Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1)

by Jeanine Croft

  Winterly passed the plague doctors with staid equanimity and lead her down a dextral stone stairway, the darkness ever and anon interrupted by lamplight dancing morbidly off the walls. This night seemed more like a macabre pantomime than a full moon ball.

  The stairway emptied the couple into a rudimentary passageway with a shallow declivity; she imagined herself being lead into the very depths of the Roman catacombs. Emma halted abruptly and pulled her hand forcibly from his arm.

  Winterly turned to regard her so that his head and black horns were angled with a question.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You are wearing a mask and a mysterious red gown, therefore, I must hazard a guess we are bound for a masquerade ball.”

  “What sort of ball takes place underground?”

  “The kind you may never dance at if you insist on tarrying here all night. Or do you imagine enfer lies this way?” He gestured into the darkness beyond the meagre sconce light. “Where I mean to ravish you?”

  “I do,” she replied. “Your behavior thus far, you must admit, has not been wholly honorable, sir.”

  “Not holy, no.”

  “I must always be on my guard with you.”

  An insistent, shadowy finger suddenly materialized beneath her chin and lifted her face up to his, else she’d have continued glaring at his cravat. “So suspicious,” he admonished lightly. Without awaiting a response, he closed the small distance between them and placed his lips at her ear with slow deliberation. There was a devil in his dark, lento voice. “Only quiet your mind, madam, and hearken closely…”

  She did as he bade her. Her heart was beating in lively allegro, but when she closed her eyes to listen, doing her best to ignore the fact that Winterly’s lips were inching their way down towards her pulse, she caught the faint strain of music. It was almost imperceptible. It was like a discord in the unearthly weight of silence, no more natural to the ear than hearing the Hallelujah Chorus at the plutonian gates. And was that not where she was bound, on the arm of the devil beside her? To the underworld? His underworld.

  “You hear it?” He pressed his lips languorously to the sensitive skin below her ear as she nodded a yes. “Nothing like a little music to steel one’s courage.”

  “And nothing like a little darkness to steal a kiss,” she replied.

  Winterly pulled himself away from her with an appreciative chuckle. “Touché, Miss Rose. There is time enough for stolen kisses. We’ve bided here quite long enough.” With that, he took her hand like a lover and continued on, their footfalls becoming fainter as the music loudened. “Have I told you yet how exquisite you look this evening?”

  “You have now,” she said, glad of his not being able to witness the flush of pleasure beneath her mask.

  “Are you ready?” There was a note of relish in his words as they reached a second set of doors.

  These were opened by another pair of plague doctors. What awaited beyond the doors stole her breath. They had indeed entered an underworld—a beautiful nether realm swathed in glimmering light and riotous silk and color. It was some sort of vast, pillared undercroft. The stone walls and vaulted ceilings were bathed in a subaqueous candlelit gold. All around them a glittering array of bejeweled gowns and frightening masks moved with unearthly whimsy. Les démons de l’enfer in all their outlandish magnificence, buoyant and fluid as they spun in waves of color. Only the musicians in their black capes and matching masks were dressed in somber shades.

  “We must be directly beneath the courtyard,” said Emma, leaning in so he could hear her.

  “The kitchen yard,” he replied, leading them into the crush. “The other side of the south tower.”

  All was bold and dark and richly vibrant. She marveled at a woman in a peacock mask of radiant emeralds who whisked past them in the waltz, the velvet of her dress a deep viridian. Emma’s gaze flew from one dancer to the next—to a Cytherean beauty, her hair as fiery as her garnet gown and her eyes concealed by a black strip of gauze and spangles. Then to an ice queen in dark silver crape, her skirts billowing like a storm as she twirled, her full mask of glittering diamonds winking. Her caped partner was equally impressive in his checkered red and black mask with its long sneering nose.

  Emma gave a startled gasp as a man in a red vulpine mask leapt at her with alarming precipitance.

  He laughed like a jackal as he frisked about. “‘O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm that flies in the night, in the howling storm, has found out thy bed of crimson joy. And his dark secret love does thy life destroy!’” With a vulgar whoop and a valedictory salute, he then slunk away.

