Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (15 page)

So. Dear Cousin Oliver wasn’t as simple as he pretended. Perhaps it was the Fonteyn blood. I chuckled. “All right. You’ve my word on it. I’ll even drop the subject. It’s bad manners to talk about a man when he’s not present, anyway.”

“Heavens,” he said, returning to his normal careless manner. “Then what
shall
we talk about?”

“There’s one thing that comes to mind. It’s what Warburton was saying to me in the hall before we left.”

“What’s that?”

“He said you’d help.”

“If I can. Help about what?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Could you please tell me . . . What’s an eel-skin?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

My initial meeting with the family’s reigning grand matriarch, Elizabeth Therese Fonteyn Marling, left me with the kind of lingering impression that months afterward could still raise a shiver between my shoulders. She had lived up—or perhaps down—to my worst expectations and more. She and my mother were eerily alike, physically and mentally, though my aunt was of a more thought-filled and colder nature, which, considering Mother, was really saying something in her favor. After that, it was about all I could say in her favor.

Her husband had died years ago—Oliver had only a faint memory of him—and since then she was the uncontested head of both the Fonteyn and Marling clans. She held her place over the others, including the men, by the force of her personality and the wealth she’d inherited from her father. As my father had done, her husband had signed an agreement forswearing all rights to her money before he was granted permission to marry her. Whether it had been a match based on love or property I was never to find out.

Fonteyn house was nearly as great in size as the Bolyn place, but with much larger grounds and so many more trees pressing close on its flanks that one could mistake the lands for primeval forest. Our coach passed through wide iron gates with spikes topping the bars, and though it was still light, I fancied a decided gloom settling upon us. That, I thought, came from Oliver, who by turns either babbled about nonsensical things or dropped into profound silence. He seemed distinctly uncomfortable, but when I asked him what was amiss, he would only shrug.

“She’s a bad-tempered lioness,” he said, meaning his mother. “Just agree with everything she says and you should be able to escape with only claw marks rather than a full mauling.”

After dealing with my own mad matriarch, I thought myself braced and ready for what lay ahead.

The coach rolled up to the front and huge doors opened from within. As we got out, a handful of young footmen rushed from the darkness of the house to see to the unloading of my baggage. They hurried as though their lives depended on it.

Oliver stayed one of them and murmured to him. The lad nodded several times, put down his burden, and hared off into the house.

“He’s announcing our arrival to Mother,” Oliver explained. “She’s usually in her drawing room this time of day, but it’s best to be sure.”

“Perhaps I should change first.” Except for some boots I’d pulled on for the journey in case we had to do any walking, I was still in the somber clothes I’d worn to the party. Thanks to the attentions of Nora’s servants they were still presentable, but I thought perhaps a different coat would be more suitable to the occasion.

“No, no, you’re fine. In fact I think she’ll approve of your apparent sobriety. She detests anything smacking of the frivolous.”

Before I could offer further objections Oliver took my elbow and guided me into the ancestral stronghold. I needed his help, for it only then struck me just how much wealth it had taken to build such a pile. There is a great difference in knowing the family to be rich and seeing the evidence of the fact. Grandfather Fonteyn had done very well for himself, it seemed, when he began buying land out from under his neighbors and using the revenues from the acreage to purchase more. Of course, it had taken him decades to build up his fortune and an exceptionally prudent fist to hold onto it, but by and large the family—that is, the Fonteyns and Marlings—lived well.

Though not in anywise a castle—it was much too modern—Fonteyn House exuded an oppressive atmosphere reminiscent of the Medieval dungeons described in Rapelji’s beloved history books. Though this structure boasted as many windows as Warburton’s, these were shrouded with thick curtains, blocking light and warmth from entry. The halls on either hand stretched into a chill gloom so thick I could not see their far end. The main staircase led up into darkness.

“This way,” he said, indicating the left-hand wing. Our boot heels sounded loud as we trod over the black and white marble floor. For a moment I had an absurd impression of being a chess piece on an impossibly large board, perhaps a knight about to be sacrificed to the opponent’s queen.

