Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (98 page)

I offered him a lump of sugar as a bribe, soothed him down, and got on with my business. He held perfectly still even after I’d finished and wiped my lips clean. For that he got more sugar. Intelligent beast.

The blood granted its usual miracle of restoration on my battered body. I felt its heat spreading from the inside out, though it seemed particularly concentrated on my chest this night. The skin over my heart began to itch. Opening Brinsley’s shirt, I found the angry red patch around the fresh scar somewhat faded. Reassuring, that.

Since I was finally alone, though, I was free to take a shortcut to speed up my healing. I vanished.

Rolly didn’t like that much. Perhaps he could sense my presence in some way; perhaps it had to do with the cold I generated in this form. He stirred in his box, shying away in protest. To ease things for him, I quit the stables and floated through the doors into the yard, using memory to find the path leading to the house. Despite the buffeting of the wind, I was able to make my way back again to materialize in the parlor right before the fireplace.

Jericho, being extremely familiar with my habits, had built the fire into a fine big blaze during my absence and set out my slippers and dressing gown. I listened intently for a moment to the sounds of the house. Jericho was in the kitchen exchanging light conversation with the coachman and the cook. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but the voices were calm, ordinary in tone, indicating that all was peaceful below-stairs. Just as well.

The itch in my chest was no more. A second look at the place of my wounding both reassured and astonished me. All trace of red was gone, and the scar appeared to be weeks old. In time, most probably after my next vanishing, it would disappear altogether.

Suddenly shivering, I pulled a chair closer to the fire and sat miserably huddled in my cloak.

I thought of Father, missing him and his sensible, comforting manner with me whenever life became troubling.

“You should be glad that you still have a life to be troubled about,” I muttered aloud. God knows with the times being what they were, had I not been cut down by that fool at the Captain’s Kettle over a year ago, I’d might well have met some other bad fate soon after.

And recovered from it. Because of my change.

A nasty bout of unease oozed through my belly as I pondered on how things might have been had I not met Nora. Without her, I’d have certainly stayed in my early grave; Elizabeth would be dead as well, foully and horribly murdered. That would have shattered Father, to lose us both.

I shivered again and told myself to stop being so morbid. It was because of that damned duel and that damned Thomas Ridley. The thought of him filled me with fury and disgust: the former for his picking the fight, the latter for his stupidity in continuing it. Blooding aside, I’d not enjoyed my revenge against him. My hand could still feel how my blade had stabbed into the tough resistance of his fleshy arm until it grated upon and was stopped by the bone beneath. A singularly unpleasant sensation, that. He’d be weeks healing, unless it became fevered, and then he’d either lose the arm or die.

Well, as with everything else, it was in God’s hands. No need for me to wallow in guilt for something not my fault. Yes, I had wanted to kill him for his insult to Elizabeth, but that desire had gone out of me after the first shock of my own wound had worn off. It was as though I’d seen just how foolish he was, like a child trying to threaten an adult with a twig. To be sure, he was a dangerous child, but he’d no idea of just how overmatched he’d been with me. And I . . . I’d forgotten the extent of my own capabilities, which made me a fool as well.

No more of that, Johnny-boy,
I thought, shaking my head.

Warmer, I threw off the cloak, exchanging it for the dressing gown, and struggled to remove my boots. I’d just gotten my left heel lifted free, ready to slip the rest of the way out, when someone began knocking at the front door.

Damnation, what now? Slamming my foot back into the boot, I made my frustrated way to the central hall and peered through one of the windows flanking the entrance.

A man wrapped in a dark cloak stood outside. For a mad second I thought he might be Ridley because of his size, but the set of his shoulders was more squared and there was nothing amiss with his right arm. He turned and raised it now to knock again and I caught his profile.

Cousin Edmond Fonteyn? What on earth did he want?

Probably come to berate me about the duel. He was something of a dogsbody to Aunt Fonteyn, and to her only, and if she wasn’t of a mind to vent her doubtless acid opinion of the matter herself, she’d have sent him in her stead. Not that I had a care for the substitution or even his presence. So much had happened tonight that I was simply unable to raise my usual twinge of guilt from having hung the cuckold’s horns on Edmond that Christmas years past.

“I’ll get it, sir,” said Jericho, emerging from the back.

“I’m here, no need.” Obligingly, I unbolted and opened the door, and Edmond swept in, seeming to fill the hall. It was not his size alone that did it so much as his manner. Stick-in-the-mud he might be, according to Oliver, but when he entered a room, people noticed.