  Winterly’s smirk beneath the dragon horns was disconcerting as he watched the leering fox gambol away. “I’ve always liked that poem.”

  “Who was that?” she asked, realizing belatedly that she’d moved closer to Winterly. Ironic really, for the dragon was far and away more frightening than the fox.

  “William Blake,” said Winterly unnecessarily.

  “I meant the man in the fox mask, not the author of the verse.”

  “Ah, but that is the point of a masquerade, Miss Rose—we are unrestrained behind our masks and at liberty to do and say what we please; the mystery remains until we choose to remove the disguise.”

  “I never really knew quite what to make of that poem.” To own the truth, it had quite disturbed her to be thus serenaded by a fool in a frightful mask. It had seemed more than just some passing lark, and the cunning fox had as good as uttered her name. Like that old crone who’d waylaid Milli at Vauxhall.

  “The beauty of poetry,” said Winterly, “is that we may interpret the words as we wish.”

  “And how do you interpret that particular verse?” She had to know. His smile had implied some dark enjoyment.

  “A rose,” he said, “is an earthly thing, beautiful and fragile. The worm signifies death or decay, does it not? Or perhaps a wyrm—a serpent or dragon.” He stroked his pale chin, and in his smile a hint of a dreaded fang; a trick of the light? “The wyrm has secretly corrupted the purity of this unwitting rose, his very own Eve. Perhaps he has stolen every night into her garden, her flower bed, offering a fruitful joy as red as the lushest apple. Yet by morning her joy is tainted when she beholds that crimson warmth of flesh, of lost virtue, as nothing more than her own ignominy writ in blood atop the ivory counterpane.” He raised a finger gently to Emma’s cheek and feathered it down her jaw and neck. “But what is corruption to some is liberty to others.”

  Emma’s sinews shifted beneath his finger as she swallowed. “That divergence of creed,” she said, “is what differentiates the wyrm from the man, I think.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Where is my sister?” Emma asked, looking promptly away to scan the sea of masked faces, capes, and dark decadence, lest she consider the tapered length of the canines she’d glimpsed. It was very shocking behavior in him to have touched her so familiarly and so publicly.

  “Over there,” he replied, gesturing with a single nod to a golden-haired woman in sapphire finery.

  Her sister’s mask resembled an exotic bird with iridescent blue plumage. The mask could not, however, disguise Milli’s rapturous smile as she was swept along with the rest of the waltzing horde by a stately man beneath the alarming vizard of some sylvan god with branch-like antlers. Valko, Emma wagered. The couple soon vanished into the throng. If Mr. Black and Mr. Morris were in attendance (and they very likely were), she had no way of recognizing them in the crush of masks and capes.

  Next came the familiar emerald skirts of Winterly’s sister, her eyes obscured behind a piece of gold gauze. Victoria glided past in the arms of a dark giant in a mask even more horrific than Winterly’s—a snarling black wolf. Though his hair shone with Macassar oil, it lay in an untamed mane about his shoulders.

  Winterly remarked the direction of Emma’s wide gaze. “You do not approve of my brother’s costume?”

  “Your brother?” She glanced up at Winterl
y.

  “Gabriel.”

  “Oh!” A mask to suit the disposition of the man beneath it. She’d had no idea of their being brothers, though. But that was unsurprising, for they both possessed that same sublime animal beauty. “Different fathers?”

  “No,” said he with warmth. The members of his menage were clearly an unwelcome topic just now. “Come, let’s not stand about in this idle manner.” He pulled her into his arms without warning and dexterously waltzed her into the melee.

  Though she was half terrified of making a cake of herself and crushing his feet in the process, she was helpless to staunch the full-throated laughter that escaped her as he skillfully maneuvered her over the polished flags. “I ought to warn you that I have never waltzed before, and I cannot promise I shan’t flatten your toes abominably!”

