“I know,” Clio said, her head bowed. “I broke my promise. I take full responsibility.”
“Broke it?” Lady Alecia snorted. “You decimated it. You made a scene. A scandal.”
“A debutante,” Mariana put in prettily.
“Debacle,” Doctor LaForge corrected.
Lady Alecia kept her eyes on Clio. “You mortified us. And you will pay for it. You will refrain from such behavior in the future, Clio,” she informed her granddaughter. “You will not set foot in Dearbourn Hall unless specifically requested to do so.”
Clio was only too happy to agree. Indeed, she had no desire to set foot in the place ever again, and would gladly have been anywhere else at that very moment. She had known the summons from her grandmother would come, it was inevitable after her appearance the night before, and she had known she would dread it and the withdrawal of her allowance it was sure to result in, but what had surprised her on the way from Which House was that even more than seeing her grandmother, she dreaded running into the Viscount Deerhound, as she had taken to calling him in her mind. She had been immensely relieved when she arrived and found that he would not be present at the interview.
Not that she could blame him. She had herself felt woozy walking into Mariana’s apartments. She had no doubt that her cousin and grandmother were responsible for the decor themselves, it had the unmistakable stamp of their taste. Three of the walls were covered in bright blue silk overstitched with green, gold, purple, and indigo threads to look like peacock feathers, all surrounded by gold moldings. The remaining wall was mainly taken up with a huge fireplace, whose beautiful medieval mantle had been gilded, and over which hung what had to be the largest mirror in London, held up by two baby angels. They were made of gold, as were all the sconces from which three dozen candles shined. Every piece of furniture was upholstered in the same fabric as the walls, and the floor was covered by the thickest, most silky looking, and most hideously overpatterned Turkish carpet Clio had ever seen. All in all, the effect was eye-popping.
Her grandmother—wearing the wig Clio had named “the Medusa”—and her cousin were seated on an oversized settee, at right angles to one occupied by the man she remembered having been introduced to once as her grandmother’s secretary. On a table between them lay a plate filled with hazelnut cakes, the one thing that Clio and Mariana had in common, the one thing they both loved. Despite his protests, Clio had decided to leave Toast at home in the interest of reminding her grandmother of as little as possible of the scene she had caused the previous night, but she was half wishing he had come, if only to smuggle a few of the hazelnut cakes out in his doublet. From where she was standing, Clio imagined she could smell them, and she began to fantasize about what they would taste like, the crisp outer crust giving way to a soft—
She forced herself to look away. Against the wall, the faded form of her uncle, Sir Edwin Nonesuch, was hunched over a chess table opposite the morose looking Doctor LaForge. The vacant expression on Sir Edwin’s face could have given anyone fierce competition in the “Daftest Man in England” contest if there had been one. Sir Edwin was the one member of her family for whom Clio felt any real affection, the one member of her family who had ever deigned to smile at her and wish her a good day, and for the first time she was glad that his mind wandered, because at least that meant it was not imprisoned in this hideous room which, despite being large and high-ceilinged, felt small and claustrophobic. Indeed, the sooner she could leave there, the happier she would be.
This was confirmed when her grandmother started waving about that morning’s edition of News from Court. “You even had to intrude yourself upon the public eye, didn’t you?” Lady Alecia asked, accusingly. “You could not allow us—”
“Did you hear someone whistling?” Sir Edwin asked abruptly, starting forward in his seat. He looked across the chess table. “Infernal noise. Kept me out of my bed all night. Did you catch it, too, Doctor?”
Doctor LaForge looked embarrassed. “Non, monsieur,” he said with a tight smile, then redirected his attention to Lady Alecia. “You were saying, madam?”
Mariana, a dreamy smile on her face, spoke instead. “Do not worry, Papa, I am sure it was just the mother dew drops singing to their babies in the moonlight.”
Sir Edwin scowled at her and sat back, muttering under his breath. Clio was thinking that she liked him better than ever, when she realized Mariana was speaking to her.