“Hallo, Edmond,” I began. “If it’s about the duel, I can tell you—”

“Bother that,” he said, his brown eyes taking in the hall, noting Jericho’s presence, then fastening on me. “Where’s Oliver?”

“In bed by now.”

“Have him fetched without delay.”

Edmond always looked serious, but there was a dark urgency to him now that made my flesh creep with alarm. I signed to Jericho. He’d already started up the stairs.

“There’s a fire in the parlor,” I said, gesturing Edmond in the right direction.

He frowned at me briefly, then accepted the invitation, striding ahead without hurry. Under the cloak he still wore his Harlequin guise, though he’d traded the white skullcap for a normal hat. He wore no wig, revealing his close-cropped, graying hair. It should have made him seem vulnerable, half-dressed in some way, but did not.

“What’s all this about?” I asked.

His gaze raked me up and down, then turned toward the fire. “Duel,” he said. There was derision in his tone, like that of a schoolmaster for an especially backward student. “What in God’s name were you thinking?”

“The quarrel did not begin with me.” He continued to scowl, but with the right on my side, I met his look. “What have you heard of it? I’m sure there’s a dozen versions flying about by now, but if you want the truth . . . .”

He grunted, abruptly waving the business away. “Never mind, it’s of no importance.

“Then tell me what’s going on.”

“You’ll know soon enough,” he growled.

Very well, then, I’d not press things, for he appeared to be in a devilish mood. Edmond threw off tension the way a fire throws heat; I could almost feel myself starting to scorch from it. Relief flooded me when Oliver finally appeared, clad also in a dressing gown, but wearing slippers, not boots. He blinked drowsily and glanced past Edmond to me, silently asking for an explanation. I could only shrug.

“Oliver . . .” Edmond paused, visibly bracing himself. “Look, I’m very sorry, but something terrible has happened and I don’t quite know how to tell you.”

All vestige of sleep fell away from Oliver’s face at these alarming words and the tone behind them. “What’s happened?” he demanded.

“What?” I said at the same time.

“Your mother . . . there’s been an accident.”

“An acci—? What sort of—? Where is she?”

“At the Bolyns’. She had a fall. We think she slipped on some ice.”

“Is she all right?” Oliver stepped forward, his voice rising.

“She struck her head in the fall. I’m very sorry, Oliver, but she’s dead.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

In England, for those in high enough and wealthy enough circles, funerals were customarily held at night. It was just as well, as it would have raised adverse comment had I not attended, though it mattered little to me. I had absolutely no interest in paying artificial respects to so contemptible a woman whatever the demands of propriety; I was there for Oliver’s sake.

The weather was atrocious, with bitterly cold wind and cutting sleet—appropriate, considering Aunt Fonteyn’s foul temperament. Her final chance to inflict one last blast of misery upon her family, I thought, cowering with the rest as we followed the coffin to its final destination. I walked on one side of Oliver and Elizabeth walked on the other, offering what support we could with the bleak knowledge that it was not enough. The color had drained out of his face when Edmond delivered the news, and had yet to return. He was as gray and fragile as an old man; his eyes were disturbingly empty, as though he’d gone to sleep but forgotten to close them.

I hoped that once the horror of the entombment was over, he might begin to recover himself. The ties are strong between a mother and child, whether they love each other or not; when those ties are irreparably severed, the survivor is going to have a strong reaction of some kind. For all his years of abuse from her, for all his mutterings against her, she was, as he’d said, the only mother he had. Even if he’d come to hate her, she’d still been a major influence in his life—unpleasant, but at least familiar. Her sudden absence would bring change, and change is frightening when one is utterly unprepared. Certainly I could attest to the truth of that in light of my past experience with death and the profound turns of fate it had delivered to my family.

The memory of my demise came forcibly back as we shivered here in the family mausoleum a quarter mile from Fonteyn House. No mixing with other folk in the churchyard for this family; the Fonteyns would share eternity with their own kind, thank you very much. And no muddy graves, either, but a spacious and magnificent sepulcher fit for royalty, large enough to hold many future generations of their ilk.

The huge structure had been built by Grandfather Fonteyn, who moldered in a carved marble sarcophagus a few yards from where I stood. His eldest daughter’s coffin was even now being lowered next it by the pallbearers. Tomorrow its stone cover with a brass plate bearing her name would be mortared into place for all time.

