“Tomorrow?” Lady Melly shrieked.

Victoria winced.

Max grimaced, and Victoria slipped past him through the open door. Her mother’s words followed her like the screech of an owl, and Victoria dimly registered something about a welcome ball for the presumed marquess.

“You must give him my regrets, Mother,” she said over her shoulder, certain that Melly would at least seize upon the excuse to speak to the marquess if she didn’t have a daughter to thrust at him.

To Victoria’s surprise, Max followed her to the carriage. He spoke briefly to the groom, and then stepped inside. The door closed, and as the vehicle started off with a gentle lurch, Max settled in the seat… across from her.

Apparently, old habits died hard.

For a moment, the only noise was the rhythmic clopping of hooves on the cobbled street and the faint creak of the carriage springs. Victoria studied him, feeling as though at last she’d earned the privilege of watching him as long and as hard as she wished.

As he often did, Max gazed out the small window, giving her little more to look at than the profile of a strong, straight nose and solid chin, now clean-shaven. And his mouth.

Her own mouth dried just a little, as she remembered with perfect clarity all of the wonderful places those lips had been, and all of the breathtaking things they’d done. Victoria’s belly did that little flip that settled into a warm tingling through her limbs, and she swallowed.

“Rather a shame to hitch up the horses for a drive around the block,” she commented drily, breaking the silence at last. “But I knew that, short of leaving the house, I’d not escape from Mother.”

“I thought perhaps you might have another use for the carriage.”

Victoria looked sharply at him, but he still peered out the window. She couldn’t tell from his profile whether that glint of humor… or heat… was there in his eyes.

But heat definitely warmed her cheeks.

“Such as?” she asked.

He lounged back into a corner of the blue velvet squab, resting an arm along the top of it. At last he turned to look at her. A dangerous glint lingered in his dark eyes, but he merely replied, “A visit to Fleet Street? Don’t you need some fripperies or furbelows for your trip to Roma?”

“Why, Max, do you mean to say you wish to go shopping with me?” She batted her eyelashes coyly. “How unexpectedly accommodating of you.”

Max’s response was a snort that sounded suspiciously like “Like hell,” but those beautiful lips tightened as though trying to keep from smiling. “I had plenty of bloody shopping when I courted Sara.”

“Ah, yes, you would have done.” Now Victoria couldn’t hold back a smile. She no longer cared about Max’s false courtship with Sara Regalado, and could find humor in the thought of him dutifully following the fashion-conscious Italian girl from shop to shop. Max would do anything in the name of duty.

Anything.

Victoria sobered. “Max, you don’t have to take the vis bulla again. It doesn’t matter to me.”

His face stilled, matching hers in seriousness. “It does to me.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said, unable to hold the words back. Blast. She sounded like a weak woman! She, Illa Gardella. Was this what love did?

Max gave a humorless laugh. “The feeling is quite mutual, Victoria. But the fact is, something is much more likely to happen to me if I don’t take the vis .”

He was right, of course. Max wouldn’t stop fighting vampires without the power of the vis bulla , and so far his lack of Venatorial strength hadn’t kept him from being coveted by Lilith. Only three weeks earlier, Lilith had had Max in her possession and Victoria and the other Venators had helped him to escape.

“And to you,” he added. His dark eyes settled on her, and she felt a burst of warmth. And fear.

This emotion, this tingling, sparking connection that bound them frightened her-it was strong yet uncertain.

And the future was frightening, for she couldn’t imagine it without Max.

“Max,” she began, but he cut her off.

“What you fail to understand, Victoria,” he said, his voice low, cool, “is that I now have no choice. I will go through the Trial, and I will succeed.”

“Are you saying that I’ve forced you into it?”

“Of course not.” His mouth flattened.

“Why did you decide to stay last night?” she asked boldly.

“I was previously… Well, I had no desire to share you. With anyone.”

As she had suspected. “You thought that I would linger in Sebastian’s bed and then come to you?” Victoria wasn’t certain whether to be angry or insulted. So she kept her voice steady.

Max’s eyes turned flat and black. “You forget that I’ve observed you and your various beaus over the last two years. You never seemed to settle on one for long.”

