The duke ignored the vamp, his intense gaze fixed on Millicent. “I suggest you find a way then. That is, if you ever want to see your Nell. Although personally, I’d recommend you just sleep with the lad and get it over with. The old lady doesn’t seem to do well in captivity.”

Millicent growled loud enough to make Selena let out a reflexive whimper.

“Enough,” snapped Gareth. “I’ll not have her forced.”

The duke chuckled. “Oh, Sir Knight, I don’t think that will be necessary. Despite her protests, the girl wants you. A few hours alone with you and she doesn’t stand a chance.”

Millicent flushed. Of course she found Sir Gareth tempting. Any woman would. But she hadn’t realized she’d allowed her attraction to show. She must dissuade the duke of the notion that the knight meant anything to her at all. Otherwise, Ghoulston would use that to his advantage. Bad enough that she’d allowed her concern for Nell to show.

“Do you really think I’d give myself to any man?” she said. “After what my mother—I’d rather you went ahead and cut the relic off my wrist, than allow Sir Gareth to touch me.”

Selena took a step toward Millicent, her eagerness to suit Millicent’s words to action obvious in the red glow of her eyes.

But the duke only chuckled, rubbing his hands together again. “This is rich. Ice-cold Millicent Pantere must surrender her virginity for her only friend.” He stilled and glanced at the mantel clock. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a farthing how you manage to get that relic off your wrist. But you had best do it. And you have only a few hours. It would be unwise of you to make me wait until tomorrow night. Selena, my pet, show them to the red suite.”

Selena pinched her lips but sailed to the door, stepping on the fallen guard with vindictive pleasure. Gareth waited for Millicent, who saw no other option than to follow the other shape-shifter. Perhaps when she was alone with the knight he would tell her more about the relic. Something that would allow her to give it to the duke without giving up the one thing she owned of value. At least to her.

She felt Gareth’s warm presence at her back as she followed Selena through the cold stone hallways to the upper level of the castle. They climbed innumerable curving stairways until they reached a landing surrounded by doorless stone walls. Selena headed across the space, stopped before a niche, and pulled the carved statue inside. Stone shuddered, and when a square opening appeared, she waved them past her with a glitter of black beads.

Millicent ignored the smirk the girl gave her and entered a room unlike anything she’d ever seen before. The walls had been painted a deep red, and paintings even more graphic than the ones in the castle hall littered the room. It looked like a parlor, although it lacked the normal tables and chairs that made visiting possible. Instead, it boasted a thick rug surrounded by pillows in front of the hearth, and a multitude of armless sofas and fainting couches.

“Bloody hell,” said Millicent.

Selena grimaced. “Too bad all this splendor will go to waste. Tug the bellpull if you manage to remove the bracelet. I want first dibs on his knightliness, here.” She gave Gareth one last lingering look before she left, the stone door grinding to a close behind her.

Millicent crossed the room, stepping over plush carpets and enormous Indian pillows, and looked out the narrow window. This side of the castle faced a craggy ravine, small waterfalls erupting out of the stone to plunge into the depths below. The fairylights on the cavern ceiling hardly penetrated this shadowy side of the fortress and she couldn’t tell if the walls provided any handholds.

She spun. Gareth studied a painting, nearly cocking his head upside down to make out some detail in it. Millicent inspected their prison. She found a door that led into a windowless washroom, and another leading into a bedroom—which didn’t have any way of escape either. She stood at the threshold and crossed her arms over her chest, scowling at the enormous canopy bed with its blood-red satin coverlet, the mirror-paneled walls and ceiling.

There had to be another way to remove the relic. She turned and faced Gareth. “Surely you couldn’t have seduced every woman who wore the bracelet.”

“True,” he replied, still intent on those scandalous paintings. “A few times the relic chose grandmotherly ladies who viewed me as a son. I stayed with them for years, until the relic loosened when they died.” He straightened, smoothing back the blond curls from his face. Again he wore that veil of sadness that somehow twisted her heart. “There were several women who didn’t prefer men in their beds. I changed their minds or stayed with them until they died. Is that why you don’t wish to bed me?”

