Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (41 page)

“Another letter? But you just sent one only . . . .” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off as recollection visibly asserted itself on her face. “Oh.”

“Indeed. Much has occurred since my last missive. I’m wondering just how much of the happenings here should be recounted to him. He would find it highly disturbing if he believed me or think I’ve gone raving mad if he didn’t. I think I shall have to err on the side of discretion.” Meaning Oliver would not know of my death and change.

She thought about that awhile, then came over to stand next to Father’s desk, where I happened to be working. “I have something for you,” she said, pulling a flat packet from her skirt pocket. I instantly recognized it.

“My journal!”

She gave it over. “I kept it apart from your other things when Mother had your room cleaned out. I was afraid she’d either throw it away or read it herself, and I didn’t think you’d have liked either of those choices.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. Thank you.”

“I didn’t read it,” she added.

This surprised me, not because Elizabeth was a prying sort of person, but because at the time she’d thought me dead. “Why not?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to. These are your words and your thoughts, I just couldn’t bear the idea of reading them so soon after . . . . Anyway, I wanted only to keep them safe. From her. I don’t know what I hated most, her utter coldness over you or the way she ransacked your room like a bloody vulture.”

Mother again. “It’s over now.”

Elizabeth put her hand on mine as though to reassure herself of my solidity. “Yes, thank God.”

“It would have been all right if you had read it. There’s nothing in here I would have minded sharing with you and Father.”

She smiled at that. “But you’re back and there’s no need.”

“May there never be another,” I solemnly intoned, putting my hand over my heart.

That brought forth another smile, which was most pleasing. It was the chief difference between her and Mother. Elizabeth loved to laugh. Her good humor and mine restored, I picked up my pen and regarded the sheet of paper before me, wondering what to put down next.

“Mind if I keep you company?” From one of the desk drawers she pulled out a penknife and some goose quills.

“I should welcome it,” I said absently.

Taking a chair next to the desk and close to my candles, she began carving a point on one of the quills. “Oliver was your best friend in England, and family. He should know the truth about you. You could find a way of explaining it to him.”

A soft laugh escaped me. “He’d think that the Fonteyn half of my blood had finally boiled my brain. Did I ever mention to you that tour we took of Bedlam?”

“In noxious detail.” She steadily sliced away on a quill, pausing only to narrowly inspect the results of her work.

“I’ve no wish for Oliver to regard me as a potential inmate, so be assured that the details of my recent experience will find no place here.”

“Then what—”

“Nora. By telling Oliver about myself, I would have to include Nora’s name in the story, which would be a breach of trust. She exercised a great deal of effort in keeping her own nature a close secret. I must respect that.”

This temporarily halted Elizabeth’s inquiries, and I read again my few lines assuring Oliver of my continued good health and a wish for the same for him. I had to pause think how to proceed. Before leaving England for home some months ago, I’d asked him to keep an eye on Nora for me and in such a way as to leave no doubt that my relationship with her had quite ended. My lightness of attitude quite puzzled my poor cousin, considering his awareness that Nora and I had been passionate lovers for nearly three years.

But, of course, he didn’t know Nora had caused me to forget all that.

I wasn’t sure if I should curse her or bless her for what she’d done to me. Some nights I did both. This was one of those nights, and they happened more and more frequently as my memories of her returned. Though she had committed a great wrong against me, I yet loved and missed her terribly.

“Ow!”

Elizabeth had a mishap with the razor-sharp penknife. She ruefully held her finger close to the candle to inspect the damage, then stopped, her gaze suddenly shifting up to meet mine.

“Be more careful,” I said, trying not to stare at the pin point sized drop of blood welling from the nick.

She lowered her hand slightly. “Does this trouble you?”

“Why should it?”

“Because you’ve an odd look on your face. Are you hungry?”

“No, I am not hungry.” Not yet. Later, after everyone was asleep and the world was quiet, I’d slip out and . . . .

“Then what?”

“I can smell it,” I whispered, not without a feeling of awe.

