The Demon Count

by Anne Stuart

  I flushed under his mocking regard, the moment of char­ity gone, leaving me with unaccountable irritation and dis­appointment. Rising with great dignity, I wrapped my en­veloping shawl around me to ward off the damp chill that seemed to creep through the windows from the canals be­low. "An early evening is an excellent idea," I said com­posedly, ignoring his acid comments. Bidding them all a graceful good night, I stopped before each one and gave them all my small, white hand.

  Holger saluted smartly, his heels clicking together in a satisfactory manner as he planted a loud, wet kiss on my hand. Jean-Baptiste was more delicate, murmuring a French endearment I pretended not to understand as his warm dry mouth followed Holger's. And then I stopped in front of Luc, holding out my suddenly trembling hand.

  He smiled down at me, not a trace of mockery this time, and took my shaking hand in his strong, fine-boned grasp. Once more he brought it to his lips, kissing my palm in a gesture that was so intimate I felt half faint.

  "Good night, mia Carlotta," he murmured, leaning over and brushing a stray lock out of my eyes. "And lock your door," he added in a low voice that only I could hear.

  I stared at him in wonder for a moment, and then he released me. Without another glance I ran out of the room, across the hall and up those long flights of marble stairs. When I finally reached my room I did just as he suggested, locking the inlaid door against the terrors of the night.

  And later, as I picked at the simple but nourishing meal Mrs. Wattles had thoughtfully sent up to me, I wondered what exactly Lucifero Alessandro del Zaglia inspired in his gullible little ward, whether it was superstitious terror, or, to my suddenly observant mind an even more frighten­ing possibility: Was it an absurdly ill-placed attraction that was skirting the dangerous and illogical borders of love?

  The moonlit canals of this romantic city met my trou­bled gaze, and gave me the answer I least wanted to hear.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When I awoke the next day, late in the afternoon, my head was like cottonwool and my tongue like chicken feathers. I lay back among the linen sheets and soft goose- down pillows and closed my eyes against the late afternoon sunlight, too tired and muddle-headed to move.

  "Are you awake yet, my dear?" Mildred Fenwick's bright voice disturbed the gentle daze in which I was float­ing, and reluctantly I turned my now throbbing head.

  "Yes, Mildred," I sighed.

  She bustled busily into the room, her pale orange dress matching her orange frizz of hair, both festooned with dark purple ribbons. "Thank goodness, dearie. You've slept like one dead. I've been in here every hour on the hour, looking for some sign of life, but you've been safe in the arms of Morpheus."

  A quick dread pulled me fully awake. "Has something happened? Is Luc . . ." I let the sentence trail, misliking the cunning look in her milky blue eyes.

  "No, my dear. Nothing new has happened. Not that I'm aware of. Apart from the fact that Count del Zaglia left last night for parts unknown. I wondered whether your unusual somnolence had any connection with the count's sudden departure."

  A hazy memory began to materialize in my mind, rather like coming closer and closer to a scarcely seen vision in a deep fog. Ribbons of mist began to dissolve away, and I stared back into my memory in mute fascination, until Mildred's noisy snorting sound brought me back into the present.

  "I beg your pardon, Mildred," I apologized absently. "I was just remembering the most extraordinary dream I had last night. I had no idea Luc had plans to leave us, but I'm sure in his absence we'll all be a great deal more comforta­ble, don't you?" I looked pointedly at her ringless hand, and the spinster flushed unbecomingly.

  "I'm sure you're right," she agreed after a long moment. "In any case, both your young men have called today, ask­ing after you. I told them you were slightly indisposed but would be delighted to receive them tomorrow."

  "That was very kind of you," I said with charming insin­cerity. I had no desire to see either of my so-ardent suitors. "In the meantime, if you could see to tea, my dear Mildred . . ."

  It took more than a few subtle suggestions to rid myself of the inquisitive creature. It was a good ten minutes before she left me alone to lie back in my bed and reconstruct the strange and compelling dream of last night.

  I had dutifully drunk most of the sour, foul-tasting stuff Luc deemed suitable wine for a young lady, and, as usual, it was not long before I had fallen into a deep sleep. But this was not the long, deathlike trance I had heretofore en­joyed since my stay in Venice. From the very first I was troubled by noises, voices whispering and shouting, foot­steps scuffling on the dusty marble floors, doors opening and closing.

  As if from a distance I watched my sleeping body rise from my bed and move to the door, soft linen night rail trailing in the dust, bare feet numb to the chill. I watched myself move as if in a trance through the darkened hall­ways of Edentide, moving nearer and nearer to the voices, the footsteps, the doors . . .

  "Who's that?" A voice called out in broad Venetian dia­lect, but the sleep-dazed creature that was and wasn't me paid it no heed. A moment later a rough-looking peasant appeared from out of the darkness, grabbing me in a bruis­ing grip that somehow I failed to notice, twisting my arms behind my back. I suffered all this with blissful unconcern.

  Another voice broke through the stillness. "If you value your life, friend, you will release the girl immediately." Luc spoke in the same rough dialect, and his garb was as sturdy and simple as the peasant's.

  "She's been spying," the man replied, loosening his grip slightly. "We can't afford to have witnesses tonight."

  "I would think you would know by now to let me decide what risks we can afford to take," Luc said with silky men­ace. Detaching the man's steely grip, he continued smoothly, "This is the young lady of the house. She is En­glish and very stupid. Besides that, any fool could see she is sleepwalking. She is still asleep—she'll remember nothing of you or me tomorrow morning."

  With one strong hand on my arm he began leading me away, back the long dark hall I had traversed so blindly. My mind seemed wholly suspended from my body, so that while my brain worried about his proximity my body was safe, and my body could revel in his nearness without the torment of an overworried mind.