  “My dear Miss Rose,” he bent his head to murmur, “I believe you’re hoaxing me. You dance as though you were born to it.” If that was so it only bespoke his own prowess.

  He was holding her so closely that it didn’t matter what her two left feet were doing, for they hardly touched the ground. Eyes locked and lips curled, they whirled about the room in gliding rotations. Scandalously, they danced through one dreamy waltz into another. As the tempo of the fourth set took on a lusty note, she felt herself flying about the underworld as the room spun wildly around her. Only Winterly remained in focus.

  The wine, the music, and the intoxicating creature in whose gaze she was drowning was so overmastering that she felt lightheaded. Colors flashed past her, indistinct and glaring. Leering masks and sighing candlelight interfused into blurring pageantry so that her fingers tightened in her partner’s hand, lest she floated away entirely.

  Winterly must have sensed she needed a moment to catch her breath, for he waltzed her to the fringe of dancers. With one last turn under his arm and one final twirl of her skirts, their dancing concluded beside a waiting footman. The servant was holding a salver of beautiful goblets.

  Parched, she reached for a golden goblet. But her wrist was arrested by a brisk grip. Bemusement instantly replaced her laughter as Winterly drew her hand from the salver and peremptorily dismissed his impassive footman with a command to bring a Madeira for the lady instead.

  “That wine is no good for you,” was all he answered to her questioning gaze.

  “Provoking man!” she retorted, her hackles rising at his impertinence. “I believe I alone ought to be the judge of what is good for me.” He was neither her husband nor her father.

  “Perhaps, but in this instance you must trust my judgement.” His hard-featured stare brooked no remonstrance.

  She might have argued the point further had not her eyes found themselves latched to a nearby man, dressed outrageously in woman’s garb. His face was powdered and his lips were smeared in lurid rouge. He plucked a similar goblet from another footman’s salver and took a deep draft of whatever was contained within. With a slight narrowing of her eyes, she watched the androgynous stranger lick his lips obscenely before he kissed his hand to her and trotted off with a suggestive wink. She then shifted her gaze back to Lord Winterly. “Just what sort of libation am I being denied?”

  “A vintage you would not care for,” was all he replied.

  “What if I insist on taking a sample?” She only posed the question to test his answer, for the viscosity of the red substance that had stained the man’s lips a moment before he’d licked it away, his cosmetics notwithstanding, hadn’t been wine-like at all.

  “I daresay,” said Winterly, “you would come to regret it bitterly had you partaken.”

  A shiver of premonition stiffened the fine hairs along her spine. She watched him take the glass of Madeira from the returning footman.

  He handed the wine to Emma, saying, “Perhaps some fresh night air is in order, if only to cool your martial humor.”

  “My humor is only upset by your impertinence.” The Madeira burned its way down her throat. With a grimace she handed the still full glass back to him, and he in turn passed it on to the impassive footman. She gave Winterly a tight smile and allowed him to lead her back towards the plague doctors and into the silent gloom beyond the doorway. Her head was still spinning from the waltz. Or was it the wine? Lost completely in her own thoughts, Emma was startled when they emerged from the narrow tunnel. The music of the subterranean wonderland was now indiscernible and far behind them.

  “Come, my Rose.” Winterly was waiting beside his plague doctors, his hand extended. “The night awaits us.”

  “Alone?” she asked, shooting the cloaked sentinels each a wary look, but they remained like statues. “In the dark?”

  “Just so.” He inclined his head, drawing her eyes up to those sinister horns. “I wish to show you the gardens.”

  She folded her arms. “We had better not.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged and appeared ready enough to take the night air without her.

  Her brow clenched. “Can it not wait until sunrise?”

  He glanced back at her. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  She pressed her lips together mutinously. “You said I ought not venture out at night. You warned of its danger.”

  “I believe I subjoined that with the caveat that you not do so without me. Besides, daylight rather defeats the purpose of a midnight stroll. The stars and lanterns are best appreciated at night, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Emma was torn between the powerful apprehension of craving his company and dreading her own reaction to him. Vampyre or not, he was dangerous to her, she understood that. Finally, she said, “What sort of woman ventures out into the dark alone with a man she hardly knows?”

