Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(76)

She turned her eyes away as though concealing something. “He said he could do nothing but bleed you in any case, and I knew that would do more harm than good.”

He nodded and sipped his tea. Old Henley didn’t seem the type to just accept a strange woman with an Eastern European accent showing up. But he must have. He had sent half his extended family to help out. “Do you need money to pay the servants? I shall write a letter to my banker in London.”

“I have no need of your money, Drew. I pay them in gold.” She sounded haughty. Then she screwed up her face and shook her head. “I am sorry. A foolish arrogance, when I use my father’s money and live in my father’s house. He left gold in . . . storage here, against need.” She sat abruptly back in her chair. “I suppose I will never be independent of him.”

Drew was not independent himself. He’d been dependent physically on Freya. He wasn’t independent of her psychologically, either. He couldn’t imagine waking and not seeing her calm, almost black eyes rise from her book.

He’d forgotten all about his obsession with Melaphont.

The thought was like a cutlass tearing the shroud of distance that enveloped him. What was he doing, lolling here and thinking of Freya when Melaphont no doubt strode around his precious house, directing the building of his new wing with his chest puffed out? Did the villain ever think of the boy he had wrongly ruined? No. But he would.

Drew set down his teacup too bluntly. It sloshed tea onto the table. “It’s time to get back to my purpose. I’ve an idea how to make Elias Melaphont regret the day he sentenced me.”

“Had you thought that by ruining him, you would also ruin his son?”

Drew blinked. “He has a son?” He set his lips. “Then maybe that is the way to get to him.” He threw off his blanket and pushed himself off the divan. His legs were so cursed weak. He sat down again abruptly.

“You mustn’t worry about Sir Melaphont now,” Freya soothed. “Have you overtired yourself? I’ll help you to your room.”

“Damn it, Freya,” he fumed. “I can’t lie here when that worm is up there gloating.”

Freya went still. It was as though she was gathering her courage. “He isn’t gloating.”

Drew frowned. “How do you know?”

“He is dead. Of the influenza. I saw him die.”

Drew felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. “Don’t make jokes about this, Freya.”

She raised her brows. She was right. She didn’t joke.

“The bloody man went and died before I could give him back his own?” Drew heard his own voice crack. Not fair! Not fair in a long line of things that were not fair. “Then I’ll have my revenge on his son.”

“No you won’t, Drew, not when you think about it. That poor creature has suffered enough, with that man for a father.”

The air went out of him, along with something else. It was as if the energy he’d expended in that flash of vengeful rage had used up whatever he had left. He looked away. “You’re right.” His life stretched ahead, without purpose. He took in the heavy wood furniture in the Tudor style that littered the room, now gleaming with wax instead of dust. Why was he here? It wasn’t his house. It had no meaning now that Melaphont was dead. It had only been a means to an end, like Emily.

He staggered out the salon door toward the stairs. Freya moved to help him but he pushed her hand away. “Leave me alone,” he growled, and pulled himself up the stairs by the banister.



Freya sat in her room on the window seat, looking out over the night garden. Things had not changed much after all. Oh, the gardens were being slowly pruned into shape. And the dust covers were gone. She was no longer alone in the house. But the distance from herself she had felt for over a year had come back to nest in her heart, as though it had never left.

It had been two days since she’d seen the horrified look on Drew’s face when he heard his nemesis was dead. Last night he’d tried to leave. She’d stopped him, of course. He was too weak to travel and he knew it. But his eyes were dead. He didn’t see any reason to go on, now that the vengeance he’d been planning for so long was useless. It was only a matter of time until he went. She didn’t want him to go this way, drifting and half-alive like she was.

For a week or two she had felt . . . connected again, interested in living.

It was because of Drew Carlowe. Her tragedy was that she . . . cared for him. The way she had never cared for anyone in her long, long life. Vampires did not fall in love. That’s what her father always told her. Especially not with humans who lived for only a flicker of time. Not long enough to love, he said. And Drew would be horrified if he knew what she was. So he would never know. So there could be nothing between them but that lie.

But if she cared for him, she couldn’t let him suffer. How to prevent the emptiness from consuming him? She remembered the feeling of wholeness their sexual union had produced. Maybe she could bring him back from the brink. The very thought of leaving herself open to his rejection was alarming. But she had to try.

She rose from the window seat and drifted through the dark room to the doorway. Light leaked from behind the closed room of his door. She turned the knob. The lock was still broken. He sat at his desk, just as she had seen him that other night, writing a letter. Only this time he wasn’t naked. He looked up. The pain in his eyes was startling. He quickly masked it with indifference.