded to the intrusions, not the actual owners of the properties.
The old man was truly desperate.
She must have spoken the words aloud by mistake, because the old man whirled around. “That is enough out of you! A carriage is waiting two streets away.” He pointed in the opposite direction Charles had run. “Take it and return home. I will deal with you later.”
She found the carriage and climbed inside without saying a word. What choice did she have? With each passing minute, the chasm that had formed in her heart when Jonathan had fled deepened.
For the first time in ten years, she didn’t have a purpose.
There was still her exhibit, but the terrible ticket sales meant it was sure to close early.
She arrived at the hunter base and trudged up the steps.
When she opened the door to her room, Winifred was sitting on the sill of her open window, wearing a billowing, black silk dress with a plunging neckline and elbow-length gloves.
The sudden appearance of her cousin, despite the spells on the townhouse designed to keep vampires out, elicited nothing from Felicity’s tired body but a numb resignation. “What do you want?”
Winifred pushed to her feet. “Only to talk.”
Felicity sat down at her dressing table and began removing the pins from her hair. “You can stop. The exhibit is all but canceled, thanks to the article you wrote.”
“What article?”
Felicity peered over her shoulder. “The one in Ladies Daily.”
Winifred tilted her head to the side. That, more than any denial Winifred might have offered, convinced Felicity.
“You didn’t write it,” she said.
Did that mean it had been Jonathan? She’d only known him a short time, but he did not seem the writing type.
“Aren’t you going to order me to leave or threaten to kill me?” Winifred asked.
Felicity winced. “No. I… I apologize for my earlier behavior.”
She’d honestly believed that all vampires were as ruthless and lacking in conscience as the one who had taken her family. Painting them all with the same brush had made it easier for her to kill without hesitation, turning her into that which she had hated.
Winifred’s eyes widened. “You really have changed.”
Felicity walked over to her bed and thumped down on it heavily. “You can have the illuminated manuscript.” She no longer cared what happened to it, or any of the other artifacts. Her family had no claim to them. They were stained with the blood of her family’s victims.
“I don’t blame you for what happened to me,” Winifred said. “I would have come to see you sooner, but Marcus insisted it was too dangerous. I hope you know it’s not your fault I became a vampire.”
The lack of any recrimination in her cousin’s tone shattered something deep inside Felicity. She put her head in her hands and sobbed.
There was a sound of fabric shuffling, and then the bed beside her dipped, and an arm wrapped around her shoulders. Felicity leaned into her friend. The chill of Winifred’s skin radiated through the many layers and made Felicity shiver.
“I am so sorry,” she said, between gasping breaths. “How can you forgive me so easily? I-I tried to kill your husband. I tried to kill you!”
“You were scared.” Winifred rubbed Felicity’s back. “As I said, I do not blame you. But would you truly give up the manuscript? Great-Uncle Ezra would disown you.”
Felicity snorted. “I don’t want anything more to do with him. I’d rather hire myself out as a washerwoman than live in this house a day longer.”
Thankfully, her options were not so bleak. As long as she remained employed, she could relocate to a respectable boarding house.
“Excellent,” Winifred said. “Then it’s time you learned the truth.”
Felicity looked up from her hands. “What do you mean?”
Winifred wrapped her arms around her knees. “Jonathan is sick.”
Even as her mind rebelled at the idea, Felicity recalled how he’d collapsed in the alley and how his wounds had failed to heal.
“It’s mate atrophy,” Winifred continued.
Felicity felt her eyebrows rise. “Mate atrophy is real?” She’d read about it but had assumed it was a fable told to hunters-in-training to reinforce the idea that vampires were more animal than human.
If the tales her parents had told her as a young woman were true, there were four stages of the illness, with the first being the longest and least severe, and the last…
The last stage was always fatal.
“How far has it progressed?” she asked.
Winifred didn’t answer, but the way she pursed her lips told Felicity everything she needed to know. A knot formed in her throat. She’d assumed Jonathan’s only goal had been to ensure his own safety and so had felt no guilt in selfishly demanding his help.
But even if Mordecai had been wrong and the owner of the dagger was still alive, killing her would not bring Felicity’s parents back.
It was time to let the past stay in the past.
Winifred laced her fingers with Felicity’s. “I’m sorry, Fel. I know it’s not fair to ask this of you, but… Jonathan won’t listen to me or Marcus. Will you talk to him?”
Felicity stared at their joined hands. Even through the glove, the chill of Winifred’s skin seeped into Felicity’s palm.
She’d done that to her friend, sent her flying out of a window to her death.
If their positions had been reversed, and it had been Felicity who had been impaled on a fence post, would Jonathan have turned her rather than let her die?
“Your husband,” Felicity said. “Is he your…” She couldn’t say the words.
Winifred chuckled. “Yes, we mated shortly before you—before my human life ended.”
“You can say it. Before I killed you.”
The room fell silent until Felicity could no longer bear the discomfort. She dropped her friend’s hand and changed the subject. “What’s it like? Being a vampire, I mean. Did it change how you felt about humans? About me?”
She met Felicity’s gaze. “You’re my best friend, Fel. I never stopped caring about you.”
Felicity swallowed back her tears. “They why did you stay away for so long?”
Six years. She’d thought Winifred had hated her for six years.
Winifred sighed. “Marcus insisted if you knew how I’d changed, you’d become as obsessed with killing me as you were with getting revenge on him.
But hearing Jonathan talk about you… One day, I simply couldn’t bear it any longer.
Being a vampire makes everything more. I love with an intensity I couldn’t have fathomed before Marcus turned me, but I grieve the loss of my humanity, and my family, just as keenly.
” Her lips curved in a sly smile. “But that’s not really the question you wanted to ask, is it?
You want to know how Marcus recognized me as his mate. ”
Felicity chewed the inside of her cheek.
Thinking about what she felt for Jonathan was like staring into the sun.
Her emotions were so raw and intense that they left her wincing.
So, rather than allow Winifred to peel back the protective layers of doubt and fear she’d built around her heart, she shoved to her feet and changed the subject.
“I can’t stay here.”
Winifred beamed. “I agree. That’s why you’re going to come with me.”
Twenty minutes and one awkward exit out of a window later, Felicity walked through the front door of a squat building she’d passed hundreds of times during her patrols but had never looked at twice.
While the exterior was stained the same sooty black as the neighboring structures, the inside was completely different.
A Kidderminster rug woven in a geometric pattern of red on black covered most of the floor in the entryway, leading to the base of a steep staircase.
She ventured farther and peered into a carpeted parlor stocked with a piano and a matching set of upholstered walnut chairs around an oval table.
It was far more comfortable than she’d expected from a temporary lodging.
“How long have you lived here?” Felicity asked.
Winifred gave a tight laugh. “A few months.” Then she rushed ahead of Felicity and took her hands. “You are welcome to stay as long as you need. The staff is discreet and familiar with my nature.”
A terrible thought struck Felicity. “Is your husband in residence?”
The last time she’d seen the Earl of Kingsbury, she’d tried to kill him.
Winifred shook her head. “He is staying in a different haven. I thought that would be better for everyone.”
Felicity forcibly relaxed her stiff shoulders. “I see.”