Mariana’s smile was still there, but beneath it Clio could see the hard determination in her cousin’s eyes. “You must not be so hard on poor, dear, Clio, grandmama. She cannot help herself. She has always been so eager for the merest thread of attention. The opportunity to have so many people talk about her must have been too strong to overcome. Poor thing, no one has paid any attention to her since that awful low woman with the horrible teeth and that dreadful Dover accent she had as a nurse died.” Clio tried to interject that the nurse had been from Devon, but Mariana was unstoppable. “No one has noticed her at all since then.” Mariana leaned forward and addressed Clio directly. “I ache for how much you must ache to know that all your efforts last night have gone to waste.”
Seeing Clio on the verge of speaking, Mariana put up a hand. “I know,” she said feelingly. “You don’t have to say anything. I can see your pain in your eyes. The eyes of a baby butterfly who has lost his way.”
“There is no such thing as a baby butterfly,” Clio pointed out.
Mariana ignored her. “Poor, dear, misguided Clio. Remember how you used to pretend to get presents on my birthday? My birthday. Just so people would pay attention to you. I never begrudged you that. I was always content to share with you, even though I knew you made it all up. How sad I felt for you that there was no one who would bother to send you gifts. That no one ever wished you a happy birthday.”
Her words, or rather their truth, stung Clio, but she hid her reaction under a blanket of sarcasm. “Your kindness to me was really astonishing.”
“I know.” Mariana prided herself on her graceful acceptance of compliments. “Even now, I feel sorry for you and the ruin of your plans.”
“What plans were those?”
“To wreck my wedding, like you always try to wreck everything of mine. That is why you came to the ball last night. I understand you cannot help it. That, like the baby duck, it is in your nature to follow me everywhere and nip at my heels. But it shall not work. Everyone is too busy discussing the Vampire of London.” Mariana leaned forward. “Do you know when he first appeared?”
“Three years ago,” Clio answered, without enthusiasm. This quiz did not seem poised to expedite her leaving, or her devouring the hazelnut cakes.
“No!” Mariana said triumphantly. “He first appeared the year I was born. When I was a baby duck myself. In my village. Isn’t that exciting?”
Clio refrained from pointing out that she had herself been born that same year, just a week earlier in fact, and in the same village. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. And I know why.” As if to build suspense, Mariana leaned over to study the plate of hazelnut cakes, picked one of them up, broke it in half, sniffed each half suspiciously, tried a taste, made a noise that indicated it was delicious, ate both halves, and then returned her gaze to Clio. “I fear what I am going to say will upset you, dear Clio, but you are not the only one who feels a fascination for me. There are others. I think the vampire is one of them. I think he has come back for my wedding.”
A guttural noise, almost like a sob, came from Lord Edwin’s corner. Everyone turned to where he was sitting, his eyes glassy, his face blanched, his mouth working. “Mother,” he said finally in a voice that sounded like it had traveled miles. “Mother.”
“Speak of this no more,” Lady Alecia commanded with a frown at Mariana.
“Why?” Mariana tossed her head adventurously. “I have no fear of his acollation.”
Doctor LaForge sighed. “Adulation.”
“It is upsetting your father
.” Lady Alecia leaned toward her granddaughter and explained in a furious whisper. “You know very well that his sister, Clio’s mother, was killed that same year by that horrible, horrible man—”
“My father,” Clio volunteered, in case Mariana did not understand.
Lady Alecia glared fulsomely at her before resuming, “—and that he has never recovered from the blow of her loss. One shall not speak of anything that happened in those dark days.”
“But—” Mariana began to protest and was cut off.
“Was the vampire caught?” Clio asked, despite this warning.
“One shall not spea—”
“Like the fly, like the fly, like the fly,” Lord Edwin chanted from against the wall, as if it were a nursery rhyme.
