I inhaled a sharp breath. There was more to my growing anxiety. Things I hadn’t wanted to share with him or admit to myself. I stared at the delicate lace on the table runner. It was so beautiful it made me want to slash it with my knife.
“Then there are my nightmares,” I whispered, not meeting his gaze. “At night, I see a man with curved horns. Always in silhouette. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. He stands there in the shadows, as if he’s… waiting for me.” A chill ran along each of my vertebrae. I finally worked up the nerve to look at Thomas. His face was a study of worry—worse than it had been moments ago. He nodded for me to continue. “He comes for me every night, stealing into my most private moments. I-I know it’s not real, but it’s hard to not think—”
I snapped my mouth shut, suddenly unsure I wanted to be quite so vulnerable. I knew Thomas wouldn’t accuse me of madness, but I did not want to add to his growing worries by admitting the full truth. I wondered if the devil in my dreams wasn’t haunting me, but waiting for me to willingly come to him. To accept my role as his mistress of darkness. The silent command emanating from him was simple: Surrender, he seemed to say without speaking. Part of me feared I’d set this inevitable path into motion the moment I decided to follow my own desires.
Thomas might be Dracula’s heir, but I was the one who craved blood. I was the one who enjoyed sinking my blades into dead flesh more than I had any right to. Sometimes, if I gave in to my secret fears, I worried there was something gnarled and twisted in me. Perhaps our wedding had fallen apart because my true companion was Satan and I was destined for treacherous things.
Thomas moved swiftly around the table and sat beside me, taking me into his arms. He cradled me there, against his pounding heart, as if he could keep my demons at bay through the sheer force of his will. “How long have the nightmares been happening?”
I hesitated. Not because I couldn’t recall, but because I wasn’t sure I should admit they’d begun the same night we’d spent our first evening together. Right before our failed wedding. I didn’t want him internalizing anything, thinking my subconscious was damning me for our desires of the flesh. I feared he’d stay far from my bedchamber forever, blaming himself no matter how wrong that was. And while I shouldn’t miss his presence in my bed since he was promised to another, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him yet.
“A few weeks.”
He sucked in a breath. I could practically hear the gears of his mind cranking over the information. “How can I make them go away?” he asked, his mouth against my hair. “Tell me how to help you, Audrey Rose.”
My first reaction was to pretend I could handle it on my own, but my mind was churning with negativity. I could not take the constant bombardment without a bit of respite. I wrapped my arms around him, uncaring that it wasn’t the most comfortable position, sitting crookedly in our stiff dining room chairs.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you.” Recalling something he’d said during one of our former adventures when things had gotten a little too serious for his taste, I added, “Make it scandalous, too.”
He grinned against my neck before planting a chaste kiss there. No doubt he was recalling when he’d said that to me—we were tucked behind the fern fronds in his family’s estate in Bucharest. He ran his hand along my spine, soothing and gentle.
“Before I met you, I was convinced love was both a weakness and a hazard. Only a fool would allow himself to be swept up in someone’s eyes, pen sonnets dedicated to them, and dream of the floral fragrance of their hair.” He paused, but only briefly. “The night we met I’d gotten into a fight with my father. He was livid with me for ruining another potential match.”
His tone was bitter now, and I remembered him telling me earlier their argument had been over Miss Whitehall. He instinctually held me tighter.
“My father called me a monster,” he admitted. “The worst part was I believed him, that I was less than human, unable to feel things as others do. I accepted his appraisal of me, which made me harbor all the more animosity toward love. Why long for something that would never be mine? If I didn’t believe in it, I could avoid the crushing disappointment that would inevitably follow if I ever did fall. Surely no one would truly want me, the monster. More obsessed with death than living.”
I wanted to twist in my seat, to see his face, but realized because I couldn’t study him it was easier for him to confess. I sat very still, hoping to not break the spell of the moment.
“You’re not a monster, Thomas. You’re one of the most incredible people I know. If anything, you care too much for those around you. Even strangers.”
He drew in a shaky breath and waited a minute before responding. “Thank you, my love. It’s one thing for someone else to tell you you’re good, but when you don’t believe it yourself…” He shrugged. “For a long while I thought I was a monster. I’d heard the whispers around London. The way people mocked my behavior and accused me of being Jack the Ripper. Sometimes I wondered if they were right, if one day I might wake up and find blood on my hands with no recollection of how it got there.”
