The Dead Travel Fast (26 page)

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “I am no saviour, least of all of myself. And I very nearly destroyed you. I cannot ask you to stay. Not now. My mother is—” He broke off, then cleared his throat, continuing on in a voice rough with emotion. “She is dying. Consumptive, the doctor tells me, although she will not own it. She clings to her legends and her superstitions because they give her comfort, but she is dying, and it will not be quick and it will not be easy. I must do what I can for her. Alone.”

I stared at him. Had I been wrong then? Was she simply a malicious old woman with a cruel sense of humour to play upon my fears? Or was she something darker and more evil still, a
strigoi
, feeding and then calling up blood to extricate herself from a situation she found intrusive?

“I did not realise,” I said slowly.

“There is often consumption in the village,” he explained. “She used to nurse the valley folk before she fell ill. I ought to have seen it when I came home,” he said, his complexion darkening. “She was so pale and fragile. Her eyes were so bright. How did I not see?”

I thought of the symptoms she had manifested; the symptoms of a consumptive were very like those of a vampire. Even now who was to say which she was?

“How did I not see what she was?” he continued, and for an instant, something fierce and almost angry flashed in his eyes. Did he know then? Did he sense the monstrous evil within her? Whatever his feelings, he did not share them, but he recollected himself and gave me a joyless smile. “I must attend to her,” he said smoothly. “I am the only one who can see to it she is taken care of as she must be.”

Again that slight, shivering touch of something not quite right. Grief at his mother’s ill health, or something darker? “I know,” I said, summoning a courage I did not feel. I had not thought it would be so hard to leave him. “I must go. I have a novel to finish, and a life to begin.”

He fixed me with those startling grey eyes. “So we understand each other, then.”

“Not entirely,” I said, breaking off a withered leaf so I did not have to look at him. “You see, I realise now it was all trickery. Everything you made me think about you, it was all just the sophisticated japes of an experienced seducer. You came to my room by way of the tapestried stair, you made me believe you were something more than human. I see it now.”

“If you want apologies, I will make you none,” he said fiercely. “I wanted you and I knew what to give you to make you surrender. Yes, it was calculated and deliberate, but it was not malicious. I had my conjurer’s tricks and I used them well. Even now you do not know what to make of me, and I will not own what I am. I want you to think of me when you leave this place and wonder whether I am merely a mortal or something beyond. A better man would release you and want you to love another. I am no better man. I am selfish and flawed and I have nothing to offer you that is not broken or imperfect, including myself. And so I offer you nothing. But I will love you until the day I die, and no man will love you more.”

He kissed me then, and I clung to him and we stood as long as we could in the shadows of his grandfather’s garden, watching the first stars shimmer into life in the pale violet sky.

“When this is over,” he said, his lips against my hair, “come to me in Paris. I will give you everything you could desire.”

I opened my mouth, but he put a finger to it. “No, do not answer. Just think on it. You will live in luxury, I promise. You will dress like a countess, be the envy of everyone who sees you. I will keep you as you ought to be kept, with every wish and whim fulfilled.”

I pushed his finger aside gently. “As your mistress,” I said.

He regarded me a long moment in the dying light. “I can offer you nothing more. Not now.”

“Then I will take nothing from you save your heart,” I told him lightly, although mine seemed to fracture within my chest even as I spoke.

“But—”

It was my turn to speak and force him to silence. “You offer me all that you think you can give, and I thank you for that. But it is not enough. It never will be. I may not be worthy to be your wife, but I am far too worthy to be your mistress. To accept your invitation would mean to give up my work, for no kept woman can be a respectable authoress, and I mean to earn my keep by my pen. I know you will say it is not necessary, that you will keep me, and that would suffice for most women. But I am unlike most women, as you yourself have observed,” I told him, lifting myself just a little. “And I will make my own way.”

He put a hand to the nape of my neck and bent to rest his brow upon mine. “Go back to Scotland with Charles then, and write your book and know that I will be there. When the wind comes unexpectedly through the casement, you will hear your name and it will be my voice calling. When you blow out a candle, it will be my breath that rises with the smoke, curling once to touch your cheek. And when you weep—” he paused to rub his thumb over my cheek to catch my tears “—when you weep, you will taste the salt of my tears upon your lips.”

He kissed me again and again until I thought I would die from breathlessness and longing. When we broke apart I looked to the night sky. Above us, a single star shimmered into life.

