Kiss of the Rose (5 page)

She leaned over the rose, her nostrils wrinkling as she caught the distinct scent of tainted Vampire blood, and saw the red stain spreading on the linen. Avoiding the thorns, she carefully picked up the flower by the stem and dropped it to the floor. The rapidly decaying rose split open to reveal white inner petals, less contaminated by the blood, which began to disintegrate.

“By all the saints, who would do that?” Rosalind whispered. But if Christopher Ellis knew she was here, surely the Vampires did as well, and this was their idea of a greeting.

Rosalind wiped her fingers furiously back and forth on her skirts and then washed her hands in water from the jug in the corner. She picked up the handkerchief between finger and thumb and studied the initials embroidered in black silk on the corner: C.E.E. While she was with the king, had Christopher Ellis searched her personal belongings and left a poisoned rose on her pillow, or had he stood by and watched as one of his Vampire allies invaded her privacy?

She touched the corner of her mouth. He’d almost kissed her… With a shudder she sat down on the bed. He’d already tried to scare her off by being overfamiliar; had he hoped she would run away because of a bloodstained rose? She smiled slowly. She’d seen far worse than a drop of Vampire blood, and she’d been kissed
far
more competently. Rhys was right. Christopher Ellis didn’t really know her at all.

Chapter 3

“I 
disagree, Roper. Rosalind Llewellyn couldn’t have killed this one.” Christopher Ellis stared down at the bloated corpse wedged under one of the ornamental bridges in the king’s gardens. It was still early in the morning and the gray sky was heavy with the promise of rain.Apart from him and his servant, the grounds of the palace were deserted. They had stolen out early to view the body before the man who’d discovered it officially delivered his report to the king’s guard.

“Why not? She’s here, isn’t she?”

Christopher gave his servant an impatient glance. “She’s only been here a day. He hardly looks or smells like fresh kill, does he?”

Roper’s face took on its usual stubborn lines. “Something killed it.”

“I can see that.” Christopher turned away and sucked in a deep breath of clean air through his mouth. “The question is, what?”

“Druids, sir, isn’t it always?”

“Not always.” Christopher sighed. Sometimes Roper’s fanatical hatred of the Druids annoyed even him. But in some ways the body did look like a Druid sacrifice; despite its bloated appearance, the skin was milky white as if there was no longer any blood left in it. This wasn’t the first body that had turned up in this condition, and Christopher feared it wouldn’t be the last. It was the reason he had been ordered back to court with such haste.

“Well, I reckon it’s her,” Roper insisted.

“This man is built like a bull and Mistress Llewellyn barely comes up to my shoulder. How on earth do you think she killed him? Did she drop out of a tree onto his head, or lurk in the bushes and chop him off at the knees with an ax?”

“Now you are being stupid, sir. He still has his legs.” Roper, apparently unperturbed by the stench, poked the flabby dead flesh. “And those Druids have powers, sir. You know that. They can perform unnatural acts.”

Christopher tried to imagine the petite and beautiful Rosalind Llewellyn killing a man and found it impossible. Yesterday, he’d tried to shock her, but in truth had ended up shocking himself by how quickly she’d aroused him. She was spirited and quick-witted enough to confound even the cleverest of men, but she didn’t look like a killer. She looked as if she needed to be bedded thoroughly and often.

“Don’t underestimate her, sir. Those accursed Druid families are devilishly cunning.”

“I know that.” Irritated by the truth of Roper’s words, Christopher turned away from the corpse, which was half submerged in the water and too badly decayed for him to determine anything much, and scrambled back up the path. As he walked, tendrils of wet mist attached themselves to his skin like icy fingers that made him shiver.

Was Roper right? What did Rosalind Llewellyn really conceal behind those fine brown eyes? He had to assume she knew her grisly trade, but how well? Perhaps she was a decoy and there was another Llewellyn, preferably a man, waiting in the wings for him to battle. His spirits rose at the thought.

“You just don’t want to fight a woman, do you, sir?”

Christopher stopped walking and stared down at the bald head of his servant. “That is complete nonsense. I will fight anyone if it leads to the destruction of the Druid race.”

