One With the Night by Susan Squires Page A

little arrangement, will you?”
    So, if she knew, her father thought she would insist on sharing the risk. He couldn’t blame a father for not wanting to poison his daughter. And he thought better of her because her father had to lie to her to achieve his goal. “I will no’ tell yer daughter.”
    The doctor nodded, his jowls moving over his neckcloth, and hurried back to the house.
    *   *   *
    Jane had been preparing dinner when the vampire attacked, so she could provide a kidney pie and a brace of partridges, potatoes and early sorrel with butter sauce, to sustain Mr. Kilkenny. Though her father liked eating in the kitchen, she had moved the meal into the more formal dining room until she could clean up after their ministrations to Mr. Kilkenny. Her father had picked at the kidney pie and retired, exhausted. She had just finished laying a fresh place at the table when Mr. Kilkenny came into the kitchen, rolling down his sleeves over forearms corded with muscle. How she did like forearms! His were covered lightly with fine black hair. His shirt was open at the collar, revealing a pulse throbbing in the vulnerable notch of his neck.
    “The dining room is just through there.” She heaped a plate with food and took it in while he washed his hands. As he fell to his dinner, she fetched a bottle of claret.
    “I dinnae expect wine,” he protested.
    “You’d prefer whisky?” she asked. Scots always liked their “wee dram.”
    “Ale is good enough for th’ likes ’o me.”
    He didn’t seem to think much of himself. She smiled. “But we’ve a cellar full of this French claret my father has had for twenty years. It ought to be drunk before it goes bad. Surely you can choke some down?”
    He looked taken aback. Perhaps vampires were unused to mockery.
    “We may live on a remote farm in the Highlands, Mr. Kilkenny,” she continued with feigned severity, “but my father likes to command the elegances of life. And we aren’t poor. No, no, no. A Harley Street doctor who attended the ton on their beds of pain? We can spare you a bottle or even enough to get thoroughly foxed if you like.” She raised her brows.
    “Sorry,” he muttered, and shrugged with that tiny thinning of the mouth that might be a self-deprecating smile, so attenuated as to be almost unrecognizable. “I am no’ used ta…” He trailed off. Had he been going to say “kindness”? She poured the ruby liquid. He was about to return his attention to his plate when he seemed to recollect himself. He stopped and gulped the wine. “It’s verra good,” he muttered.
    Well, that seemed dragged from him! She fetched her own plate and sat across from him. “Papa says you’ve agreed to stay on in case any others come,” she said, toying with her sorrel.
    “Aye.”
    Would he volunteer nothing? He had been forthcoming in the barn. She had a thousand questions she wanted to ask him! “Are there … many of the … the born?”
    “Enough.”
    How annoying! “You’re not very talkative, are you?”
    He stopped and sat back, chewing, and took another drink of wine. His gray-green gaze roved over her, a certain hunted look in his eyes, and beneath that a heat that felt only too familiar. She flushed. He saw it and looked away. “I talked once. A lot.”
    “You … you don’t anymore?” She picked at her partridge breast.
    “Nothin’ worth sayin’.”
    “Ah.” Had he resolved not to answer her questions? She noticed that his hand shook almost imperceptibly as he reached again for the glass. But of course he was exhausted. He’d engaged in a fight to the death, healed wounds that would have killed a human man a dozen times over, then cared for his horse and buried a vampire. She felt small and selfish. Indeed, as he sat back, he seemed to have used the last of his strength. He blinked and licked those marvelous lips, half-dazed.
    “You should rest,” she admonished. “I’ve put your things upstairs. First room at the