“Venus,” I said, pointing with a trembling hand. “You see, you have taught me well. I shall not forget.”

20

I did not forget, and it was the memory of that enigmatic and fascinating man that warmed me through the months that followed. I left Transylvania an older and marginally wiser woman, with a book of poetry in my pocket and the pieces of my heart resting beside. There was a new coolness to me, a reserve that none could penetrate, and my hauteur served me well in the new life I fashioned for myself.

I did not go to Scotland; there was nothing within its grey streets to lure me back. I went instead to London, where I wrote and walked and waited to be made whole again. To his credit, Charles was a prop to me, advancing funds against the sale of my book to permit me to take furnished rooms in a pleasant quarter of the city and visiting often in the capacity of friend as well as publisher. We had endured much together, and sometimes, when the hour grew late and the moon hung low, we spoke of Transylvania and the extraordinary time we shared there. It had finally occurred to me that the greatest mystery—whether the
strigoi
actually existed or whether Cosmina had been a murderess—could have been solved by the expedient of searching the garderobe for traces of blood. A human villain would have rinsed the blood down the sluice to create the fiction of a vampire; an actual vampire would have fed upon it. But it was far too late to make such conclusions now, and I knew the question would never be settled within my mind. Was the countess a
strigoi
who had committed her own murder and seen her niece carried away for the crime? Or was she a consumptive old woman who had formulated a murderous plot? I should never know, and after a time, I realised I did not wish to. There were times I did not wish to think upon my time in Transylvania at all, and others in which I wished to relive every moment. Charles was a great comfort to me in both moods.

“Do you ever hear from him?” he asked me once. I did not ask whom he meant.

“No. And I am glad of it,” I told him truthfully. It was difficult enough to lay the ghost of his memory without the thorn-prick of letters to disturb my peace. But each night before I slept, I read Baudelaire, until the pages grew thin and worn with handling.

To his credit, Charles never renewed his addresses. “Having met the count, I would not dare,” he told me once, with a sort of pointed jollity. I understood his meaning. The count was larger than life; no mere mortal man could ever hope to challenge him on any ground, much less carry the field.

But Charles was a comfortable companion during those long months, and the following year when my book was published, it was Charles who arranged for readings in the most popular salons and stood beside me to fend off an enthusiastic public. The book had been brought out to surprising acclaim—surprising to me, although Charles claimed that he expected nothing less from a thrilling tale of vampires and werewolves and abducted heiresses. I was much in demand, and once or twice found myself addressing rather more exalted company than that to which I was accustomed. The most important of these was a reading Charles had engaged before the Society of Literary Fellowes, a collection of titled gentlemen—founded by a viscount—who dabbled in letters and thought themselves terribly daring for consorting with authors. The society met in the townhouse of the viscount, in a fashionable square in Belgravia, and I dressed myself carefully for the occasion, in new finery of blood-red velvet, befitting an authoress of sensational tales, I thought. I was much sought after that evening, and presented to so many titled heads I could not help but think I was the lone commoner in the room. The elevated company made me rather nervous, and I paused to collect my nerve as I began to read, slowly at first, but then gaining speed and confidence with the excited gasps and sighs of my audience. I finished to warm applause, and for an hour after I was importuned with still more people clamouring for introductions and pressing me with questions about my researches.

“How did you find Transylvania, Miss Lestrange?” asked the viscount himself. “I am told it is a wild and friendless place, full of bandits and bloodthirsty creatures.”

I strove for an answer that would be both truthful and just. “I found it unlike anyplace else in the world,” I told him at last. “It is a land of myth and legend, and yet the peasants are kindly and generous. It is a curious alchemy of medieval and modern. Manners are free, for a man and woman may walk together without either chaperone or censure, but one must always be alert, for to stir out of doors is to make oneself vulnerable to wolves and other creatures.”

As I expected, the ladies shivered in delight, while the gentlemen regarded my answer soberly. “I shall have to organise a holiday,” the viscount said. “I should quite enjoy hearing these local legends from the horse’s mouth as it were.”

“I shouldn’t dare,” his wife said with a shudder. She was a pretty little thing, with blond curls and half her husband’s years, swathed in forget-me-not blue to match her eyes. She turned to me. “I am so pleased the book ended happily. I was desperately afraid the baron would not come for dear Rowena.”

I smiled at her. “You have penetrated my secret, my lady. I am a coward. I have not the courage to deny my readers a happy ending.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, you must not say you are a coward, for I am quite devoted to your book and will not hear a word against you, not even from your own lips.”