Millicent’s arms fell to her sides. “Certainly not. Of course I want—that is, I like men. I just don’t prefer to take one to my bed.” She kicked a pillow that sat near the door, the small bells around its seam jangling with the movement.

Gareth smiled at her words. It lit up his face and made her knees go weak. His blue eyes met her own amber gaze and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. “So you finally admit you want me. Why, then, do you fight it so?”

Drat, the man could drag the secrets out of a mountebank. He spoke as smoothly as he moved. “That’s none of your concern. Now, are you telling me there are only two ways the relic will come off? Sex or death?”

“If I knew of any other, I would tell you.”

She believed him. He was a true knight of the Round Table, full of honor and chivalry and truth. It wasn’t just his sensual handsomeness that attracted her. Millicent yearned for that goodness within him. She wanted to surround herself with that light that shone like a beacon in her dark world. She wanted to take it inside her and somehow make it a part of her too.

She swayed toward him.

He reached out, started to close the distance between them.

Millicent held up her arm. “Don’t. Don’t come any closer.” She wanted an impossible dream and she’d best snap out of it, so she could deal with the reality of her life. Her dark soul would probably snuff out that goodness within him as easily as she put out a candle.

“Millicent.” His voice caressed her name.

Her traitorous human body swayed toward him again. Millicent quickly shifted to panther. The hair on her back stood up in a line of warning. She snarled and bared her teeth, swishing her tail in fury. Any other man would have trembled with fear, but Sir Gareth just looked puzzled. He watched her pace the room, a caged animal with no place to go, no room to run.

Millicent didn’t want to want him, damn it.

She should never have put that bracelet around her wrist. She should have just snatched it and run. Then Selena could have put on the relic and satisfied her obvious lust for Sir Gareth. It would now be around the wrist of a woman who would relish a night of pleasure in the arms of this sensual man…

Millicent paused on top of a thick carpet. She flexed her claws repeatedly into the deep pile while she thought, a slow purr beginning to rumble in the back of her throat. She shifted back to human, ignoring the fuzzy shreds of yarn now piled at her feet.

“How bound are you to the wearer of the relic?”

“I like your were-beast,” he commented absently, stretching out on one of the couches, his tunic pulling up with the movement, revealing muscular thighs through that thick woolen hose he wore. “You move with sensual grace.”

“Predators usually do. It’s how we manage to catch our prey.” She smiled without humor, revealing the unusually long human canines that mimicked her beast. “Now would you please answer the question?”

“I’m not forced to make love with the wearer, if that’s what you mean. Although it would be foolish of me, since she may just be the one who could break my curse.” He locked his arms behind his head, making his chest appear even broader. Pulling up his tunic even higher. “I do not have to stay by her side, either. But no matter how far away from the bracelet I roam, it always manages to swallow me when the sun rises.”

Millicent averted her eyes from his recumbent body, wondering if he wore some sort of drawers beneath that tunic, or only the hose… which didn’t seem quite so thick now. “No, I mean, can you make love to someone else? Even while another woman wears the relic?”

“It would have been some long years with the grandmothers if I couldn’t.” He frowned at her, a hint of anger in those pale blue eyes. “Verily, I don’t need the relic to seduce a woman.”

“That’s bloody obvious.”

He raised himself up on his arms, lowering his head and gazing at her through hooded eyes. Every movement he made seemed designed to inflame a woman’s desire. “I will not force you.”

“So you’ve said. But how willing are you to help me?”

Gareth shrugged. “I’m not bound by the relic to do so. But honor demands it of me. My sword is at your service, my lady.” He looked down at his empty scabbard in chagrin. “Forsooth, it would be if I had it.”

Millicent smiled. “Ah, but that’s not the weapon we’ll be needing, Sir Gareth Solimere.”

Four

Gareth shouldn’t have been annoyed by Millicent’s plan, yet he found himself tugging the bellpull with enough force to tear the embroidered fabric from its rope. He stared at the cloth in his hand with chagrin. Why was he reacting this way? Millicent’s idea actually had merit, and he had no doubt he could seduce the were-vampire bat into revealing where the duke had imprisoned this Nell woman.