The Vampire Who Loved Me Read Free Page A

his teeth and, for an elusive instant, there was something almost feral in his expression, something that made Cuthbert take a step away from him.
    “What is it?” Cuthbert whispered. “Has the marquess doubled back to finish us off?”
    Julian hesitated for a moment, then shook his head, the predatory glow in his eyes fading. “It’s nothing at all, I suppose. Just a ghost from my past.”
    Giving the yew one last look through narrowed eyes, he continued across the meadow. As Cuthbert fell into step behind him, Julian launched into the chorus of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” in a baritone so pure it could have made the angels weep with envy.
     
    The woman huddled behind the yew tree slumped against its broad trunk, her knees going weak. The notes of the song slowly faded, leaving her alone with the murmur of the falling snow and the unsteady throb of her heart in her ears. She couldn’t have said whether her heart was pounding with terror or excitement. She only knew she hadn’t felt this alive in almost six years.
    She had slipped out of the house at dawn and instructed her driver to follow the marquess and his entourage to the park, torn between hoping the gossip was true and praying it wasn’t. But all it had taken was one peek around that tree andshe was once again a bright-eyed seventeen-year-old, basking in the first awkward flush of infatuation.
    She had counted off each step the duelists took as if she was marking the final moments of her own life. When the marquess had turned, pistol at the ready, it had been all she could do not to leap out from behind the tree and scream a warning. When the pistol shot rang out and she watched the marquess’s opponent crumple to the ground, she had clutched her chest, certain her own heart had stopped.
    But it had started beating again the moment he sat up, shaking the curling dark mane of hair from his face. Drunk with relief, she had forgotten her own danger until it was nearly too late.
    She had been gazing after him, her heart in her eyes, when he had suddenly stopped and turned, his body taut with the tensile grace she remembered only too well.
    She had ducked back behind the tree, holding her breath. Even with the sheltering trunk of the yew between them, she could feel his gaze penetrate her defenses, its probing caress leaving her as vulnerable as the kiss he hadbrushed across her brow the last time they had met. Pressing her eyes tightly shut, she had touched one hand to the velvet choker that circled the slender column of her throat.
    Then he was gone, his voice fading to an echo, then a memory. She slipped out from behind the tree. Fat snowflakes drifted from the sky, filling the scattering of footprints and the hollow where his body had lain. Soon there would be no proof that the misbegotten duel had ever taken place.
    She almost pitied his sandy-haired companion for his ignorance. She’d had nearly six years to learn how to embrace the impossible, but she’d still had to bite back a stunned gasp when that lean form had risen from its grave of snow. If his companion’s hand hadn’t been stayed, she knew exactly what the man would have found. That plump finger would have wiggled its way through greatcoat, coat, waistcoat, and shirt, not stopping until it brushed the unblemished skin over a heart that should have been shattered by the marquess’s pistol ball.
    Portia Cabot adjusted the veil on the sweeping brim of her hat, a faint smile curving her lush lips. She didn’t regret one moment of herreckless jaunt. She had proved the rumors were more than just idle gossip.
    Julian Kane had come home. And if the devil wanted his soul, then the old rascal would just have to beat her to it.

Two
    “Have you completely lost your wits?”
    A more delicate soul might have quailed at having such a question directed at them—especially when uttered in a near roar by such an impressive specimen of a man—but Portia refused to take offense. After all, it wasn’t as