As Vital as Blood (Victorian Vampires Book 1) by Amanda DeWees

Author:Amanda DeWees [DeWees, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-01-23T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter VIII

The intrusion of her irritating companion from the journey had unsettled Michael. In her room, as she took her hair down and began to brush it, she thought about the missing girls, the gossip about vampires. The evening had been a reminder that she was a stranger in a foreign land whose ways were not her own, and she realized that as the baron’s guest she had probably been insulated from much that would have startled or shocked her.

Not that life in his castle was always peaceful or comfortable. She glanced at the window, thinking of her dreams. Thinking, too, of the baron himself.

No other man had ever exerted such fascination for her. The magnetism of his presence might have been enough to summon her from halfway across the globe. She couldn’t understand it, this unreasoning sense that there was a connection between them, but it was there all the same, defying all logic.

Use your intellect, Michael. But perhaps this was a territory where instinct reigned, not reason.

Just this evening, for example, before Mr. Rich had barged in, before she had begun to read to the baron. She had remembered something she wanted to check in a volume of Johnson at the other end of the room, and as she stood there, flipping the pages, she had had the strongest conviction that the baron had walked up to stand close behind her. The quality of the room’s silence changed, as if his body was blocking the ambient noise, and she felt the height of his presence behind her, not intimidating, but…exciting.

She kept perfectly still, even holding her breath, wondering what he would do. He had not yet touched her. In this suspended moment she could imagine him slipping his arms around her waist to hold her close against him. Or reaching for her chin, gently turning her toward him, bending his head to kiss her lips. It was so vivid in her mind that she began to turn her head.

Then the illusion vanished. She was looking across the length of the room at the baron, who stood behind the desk tidying a stack of papers. She had imagined it all. But it had felt so real…

That he had confided in her about his past moved her in its demonstration of trust. But some of what he said had disturbed her. Combined with all this talk of vampires and the mayor’s dark warning, his peculiar story made her wonder if he was hiding something from her. Not that she was ready to believe he was a vampire or even that such things existed, but perhaps he was guilty of wishing to be one.

Michael was not a fool, nor was she ignorant of the folklore. She knew that many of the details of the baron’s curious life—his avoidance of the sun, his refusal to take food in her presence, perhaps even the absence of mirrors in the castle—were consistent with the legend of the vampire. The story he had told her

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.