Oliver paused before a set of doors. Closed fast, they looked to be sturdy enough to fend off a real siege. “In here. You’re on your own, I’m afraid.”

“You’re not coming in?”

“I’ll be behind you, but will have to be silent for the most part. She’ll dismiss me early on, so you’ll be alone and unsupported.”

At this point I actually wavered.

He saw it. “I’m really sorry, Coz, but she has her ways. It’s all to a purpose. She wants to see you sweat. She’s a fiend toward those she wants under her thumb, and this is how she begins the bullying.”

“Oh, indeed?” Father had taught me how to deal with bullies of all types.

Oliver saw that as well. “For God’s sake, don’t take it as a challenge. There’s nothing she likes better, and she knows far more than both of us together how to put down what she sees as defiance. Trust me, your interview will be much shorter and less scathing if you play the obedient and humble sheep.”

I could see he was absolutely serious. In light of the things he’d already told me and what I’d gleaned from Father before my departure, it seemed sensible to take his advice. “All right. I’ll tread carefully.”

He looked relieved. “Excellent. We’ll have some good brandy afterward. Lots. You’ll want it.”

He knocked twice on one of the doors, then opened it like a well-trained footman, standing out of sight of whoever lurked inside.

With a dry mouth, I straightened my spine and went in. The room was long, with a low ceiling and but one window. Candles burned in the corners, but were hard-pressed to push back the gloom. A fireplace was at its mid-point, dormant now. Above it hung a full-length portrait of old Grandfather Fonteyn himself, painted during his prime to judge by his apparent youth and antique clothing. A strangely unremarkable face. Either the artist was an inferior talent, or he’d been careful not to reveal the truth about his subject. He’d painted a likeness, but nothing of the soul as some were able to do. He had done something with the eyes, though, for they seemed to look right at me from their height.

I refused to let a bit of paint and canvas perturb me. The old man was dead and gone, and I had his living descendent to worry about.

Next to the fireplace, between two large candelabra . . . a throne.

Or so it seemed to me. I gathered the impression of a large and richly carved chair and velvet cushions. Its proportions were such that they might dwarf an ordinary occupant, but the women seated there seemed to fill the whole of its space and beyond. She was of a normal height to match my mother, but possessed a quality in her bearing that made her seem much taller than me.

As I crossed the length of her drawing room, there came to me the creeping sensation that I’d not left home after all, for she looked uncannily like Mother, right down to an identical ivory scratching stick clutched in one hand. Dear God. I barely heard Oliver trailing ghostlike behind me.

Elizabeth Marling raked me over with her hard gaze, her thin mouth growing thinner as it pulled back into an easy sneer. The surrounding lines in the heavily painted skin had been incised there by many years of repetition. I could expect no mercy or understanding from this woman, nor even the pretense of familial affection.

Oliver, using a quiet, flat voice that seemed to not be his own, made introductions, formal as a lord chamberlain.

My aunt snorted at me. “Marie said that you were a devil and you’ve the looks for it, boy, but if you’ve any ideas of devilry while you’re under my watch you can put ’em out of your head this instant.”

Such were her first words of welcome to her only nephew, delivered before I’d completed my bow to her. “Yes, Aunt Therese,” I mumbled meekly.

“You will address me as ‘Aunt Fonteyn,’ ” she snapped.

“Yes, Aunt Fonteyn,” I immediately responded.

“It’s a good name and better than you deserve. If you didn’t have a half share of my father’s blood I wouldn’t waste my time on you, but for his sake and the sake of my dear sister Marie, I’ll do what I can to civilize you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Civilize? What did she think I’d do, use the soup tureen for a chamber pot in the middle of supper with the local curate?

Tempting thought.

“Something amusing you, Jonathan Fonteyn?”

“No, ma’am.” I managed to hide the inevitable wince my middle name inspired.

“How is my sister?”

“Well, ma’am, when I left her.”

“Have you letters? She would send letters with you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I had a thick packet of them folded in oil cloth in one pocket, hastily retrieved from my boxes on the ride over. I held them out.

