Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (69 page)

The date, as nearly as I could make out from Oliver’s atrocious handwriting, was late in February, indicating that he’d replied only days after the arrival of my last missive to him. So it had taken a solid four months to get to me. Old news by now, but better than nothing. My eyes flew over the crabbed words, searching for Nora’s name.

And when I found it . . . . Well, I’d hoped for more . . . expected more.

He told me that he’d forwarded my letter to Nora to the Warburtons as per my request and hoped that I should get a speedy reply. He’d had no word from them other than a note from Mrs. Warburton saying that her son, Tony, had improved a little in the temperate Italian climate, though he was still far from recovered.

Damned murdering bastard,
I thought, my mood going foul from this lack of news. I didn’t care about him, I wanted to hear about
Nora.

“Not ill tidings, I hope?” said Mr. Farr.

“More like no tidings at all,” I grumbled.

The rest of the letter reflected the one I’d sent, chatty and full of comments about things written long past and near forgotten. I was to the point of folding it to peruse later when I caught the name “Norbury” and “Norwood” and read a bit farther. I’d asked Oliver for an opinion of the Duke’s family and he provided one.

I was reading it for the fourth time when Lady Caroline, apparently impatient from the waiting, came in. Mr. Farr went to her and asked permission to show her to the ladies’ portion of his house, but she put him off and came toward me smiling apologetically.

“Mr. Barrett? I’ve no wish to press you, but I thought you might have forgotten that your cousin is waiting for us.”

Couldn’t speak. Could barely hear her. Could only stare at her face, familiar for so many months, pretty, friendly, intelligent, charming, an entirely lovely woman. I stared, with a terrible sickness sweeping up from my belly.

Farr noticed something was wrong. “Mr. Barrett? What is it? Mr. Barrett?”

My gaze wrested from her face to his, and I struggled to form an answer. Impossible. The whole world was impossible.

She said my name again. Questioning.

Still couldn’t answer. Shock, I suppose. Made it hard to think.

“. . . some brandy, sir?” Farr was saying. “Mr. Barrett?”

I shook my head. Put a hand to my eyes, rubbed them. When I blinked them clear, the horror was still before me. Undeniable. It would not go away on its own. It would have to be dealt with, and the damnable job had fallen to me.

Once I understood that, a kind of acceptance and resolve took hold. Without another word, I seized Caroline by the arm and, ignoring her surprised protest, guided her firmly toward one of the private receiving rooms. I grabbed up a candle from one of the tables in passing, much to the startlement of the men there. Ignoring their comments as well, I pushed her ahead of me into the room and shut the door.

“What
is
the matter, Mr. Barrett?” she demanded, nonplussed if not fully angered by my
abrupt and odd behavior.

“That is something for you to explain.” I put the candle on a heavy oak table and placed Oliver’s letter next to it. “Read,” I ordered, pointing.

“This is ridiculous,” she protested. “What on earth—?”

“Read, damn you!”

She went pink with true anger at this insult, but there was an unmistakable wavering in her eyes.

Doubt,
I thought, fighting back my growing fury.
Most definitely doubt.
I wanted to be wrong, for this to be a misunderstanding for which I could tender a profound apology afterwards.

She kept anger to the front, though, and showing it in her every move and gesture, sat in one of the chairs and plucked up the pages. It was slow going, as she was not used to the handwriting, but I knew how things stood as I watched her grow more and more pale until she was deathly white. Then there was a strange reversal and her color returned until she was flushed, with two crimson
spots high on her cheeks.

Oliver had been fairly succinct on the subject:

“ . . .
I’d not heard of any Duke of Norbury, but thought if Cousin Elizabeth were considering adding a peer to the family it wouldn’t hurt to improve my knowledge, so I began asking around. The news isn’t good, I fear. I was most exhaustive in my inquiries, making a pest of myself to the people who dote upon anything to do with the peerage. They checked every history at hand, but there is no doubt-there is no such duke and never has been. The only Norbury I can turn up is some nothing of a little hamlet south of London that doesn’t even have a church, much less a duke. There is a village called Norwood and I understand it has a rather fine inn, but again, no duke lurking about the place, never has been. I’d question this fellow and his sister most closely as they’re bound to be bounders, don’t you know.”

