Page 14 of Too Brazen to Bite (Gothic Love Stories #5)

E llie fled through the halls with both hands crisscrossed over her gaping mouth. The warm stickiness adhering to her fingers and the telltale coppery sweetness coating her throat were further evidence of the two-pronged proof currently distorting her lips:

She had fangs.

“No no no no no,” she panted as she ran, the syllables coming out muffled against the pressure of her hands. Her rational, orderly world had turned completely upside down in the space of seconds.

Batty Miss Breckenridge had been right.

Vampires absolutely existed. Mártainn Macane was an incontestable example.

She’d kissed the beast. Who had then bitten her.

The spread of infection was instantaneous.

And now she, Elspeth Ramsay, self-professed bluestocking and scholar of all that was mundane and logical, was a godless, soulless bloodsucking monster with razor sharp fangs.

They protruded from her mouth, for the love of science.

She had to get out of the open. Fast.

Bad enough if someone would have entered the conservatory and chanced upon her and Cain in a compromising position. Unimaginably worse, if someone were to stroll down the corridor and happen across the lowest-born houseguest with a brand new set of fangs to augment her perpetual queerness.

Mama would know what to do.

Well, no, Mama would have no inkling what to do.

Ellie hadn’t the least spark of a plan, and she was the logical one.

But her mother had been Ellie’s sole confidante since she was a baby, and as there was no one else to confide in anyway, they would just have to fathom it out together.

Along with how to rid Ellie of her recent thirst for warm blood.

The hope of devising a working plan provided such a rush of relief, Ellie’s hand closed about the guest chamber’s doorknob before she realized there was no call for the other hand to keep covering her mouth. The strange fangs had retracted as quickly as they’d appeared.

Before she could begin to puzzle out the reason, the sound of rapid footfalls spurred Ellie back into motion. She pushed open the door, flung herself inside, and nearly bowled over her own mother as if playing a human game of skittles.

“Mama—” was all Ellie managed before she glimpsed the identity of the approaching observer.

Cain .

She slammed the door shut, slid home the lock, and leapt away from both as if she half-expected him to burst through anyway.

He did not. When his footsteps finally receded, Ellie let out her pent-up breath and turned about.

The sight of her mother’s blanched face sent Ellie’s heart into a panic all over again.

“Elspeth.” Mama’s voice was low, but each syllable thrummed with icy resolve. “You stay away from Mártainn Mac Eoin! Do you think he saw me?”

“Macane,” Ellie corrected automatically, then blinked to realize her reclusive mother had recognized a ton rake on sight—and recalled his Scottish name. “No, he was looking at me. I didn’t even see you. How would you know who he is? Had you met before?”

“Yes.” Mama shook her head. “No.” She jabbed a finger at Ellie’s midsection. “I’m not the one who needs to answer for myself. Since no one has seen me, everything is fine. But what about you? Did you join the picnic? Why are you back so soon? Where were you if not with the others?”

Ellie stared at her mother uncomprehendingly until it dawned on her that her mother’s alarm was of the normal, everyday, overprotective variety. She had no idea anything was amiss.

The lace of Ellie’s bodice covered the marks left by Cain’s fangs. Her own fangs had disappeared before she’d entered the room. If her curls were topsy-turvy or her gown a bit mussed, well, when was it not?

Ellie was having a personal crisis, and Mama... was simply being Mama.

With an inward sigh, Ellie realized that her hope of puzzling out this new twist together with her mother had been a foolish one.

Mama believed in the world as she saw it.

Her biggest fear was that her baby was not enjoying the house party she’d begged to attend.

Mama was safely ignorant of the evil lurking just below the surface of those around her.

.. and Ellie was swept with a fierce desire to keep it that way.

Unable to confess what was truly bothering her, Ellie smiled as cheerfully as she could.

She headed to the tea tray across the room as if she hadn’t a care in the world, hoping Mama wouldn’t notice her shooting covert glances at the gilded looking-glass above the bookshelf.

Ellie’s familiar—if ashen—visage reflected back at her.

Miss Breckenridge had been mistaken about the mirrors, then. Thank God.

“Everything’s fine, Mama.” Ellie poured herself a half cup of tepid tea. Everything was not fine. Things could not possibly be worse. How could she expect to keep a secret of this magnitude? “I came back because I forgot my parasol.”

“So that’s what it is!” Her mother rushed to Ellie’s side and pressed the back of her fingers to Ellie’s cheeks and forehead. “Are you feeling weak? I told you not to go, and now look what’s happened. Do you need to lie down?”

