The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (11 page)

Having changed for dinner, we found the whole family in the dining room, including the old count in an old-fashioned evening coat and cravat.

“Praise the Lord,” Zsigmund murmured irreverently in my ear. “You are honoured by His Excellency’s presence.”

“I rather think
you
are,” I returned. “He was much more pleased to see you than he let on.”

Whoever he aimed to please, if anyone other than himself, the old count was certainly on his best behaviour that evening. I was given my place as lady of the house, an honour which Gizella did not appear to begrudge me. In fact, she looked uncomfortable to the point of frightened to have the old man there at all.

Gabor dined with us also, a watchful, mostly silent figure in the lively conversations.

Zsigmund brought up the subject of our planned entertaining. The count merely grunted and said, “Gabor will help you find whoever you want to invite. There have been a lot of changes.”

Zsigmund nodded once, curtly. He didn’t want to think of the tragedy of the last two years. He cast me a quick smile. “Gabor knows everything like that, who is in the city and who not, where they live and what they had for dinner—”

The count gave a crack of laughter.

“I do not,” Gabor said with dignity, “know what anyone else has had for dinner.” He fixed me with his incredibly dark, steady eyes. “But I will be happy to help with your invitations.”

“Thank you,” I said gratefully. “For one thing, I know Zsigmund will be bored by the whole process within ten minutes.”

Zsigmund smiled lazily. “I’m born to command. I have the ideas and expect other people to carry them through. It’s a failing of my class and my upbringing. Saving your presence, Grandfather.”

“Insolent jackanapes,” the count said without heat.

Gizella relaxed in her chair, from which I understood the count wasn’t always so good-natured about Zsigmund’s slightly barbed teasing.

“I wonder if you can advise me on another problem?” I said, including everyone in my sweeping gaze. “I had to send my maid home to England, so I need to engage one here.”

“János deals with the domestic arrangements,” Gizella said. “I haven’t had my own maid for years. Katalin helps me when necessary, so I’ve never had to take on anyone new.”

There was no truly tactful way to broach the rest of the subject, so I simply said, “Would there be any problem with my hiring a few other servants at the same time? Now that Zsigmund and I are here, it’s too much work for three people.”

Clearly, it had been far too much for three people before we’d arrived too, but I wasn’t going to say so. On the other hand, I wasn’t quite prepared for the silence which greeted my mild words. Gizella stared down at her food. Although István and Gabor carried on eating, they did so with a kind of tense concentration that suggested someone who’s seen the lightning patiently waiting for the thunderclap. Zsigmund set down his fork and leaned back, a faintly malicious smile playing around his mouth while his eyes, watchful and steady, remained on his grandfather.

The old man looked up slowly and fixed me with his gaze while he finished chewing and swallowed.

“There’s no money for servants,” he said shortly. “He might have a courtesy title but you didn’t marry a rich man. You married a disgraced one.”

Beside me, Zsigmund’s scar seemed to grow livid. I laid down my fork and covered his rigid hand with mine. I said, “I see no disgrace in fighting for one’s country. We can’t change the tragedy of the war, but it is a simple matter to set this house to rights.”

“Not without money, it isn’t,” the count retorted.

“But if there was money, you would be content with more servants?” I persevered.

He shrugged. “Stupid question.”

I picked up my fork again. “Then I apologise.”

Immediately after dinner, the old count stomped off to his study, barking over his shoulder at Zsigmund, “Ten o’clock. I’ll see you at ten and not a moment later.”

The rest of us repaired to the drawing room, where Zsigmund threw out a list of names. Gabor wrote them down in a notebook, and hastily scribbled addresses beside several of them while Zsigmund thought who else to invite to the larger soiree.

“And then there’s the ball,” Zsigmund added, frowning, clearly bored with the mundanities.

“I’ll sort out your guest list for that,” Gabor said. “There are people you
should
invite as well as those you wish to.”

Zsigmund grinned like a schoolboy released from the classroom and strolled off towards the decanter while Gabor and I wrote the informal invitations for the evening after next.

“I believe it was a friend of yours who married us in France,” I said as we finished.

“So I heard.”

“He asked to be remembered kindly to you.”

