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amber on a cream background. Where had her paisley shawl gone? With nothing but the thin nightdress between her nakedness and his eyes, her arms flew in all directions in a vain attempt to hide herself from his view. Making matters worse, a strange elder gentleman shuffled in barefeet from an adjoining chamber. It was beyond endurance. Two pair of eyes were trained upon her: her host’s gazing in blatant gawking admiration, the other man’s in confused embarrassment. After a moment, the elder man started as if he’d been jabbed with a cattle prod, and pattered to the adjoining dressing room. He returned moments later bearing a silver-gray brocade dressing gown, and offered it. Cora snatched the gown and shrugged it on. It was a mile too large. Her hands disappeared inside the sleeves, and it all but dragged upon the floor. Still, she bore it regally, tugging it closed in front.
    “These are my apartments, and this is Parker, my valet,” Joss said. Then, to the slack-jawed elder; “Lock the door, and for God’s sake keep her here till I return,” he commanded. Spinning on his heel, he charged back out into the hall and disappeared.

C HAPTER S IX
    Proprieties be damned! It was too late for preserving decorum now. Joss’s feet scarcely touched the stairs as he raced below. So many raw emotions riddled him that he could barely walk straight; the arousal straining the seam in his breeches could have something to do with that. Twice now he had held that exquisite body in his arms—felt the softness of Cora’s skin, smelled the sweetness of her breath puffing against his, felt the thumping of her heart, this time through the soggy woolen greatcoat. That garment weighed him down now, and he stripped it off and threw it over the banister at the bottom of the landing.
    There hadn’t been time to take Bates to the servants’ quarters below; Joss was too anxious to get to Cora before the coachman could. Instead, they had carried the butler into the salon and made him comfortable on the chaise lounge there. Now Joss evicted Grace, Amy, and Rodgers the footman from their vigil, and bolted the door after them. Blinking back tears, he dropped down on oneknee beside the chaise lounge, and tucked the afghan Grace had left there close around the butler’s body.
    “Why did you let him back in, Bates?” he moaned. “Why did you disobey me? He is
vampir
—an impostor. He is not the young lady’s coachman. The real Sikes probably lies dead of exposure, naked in the snow . . . or has become a vampire. Those were his togs the impostor was wearing.”
    “Y-you left with him, sir,” said the butler feebly. “He’s been livin’ below like one o’ us. He said you was right behind him . . . and he was bleedin’.”
    “Were you . . . bitten? Did he bite you, Bates?” Joss said, his misty eyes flitting over the butler.
    Bates shook his head. “No,” he said, “I was looking past him . . . for some sign of you. He said you was coming on. When you didn’t come . . . I stepped aside to let him enter, and he threw me down. I’m an old man, sir . . . seventy-seven come February . . . too old for sparring . . . too tired . . .”
    Tears blurred his image from Joss’s view. The beloved old butler had been his friend and protector for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t be dying, and it couldn’t be his fault. How could he bear it?
    Joss’s head was swimming with questions. Where were the bodies from the coach? How could he break the news to Cora that they had vanished? Who was the stranger posing as her coachman? Where had he gone? He was vampire, and a shape-shifter as well, with two animal incarnations—the wolf and the bat. How many other shapes did he command? Joss needed answers if he was to fight, and though he was loath to have them at the expense of his butler’s last breath, he had no choice but to extract them.
    “Is anything broken?” he asked, a close eye upon Bates’s contorted features.
    The butler