Jane sobbed, her nerves finally getting the better of her. "Maybe we can share the same coffin," she sniffled.
"Now, now, nobody is going to fit you for a casket. Instead we'll fit you for a wedding gown," Clair soothed Jane, holding both her friend's hands. "This will all work out."
"Impossible."
"There's no choice, and I am not one to beat about the bush. You are compromised. You have done what many a female set out to do and failed: bringing Asher to his knees. He will propose. You must accept, and your father must concede to the match for honor's sake." Clair hid her elation. Her Plan Z had changed dramatically, but the end result was the same. She would see these two married or her name wasn't Clair Elizabeth Frankenstein Huntsley.
Jane shook her head fiercely. "My father will never agree. He'd rather see me a corpse than married to one. Besides, Asher hates me. I imagine he wants to suck me dry for this." Jane wailed, "I should just roll over and play dead now." A sense of dread began rolling over her.
"Now, now," Clair remonstrated, patting Jane's hands. "It's not as bad as all that."
"But it is," Jane argued, nodding vigorously. "Even your husband wants to kill me for this fiasco."
Clair stared in disbelief. "Ian said that?" Her husband was a puppy dog—when he wasn't a big, scary werewolf.
"No. But I can tell murder when I see it in someone's eyes. I have embarrassed you, your husband and his guests. I have abused his hospitality. So Ian will want me dead too." Wound up, Jane continued, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. "Just what does that say about me—that everyone I know wants to murder me?"
She held on as though Clair's hands were a lifeline. "I'm not a bad person. Not really. I go to church. I feed my birds and take in stray dogs and cats, in spite of the major's many protests. Grandfather Ebenezer and I deliver Christmas gifts to the street urchins from the lists my grandfather makes all year. I even pull the weeds from neglected graves when we are hunting in the cemeteries," Jane said sadly. "But don't tell my cousins that last bit, especially Dwight. He's an odious toad."
"I know. You're a fine person, Jane. Why do you think you are my friend? I wouldn't have just anyone. And no one will touch a hair on my bosom friend's head," Clair asserted firmly.
Standing, Jane pulled away from the warmth of Clair's comfort and began to pace back and forth and back and forth across the thick Persian carpet. Watching her, Clair felt as if her eyes were crossing.
"No, I'm not a fine person," she said. "I am pulled in two different directions. I'm formed into a shape I don't even recognize at times. My Van Helsing duty lies one way, but my heart and dreams lie in another." Jane's features contorted with anguish. "I didn't want to stake Asher. I don't want to stake any vampires ever. Blood is just so… bloody! Dirt is just so dirty. And spiders—well, they have eight legs and crawl all over you. I think I want a large marble angel to decorate my headstone," she finished in another torrent of sobs.
Trying to commiserate and read between the lines was not an easy feat when Jane was upset. And Ian thought Clair was hard to follow! Ha! Still, Clair persevered. Her brilliant plan was not going to go awry. Determinedly she asked, "But most especially Asher. You wouldn't mind being married to Asher—although it is a little late to worry about that particular point now. Marrying Asher is the only solution for you after tonight."
Jane stared at Clair for a long moment, then quietly said, "Yes. But he loathes me now."
"All husbands hate their wives every now and then. It's just the nature of the beast. Nobody can be blissful all the time. If we were, we wouldn't know what true bliss is. And nobody can be likeable all the time. Not even Ian."
Jane stared hard at Clair, trying to reason out what her friend had just said. "Bliss isn't bliss, unless we are sometimes unhappy?"
"Yes. You've got it," Clair remarked happily. "Besides, between husbands and wives, making up after a jolly good fight is invigorating." Clair remembered Ian making love to her in the pantry after their most recent argument—one about serving the truffles that Mr. Warner had gathered on his last hunt.
"Who wants pig drool on one's food?"
Jane stopped pacing for a moment and looked at Clair, confused.
Undaunted, her friend went on. "Be thankful Asher is upset with you. If he wasn't, he'd be touched in the head. Imagine, not being upset with the person that stuck you in the fanny! I couldn't allow you to marry a raving lunatic, now, could I?"
In a bizarre way, that made sense. But there were so many problems with a match between Jane and Asher, such as their domestic arrangements—what time they would sleep and where. She certainly would never be caught dead in a coffin. (Or at least alive in one.) And her husband would never be able to take a walk in the sun with her, unless she wanted him to be a dried-up raisin. How could she want that? Her husband was a beauty if a beast, and a plain Jane like herself would never waste such a thing.
But then reality set in, and she said, "Asher is a great connoisseur of beauty. He buys only the finest things and courts the loveliest women. I'm no beauty. I can't believe he will offer for me."
Clair waggled her index finger at Jane, her brows arched. "Tut-tut. Never judge a vampire by his coffin." She went to stand before her friend, put her arms on her shoulders.
"Jane, you are pretty. You have just refused to see it all these years. You have the most remarkable greenish eyes I have ever seen, and a very good figure—a fine figure, indeed. Asher will be most impressed. But more importantly, you are intelligent, compassionate and have a core of iron. You also have a sense of the ridiculous, which you will need in dealing with our toplofty earl," she added with a laugh.
Jane shook her head. "But… how can I endure being married to a vampire when I am a Van Helsing? If I am torn by duty now, what will happen when I wed?"
"When you marry, your duty will be to your husband first and foremost. You can retire permanently from slaying."
Clair's words struck Jane like a #3 mallet. She was perfectly correct, and wasn't it marvelous? Wedding vows before God superceded family vows—at least Jane hoped that was so. No more midnight stakeouts!
"No more of this vampire cloak-and-dagger stuff. I can live a normal life. Well, as normal as anyone can whose husband has both feet in the grave." For the first time since Clair arrived, Jane smiled, a wistful smile of hope. Then reality intruded again, and her features darkened. "No, the major will never allow it. He will have me drawn and quartered. And he'll have Orville served for Christmas dinner."
Clair laughed, the sound light in the dismal room. "I think they quit doing that in Shakespeare's day," she said.
"Serving ostrich?"
"Drawing and quartering."
Jane's lips quirked. "And what a fine time the bard would have had with this. A vampire hunter married to a vampire! What a farce."
"Yes, your life is like a play! Rather like Romeo and Juliet."
Jane pursed her lips, deflated. There were many problems with that analogy. "No. Romeo was in love with Juliet." She wondered what would have happened if Romeo hadn't died. Would he have ever loved again? Could she herself marry a vampire who was in love with her friend? No, even Shakespeare's plots weren't this convoluted.
Looking at her friend, Clair smiled a secret smile, thinking that with a little time and luck, the earl would fall deeply and forever in love with Jane. He might be sorely angry right now, as well as sore, but soon he would be focusing on a different bottom than his own: the pert one on his soon-to-be bride.
"Well then, Jane, what about The Taming of the Shrew?" she suggested. Clair shook her head. "No, you're no shrew. A shrew couldn't hold a stake," she teased. "Not with those mousy little paws."