Gabor’s lips twisted. “Did he?”

“Were you not friends?” I asked, slightly baffled by his attitude.

“Oh yes. Once. I imagined I’d become one of those parts of his life he’d chosen to forget.” He smiled gently. “Perhaps I’ll get in touch.”

Something in the smooth velvet voice made me shiver. It took several moments before I realised I was actually afraid for the bishop.

Ridiculous. I shook the feeling off and thanked Gabor for his help.

“I’ll give you the other addresses tomorrow,” he said, standing. “Would you like me to send these out for delivery this evening?”

“Yes, please, if that is possible.”

He bowed and departed, and I realised I was the only one left in the drawing room. The Andrassys, clearly, were not a family given to cosy evenings together around the fire. I thought of most of my evenings over the last twelve years, spent in pleasant companionship with Neil, reading or sewing, talking occasionally of the day’s events or some other subject that popped into my mind or his. My throat closed up. That was the true reason I’d gone so often to the assembly rooms. I hadn’t wanted to miss Neil. And yet here I was, missing him now in the home of my new husband.

I smiled determinedly and rose to my feet. I would always miss Neil, as I already missed my father and my grandmother, and my friend Catherine, who’d died in childbirth. But I had an exciting new life now, full of different challenges, and I would not mope, let alone whine about being left alone! Since I hadn’t yet explored much of the house beyond the ground floor, I left the drawing room and headed upstairs.

There were very few lights to guide me. On the first floor, I could just about see my way to the count’s study, where a light shone under the door. In the other direction was pitch darkness. I lit a candle from a collection of stumps at the top of the stairs and walked into the blackness. The nearest room was a spacious, well-stocked library, which I promised myself to examine in more detail in the daylight. Closing the door, I moved on to the next.

It was a music room. Another piano, a harpsichord, and a harp stood in three corners, with a mandolin, a guitar, and a violin on stands nearby. A few armchairs and sofas were scattered between, all shrouded in dust sheets.

I wandered inside. A wood-and-glass cabinet held piles of sheet music and instruction books for children. I imagined Zsigmund learning here as a child and smiled at his envisioned impatience. I could almost see him later on, a wild youth at the piano, playing some stormy, romantic piece.

When I touched the piano lid, I could feel the dust thick under my finger. No one had used this room for years, which was a shame. The instruments looked very fine. I could imagine musical afternoons around them, friends gathering to play together and listen, young girls learning to be accomplished, adults honing their talents. I imagined various music teachers, governesses, and tutors, perhaps even professional musicians earning a little extra money. I could almost see all these figures overlapping each other as they played, walked, sat, danced. I even hummed a little tune for them which sprang into my head from nowhere, an exotic gypsy-style melody I must have heard in my recent travels.

The dancers spun away into the background, faceless, almost formless figures of my fantasy, while I more clearly imagined a black-haired young woman seated on the stool at my feet, beautiful in the soft glow of my candle flame as she played the gypsy song on the mandolin. When I could actually make out the lace on her dusky pink dress and the matching ribbons in her hair, and could see that her nose turned ever so slightly upward, I decided the fantasy had gone far enough and blinked it away.

Oddly, I could still hear the music in my head. As I walked across the room towards what seemed to be connecting doors, I gazed around at the drawn curtains and the high ornate ceiling. Despite the dust covers and the cobwebs, this was a beautiful room. More than that, it felt...
happy
.

I opened the double doors at the end of the room and walked into a large drawing room. Yet another piano stood in the curtained window. This had once been a most musical household.

There was a tall bookcase, lots of little tables bearing vases and tiny ornamental sculptures, surrounded by dust-protected chairs and sofas. It was almost like several small rooms in one, where you could either have a large gathering or any number of cosier ones. Despite the formless hunks of covered furniture, I immediately liked it far better than the drawing room downstairs which seemed...soulless compared to this one.