Caroline shook her head, putting on a wonderful puzzlement. “Really, Mr. Barrett, there has been an awful mistake; that, or your cousin is playing a miserable joke upon us all. My family is an old and noble line, why, we even had ancestors with Henry at Agincourt.”

“I don’t give a damn if they were with Richard at Bosworth Field, you will explain yourself.”

“But I tell you there’s nothing to be explained, ’tis your cousin who needs to . . . .” She saw my look and tried another tack. “This is ridiculous. We’ve lived with your family for months. You
know
us well. How can we be anything except what we are?”

And for a moment I experienced a twinge of doubt. Oliver was often a rather silly fellow, after all. He
might
have gotten things muddled. . . .

“This is a mistake,” she said firmly. “You must realize that.”

No. He could be an ass at times, but much of that was an affectation. He was no fool. Unlike me. Unlike all of us.

I fixed my gaze hard upon her. “You will
listen
to me. . . .”

She hissed as though burned and flinched. After that initial reaction she went still as stone, expression wide open and blank. Soulless. Certainly as heartless.

Sweet God,
how . . . ? Why?

I broke away to pace up and down a few times, trying to calm myself. I was sick and angry and ashamed, with a thousand other similar damnable feelings crowding mind and cowing spirit, filling me with their turbulent hum, making it impossible to think clearly or do anything. No good trying to question her while I was so upset, it could kill her . . . or worse.

Sweet God, but it
hurt.

And it was like this for me for many long and silent moments until it finally settled into something I could control. Only then did I dare look at her and form my first question.

“Who are you?” My voice was strangely steady.

“Caroline Norwood.

“Where are you from?”

“London.”

“Is your oldest brother the Duke of Norbury?”

“I have no brother.”

God. “Then who is James Norwood?”

“My husband.”

I fell back as though I’d been shot. I had to, to save her, to save myself from—

The sickness returned tenfold. For a time I couldn’t do anything, the awfulness of it was too great. I kept my back to her, forcibly breathing in huge gulps of air, trying to clear my mind, and after a time, succeeding. When I was calm again, I resigned myself to the fact that everything to come was going to hurt like blazes, but there was no way it could be avoided. All I could do was to get through it as quickly as possible. I had to know
everything
before inflicting this monstrous horror on Elizabeth. However much it injured me it would be ten thousand times worse for her.

Pulled a chair out opposite this stranger, this deceiving, hateful and so sweetly enchanting
stranger
, I sat clasping my hands before me on the table. I was eerily reminded of my aborted interview with the murdered Knox, and shot a swift look at the room’s one window. It was shuttered for the night for safety, the custom now despite the summer heat.

We would not be interrupted. I looked hard at the woman.

“All right, Caroline. I want you to tell me all about yourself.”

* * *

It was a wretched story, made more so by their utter lack of conscience.

They’d come across from England over a year ago with fine clothes and finer manners and posed as Lord James and Lady Caroline, complete with a duke as their elder brother along with a distinguished family history. The pair had had much contact with nobility in England, after all; she had been a music teacher, he a dancing master to scions of the peerage.

Both were natural-born actors, able to ape the speech and manners of their betters. Both were discontent with their stations in life and prepared to do anything to improve it. The assumption of titles had proved to be a clever ploy, making them predictably irresistible to certain members of Philadelphia society, and it wasn’t hard to dupe the lot.

They made shameless use of their new status to acquire goods, services and favors, and stayed as guests of the best families in the city. They borrowed money with no intention of paying back, knowing they could blame the vagarities of the war for tardiness of remuneration. For all that, they were always short of cash and on the lookout for a means of getting more.