She brought her finger to her nose and sniffed, then shrugged at her failure to sense it. “A little speck like this?”

“Yes. It hangs in the air like perfume.”

“That must be interesting for you,” she observed, one eyebrow arching. She wiped away the blood on her handkerchief. Picking up the quill, she gingerly resumed her delicate work with the knife.

Disturbing, more like,
I
thought, unable to ignore the scent and the reactions it aroused within me. I ran my tongue over my teeth. There, the two points on my upper jaw, a slight swelling, not painful . . . quite the opposite, in fact.

“Jonathan?”

“It’s nothing,” I said.

But she seemed to know what I was hiding.

“Sweet God, Jonathan, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Really.”

“Then why the glower?”

I made a fist and bumped it lightly against the desk, then opened it flat. “I’m not sure I . . . that I’m . . . comfortable with this part of what’s happened to me.”

“You do what you do because you have to.”

“Yes, but I’ve . . . I worry about what people might think should they find out.”

“No one else knows but me, Father, and Jericho. We don’t speak of it, and none of us are likely to blurt it out.”

“As though it’s something shameful.”

“Something private,” she corrected. “Like your journal.”

Unable to endure her steady, sensible gaze, I shoved my pen into a cup of lead shot and stood up to pace.

Elizabeth continued to watch me. “Come now and listen to yourself. Worrying about what others may think is the sort of nonsense that bedevils Mother. There’s no need for you to pay mind to that same voice, or you could end up like her.”

All too true. I
had
been haunted by a miserable dark chorus muttering of nothing but doubt and doom. “It’s just that most of the time everything is as it was before my . . . return. And yet”—I gestured vaguely— “everything is so different.
I’m
different.”

She did not gainsay me. The changes within that had literally brought me back from the grave were profound, and their full influence upon how I now lived were only just being realized. I slept, if one could call it that, the whole day through, unable to stir for as long as the sun was up. Since the household held to an exactly opposite habit, my enjoyment of its society was limited. Except for a few hours in the evening before everyone went to bed I was alone. Very much alone.

As for Elizabeth’s little accident . . . well, it was yet another reminder of an appetite that the world would look upon as disgusting or at least react to with alarm and fear.

I paused by the bookcase and stared at the titles within without reading them. “Remember the night I . . . came back?”

She nodded. It was not likely either of us would forget.

“After we’d captured the rebels, two of Nash’s Hessians escorted me to Mrs. Montagu’s. I thought I’d gotten rid of them, but they came back and saw me in her barn with her horses . . . feeding myself.”

“Then what?”

“They ran like rabbits. They were terrified. One of them called me a name, ‘
blutsäuger.
’ ”

She stumbled over my no doubt questionable pronunciation. “Blutsawer?”

I repeated the word for her. “It means ‘bloodsucker.’ Hardly flattering.”

“Certainly not in the context that it was given.”

“Not in any context.”

“What of it? You’re a ‘bloodsucker,’ I’m an eater of animal flesh.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It would be if dining on a good hot joint was thought to be repugnant by most people. It’s not like you to feel sorry for yourself, little brother. I hope you get over it before it becomes a habit.”

I idly poked at a crescent of dust gathered in a corner of the bookcase woodwork. One of the maids had been careless over her cleaning chores. Woe to her if Mother noticed. “Perhaps the Fonteyn blood is doing its work upon me after all, and I shall become mad.”

“I think not, since you’ve been diluting it so regularly with that of our livestock.”

My openmouthed stare was returned with a flash of her cheerful blue eyes as she tilted her head to one side. It convinced me that I was taking myself far too seriously. “I do believe you have a fool for a brother,” I said wearily.

“Better a fool than a corpse,” she responded bluntly. “You’re not going mad, you’re just getting used to things. I still am, myself.”

“And what do you do about it?”

“Ask God to sort it out for me, say ‘amen,’ and go to sleep.” The point of one quill cut to her satisfaction, she put it aside and picked up another. Its feathering had not yet been trimmed, and she made a fine mess on her wide skirts as she worked to correct the oversight.