My friend Barbara Darke claims all houses, and even rooms within houses, have unique atmospheres that people absorb, usually without realising. The atmospheres form from the events which take place there and the emotions surrounding them. Barbara claims to be a spiritual medium, if you press her, so being more of a realist myself, I take much of what she says with a pinch of salt. But I had never felt the truth of this idea so strongly as in this house. It was almost as if the house were split in two: these dusty old rooms, redolent with old happiness and future hope; and the public rooms downstairs which seemed cold, shallow, only for show. As if the soul of the house lived here...

Or in the old count’s bad-tempered study.

And if I was classifying rooms, where would I place our bedroom? Remembering our recent coming together there, I blushed in the darkness, turning my gaze away from the candle as if to hide. It was already a room of passion.

Another set of double doors took me into a much smaller sitting room, a feminine room with lighter curtains and smaller, less imposing chairs. And a discreet door from there led me into a large bedroom with a huge bed surrounded by dusty, tied-back curtains.

A book lay open on one bedside table, as if someone had been reading it only this morning. I couldn’t resist touching it. My finger came away coated in dust. No one had used, let alone cleaned, this room for a very long time.

I sank down on the bed, letting the peace of the place enfold me. I felt an urge to lie down and sleep, to wait for Zsigmund to come and make love to me here. I smiled, imagined him entering the door behind me and walking towards me, slow, deliberate, predatory. The mattress would sink under his weight as he settled behind me, his breath tickling the back of my neck as his arms crept around me, his hands closing over my breasts...

I could feel that breath, warm, arousing, making every hair on my nape stand up with awareness. Gasping, I jerked around.

Of course, there was no one there. Not even Zsigmund.

“Barbara, you would love these rooms,” I murmured. “They’re full of ghosts...”

I rose and picked up my candle again. The door which I imagined led back into a passage seemed to be locked, so I walked back the way I’d come, through the sitting room and the drawing room and the music room.

Here, I paused once more, unable to resist laying down my candle and lifting the lid on the piano keys. Although the dust glittered in the candle’s glow, I could almost convince myself the instrument had been played only yesterday. The gypsy music came back to me, haunting and insistent. I spread my hands over the keys, finding the right notes, and pressed down.

The keys gave, sounding a thoroughly out-of-tune cacophony that made me wince. I jerked up my hands at once, just as something creaked and I spun around to face it.

A tall, dark figure stood in the doorway, black against the grey darkness behind him. My stomach jolted with inexplicable fear. For an instant, I thought it really was a ghost. Then he moved, and I snatched up my candle, which showed me the scarred, shadowed face of my husband.

“Oh goodness,” I said, trying to laugh at my relief. “I thought you were a ghost!”

“I thought it must be you in here. No one else would go in.”

“Why not?” I asked, walking to meet him. “These are beautiful rooms.”

“They were my parents’ apartments,” he said abruptly, taking the candle from me and turning at once for the door.

“They must have been happy here,” I said warmly. “How did your mother die?”

Curiously, he’d never mentioned that. Now he gave an impatient shrug. “Why do people always ask that? However she died doesn’t make her less dead. It’s the death that’s important, not the reason. Did you get bored with the invitations too?”

“No, they’re all finished. Gabor is dealing with them now.”

As we left the room, Zsigmund closed the door firmly and turned back towards the staircase. “Excellent. Then I’ll soon have the pleasure of showing you off.”

I eyed him sardonically, but before I could comment, he said with odd grimness, “I’m on my way to confer with my grandfather. Wish me luck.”

“Will you need it?” I asked, surprised. He seemed to be the only one of his family not afraid, or at least in awe, of the old count.

“Oh yes.”

“Then I do,” I said, giving him a quick hug.

For an instant, I thought he was too distracted to notice, then his arm fell about me, squeezing me convulsively to his side. “Forgive me if I behave badly,” he mumbled into my hair, and then he dropped his arm and strode around the corner in the direction of his grandfather’s room.

I followed him with my eyes for a little before I turned and climbed the stairs towards our own rooms.

There, I spent some time setting things out to my better liking and making plans for this room and the little sitting room next door. Then, just as I was about to prepare for bed, I heard voices raised outside the house, not in anger but in fun. Shouts of laughter drew me to the window, but I couldn’t see anyone. I heard the front door open below and Zsigmund’s exuberant voice before the door closed again, and for a moment, I could hear joyful voices raised within the house.