As depressing as it was to stand here surrounded by the Fonteyn dead, it was preferable to being clustered ’round a gaping hole in the ground with the sleet stinging the backs of our necks. The cloying scent of freshly turned earth might have been too much for me, though being at a funeral, period, was bad enough. The same went for Elizabeth, for she not only had memories of my burial to wrestle with, but the service for James Norwood, too. Choosing to keep his betrayal of her secret, she’d had to play the grieving widow before hundreds of wellwishers. To this day I had no understanding of where she’d found the strength to endure it.

I glanced over to see how she was holding up and she gave me a thin but confident smile meant to reassure. Her attention was concentrated on Oliver, which was probably why she was able to get through this.

Sheet white and shaking miserably with the cold, Oliver looked ready to fall over. He wasn’t drunk, and he should have been; he was in sore need of muzzy-headed shelter from events. He stared unfocused at his mother’s coffin as they eased it into place, and I had no doubt that every detail was searing itself forever into his battered mind.

He must have help,
I thought, and wondered what I could possibly do for him. No shred of an idea presented itself, though. Perhaps later, after we were out of this damned death house, I could come up with something.

The service finally concluded. Since I’d not listened to one word of it, I knew only by the last
amens
and general stir about me. No mourners lingered in this torch-lit tomb. As one, we left Elizabeth Therese Fonteyn Marling to God’s mercy and all but galloped back through the crusty mud and snow to the lights and warmth of Fonteyn House.

The servants had set a proper feast for the occasion, and the family set to it with an unseemly gusto. Soon the gigantic collection of cold joints, pies, sweets, hams, and lord knows what else began to steadily disappear from the serving trays. The drink also suffered a similar swift depletion, but no one became unduly loud or merry from all the flowing Madeira. Oliver, I noted, never went near the groaning tables.

Very bad, that,
I thought.

There had been an inquiry about Aunt Fonteyn’s death, but a mercifully brief one, since it was obvious to all that it had been an accident. She’d been found in the center of the Bolyns’ shrubbery maze, having had the bad luck of somehow slipping on a patch of ice and striking her head on the edge of the marble fountain there. A servant had found her and raised the alarm. Though a doctor was sent for, her skull had been well and truly broken; nothing could be done. At least it had been quick and relatively painless, people said; that should be something of a comfort to her family. After all, there were worse ways to die.

Of the talk I overheard or participated in, it was universally agreed how unfair and awful it was, but then God’s will was bound to be a mystery to those who still lived. Thankfully, Cousin Edmond assumed the duties of making arrangements for the funeral. As lawyer himself, he moved things quickly along out of deference for Oliver’s condition, and three nights later most of the family gathered at Fonteyn House to pay their last respects.

If everyone had not been garbed in black, it might have been another Fonteyn Christmas, for we were well into the season. All the usual crowd was present, and one by one they expressed their sympathy to Oliver. Some of them, sensitive to his downcast countenance, were even sincere, but many did not like him. Of the falling out he’d had with his mother, none said a word. This was a great family for silences.

One or two latecomers were ushered in by a sad-faced mute hired for the task. Gloves and rings were distributed to the closest relatives; I’d gotten a silk hat and chamois gloves, both black. God knows what I’d do with them, being unable to generate any grief in my heart for the foul-minded hag, but I was expected to put on a show of it, nonetheless. Hypocritical to be sure, but I took comfort from the fact that I could hardly be the only member in this gathering with such feelings. Aunt Fonteyn had not been the sort of person to inspire deep and sincere mourning from anyone in his right senses. . . . Then I suddenly thought of Mother and just in time whipped out a handkerchief to cover my painfully twitching mouth before betraying a highly improper grin to the room.

The only thing that settled me was the knowledge that I’d have to write home with the news. Father wouldn’t have an easy time of it—not that he ever did—once Mother learned about the demise of the sister she doted upon. With that in mind I was just able to play my part, nodding at the right times and murmuring the right things and trying to keep my eye on Oliver as much as possible.

He was still hemmed in by a pack of relatives and not too responsive to whatever they were saying. Elizabeth was with him, doing her best to make up for his lack. Oh, well, no one would think badly of him for it and only put it off to grief.

My lovely cousin Clarinda moved through the crowds, having assumed the duties of hostess for him. I could not say that black suited her; tonight she looked almost as drawn as Oliver. Though far more animated than he, her natural liveliness was dampened owing to the circumstances. We’d exchanged formal greetings earlier, neither of us giving any sign of having a shared secret. I suspected, given Clarinda’s obvious appetite for willing young men, that our particular encounter had faded in her memory. Not that I felt slighted; if this proved to be so, then relief would best describe my reaction.