My fingers curled into his lapels, gripping them tightly. I remembered those rumors, too. I’d encountered a bit of that animosity during an afternoon tea I’d hosted what felt like ages ago instead of mere months. I’d only just met Thomas—and couldn’t stand him most of the time—and yet I’d defended him instead of sitting back and quietly agreeing, much to my aunt’s dismay.
I loathed the way the people of so-called noble birth spread rumors of him like a plague. When they’d discovered Miss Eddowes, one of the Ripper victims, had a small tattoo that read TC, they went wild with theories. They were cruel and inaccurate. Thomas could never harm anyone. If they’d only given him a chance, they’d have seen what I did…
“Anyway, that night I made a vow to the heavens. I swore I would only marry science. I refused to surrender my heart or my mind to anyone. No one can think you’re a monster if they don’t know you. And those who already thought it? Why should I care? They didn’t mean anything. I refused to let them.”
He dropped a kiss on my neck, drawing a lovely tingling sensation on my skin there.
“When I walked into your uncle’s laboratory, I’d been so consumed with the surgical procedure we were about to perform. It was the perfect distraction from my black mood. I hadn’t initially noticed you. Then I did.” He breathed in deeply as if preparing to reveal the secret I craved. “You were standing there, scalpel in hand, apron splattered in blood. Of course I noticed your beauty, but that wasn’t what caught me off guard. It was the look in your eyes. The way you held that blade aloft, like you might stick me with it.” He chuckled, the sound rumbling in his chest. “I was so startled at the odd surge of my pulse, I almost fell face-first into the open cadaver. It was a horrifying mental image. I was even more disturbed when I realized it mattered—what you’d think of that. Of me.”
He gently stroked my hair for a few beats.
“I hadn’t had a physical response to anyone before,” he said, voice shy. “I’d never found myself intrigued by anyone, either. And there you were, within an hour of my declaration against love, as if mocking my resolve. I wanted to shout, ‘I will not become a monster for you!’ Because a foreign piece of me wanted to snatch you away and keep you all to myself forever. It was downright animalistic. I wanted to loathe you but found it impossible.”
I snorted at that. “Yes, you certainly seemed bewitched by me. What with that icy reception. You didn’t even speak to me.”
“Do you know why?” he asked, not expecting an answer. “Because I knew, straightaway, there was only one reason behind my treacherous heartbeat. I thought if I could fight it, pretend the feeling away, freeze it, if necessary, I might win the battle against love.” He shifted behind me, gently turning my face to his. This time, he wished to confess to me. “I knew from the moment I set eyes upon you there could be something special here. I wanted to forget the surgery and don an apron, too. I wanted to cast you under the same spell that you’d cast over me. Of course that wasn’t logical. I needed to remember who I was—the monster, incapable of being loved. My coolness was directed entirely at myself. The more time we spent together, the harder it became to deny the change in my emotions. I couldn’t pretend away my feelings, nor could I blame them on some strange illness.”
I rolled my eyes at that. “How exceptionally sentimental. Believing your affection for me was nothing more than an infection.”
His laugh erased my remaining worry with its warmth. I all but forgot about the maelstrom in my head. “I had an inclination that you might feel that way. Which is why I penned this for you instead.”
I stared at him for a moment, pulse pounding. “You wrote something for me?”
He pulled a small cream envelope from his pocket, his expression bordering on bashful as he handed it to me. My name was written with care—the script more beautiful than his usual hurried writing. A lovely flush crept up his collar.
Curious as to what would bring about such an unusual emotion in him, I quickly opened it and read.
My dearest Audrey Rose,
Poems and sonnets are meant to rhyme, but I find myself unable to pen anything other than the deepest longing of my soul. My world had been dark. I was so used to it that I’d grown accustomed to traversing through the lonely stretches of desolate land.
When you entered my life, you shone brighter than the sun and stars combined. You warmed the frozen parts of me I’d feared were incapable of thawing. I’d been convinced I had a heart carved from ice until you smiled… and then it began to beat wildly. I cannot imagine my world without you in it now, because you are my entire universe.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Wadsworth. You are and will forever remain my truest and only love. I hope, though I have no right to, that you will be mine. As I will always be