The Autumn Palace (7 page)

‘Aye, yer a good woman.' He kept his voice quiet, so that only Col could hear.

He buried his face in the meat, biting off chunks and swallowing them without chewing. He heard rather than saw Ondine leave via the servant's door. A pang gripped his heart at her departure, but he knew that she'd want to get as far away from Vincent as possible.

A furious barking sound came from the guests' entrance. Two of the waiters opened the double doors. In stepped the Infanta Anathea holding a white ball of fluff under her arm. It barked and yapped like a lunatic. (The dog, not the Infanta.) With the frozen expression of a woman caught in a wind tunnel, the ash-blonde Infanta looked around at everyone seated at the table. For a while Shambles tried to work out what was wrong with her face. Everybody knew the
Infanta was at least a decade older than the Duke, but her eyebrows were up near her hairline and her forehead looked ironing-board flat.

Keeping that imperious look on her face, perhaps because she was incapable of any other expression, Infanta Anathea turned to the Duke and snarled, ‘You started dinner without me?'

Everyone stopped talking. The room reverberated with clunks and clangs as they put their cutlery down. A flash of silver caught Shambles's eye – he turned to see someone dropping a small fish knife into a clutch bag and clicking the top closed. Shambles snuck over to the patent-leather bag. It was so shiny he could see his furry reflection in it.

The Duke rose from his chair. ‘Dear sister. Dinner is at seven sharp. Just as it always is. Your seat is waiting.'

‘You're so rude,' the Infanta said.

Shambles used the distraction to his advantage, the Infanta's voice drowning out the quiet ‘snick' as he opened the clutch bag. He grabbed the stolen knife with his teeth and brought it to an empty spot under the table, well clear of anyone's feet.

At that moment the Infanta's little dog spotted Shambles under the table. The dog wriggled and spasmed like he'd been struck with an electric prod.

‘No, Biscuit,'
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the Infanta said, attempting to calm her pet.

Biscuit paid the Infanta no mind. With a bloodcurdling ‘ru-ru-ru-ru' the white hairy thing launched itself into the air. He landed on the ground and charged for Shambles.

‘Biscuit! Heel!' the Infanta commanded, but Biscuit had another master – blood lust!

For a terrifying quarter of a second Shambles considered transforming into a human to gain an advantage over the dog. Panic surged through his furry body as he looked up to see Old Col's worried face. With a lunge he shot up the leg of the chair, but his claws tangled on the hem of Col's skirt.

‘Ru-ru-ru-ru,' Biscuit barked.
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Quick as a flash, Old Col's hands grabbed
Shambles around the middle to pull him to safety. Biscuit hurled himself into the air, his mouth open, white teeth and red gums bared.

The pretty white dog sank his fangs into Shambles's ferrety neck and chomped down hard.

 

27
   Invented by those gourmets the French. An ‘aperitif' is a pre-dinner alcoholic drink, designed to get the appetite going
.

28
   At the risk of turning this into a manual on Brugel's unusual grammar, ‘fenudging' is a common adverb describing the flickety fidgety movements of people who otherwise ought to be sitting still
.

29
   Quite frankly he deserved a medal. Next time you do something mild like stub your toe or get a paper cut, see if you can remain completely silent
.

30
   Biscuit's real title is Cardrona King Ivanovich, five times Best Breed, twice Best in Show, Venzelemma Ducal Dog Show
.

31
   He snarled too, but the Brugelish spelling of dog snarls is too complicated to print here
.

B
eing neither a witch nor a woman possessed of supernatural powers to see into rooms without being in them at the time, Ondine remained oblivious to Shambles's current plight. To her credit, she had realised her presence in the Duke's dining room during the evening meal had been a huge mistake. She knew Hamish and Old Col would be at the dinner, but she couldn't refuse Draguta's request to take the towels in. Guilt spread through her at the huge amounts of pain it must have caused Hamish for her to appear like that and make him transform. It didn't help that Vincent had been there too. Thankfully he only gave her a greasy look and had kept his mouth shut. The moment she'd done her job, Ondine had nodded to the Duke and Duchess and quickly scarpered out of there. Her
assumption being that Hamish would revert to ferret form and remain safe and undetected, if a little green around the gills.

Not knowing Hamish was bleeding from the neck after Biscuit's attack, Ondine followed Draguta to the staff lounge and ate a bowl of vegetable soup and a multi-grain dinner roll. Unaware that the Infanta was screaming profusely at Old Col about the chance ‘that revolting
thing
' had given her champion rabies,
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Ondine accepted a second bowl of soup.

She was also completely insensible to the next development, where Old Col made an incantation to the powers of the earth, stars and moon, at which
point Biscuit's teeth fell out.
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The Infanta's high-pitched screams that could open a can? Ondine heard them loud and clear. Just about everyone in the palechia heard them. They ripped through the halls and the thin plaster walls like daggers of foul temper. The piercing noise reached the staff lounge, where Ondine's second bread roll beckoned, but ultimately lay untouched.

In a heartbeat Ondine took flight and ran towards the horrible sounds of chaos and terror.

Only to find herself face to face with her worst nightmare. OK, her second worst nightmare. Her first worst nightmare was being separated from Hamish. But her second worst nightmare was Lord Vincent.

He was standing right in front of her. His eyes glinted with anger as he scraped his blond hair back from his forehead. A gleam of satisfaction stole through her as she saw remnants of a blue stain on his hand, left over from the night they'd caught him robbing the family hotel. Did he not wash, or was it
sheer guilt keeping the stain there? Not for the first time, Ondine wondered what she'd ever seen in him. He might have been handsome if he weren't so ugly on the inside.