“That is enough, Edwin,” Lady Alecia told him, then turned to Clio. As she did, her face changed into what Clio thought of as her “wicked abbess” expression, a mask of beneficence barely concealing a core of cruelty. “Now Clio, we summoned you to inform you that as a result of your behavior yesterday your allowance has been revoked. However, in honor of Mariana’s wedding, we deem it appropriate that you share in our good fortune. In commemoration of the happy day we shall set aside a small sum for you.” She paused, waiting for Clio’s professions of gratitude. When they did not come, she went on. “You may collect the purse here, that morning, before Mariana’s wedding.”
“It shall be a birthday present!” Mariana said, clapping her dainty hands. “Just like when we were girls. Only this time you really will be getting something. Oh! I am so happy for you dear Clio. For once you will know what it is like to be cared about.” Her eyes got large and misty with the enormity of her heart. “I want you to know that I understand why you behave wickedly, like you did last night. I understand how hard it must be to know that you are unlovable, that no one wants you.”
Clio took her leave quickly, and not only because it was evident that Mariana was about to embark on a series of “Poor dear Clio” statements that was going to make her head ache, or because the numbers in her ledger loomed larger than ever. For reasons she could not understand, Mariana’s words, her family’s dislike of her, still hurt, even after all these years. She did not know why, or how, she could care about them, why she craved their approval, their affection, but some part of her did, and some part of her was wrenched by their treatment. Was she really as awful—as unlovable—as they thought?
Her cheeks were burning and her eyes filled with tears as she rushed through the corridors of Dearbourn Hall. She wished she could be angry with them, angry and resentful, but her rage was turned against herself, for her weakness, for caring what they said, caring that no one had ever wished her a happy birthday, that no one ever would. And not just caring, but crying.
Silly, foolish, stupid girl. She heard Elwood’s kind words—you are not stupid, Clio—through her tears, but she was certain that if he really knew her, he would realize he was wrong. Crying! Letting her cousin make her cry! What was happening to her? She felt like she was peeling apart. First death’s head visions, now breaking down in unfamiliar corridors. Breaking down anywhere. She did not—would not—care that her birthday always went unmarked, would not care about Mariana and Lady Alecia. She stopped to wipe her eyes and as she did a golden puff of fur scurried around her ankles and set to work licking the tears off her boots.
She bent down and picked him up, and he reached out his tongue to lick the tears off her face as well. It tickled so nicely that despite the fact she refused to have anything to do with dogs, she laughed to herself, which is why she did not hear his footsteps.
Miles felt a pang of jealousy such as he had not known in years, watching Clio’s expression go from delight to disgust as her eyes moved from the puppy’s face to his. After Mariana’s reaction to the puppy—or rather, baby dog—that morning, which included shrieking, attempting to kick it, and declaring that she hated it and never wanted it to come into her presence again—Miles had half wished to change places with it, but not nearly as much as he did now.
“Oh,” Clio said when she saw him. “Here.” She extended the puppy toward him. When he made no move to take it, she set the dog down and began walking quickly away.
“I owe you an apology,” Miles said, following her closely.
Clio waved his words away.
“I treated you badly last night. I am sorry.”
Clio kept walking.
“Also, I should tell you that this corridor only goes to my bed chamber. Unless that is where you wish to go?”
Clio stopped and glared at him. “I think that was a record. Three seconds before you insulted me. Bravo. You are making progress.” She turned and began marching back the way she had come.
“That is not fair,” Miles said from behind her. “Last night I went at least five minutes before offending you.”
“I was taking an average,” Clio replied. The sound of Miles’s laughter stopped her and she whirled around. Her face was stark, her voice almost desperate as she said, “Please. Please just leave me alone.”
Miles closed the space between them. “What is wrong, Lady Thornton?”
