Bite At First Sight
Scandals With Bite: Book 3
She chose the wrong night to go graverobbing.
Rafael Villar, interim Lord Vampire of London, has an avalanche of problems. First, the vampire hunter he’d caught in the cemetery was no vampire hunter. It was Lady Cassandra Burton, the vexing countess who’d pestered him social events. She’d only meant to steal a cadaver for her relentless quest to become a doctor.
In a stroke of bad luck, Rafe is unable to erase Cassandra’s memory of their encounter. He has no choice but to take her prisoner, under vampire law. The Elders give him thirty nights to decide whether to kill her or Change her. For reasons he can’t reveal, Rafe can’t do either.
Despite being imprisoned by a monstrously scarred vampire, Cassandra isn’t afraid of Rafe. In fact, she insists on experimental operations on his bad arm, rendered useless from being burned by the sun. Undone by her passion and beauty, Rafe agrees to a trade. For each experiment, she must give him something he’s never dared ask for since before he was burned: A kiss.
As time trickles down to the hour Rafe must solve his impossible dilemma to spare the life of the woman he’s falling for, another vampire is using his distraction to foment an insurrection.
Subgenres: regency romance, paranormal romance, regency vampire romance, gothic paranormal romance, historical paranormal romance, victorian vampire romance
Tropes: forbidden romance, angsty, alpha hero, vampire hero, grumpy romance, grumpy hero, kidnapped romance, grumpy sunshine, age gap romance, nerd girl, scarred hero, beauty and the beast romance
28 September 1823
St. Pancras Cemetery, London
“If one desires a task accomplished correctly, one must do it herself.” Cassandra Burton, Dowager Countess of Rosslyn, repeated the litany as she pulled the rickety little wagon through the moonlit aisle of tombstones.
She shivered under her velvet cloak. Her fingers had long since gone numb with the effort of navigating the dratted conveyance over uneven ground and across slippery, damp grass. Shovels and pry bars clanked across the wagon’s worn pine boards. The winch rattled on its frame.
Something flickered across the corner of her vision.
READ MORECassandra jumped. She stopped and rubbed her gloved hands together for warmth, surveying the graveyard. The area was still and silent as…well, a tomb. Yet the chill in her spine refused to abate. A scornful frown turned her lips at such irrational behavior. Ghosts were an illogical figment of uneducated imaginations, and no one could possibly have business out here at this hour…except herself.
“Worthless curs,” Cassandra whispered in as haughty a tone as she could manage.
If only the men to whom she’d offered a more-than-generous sum to perform this troublesome task had done their duty, rather than disappearing. She shook her head. If not for their unreasonable negligence, she would now be comfortably ensconced in her laboratory unraveling the secrets of the human body…not out in this cold, dreary place, jumping at shadows.
Surveying the newest graves, she read the dates to decide which would be the best specimen. The mysterious disappearance of her hired hands nagged at her. Could a murderer be on the loose? She shook her head and pulled the folds of her cloak tighter. No, by now the authorities would have found their bodies and the news would be sensationalized in The Times.
They were cowards, but she was not. To prove her lack of fear, Cassandra halted her wagon and fetched out a shovel. Her hands trembled nervously as she grasped the wooden handle.
Removing the dead from their graves was illegal. If a constable caught her, she’d be sent directly to Fleet Prison. A fresh surge of trepidation curled in her belly.
Exhuming a corpse was quite a different matter from having one ready on her operating table. As objective as she tried to be, the prospect of removing the body from its carefully arranged resting place by winching it out of the ground and loading it onto her cart was undeniably gruesome. However, gruesome or not, Cassandra needed a specimen to continue her work. And she would acquire it, no matter how much her nerves protested.
Despite being barred from official education as a physician because of her sex, Cassandra was determined to learn the skills required to become a doctor. That included studying human anatomy, and for that, she required cadavers.
Returning to the graves, she made her selection. Alfred Lumley, born September first, 1801; died September twenty-sixth, 1823. Two days ago Alfred had been a living twenty-two-year-old man, three years younger than herself. Whether or not he’d been healthy, she would soon determine. A pang of sorrow struck her heart. His soul is in heaven, she reminded herself. A mere shell remains. A shell that will help me to aid the living.
She raised the shovel, ready to plunge it into the soft soil. “I am not afraid. I am not.”
“You should be.” A sinister, accented voice pierced her consciousness.
COLLAPSE