Ellie slid out of her mother’s grasp. “I’ll be fine once I’ve had a sip of this tea. I don’t have sunstroke, Mother. I have a dearth of social experience. I don’t know how to make small talk with Polite Society. Our ideas of what makes for interesting conversation are incredibly distinct.”

Mama stood for a moment longer, squinting down at Ellie as if searching for signs of trouble using microscopic vision. Apparently satisfied at last that her daughter appeared as normal as she ever did, Mama took a seat on a wingback chair opposite Ellie.

“Oh?” she asked as she settled back without partaking in the lukewarm tea. “What sorts of nonsense are the blue bloods mad about these days?”

Ellie added a lump of sugar to her cup. Now that she’d decided to pretend nothing was amiss, she needed to come up with a few details capable of convincing her mother that the High Society houseguests were nothing more than a gaggle of inane fops and fribbles.

“Well,” she said slowly. “One gentleman asked me if I’d ever been to Scotland. Twice.”

Mama jerked forward, her eyes suddenly intense. “And what did you say?”

“No, of course.”

Mama’s hyper-focused gaze continued unabated, as if she suspected Ellie of holding back details. “Was that the end of it?”

Ellie shrugged. “More or less. Oh, and he talked about some estate burning to the ground. A castle... Foulis, I believe.”

“What? No . It can’t be!” Mother clutched the armrests with trembling hands and stared at Ellie with too-wide eyes. “Why would they... When? How? Are there survivors?”

“You...” Unsettled, Ellie’s stomach began to churn with a sick feeling that had nothing to do with stale tea. “You’ve been to Scotland, haven’t you?”

Mama’s eyes glazed. “I?—”

Ellie put down her cup hard enough to crack the china saucer. “You’ve been to Castle Foulis. Haven’t you!”

Mama gave her head a violent shake. “I?—”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “If you lie to me, Mother, I shall never forgive you.”

Mama’s chin lifted in her customary hauteur, then her face crumbled into a wholly unfamiliar expression of guilt and despair.

Nothing could have frightened Ellie worse.

“I hope that is untrue,” Mama said quietly, “for I have told many lies in order to keep you safe.”

Frowning, Ellie leaned forward. “Safe from what?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The tips of Ellie’s fingers traced the twin welts beneath the lace of her bodice. “Try me.”

Her mother slumped against her armrest, the sorrow in her eyes now tempered by a faraway look of remembrance.

“Scotland... is very beautiful and very old. Fantastical stories are passed down through the generations, and magic is considered commonplace.” She shifted her gaze to the thick curtains covering the window.

“There are those who still believe the legends of the vampires of yore...”

“It’s no myth,” Ellie muttered behind her teacup. Her mother shot up from the chaise. Out of surprise, Ellie did the same.

“Then you know?” Her mother’s voice cracked on the final word.

More confused than ever, Ellie ran the tip of her tongue over her sore gums before replying. “I am irrevocably convinced. Although I admit to not understanding this conversation.”

“Oh, Elspeth.” With the tea tray still on the table between them, Mama reached over to briefly lay a hand on Ellie’s cheek. “I owe you an apology. And an answer to all your questions. I had no idea you suspected... that you knew ...”

Ellie stopped massaging her sore gums as trepidation set in. Whatever she thought she knew was merely the tip of an iceberg she hadn’t known existed. The ill feeling in her stomach increased sevenfold. “Perhaps you should start at the beginning?”

“The beginning?” Mama’s laugh was high-pitched and humorless.

“A few hundred years are far too many to recount in one sitting. Suffice it to say, I barely recall who I was before I became what I am now. I lived... if not happily, then at least contentedly under clan rule until early last century, when I met your father. He was so sweet, so?—”

Ellie shook her head to clear the cobwebs from her ears. “Beg pardon, I thought you said... early last century?”

Mother nodded abstractedly. “It was forbidden, of course, under penalty of death... but a woman in love cannot refuse the call, even if she has the ill fortune of being in love with a human. And an Englishman, at that. He was?—”

“You’re saying... you’re a vampire? ” Ellie blurted as the pieces fell into place. Her flesh grew cold at the obviousness of the truth, now that her empirical mind could no longer disbelieve the signs. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she fell back to the chaise as if awakening from a stupor. “You are!”

Mother perched back on the edge of her seat, her gestures nervous, her eyes guilty. “Was that not what we were discussing?”