How To Marry A Werewolf (Claw & Courtship, #1)(20)

When their second dance was over, Major Channing came once more to loom next to her, saying nothing. Biffy bowed himself away with a knowing smile.

“Your Alpha doesn’t seem very fierce,” Faith commented at last, genuinely interested but also desperate for something to say. Of course, what she was really saying was, I understand that he isn’t for me. And I’m not for him. He’s too much a dandy and not enough a danger.

She tried not to sound at all disappointed.

“Fierce? No. He does not need to be. That is what I am for.” Major Channing left her again, looking reassured by their brief exchange and a little smug.

Only one incident marred Faith’s enjoyment of the festivities. It was heralded by a slight hush about the room. Faith raised her head to find her card seized without ceremony and signed by the vampire, Lord Ambrose. He gave her a nod and then drifted away, only for her to discover that he had demanded the dinner dance.

During the course of their subsequent reel, she was given cause to suspect he looked upon her as the dinner.

“You are quite the excitement of the evening, Miss Wigglesworth.” The vampire spoke gallantly as he led her into the pattern. He was very stiff in his movements.

“I assure you, sir, it’s a big surprise to me, too.”

“Is it indeed? I suspected it to be, in fact, by carefully crafted design. Lord Falmouth has taken an interest. Your attire reflects his taste and not inconsiderable influence. Do you deny it?”

“I’m honored by the smallest scrap of his attention.”

“Yes, he has that effect. You know he could have been one of ours had Lord Akeldama not bungled his household management? Such a tragedy.”

Faith thought of Biffy and the way he looked at his Beta with eyes that shone. “I think he’s good where he is. And your comments to a stranger on the matter might be considered impertinent.”

“You dare to reprimand me over a breach in etiquette, as though I were a schoolgirl?”

“You are gossiping like one,” Faith snapped back, daring a cheeky smile.

Lord Ambrose started at that. A spider who thought he had caught her in his web, only to find the web itself shaken and disrupted.

He leaned in, too close but still the correct distance to whirl her around the floor. “You are a ripe and ready young thing. Bold. Is it the American upbringing?”

“Maybe.” Faith thought it probably paid to be cautious with vampires.

His smile was both pointed and pointy.

Their reel ended, and Faith was profoundly grateful for the short and invigorating nature of a dance that prohibited too much intimate talk. Then she was horrified to remember that this was the dinner dance and he was shortly to find her a plate and keep her company while she ate.

Lord Ambrose led her from the floor. His touch was cold. He seemed some marble god of old somehow squeezed into the confines of polite society.

“I see why the werewolves like you.” It might have been a compliment.

“Do you indeed?” said a mellow voice, all the more threatening for its calmness.

Major Channing was back. He moved in a delicate but firm motion, and Faith found herself neatly separated from the vampire. The werewolf now stood between her and Lord Ambrose.

Lord Ambrose hissed, surprised and snakelike. “That was the dinner dance.”

“You signed for it without request. I watched you. Regardless, she is American. She knows not what she offers, to dance the repast reel with a vampire.”

“Ignorance of social rules does not pardon her blunder.”

“You’re crabby because you’re hungry. That does not change the fact that this one was my prey from the beginning.” Channing’s tone was beyond mocking.

Lord Ambrose looked highly affronted. “You cannot have a prior claim to this lady.”

“I saw her first,” answered Major Channing, sounding not unlike a child with his favorite toy.

“Never doubt, wolf, that we make the rules here. Have you offered her a claviger contract?”

“Stand down, blood-sucker.” Channing sounded every inch the soldier.

Faith looked between the two posturing predators. “What about what I want?”

The two men looked at her, startled.

She turned to Lord Ambrose. “No thanks for my part, in either regard. I don’t want to be your meal for the evening, nor your indentured drone for the year. I’m not creative, even if I were interested in metamorphosis. Which I’m not. Besides, as a woman, my chances of surviving a bite are tiny. Frankly, I don’t like those odds and I find the idea of immortality off-putting. Although you honor me with your consideration.”

She added that last bit because he was, after all, a vampire and an aristocrat. It wouldn’t do to cause offense.

Channing grumbled. “He should have put it in writing.”

Faith knew little about vampire drones and only slightly more about clavigers. She had once spent too much time with a claviger, but Kit had been cagey about the details of his service. She knew they provided daylight protection for their supernatural masters and that they worked to curry enough favor and show enough potential to be turned immortal. Vampire drones, Faith felt, probably had it worse, since they were also food.

Had Lord Ambrose’s demanding the dinner dance meant something more significant than his fangs in her neck?