I moved among the various relatives as well, shaking a hand here, bowing to a lady there, but inevitably ending up with a group of the men as they spoke in low tones about the tragedy. As there was very little one could say about it, and since it was considered bad taste to speak ill of the departed, no matter how deserving, the topics of talk soon shifted from things funereal to things political. The dispiriting details of General Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga were now in the papers and the men here had formed the idea that I could somehow tell them more than what had appeared in print. But with my mind on Oliver’s problems, I had no interest discussing the situation in the Colonies tonight.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, but I know only as much as you do from your reading,” I said, trying to put them off.

“But you’re from the area, from New York,” insisted one of my many Fonteyn cousins.

“I’m from Long Island, and it’s as far away from Saratoga as London is from Plymouth, and with far worse roads in between.” This garnered discreet smiles.

“But you weren’t so far from the general fighting yourself if Oliver is to be believed.”

“I’ve been close enough, sir. There have been some incidents near our village concerning the rebels, but the King’s army has things well in hand now.”
I hope,
I silently added, feeling the usual stab of worry for Father whenever I thought of home.

“You’re too modest, Mr. Barrett,” said another young man, one of the many in the crowd. I had a strong idea he was here more for the feasting than to pay his respects. He was a handsome fellow and familiar, since I’d seen him before at other gatherings, but nameless like dozens of others. “I believe by now all of you know that your cousin here is a rare fire-eater when it comes to battle,” he added. “Perhaps some of you were there at the Bolyns’ party and saw him in action.”

I didn’t like his manner much or the fact he’d brought up the subject of the duel. Unfortunately, the other men were highly interested and wanted a full recountal of the event.

“Gentlemen, this is an inappropriate time and place,” I said firmly, as discouraging as possible.

“Oh, but we may never have another opportunity,” the young man drawled with expansive insistence. “I think we’d all like to hear how you defeated Mr. Thomas Ridley after he’d so grievously wounded you.”

“Hardly so grievous or I’d not be here, sir.”

More suppressed expressions of good humor.

“Do you call me a liar, sir?” he said slowly, deliberately and, worst of all, with no alteration in his pleasant expression.

Great heavens, I’d dreaded that some idiot might turn up and make a nuisance of himself by provoking another duel with me, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon and certainly not at Aunt Fonteyn’s funeral. Those around us went still waiting for my answer.

I could have found a graceful way of getting out of it, but the man’s obvious insult was too annoying to disregard. “Your name, sir?” I asked, keeping my own voice and expression as bland as possible.

“Arthur Tyne, sir. Thomas Ridley’s cousin.”

If he expected me to blanch in terror at this revelation, he was in for a vast disappointment. “Indeed? I trust and pray that the man is recovering well from his own wound.”

“You have not answered me, Mr. Barrett,” Tyne said, putting an edge into his tone that was meant to be menacing.

“Only because I thought you were making a jest, sir. It seemed polite that I should overlook it, since we are here to pay our solemn respects to the memory of my aunt.”

“That was no jest, sir, but a most earnest inquiry. Are you prepared to answer?”

“You astound me, Mr. Tyne. Of course I did not call you a liar.”

“I find you to be most insolent, sir.”

“Which is not too surprising; poor Aunt Fonteyn often made the same complaint against me.” If some around us were shocked by my
honesty, then more struggled not to show their amusement.

“Are you deaf? I said you are most insolent, Mr. Barrett.”

“Not deaf, dear fellow, only agreeing with you.” I fixed my gaze and full concentration upon him. “Certainly you can find no exception to that.”

Arthur Tyne found himself unable to say anything at all.

“This is a most sad occasion for me,” I went on. “I should be sadder still if I’ve caused you any distress. Come along with me, sir. I am interested to hear how things are with your cousin.”

So saying, I linked my arm with his and led him out of earshot of the rest. Tyne was just starting to blink himself awake when I fixed him again in place.

“Now, listen to me, you little toad,” I whispered. “I don’t care if the idea to have a fight with me was yours or your cousin’s, but you can put it right out of your head. You’re to leave me and mine alone. Understand? Now get out of my sight and stay out of my way.”

And so I had the pleasure of seeing Arthur Tyne’s back as he made a hasty retreat. He was visibly shaken, and the other men noticed, but I kept my pretense of a smile and ignored them. What I could not ignore was Edmond Fonteyn’s sudden presence next to me. Unlike his wife, black suited him well; it made him look larger, more powerful, more intimidating.