“If you say so, sir, but she’s a fetching little thing. I can understand if you’ve gone all soft on her.”

“I haven’t gone soft.” In truth, certain parts of him had gotten quite hard when he’d sparred with her, but Roper didn’t need to know that. “I’ll kill her if I have to.”

Roper chuckled. “If she doesn’t kill you first.”

“As you said, she’s a fetching little thing, but I doubt she can do much more than scream and run away.”

“There you go again, sir, underestimating her. Now, you just be careful.”

Christopher’s temper crackled to life. “By God’s teeth, Roper, stop treating me like I’m five years old!”

Roper’s disgruntled expression didn’t change as he stared up at his master. “I’ve known you since you were five years old, lad, and that gives me the right to tell you what I think.”

“So you always say, but I’m quite capable of making my own decisions. I’m five and twenty, and my uncle has trained me well.”

“Indeed he has, sir.” Roper started to walk again and Christopher followed.The sun was rising in the east, adding a silvery outline to the banks of rolling clouds. Christopher drew his cloak tighter around his body as Roper continued to mutter. “Shame it had to be a woman they put up against you, though, sir. Hard to prove yourself against the weaker sex.”

Christopher set his teeth and refrained from replying. Roper had a way of expressing his opinions without concern for his master’s pride or dignity.

“Do the Vampires know she’s here, sir?”

“I should imagine so.Why do you think my uncle sent for me? But I’m confident that together we will be able to vanquish Rosalind Llewellyn and send her home defeated, or in a casket.”

“Or maybe they’ll make her one of them, sir.”

Christopher shuddered at the thought. “Somehow I doubt it. Mixing Druid and Vampire blood is considered dangerous.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Roper nodded as he opened the side door into the men’s quarters of the palace. “Better to kill her, then.”

Christopher pictured Rosalind Llewellyn’s expressive face and imagined it laid waste by death. Surely killing her wouldn’t be necessary? He’d much rather send her running home and take on a real Llewellyn adversary in her stead. His sympathy toward her waned. Perhaps that was the plan after all. The Druids weren’t convinced he was a real threat and had sent a weak female to test him out.

His fingers tightened on the door handle. Was he always going to be suspect? His foreign blood considered tainted? His worth as a Druid slayer doubted by his own people,
his own family
? Christopher’s faint smile died. By God, he would show them he was more than capable. He would wreak such havoc in the Druid world that his name would live on for centuries.

Unconsciously, he pressed his hand over his heart where the mark of Mithras branded his skin. He’d vowed, as had his Roman forebears, to defend the Vampires against the Druids. It was true that the Druid threat was much reduced, but he was still bound by his oath. He’d fought hard to be accepted into the cult of Mithras, and he was determined to do its work, whatever his personal qualms about killing a woman.

Christopher slammed the door shut and stomped up the stairs, leaving Roper trailing in his wake. Doubt stirred anew in his mind and he immediately banished it. He could not afford to show any weakness. If he had his way, the Llewellyn wench would wish she had never been born.

Rosalind frowned at the king. “I’m not sure what you want me to say, sire.”

King Henry sat down and indicated that she should sit as well. He’d summoned her to his suite just as dawn was breaking, and she’d had no time to do more than throw a cloak over her riding dress and follow the guards through a series of secret passages into the king’s presence.

“You heard me perfectly well. I want to know if you believe the Vampires are murdering my servants.”

“As I said, it is possible, sire, but…”

He sat forward, his massive hand clenched on the arm of his chair. “Five palace servants have turned up dead in the past five weeks, and last night I found a corpse in my bedchamber!”

“Here, sire?” Rosalind looked cautiously around, but could see no evidence of another body, living or otherwise.

“Yes,
here
.” The king shuddered and drew his long fur robe closer around his shoulders. He gave a careless flick of his bejeweled fingers. “I arranged for the body to be left in the queen’s pleasure gardens. I cannot have my subjects know someone successfully penetrated my private chambers.”

“Absolutely not, sire.” Even as she admired the king’s callous decision to separate himself from the consequences of an unwanted corpse, Rosalind wondered how the queen and her ladies would feel if they unexpectedly came upon a blood-drained body on their way to Mass that morning.