“There.” She pointed the scratching stick to a small table to my right.

I placed them on top as though they were a fragile treasure. Mother had strictly charged me with their care and delivery. She gave me to understand that should the ship sink I was to save them before saving myself. They’d spent the entire crossing in the small chest where I kept my more treasured valuables. In all that time I wondered what was in them, but honor prevented me from breaking any of their wax seals and reading the contents. Intuition told me I wouldn’t have liked what was there, anyway.

“You, boy,” she said, addressing Oliver as though he were a servant of the lowest order. He seemed to be staring hard at some invisible object just off her left ear. “Get out of here. Have Meg bring tea. Mind that she has it hot this time if she knows what’s good for her.”

He fled.

She turned her gaze back upon me, and I strove to find whatever it was that Oliver had seen. There was nothing, of course, but it was better than trying to face down her basilisk glare.

“Naught to say for yourself, boy?” she demanded.

“I deemed it best to wait upon your pleasure, Aunt Fonteyn.”

“Ha! Talk like your father, do you? He could make a pretty speech twenty-odd years ago. Does he still have that sly and easy tongue?”

“He enjoys a convivial, intelligent conversation, ma’am,” I said, trying to be neutral.

That stayed her a moment. Perhaps she was considering whether or not I was making an impertinence about our own exchange. My voice and expression were all innocence, though. Mother might have pounced upon it, but Aunt Fonteyn let it pass. Probably waiting for a more vulnerable opening. The checkered black and white marble pattern served as a floor here, too, a continuance of the likeness to a chess game. Though we were on a level to each other, this queen seemed to loom over me, ready to strike me from the board.

“What about that sister of yours? How is Elizabeth Antoinette?”

Elizabeth, God bless her, hated her middle name as much as I did mine. I was glad she wasn’t present for she might not have been able to hold on to a bland face. “She was well when I last saw her.”

“She look much like your mother?”

“Many have remarked on the resemblance, ma’am, and say that they are very alike.”

“In looks only, I’m sure,” she sniffed, as though it were a crime rather than a blessing not to share the same temperament. “The Barrett blood, no doubt. Anyone to marry her, yet?”

“No, ma’am. Not before I left.”

“She’s past twenty, isn’t she?”

“Nineteen, ma’am.”

“She’ll be a spinster for life if she doesn’t hurry along, but I suppose there’s nothing suitable on that miserable island of yours.”

She made my beautiful home sound like a barren rock barely able to stand clear of a high tide. What
had
Mother been writing to her?

“And you? Any prospects?”

Nora’s sweet face flashed across my mind’s eye. I would not defile that private delight by mentioning her existence to this creature. “No, ma’am.”

“And just as well. You’re to have none, y’hear? Not without my approval. “

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ll see how you settle in. If you behave yourself we just might be able to find some wench who’ll put up with you, providing she’s got decent money and a name.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Until then you’ll keep your attention on your studies. There are no wastrels in this family, y’hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Going to practice law, eh? Then I hope to God you do better at it than your father.”

I’d expected a taunt like that and did not react. For the next two hours and thirty-two minutes I stood statue-like before her doing my level best not to react to anything she said.

She lashed me with close questioning about my life and future and meted out summary judgments, all severe, of my answers. I recall the passage of the time very well because of the presence of a clock on the mantel. It was clearly ticking, but I grew certain that the mechanism of the minute hand was defective, for the damned thing hardly seemed to move. I could have sworn days had passed rather than hours before she finally,
finally
dismissed me.

I reeled out the door, exhausted, yet horribly stirred up inside, and sweating like a blacksmith. It was a nasty, familiar feeling; one I’d thought I’d left behind with Mother. Here it seemed doubled, for it was doubly undeserved. Mother was full of bitterness and reprisal for imagined slights; Aunt Fonteyn had no such delusions. She enjoyed inflicting pain for its own sake. She was worse than Mother, for Mother’s graceless treatment of people might possibly be excused by her unstable mind; Aunt Fonteyn had no such defense for her behavior. Mother could not help herself, but my aunt was very much in control of her conduct.