  “The sort of woman who dares to know the man’s darkness.”

  She swallowed the surge of dreadful excitement that followed his words. “By that you mean his secrets?”

  He held his hand out to her again. It was answer enough.

  She deliberated only a short moment more, for she had promised herself she’d uncover at least some of his secrets tonight. At last, she placed her hand in his, a shudder of premonitory excitement spreading warmly along the point of contact.

  She was almost certain she knew what lurked in the darkness beneath his mask—a vampyre. And yet she went with him anyway. Did that make her some fatal bloom? Being mindful of her doomed futurity and yet unable—nay, unwilling—to deviate from it, drawn to that which might corrupt her. Destroy her. Was she a sick rose after all?

  As she and Winterly passed a curved mirror, Emma caught sight of Winterly’s reflection distorted into some giant beast. Beside it there walked an equally fearsome creature in red, her pale arm upon the beast’s black hoof. Beyond that mirror, along the avenue of mirrors she dared not venture through, she glimpsed a hundred more disfigured Emmas, all draped in lurid red. Each was as disturbing as the last. Refractions and versions of herself that disconcerted her, for she and they were but one flawed moiety. A sick Rose.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Malaria

  Dearest Emma,—Whence do these feelings spring? If the source is honorable and pure, as I believe you are, then how can they be cankerous? Do you speak of your feelings for the wicked viscount? You have yet to satisfy my curiosity—who is the master of Winterthurse? Yours impatiently,

  Mary.

  The untamed gardens of Winterthurse were alive with symphonies—crickets, nightingales, and the majestic solo of a tawny owl somewhere in the boughs overhead. Emma listened to it all, felt the rhythm of the night as it floated around her, seductive and powerful.

  Lanterns had been strung from the trees and candles flickered sleepily along the garden pathways. Some of the guests, still cloaked in their disguises, were strolling off into unlit avenues, likely for midnight trysts. Were they imagining the same of the woman in red and the devil at her side?

  Her hand no longer rested in Winterly’s, yet she was no less affected by the virile force of his presence beside her. The cat’s eye stones glowed along the pathwa
y beneath the moon and the stars as though they wandered upon some ancient Roman road; as though all of nature and all of heaven had turned to watch them.

  Why did he not speak? Why did he insist on wearing that vile mask. It disturbed her all the more out here in the perilous dark. “Will you not remove your mask?” she asked.

  He saluted her words with a grin. “Suppose instead that I have only ever worn a mask. Perhaps the mask incarnates who I really am, and the face beneath—the face you think you know—is the lie.”

  “Do you mean to tell me you’re a dragon?” On his imposing frame the mask certainly appeared demoniacal.

  “I mean to show you what I am soon enough.”

  “Then do it now,” she said, her own mask affording her a dauntlessness she did not wholly feel. “Remove the lie.”

  “And ruin this little idyll?”

  “If the idyll is the lie, then yes.”

  “All in good time.”

  “Howsoever treacherous the truth may be, I wish to know it.”

  “Even if that means you must acknowledge your own darkness?”

  “I know who I am, Lord Winterly, the question is—”

  “No, you know only who you think you ought to be. You see through a glass darkly, always afeared to look deeper. You are afraid of yourself, Miss Rose.”

  Emma felt her hackles rise. Not because he offered such presumptuous insight but because he was right. At length, they passed by a massy hedgerow of wild roses, the dark carmine petals gleaming blackly in the nighttime. The candles and lanterns were now far behind them and only the moonlight followed.

  She halted suddenly. “Remove your mask.” She’d grown more leery with every step that had taken her farther from the castle.

  “Still suspicious of me?”

  “Always.” She could hardly make him out in the darkness at all, just the delineation of his horrible mask in the umbra of the garden.

  “Yet here you are alone with me,” he asked with an elegant sweep of his wrist to encompass the dark grove they’d entered. “Hardly fitting conduct for a pious skeptic.”