‘What are
you
doing here?' she asked.

‘What are you doing
here
?' he asked straight back. ‘And don't stand there like an idiot. Bow to your betters.'

Just because you've got a title it doesn't mean you're better than me
, Ondine thought. The memory of the night he slapped her hard on the face came flooding back.
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In defiance, she kept her back ramrod straight. ‘Aren't you supposed to be in Fort Kluff?'

‘It didn't take.' He examined a fingernail and said, ‘Why are you here?'

‘I'm working.'

Vincent mimicked, ‘
I'm working
.' He made no sideways movement to let her pass.

Frustration surged through Ondine. ‘May I pass?'

Silently he stepped to the side and made room. Ondine took a step but something smacked her hard in the shins. A lurching, falling sensation lasted all of
half a second before she hit the floor with a thud. She looked up and saw a smirk on his face.

‘Not quite a bow, but it will do.'

Picking herself up, Ondine brushed away the hurt in her palms. ‘You're a –'

‘Tut tut! When I'm Duke, you'll show me more respect.'

‘When you're Duke I'll emigrate to Slaegal!'
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Ondine stomped off as best she could, head high, limping slightly, but all the same savouring the victory of getting the last word in.

Just as she turned the corner Vincent yelled out, ‘Witch!'

His tone carried such a sting, it was the first time Ondine heard someone use that word in a derogatory sense. Indignation on behalf of her great aunt surged through her. A retort sprang to her lips just as Old Col arrived, carrying a prone Shambles in her arms. Around his neck she'd wrapped a white linen napkin.
Correction, some of it was white but mostly it was covered in deep burgundy stains.

‘Shambles!' Ondine cried.

Lurch
. Ondine's stomach did that horrible sinking-with-fear thing as she looked at him. Then
lurch
again as another nagging, awful, this-is-not-right feeling took hold. She was standing right next to him, close enough for her to touch his head and say, ‘Oh, you poor darling.'

So why hadn't he changed back into a man now that they were close again? Did he not want to?
Gasp
. Was he too injured?

‘Quick, let's get to my room,' Old Col said. They ran up the stairs and rushed down the hall, and shut the door behind them for privacy.

Ondine grabbed a couple of towels and placed them on the bed, so they could lie Shambles down without staining the duvet.

With a waver in her voice, Ondine asked, ‘How did it happen?' All the while she gently stroked Shambles's soft ferrety head and even kissed him twice. Did his eyelids flutter open? Did he mutter
even one saucy comment about kisses? No.

Which made Ondine worry even more.

‘Jupiter's moons, he's dying.'

‘He's not dying,' Old Col said, unwrapping the cloth to reveal Shambles's matted wet neck.

His furry body gently rose and fell with his breathing.

‘But there's so much blood,' Ondine said.

‘That there is. Fortunately, most of it belonged to Biscuit. That's the Infanta's crazy dog, by the way. Thank goodness the dog bite missed anything vital, otherwise Shambles would have bled to death.'

Fresh pain seared Ondine and her tummy curdled like lemon juice in milk. She felt like she might stop breathing. Her strapping, handsome lad was simply lying there in his fragile ferrety state and there was nothing she could do about it.

Old Col related the entire sorry tale to Ondine. About how the champion show dog had gone the full-berserker on Shambles and how she had used ancient magic and ripped the little mutt's teeth out. Every last one of them.

Old Col looked ashamed. ‘In the panic of the
moment, I wanted Biscuit's teeth out of Shambles. I must have said the spell not quite right. Maybe I had a senior moment?'

Hope surged in Ondine. If that nasty dog had no teeth left, Shambles would be safe from future attacks. ‘Will he make a full recovery?'

‘Undoubtedly. He's sleeping it off. When the dog attacked, Shambles was about to let fly with enough profanities to strip the wallpaper. There wasn't time to think. I cast a spell to make him appear dead, so that I could get him out of the dining room.'

Relief washed over Ondine like a tidal wave. But there was one more unknown factor in the sorry adventure, not counting all the unknown unknowns.
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‘Aunt Col, why is he still a ferret?'

Col shook her head, pursed her lips as if in deep thought and said, ‘We'll have to wait and see.'

Waiting is awful. There's the waiting for a meal to arrive when you can smell it cooking, and your stomach is saying ‘hurry up'. There's the butterflies-in-the-tummy waiting for a gymnastics score from the fussy judges who are not sure if they should deduct half a point or a whole point for stepping outside the white lines. Then there's the hopeless I-feel-completely-sick kind of waiting, as a young girl looks upon the hopeless shape of an injured ferret waiting to see if he'll ever become handsomely human again.

An hour dragged by. When Ondine looked at Old Col's watch, it lied and said only eight minutes had passed. Fifteen more of Ondine's hours passed over the next two real hours. There was no change from Shambles at all, just the rise and fall of his furry little tummy as he breathed in and out. Every now and then his paws twitched. At one point, his eyelids flickered and seemed ready to spring open, but it was just his eyes quivering. Dreaming.

‘You need sleep yourself, you've got school in the morning,' Old Col said.

‘But it's got no roof.'

‘Pyotr told me they'll make do with one of the barns.'

‘Do I have to go?'

‘Of course you do. If you don't, the Duke will send you home. By the way, your parents are furious with me for letting you stay and work here.'

Gulp
. Shambles had taken up so much of her head space she hadn't given a thought to her parents. ‘It didn't go down well?'

‘You should have heard your mother scream when I phoned her and told her where we were. They wanted you to go home immediately. I told them you'd get a better education here. So you'd better prove me right or we're all in strife. And another thing, make sure you call them every now and then, just so they know you're safe and well.'
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