She could have allowed the righteous fury to burst forth, skewering him with her words, but Victoria sensed something unspoken beneath his comments. Something he masked very well. So she chose bald honesty. “I never have. Until now.”

The belligerence in his eyes died. His mouth relaxed. But he didn’t speak.

“Max,” she began, unsure what was about to come from her mouth… and then her breath trailed off. Because he was looking at her again like he had last night… through hot eyes filled with intent and boldness.

“I begin to see the attraction of carriage rides,” he said, and reached forward to close his fingers around her wrist. “The rhythm, the privacy…”

She saw the flash of a decidedly wicked smile before she flowed across the divide, into his arms.

“Most definitely the privacy,” she murmured after a moment, pulling a bit away from the long, sleek kiss. “No Verbena to interrupt us. Poor girl,” she said, paused for a lovely little mash of lips, then continued. “She’s half terrified of you anyway… and you bellowed at her this morning.”

He smiled against Victoria’s mouth, his fingers already loosening the buttons at the back of her gown. Efficient in everything he did, of course.

Then suddenly, he stopped and gathered her close. One strong hand curved around the back of her head, fingers sliding into the loose knot there, palm cupping the base of her neck, and the other at the center of her back, where the gown had begun to gap open. “Victoria,” he said into her ear, barely audible, “I can’t let anything happen to you. I simply cannot. That’s what I meant by having no choice.”

She pulled back, looking into his eyes. “I’ve made the same choice, Max. Don’t you understand?”

He turned away, his face becoming rigid. “I almost wish you hadn’t. Almost ,” he added sharply, before she could argue.

Now he moved away, putting space between them, tilting her off his lap and into her own corner of the seat. “It’s you that doesn’t understand, Victoria.” He grabbed up her hand, closing his strong brown fingers around hers, covering her slender white hand with his broad, square one. “You called me a coward once.”

“Twice,” she reminded him.

The flicker of a smile ticked at the corner of his lips. “Yes, then, twice. And it’s true. I am a coward. I’ve fought this for so long-”

“How long, Max? Since you peeked at me changing in the carriage?” Victoria couldn’t resist.

Again, that involuntary twitch of lips. “Long enough. And I’ve already told you, I had no desire or reason to peek.” Then the sobering mood returned, this time laced with underlying anger. “Be quiet and let me say this.”

He glanced out the window. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done was when I… executed Eustacia. I loved her like a mother, a leader, a mentor and a friend… and she ordered me to kill her.”

“You had to, Max,” Victoria said earnestly, her fingers tightening inside his. “You had to in order to get close enough to the vampires to destroy the obelisk.”

In fact, Aunt Eustacia had ordered Max to sacrifice her in order to prove his loyalty to the vampires.

“Goddammit, I know that, Victoria. Of course I had to-it was the right thing to do. One life sacrificed in order to save countless others. I hated myself for doing it. I loathed the fact that I had to… but I did. I didn’t hesitate. I did what bloody well had to be done.”

He turned from the window then to look at her, bleakness in his eyes, austerity in his face. “But if it had been you? I couldn’t have done it. Do you understand? I could not have done it. ”

He pulled his hand from hers. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Victoria. A choice like that.”

Ten

In Which Sebastian Acquires Reading Material

Sebastian knew the moment Victoria walked into the town house parlor that things had changed.

He’d been conversing with Wayren, sitting yet again in this little room that continued to tug at him whenever he came to Eustacia’s home. During the short time he’d been here, waiting for Victoria’s return, his attention had been drawn over and over to the cabinet that held the Gardella Bible.

More than once, he’d thought to ask Wayren if he could look through it-after all, he was a Gardella, somewhere centuries back in his mother ’s family tree.

But then Victoria breezed in, dressed in a simple gown of pale blue that didn’t begin to do her justice. For pity’s sake, he’d seen maids better dressed. She was gloveless, and her rich, inky hair sagged low at the base of her skull, curls flying in little springs from her temple. And she was followed by Max Pesaro.

“Sebastian,” she greeted him. “Have you been here long?” She took a seat at one side of the empty sofa, and Pesaro sat there as well, but at the other end, well away from her, as though afraid of catching something. Though from the look on his face, he’d already been close enough to do so.

Devil take it. How was he going to travel to Prague with the two of them?