Her seriousness was touching, and I inclined my head. “Very well. Then I will say I am more generous to my characters than I am to myself. I give them the happy ending I have not yet fashioned.”

I would have turned then, but she stayed me with a hand to my arm. “One thing more, Miss Lestrange. I was particularly moved that your heroine was able to give the whole of her heart to her beloved guardian, even though she suspected him of being a werewolf. Do you not find it extraordinary that a woman should be so accepting of such a thing?”

I thought of the count then, and the impenetrable mysteries he had constructed for me, the questions he had seeded so carefully in my mind, leaving me to puzzle over, until I had come to understand that some things were never meant to be known.

“I believe in the human heart, and the power of it to love, even when such love is unwise or even unwanted. It is an enduring thing, love is. It will weather the fiercest storm and stand, bowed but unbroken. And when life is gone, love itself may still live on. That is what I find extraordinary, my lady.”

I excused myself then, and turned to find Charles at my elbow.

“There is another gentleman who begs an audience,” he said, his colour high and his manner a little stiff.

I followed, and there he was. Charles tactfully melted away and the crowd seemed to have dispersed a little, for we were alone in the corner of the great salon. It was a long moment before I could find my voice, and when I did, it was so low he had to bend to hear me.

“You look well,” I told him, for he did. The great slashing scar had faded to a thin, white line that—as I had suspected it would—merely emphasised the elegance of his bones and took nothing from his looks. There was a touch of silver at one temple, and I noticed the black armband of mourning crepe pinned to his sleeve.

“I am well,” he said, and the melting honeyed tones were just as I remembered them. He brandished a book, and I saw that it was mine. “I have just concluded it.”

I swallowed against the quick dryness of my mouth. “What did you think of it?”

“A compelling tale. It was good to see my country described by one who clearly loves the place.”

“I did love it. I love it still,” I said, wondering if he noticed that my hands trembled to have him near to me.

He must have, for he took them in his.

“Will you return then? I told you once I had nothing to offer you but a broken and imperfect man in a broken and imperfect place. But I am a better man now than ever I was, and if you will have me, I am yours.”

I considered it carefully. “I am not the sort of a woman you would marry, you told me once. And even if that were untrue, I cannot be content breeding sons and ordering servants and sewing your shirts. I know my place in the taxonomy,” I added with a small smile. “I cannot be the wife you expect.”

“But you are the wife I want,” he said firmly. “I was a fool to ever think otherwise. I want a wife to stand with me, to believe in me, to love me for the man that I am and the man I can yet become. I want you.” He reached out his hand to my shoulder, the heavy silver ring gleaming in the light, and I saw that it had been set with a great pigeon’s blood ruby. “I have put aside my tricks, my stratagems and sophistries, and I am nothing, have nothing, but my heart. And poor and wretched as it is, it is knit to yours and cannot be unbound.”

And those simple and honest words mended all that had been broken before. I put my hand in his, feeling his fingers close over mine, warm and strong and possessive, and I gave myself up to my own happy ending.

In the end, the life we fashioned for ourselves was a compromise. I learned to shake hands with domesticity, and he learned to love freely. He found a calm and centered peace in our life in his homeland, and I found infinite inspiration. Curious, I often thought, how two such different people could be happy in the same place, but we found contentment there. There were shadows from time to time, as there must be in such a land, for we walked with ghosts there, and the dead do not always lie quietly in Transylvania. The Popa men continued to take to the mountains when the moon rose full and low over the Carpathians, and in spite of my best efforts, folk in the village still crossed themselves when my husband passed. But they accepted him with a sort of fierce and peculiar loyalty, and whether they believed him a
strigoi
or not, they became devoted to him and called him master with genuine affection.

They accepted me as well, although they found me meddlesome at times, and thought my stories curious and strange. They tolerated my inquisitive prodding into their legends and tales, which provided endless inspiration for my novels through the years, and together we created a prosperous and happy time in the valley.

And as the sun gilded the birch forests on the side of the mountain one afternoon, I scribbled upon my latest effort in the library, rocking my baby’s cradle with my foot and pausing occasionally to read a passage aloud to Tycho. As I did so, I thought of that long-ago day when my brother-in-law felt the weight of responsibility for me, and I thought with some satisfaction that I had solved the problem of what to do with Theodora rather well on my own.