Clio swallowed hard. They stood facing each other, in silence, as the clock at the end of the corridor ticked off the seconds. Up close, he did not look detestable. Nor did his ears, chin, lips, eyes, hair, teeth, neck, chest—what she could see of it, at eye level—nor did his hands, hands which were moving up to cup her face, soft warm hands, hands caressing her cheek, hands tilting her head back, lips…
She pushed past him at a run. It was not the way her knees got tingly that made her rush from him. It was not the fact that his personality suddenly seemed entirely un-detestable that made her careen down the stairs, almost tripping, and fly through the front door of his house. It was the fact that she felt them coming on.
The hiccups.
And she did not know why. She searched her head as she ran, searched for any sign of violence, any desire to harm anyone, but could find none. Certainly she would never be averse to strangling Mariana, but that was a different impulse than the deep, scary violence that prompted the hiccups. Once outside the gates of Dearbourn Hall she slowed, but the hiccups came quickly, fast like they did when she had to work hard to suppress her rage. Her primary emotion was not rage, however, it was fear, fear that she no longer even felt the violence inside of her. Fear of what she might be capable of. Fear of herself.
She was walking blindly, clenching her fists into tight balls, moving with the crowds that filled the streets but not hearing them, not seeing them. The hiccups meant one thing. She wanted to hurt someone. And she did not even know it.
Just as she did not know the identity of the person who pushed her into the street in front of an onrushing coach. Her surprise paralyzed her and she stood, unable to move, looking at the horses rearing above her. For an instant she was aware of every detail of her surroundings as if they had all been frozen in amber—the perspiration of the horses flying like raindrops from their necks, a shabby looking boy running down the street in the opposite direction, the shouts of the people around her hanging in the air in individual syllables, the gold puppy leaping high into the air, a figure in one of the second floor windows of Dearbourn Hall observing, a familiar looking man with a mustache dressed in a fancy red doublet staring at her with a smile and then winking (winking!), a butterfly alighting from a flower eight feet away, a rivulet of water between the smooth gray stones of the street, an orange skidding past her feet, mud on her boots, mud on her boots, mud on her boots—and then, slam, everything started moving again and she was moving also, flying, and the horses had brushed past her and no one was shouting and the man across the way had vanished and the gold puppy was jumping up and trying to get into her arms but he couldn’t because someone was holding them at the shoulders and she looked up and it was the viscount and his lips were moving and what he was saying was, “Are you all right?”
Clio blinked, realized that her hiccups were gone, the
n nodded. “Did you see a man in red?” she asked.
Miles frowned. Of the questions he would have expected someone to ask after he had saved their life—are you all right, what happened, where am I, what can I ever do to repay you—“Did you see a man in red?” was very low on the list.
“Are you sure you are all right?” he asked again.
Clio nodded impatiently and pulled away from him. “I am fine. But I have to find that man.”
“I did not see anyone in red,” Miles said, but then, he had not exactly been paying perfect attention.
He had been glad if slightly surprised to see Clio Thornton in the hallway of his house, principally because he was on his way to call on her and her appearance would save him the trip. He was going to her house to find out everything she knew about the Vampire of London, and to order her not to attempt to unmask him herself, to leave it to him. He was damned if he was going to have Lady Clio Thornton’s death on his conscience as well.
Then there she was, miraculously on the threshold of his room, and instead of inviting her in and asking her questions he was about to kiss her.
It was ridiculous. He had not kissed anyone—besides, of course, Clio at the Painted Lady the day before—in over two years.
He had not wanted to. After Beatrice’s death he found that physical intimacy only left him feeling lonely. The mere thought of kissing any of the women who sought his attention had almost repulsed him. Unlike the thought of kissing Clio.
The man known and feared as Three did not kiss women, he lectured himself. It was a distraction and a nuisance—who had time, with someone killing his guard dogs, a smuggling investigation in process, the Vampire of London on the loose, and his impending marriage to Mariana? He would not kiss Clio Thornton. And definitely not in the middle of the street.
Her mouth, when Miles brought his lips to cover it, was more succulent and delicious than anything he had ever tasted in his life.