Page 34 of The Doctor and the Devil
“The Order has Rafael’s brother.”
12
RAFAEL
April 23, 1768
Dunkirk
“Perhaps I believe you.Then again, you haven’t given me much reason to,” I growled at the woman sitting across from me. She tilted her head, her shrewd eyes assessing.
“Why should I lie? I had no reason to approach you. I could have stayed in hiding, watching you flail and falter as you hunted us.” She sneered, her shapely cherubic lips tilting up at the corners. It was an unfortunate characteristic of Marguerite’s exceptional beauty that disdain and sarcasm intensified her attractiveness. When she’d been a maid in my father’s household, I’d wondered if she exacerbated every ill temperament to show her face in its most attractive light.
“Hunting isn’t quite what I was doing,” I replied. “And I was close enough before you revealed yourself to me. It would have been a matter of time before I discovered wherever you and Laszlo were hiding.”
Her brown eyes twinkled beneath long sweeps of dark lashes, and she lifted one pale shoulder in an artful shrug. Everything about her felt predatory and calculating, like a viper waiting to strike.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, echoing my earlier word. We stared at each other for a long while, her slender fingers drumming lightly on the lacquered table in their townhouse.
When she had approached me at the docks, she’d been dressed in a silk gown of deep sea green—beautiful and lavish, certainly, but some years out of fashion. She persuaded me to accompany her to the townhouse where they resided, which was in a nicer part of town that overlooked the ocean but remained far enough away from it to be protected from the chilly storms that raged in the winter. Not that either of them would be bothered by the cold or damp.
The townhouse was well appointed, and I suspected Laszlo had brought enough money with him when they eloped to keep Marguerite in style, but given that our father had disinherited him, I wondered how long that money had lasted. Was that Marguerite’s game? The money had run out, and so she’d tired of her immortal companion.
“Why would the Order come for him? They seem to wantmein connection with the arrival of the blood plague,” I asked. “And how would they have been able to find you here when I only just discovered you myself?”
“Maybe you’re not as clever as you think.” She smiled. “And I suspect they’re after your entire line—everyone in the Dracul family is at fault for the blood plague.”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s Laszlo who ran from his responsibilities and let loose the curse upon the world. I’ve been trying to fix things for the past twenty years—atgreatpersonal cost.”
“What do you know of responsibility?” she hissed. “You forget, I worked in your house long enough to see you squander money and title and kinship on satisfying your pleasure. Long before thatgirlcame along. You encouraged your wanton reputation and strained the ties between your family, pushing Laszlo away and saddling him with the entirety of a kingdom he never wanted to begin with.”
“He wanted it beforeyoucame along! And you turned his head, feeding him God knows what lies, all so he would whisk you away from your life in service.” I snarled. “You were greedy and manipulative then, and you’re just as bad now. If he is with the Order, it’s probably because you betrayed him so you wouldn’t be tied to the penniless, nameless, first-born son of a disgraced family.”
Cold anger rolled off her in waves, giving her the appearance of a vengeful Amphitrite.
“Believe me or don’t,” she bit out. “But I’m telling you he was taken by men four days ago. I know they worked for the Order because I overheard them as they carted him away.”
“How did you overhear them? How did they manage to take him? He would have been able to break any bonds and escape. Why didn’t he?”
“I was coming home from my modiste when I saw them. I hid, naturally. They drugged him with an injection of quicksilver,” she answered.
My lip curled in disgust. “You hid while the purported love of your life and your maker was taken away, likely to be tortured or murdered.”
“If they’d taken me, too, I wouldn’t have been able to solicit your help in getting him back,” she said grimly. “As much as it pains me to admit, I need your assistance, Rafael.”
“You didn’t seek me out, Marguerite, you waited until I was practically at your doorstep. What have you been doing since he was taken? Awaiting final measurements for your new gowns?” I shot back.
“I knew you were in France,” she said coolly. “I was making preparations to find you, but instead, you turned up here asking after that fool pirate.”
“You lie too easily,” I hissed. This woman had seduced my only brother and taken him from me—ruining more than our lives. It was because of her I’d had to abandon Mina to stay and take Laszlo’s place. It was her actions that set this whole course in motion, and I suspected she’d schemed from the very beginning. I couldn’t understand or believe that Laszlo loved her truly and madly, as I loved Mina. Marguerite was beautiful, but cold, distant, and dangerous.
“Dismiss me if you must, but you know something is wrong. If you’d been a better brother and had maintained your connection to him, you would have sensed it already,” she sneered.
Her words cut straight to my heart—to the guilt that lingered there over the fracturing of my family. Over the past twenty years of tense silence between us and the unspoken understanding that neither of us had the temerity to seek the other out.
“Besides.” She arched her brow. “He is obviously not here. Do you believe I have him bound and gagged somewhere? The most powerful vampire in a thousand years—restrained by his newly turned wife?”
Wife.Wife.So they had married in secret after all. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much. It made sense that they would marry—he was too proud to keep her as some false consort. She would have demanded it. Still, the word needled me for everything it meant. Laszlo and Marguerite had had their twenty years of love while I’d had to give up everything—everything—to take his place under Father’s cruel eye.