“Would that I could sleep,” I muttered.

“More dreams?”

“Nothing but, and no waking to escape them is possible.”

“Dr. Beldon couldn’t help?”

“He let me try some of his laudanum.”

“And it didn’t work?”

“Not really. He made up a draught and told me to take it when I was ready to retire, but I knew I’d never be able to keep it down. So I went out to the stables and drew off blood from one of the horses to mix it in and was able to drink that. It put me into quite a stupor, but the dreams were still there and more disturbing than usual. Never again.” I dropped into Father’s big chair by the dormant fireplace. “Damnation, but the only rest I ever had since my return was when I was forced to shelter in the old barn.”

“Perhaps you could go back and try it again.”

“Why should my sleeping there be any different than here in my own bed?”

“I don’t know. If you went back you might find an answer.”

“It’s hardly safe.”

Her brows drew together as she glanced up from her fine carving. “No one goes out there anymore.”

“The Hessians might. You know they wanted to take Rapelji’s house away from him for their own lodging? He’s lucky they changed their minds and took over the church instead.”

“Not so lucky for the church.”

“Better to have them there than at Rapelji’s or even in our own house. I’ve been down to The Oak to learn the news, and they’re a pretty rough and savage lot.”

“I’ve heard the stories, Jonathan,” she said dryly. Because of the recent occupation of our island by foreign mercenaries Elizabeth and the other women of our household had hardly been able to stir a foot outside the door for fear of being insulted by the very army sent to protect us. “Anyway, you’ve wandered off the subject of the barn. Why don’t you try spending the day there? Jericho can run out and check on you if you’re that worried.”

I grimaced. “It’s so open and unguarded, without doors or shutters. I only used it because I had no other choice.”

“But you were able to find rest then, with no dreaming.”

That was inarguable. I was about to raise more objections, just to keep up the flow of talk, when Father came in, shutting the library doors behind him. He was a tall man with a spare figure and a still handsome face, but lately more lines had begun to clutter his normally amiable expression. Imprinted there by the upheavals in our own lives and by the larger conflicts outside our home, they seemed to lift when he looked upon us, his children.

“Is the card game finished?” Elizabeth asked.

“No, they’re still at it,” he replied, meaning Mother, Dr. Beldon and Mrs. Hardinbrook, who was Beldon’s widowed sister. “They’ve changed to something that needs but three players to work well, so I made my escape.

“Why do you play if you don’t enjoy it?”

“It soothes your mother’s soul.” He strode toward the cabinet that held a small supply of wine and spirits, then changed his mind with a sigh.

“No. I’ll be damned before I let that woman drive me to drink.”

“That woman” referred to Mrs. Hardinbrook, not Mother. “What did she do tonight?” I asked.

“She opened her mouth, and that’s more than enough. How she does clack on. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen her pause for breath. At least when we’re at cards she shuts up for the play.”

“And when Mother is talking,” Elizabeth put in.

Father grunted agreement to that, then turned his attention upon me. “All right, laddie, what’s the rest of your tale? Just how did your arm heal so quickly?”

Elizabeth left off the carving of pens and folded her hands in her lap, her face bright with interest.

I gulped. It’s one thing to promise an explanation, but quite another to actually deliver it, particularly when one doesn’t know where to start.

“Well, it’s connected with how I . . . escaped my grave.” My last words came out in a rush, as I wanted to get past them as quickly as possible. I did not like to think about that time; it always made me feel ill. They could see how difficult it was for me to talk, and waited. Suddenly restless again, I launched out of Father’s chair and stalked up and down the room.

“I . . . ceased to be solid and floated my way out,” I finally said. “Passed right through the ground. To the surface.”

They exchanged looks. Father’s brows went up. Somehow, this had been so much easier to talk about with Jericho, but then he’d already known something of the topic.

“What? Digging like a badger?” asked Elizabeth.

“No, it’s . . . uhh . . . .”

“Not solid,” said Father. “Did I hear you right?”

“Yes! That’s how I got out without disturbing the earth. I can make my body . . . .”