Blood Fire by Sharon Page

try to have love between us.”
    “You drive me mad,” he growled in a low voice. He saw Miss Compton watching them intently, as she pretended to study a display. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can’t love you, it’s true, but I lust for you like an addict needs opium. I’m half-insane with desire for you.”
    “Well, I’m sure you’ll recover, once you have left England.”
    “Damnation,” he swore, which was not something he was supposed to do in front of a lady. Even one he’d fucked. “I have to go.”
    “Are your voyages so very important to you? I’ve wanted to travel my whole life, and I’ve never been allowed to. I am supposed to accept all the limitations a woman has and be happy. You men refuse to give even an inch for anyone else, even someone you love.”
    Matthew had to be insane. He was throbbing with desire for her, hard as a brick. His heart thundered like native drums. “Would you believe me if I said I had to go back because it was my arrogance and stupidity that unleashed a powerful vampire? I have to go back to the Carpathians to kill her.”
    “I—A vampire? ”
    “What?” Miss Compton breathed. She had crept up behind them.
    Holding Octavia’s wrist, he dragged her against his body. He had to marry her. Had to. And, God, this close to him, her scent was drugging him like opium. He had to have her.
    In the middle of the Egyptian exhibit, in front of numerous members of Society, he yanked her into his arms and hungrily French kissed her.
     
    It was the scandal of the Season. Drat Lord Sutcliffe.
    But that shocking and scandalous kiss in the middle of the British Museum was not the only reason Octavia had not left the house for a week.
    Sutcliffe was determined. He had delayed his voyage to the Carpathians. He had sent her a long letter that detailed everything that had happened to him on his last journey there: his trip to a forbidden cave, his foolish exploration that had unlocked the prison of a vampire, the attack on his brother, the fact he had been forced to kill his own brother.
    He had explained that his heart had broken with his brother’s death and that he believed he could never love anyone again.
    She knew how painful grief could be. She had never lost the grief she’d felt after her mother had died. Sutcliffe felt responsible for his brother’s death, which must make the pain a hundred times worse.
    She understood how he felt, but that did not mean she was willing to enter into a loveless marriage.
    Unless he could be healed . . .
    No. It was ridiculous. He’d told her he refused to even try to open his heart to her. Anyway, she suspected he would be so determined to avenge his brother he would probably get himself killed in the Carpathians.
    In his letter, he’d written that he feared she would think he was crazy for saying that vampires really did exist.
    She believed him because Father had told her such things existed. . . and because she had discovered there was something wrong with her. Slowly, Octavia faced her fireplace. The fire was laid, but not burning. But she knew what would happen if she looked long enough—
    With a whoosh, flames burst from the logs. Heat flooded into the room from the fire. The blaze consumed the logs, turning them to ash at an impossible rate.
    She stepped back, shaking. She was certain she had started the fire. These things kept happening. When she grew angry . . . glass shattered, or wood splintered, or liquid suddenly frothed out of pitchers. Or fires suddenly started.
    She was so scared Father or a servant would notice. She’d avoided the dining room, the parlors. Again she was hiding in her bedchamber, just as she’d done when she was sick. Hiding the fact she appeared to be a witch. And brushes flew.
     
    She had read everything in her father’s journals about witchlike women. The words he had written were now burned into her mind, as if they had been imprinted on her with a searing brand.
    The things she could do