“I know, but to fall in love—” Matthew protested, his anger mounting.
“Marcus has done a brilliant job, no buts about it,” Hamish interrupted. “He’s recruited new members and overseen every financial detail of our operations. He demanded that the Congregation punish Knox for his actions here in May and has formally requested the covenant be revoked. Nobody could have done more. Not even you.”
“Punishing Knox doesn’t begin to address what happened. He and Gerbert violated my home.
Knox murdered a woman who was like a mother to my wife.” Matthew gulped down his wine in an effort to drown his anger.
“Emily had a heart attack,” Hamish cautioned. “Marcus said there’s no way to know the cause.”
“I know enough,” Matthew said with sudden fury, hurling his empty glass across the room. It smashed against the edge of one of the bookshelves, sending shards of glass into the thick carpet.
Hamish’s eyes widened. “Our children will never have the chance to know Emily now. And Gerbert, who’s been on intimate terms with this family for centuries, stood by and watched Knox do it, knowing that Diana was my mate.”
“Everyone in the house said you wouldn’t let Congregation justice take its course. I didn’t believe them.” Hamish didn’t like the changes he was seeing in his friend. It was as though being in the sixteenth century had ripped the scab off some old, forgotten wound.
“I should have dealt with Gerbert and Knox after they helped Satu J?rvinen kidnap Diana and held her at La Pierre. If I had, Emily would still be alive.” Matthew’s shoulders stiffened with remorse. “But Baldwin forbade it. He said the Congregation had enough trouble on its hands.”
“You mean the vampire murders?” Hamish asked.
“Yes. He said if I challenged Gerbert and Knox, I would only make matters worse.” News of these murders—with the severed arteries, the absence of blood evidence, the almost animalistic attacks on human bodies—had been in newspapers from London to Moscow. Every story had focused on the murderer’s strange method of killing and had threatened to expose vampires to human notice.
“I won’t make the mistake of remaining silent again,” Matthew continued. “The Knights of Lazarus and the de Clermonts might not be able to protect my wife and her family, but I certainly can.”
“You’re not a killer, Matt,” Hamish insisted. “Don’t let your anger blind you.” When Matthew turned black eyes to him, Hamish blanched. Though he knew that Matthew was a few steps closer to the animal kingdom than most creatures who walked on two legs, Hamish had never seen him look quite so wolflike and dangerous.
“Are you sure, Hamish?” Matthew’s obsidian eyes blinked, and he turned and stalked from the room.
Following the distinctive licorice-root scent of Marcus Whitmore, mixed tonight with the heady aroma of lilacs, Matthew was easily able to track his son to the family apartments on the second floor of the chateau. His conscience pricked at the thought of what Marcus might have overheard during this heated exchange, given his son’s keen vampire hearing. Matthew pressed his lips together when his nose led him to a door just off the stairs, and he tamped down the flicker of anger that accompanied his realization that Marcus was using Philippe’s old office.
Matthew knocked and pushed at the heavy slab of wood without waiting for a response. With the exception of the shiny silver laptop on the desk where the blotter used to be, the room looked exactly as it had on the day Philippe de Clermont died in 1945. The same Bakelite telephone was on a table by the window. Stacks of thin envelopes and curling, yellowed paper stood at the ready for Philippe to write to one of his many correspondents. Tacked to the wall was an old map of Europe, which Philippe had used to track the positions of Hitler’s army.
Matthew closed his eyes against the sudden, sharp pain. What Philippe had not foreseen was that he would fall into the Nazis’ hands. One of the unexpected gifts of their timewalk had been the chance to see Philippe again and be reconciled with him. The price Matthew had to pay was the renewed sense of loss as he once more faced a world without Philippe de Clermont in it.