But the trouble in that city from the approaching war made it impossible for them to fulfill such plans as they’d made; escape became necessary. Enter my innocent cousin, Anne, not clever but possessing relatives with a splendid sanctuary far from the conflict.

Possessing money . . . at least on one side of the family.

Once they arrived and got their bearings, it was determined that rather than simply borrow and abscond as before, one of them should marry into that money. Upon arrival they worked out that James would come to pay court to my sister, as there was less difficulty for a husband to control his wife’s property than the other way ’round. All he had to do was be what he essentially was, handsome, genial, naturally affable, but without a speck of real feeling or guilt for what he was doing.

Caroline was the same way. They were perfectly matched.

Then they’d found out that Elizabeth was my heir. Her money alone would be a fortune , but how much better would it be to double it. That’s when they made their first attempt on my life. During the happy confusion of a tea party, it had been easy enough to keep Anne distracted. Caroline slipped a killing dose of laudanum into my tea and watched with approval as my blameless cousin stirred in plenty of sugar, which would conveniently mask the taste.

The plan was that I should simply fall asleep, never to wake. If anybody at the party noticed me dozing in a chair, one or the other of them would prevent any attempt to rouse me. The greater likelihood was that once I felt sleepy enough, I’d go upstairs to bed, never to return.

They couldn’t know that I would not be drinking it; I’d long planted that provision into their minds as I’d done with everyone else: that they should entirely ignore the fact I never ate or drank anything.

What a shock it had been to them when Rapelji had come in and raised the alarm about Father.

Father . . . my poor father . . . he might have died in my place, all unknowing.

And Mother . . . all these months ignorantly bearing the stigma of a poisoner.

I roughly pushed my bitter rage aside and made Caroline go on.

Made cautious by this blunder, they held off for a time, until things could fall back into their usual routine. They did not for a moment believe Beldon’s story about the flying gout and noticed right away the new lock on his door. After much speculation and observation, later confirmed when Elizabeth decided to confide in Norwood, they knew it was Mother we suspected, not them. With relief they watched and waited for another opportunity, and James proceeded with his sham courtship of Elizabeth.

Caroline apparently had little objection to her husband’s conquest of another woman and none at all to his going to a prostitute for the easement of such urges as come to a man forced by circumstances to be celibate. Neither of them dared to compromise their pose. Having been servants themselves, they knew the impossibility of keeping a conjugal tryst secret in so large a household so they continued their masquerade. Norwood sought acceptable release elsewhere, the same as any other unmarried man.

After he’d finished with Molly one night, he’d gone to The Oak for a fortifying drink and had overheard the regulars joking amongst themselves about my recent departure to pay my respects to the lady.

He wasn’t aware at that time of Molly’s reputation for discretion. He knew that one careless word from her to his prospective brother-in-law could endanger his chances with Elizabeth. Besides, there was the additional gain of inheritance to consider. I had to be silenced.

And the men to do it were right there. Ash, Drummond, all the others.

For they were Norwood’s men.

He’d met them and secured their services on one of his frequent trips away to see to “business.” Faster and more certain than marriage, he’d made lucrative arrangements with them, finding likely places for a raid and taking a portion of the profit. They’d been in Glenbriar that night to plan the next foray and he ordered them to kill me, saying that I’d found them out and would talk.

There were two problems with that, though: Ash had decided on his own to try for a ransom on the side . . . and I was not the ordinary man I appeared to be. No wonder Norwood had been so completely astonished to see me alive on the road the next night. I was supposed to be dead and drifting somewhere at the bottom of the Sound.

Also to his misfortune, Knox had been captured. He’d been close-mouthed, but then I’d promised to make the man talk. It fell to Norwood’s wife to see that he did not.

“You? How were you involved with that?” I demanded. My influence upon her had lowered her guard so much that she was readily answering questions as though they were part of a normal conversation, requiring only a word or two from me to keep her going. It was just as well. The initial effort of concentration caused me much discomfort, and to sustain it for any length of time made my head throb terribly.