“Did you say there have already been five deaths, sire?”

“Two men and three women.” The king lowered his voice. “These Vampires of yours. How exactly do they kill their prey?”

“They have fangs, sire, which they use to puncture the skin and suck blood out of their victims.”

The king shuddered.“The body had such marks on its throat. Do Vampires drain their victims dry?”

“Not usually, sire, because— ”

“Do they steal their souls?”

Rosalind strove for patience. “Sire, they usually just drink from their victims and leave them alive. It is very unusual for a Vampire to take all the blood from a human unless they plan to…”

“Plan to what?”

“If a Vampire wishes to turn a human into a Vampire, he needs to bleed his victim dry and then feed him Vampire blood to revive him and complete the change.”

“So it is possible that whoever did this was trying to make more Vampires?”

“It is possible, sire, or the Vampire might simply have gone mad and just wants to kill.”

The king sat back, his face pale, his eyes narrowed. “And what do you intend to do about this?”

“Execute the culprits, sire.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

Rosalind considered the king. How much did he need to know in order to allow her the freedom to operate without obstructions? “Well, it isn’t quite that easy, sire. There are hundreds of people attending your court. Finding even one rogue Vampire amongst them could take some time.”

“You have my permission to take whatever steps necessary to keep those monsters away from me. I will also inform my guards and my personal servants that you are to have access to me at all times.”

“Thank you, sire. That will certainly help.” Rosalind hesitated. “Do I also have your permission to kill the Vampire?”

“Of course.”

“Whoever it is?”

The king’s brows drew together. “Are you suggesting it could be someone I know intimately?”

“It could be anyone, Your Majesty. Vampires are immortal and make their plans accordingly. Waiting a human lifetime for one moment of revenge or the chance to enslave a king would mean nothing to them.”

“Then you have my permission to kill anyone you want.” The king met her gaze and the ruthlessness in his expression shocked her. Here was a man who would sacrifice anyone to save himself: a true monarch, a true survivor.

“How do you kill these things if they are already dead and supposedly immortal?”

“You have to decapitate them with a silver-coated blade and stake them through the heart.”

“Ah, of course.” The king studied her intently. “And you are capable of doing that?”

“Yes, sire. I might appear small and weak, but I have been trained since birth to defeat the Vampires.”

“Have you killed any?”

“Yes.”

The king’s gaze moved restlessly over her. “If these creatures are already dead, what has happened to their souls?”

“Some say that when they relinquish their humanity and become Vampire, their souls are trapped in purgatory for eternity.”

“Aye, I can understand that.” The king shivered. “Like the soul of an unbaptized child: living, yet not consecrated to the Lord. If the Vampire is killed, do you believe he is reunited with his soul?”

“I don’t know, sire.” The king’s interest in the theological matters of the Church was well known, so Rosalind was hardly surprised by his questions about the Vampire’s soul. “Others maintain that a Vampire has no soul because it disappears the moment they become immortal.”

“And what do you believe? When you kill one, what do you think happens?”

Rosalind met his gaze. “I believe in hope and the mercy of God. I like to think that the human soul is finally restored to God and can be free of the Vampire taint.”

She suspected her family wouldn’t agree with her. They believed a Vampire had no soul and deserved the nothingness of death with no promise of resurrection. Perhaps she only wished to justify killing Vampires, but she had to live with her nightmares.

The king stood up and Rosalind followed suit.

“You will keep me informed of your progress, Lady Rosalind.”

Rosalind curtsied low.“Of course, sire, and thank you for your trust in me.”

The king smiled. “It appears I have no choice but to trust you, my lady. Don’t disappoint me.”

Rosalind chose to ignore the implied threat in his words and offered him a smile of her own instead. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

She escaped into the anteroom and was escorted by a single guard back down the same secret passageway, which emerged by the kitchens of the queen’s main apartments. She had time to wonder just how many women the guard had escorted to and from the king’s bedchamber without the queen’s knowledge. Rather than venturing back upstairs to awaken Margaret, Rosalind chose to keep going to the stables where Rhys would be waiting for her. The sun was already rising above the roofline of the palace and he would be worried if she didn’t appear.