  There was an unusually grim expression in the count's dark, handsome face, and the golden eyes were bitter. I wasn't worried, however. I followed him happily enough, mindlessly, blankly assuming he would take me upstairs to his bed. In my dream it seemed like an excellent idea.

  "I will take her from here," Maddelena appeared at the top of the stairs, and my anger and disappointment was so great I almost woke.

  He stopped and looked down at my blank, guileless face, and his mocking reproach tore at me. "You gave her too much of the drug tonight," he said in a flat, dead voice. "I found her wandering down in the cellars. Giorgio was ready to cut her throat first and ask questions later."

  "A thousand pardons, Signor Luc. But with such a stub­born one as this it is very difficult. Some nights she doesn't touch the wine, some nights a sip, some nights she drains the whole of it. There is no way to be certain; she is so willful."

  "The drugging will stop, Maddelena," he ordered ab­ruptly, still staring down at me out of those sad, beautiful eyes. Without any warning he pulled me gently into his arms, so that my head rested quite comfortably on his shoulder. I could feel the hardness of his chest in the rough peasant cloth press against my breasts through the thin night rail, and our hearts beat as one.

  "What have we become," he murmured against my hair, "that we would drug a poor, innocent child like this? How could we have become such strangers to decency?"

  Maddelena made some articulate cry of dissension but Luc ignored her. A hand came under my chin, forcing my head up to meet him. "Poor, lovely, lost child," he mur­mured in sweet, gentle Italian. "Whatever shall I do with you?"

  Needless to say, I found all this very agreeable. With Luc's strong arms around me I felt safe and content for per
haps the first time in my life. The soft, soothing words made me want to purr like a contented kitten.

  Abruptly he released me. "Take her away, Maddelena," he ordered hoarsely. "Before I forget myself." And he van­ished into the night like a creature of darkness, leaving me bereft.

  As I dressed that late afternoon, trying to blot from my mind the weakening and embarrassing memory of last night's dream, another strange thing happened. I heard a loud thump just outside my balcony, and without hesitation I flung open the shutters, determined to confront the eaves­dropper.

  Sitting at my feet was the largest cat I had ever seen in this city of large cats. Coal black as the prince of darkness himself, he stared up at me haughtily out of golden eyes that were a twin to Luc's amber orbs. Had I been a devout Catholic I would have crossed myself.

  Instead I stumbled back into my room, controlling the nervous shriek that bubbled up within me.

  "So that's where he's gotten to," Mildred's querulous voice floated in. "Nasty, dirty creature. I can't abide cats, but he is by far the worst!"

  Reaching down, I lifted all twenty-some pounds of him and held him against me. "Where did he come from? I've never seen him before."

  She sniffed disdainfully. "His name, I believe, is Patrick. I gather from Maddelena that he haunts the count's rooms exclusively. I, of course, would have no idea about that." Here she sniggered coyly. "The rest of us never see him unless the count is gone. Here, let me take him." She reached out her thin hands and Patrick showed the good taste to spit at her.

  "Evil creature! If it were up to me I'd see him drowned. You'd best be careful, Miss Charlotte. He could carry ra­bies."

  I hugged the huge creature closer to my breast, which seemed to bother the immense feline not one bit. "I'll be careful, Mildred." I scratched behind his ears, and he looked up at me with dignified adoration. "I'll be very careful."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Must you walk so quickly, Mildred?" I demanded irritably, struggling to keep up with her long-legged stride as her beanpole figure made its way hurriedly through the teeming crowds. "We are in no particular hurry, are we?"

  She turned back with a guilty expression on her plain, aging face beneath the fruit- and feather-trimmed bonnet. "No, of course not I beg your pardon, Charlotte. Since you expressed an interest in Florian's I naturally thought you would be eager to arrive."

  I sighed. "I am eager to arrive. But a few minutes won't make much difference one way or the other, will it?"

  "Perhaps," my companion murmured cryptically, speed­ing up once more, her clawlike hand in the pale, lime- colored gloves digging into the tender flesh of my arm. Giving in, I quickened my footsteps to match hers, undeni­ably grateful for my first trip out of the oppressively beauti­ful Palazzo del Zaglia in two long weeks—weeks that had left me bored and solitary, with only the large black cat, Patrick, for company. I would have been ready to die of boredom, had it not been for the amusingly obvious at­tempts of my false suitors to gain information from me.

  "I have absolutely no idea where Luc has disappeared to," I replied limpidly to the fulminating Holger. "He cer­tainly never confides in me. You'd do much better to ask Jean-Baptiste where he's gone to."

  But Jean-Baptiste had been equally curious, if a trifle more subtle. "Surely, ma petite, Luc would never have left a charming, defenseless creature such as yourself without a word? He cannot have simply disappeared with not a men­tion of his destination?"

  "I'm afraid he has," I replied, smiling with an equally fraudulent charm at the Frenchman. "One day he was there, the next he was gone. Pouf. Like magic." I was not above having a part in increasing Luc's supernatural repu­tation. "Maddelena probably knows where and how, but whenever I ask her she pretends not to understand."

  "Ah, then you too are curious?" Jean-Baptiste pounced.

  I opened my china-blue eyes as wide as I could, flutter­ing my long eyelashes provocatively. "But of course, Mon­sieur Perrier: I am exceedingly curious, about that and oth­er things. After all, what else have I with which to occupy my days?

  He allowed himself a small snort of frustration, and I leaned back, satisfied. He left with indecent haste, and it would have taken a dim-witted lady indeed to have clung to the belief that he had any interest in my heart. My sup­posedly shallow brain with its untapped store of knowledge, perhaps. And he might not have refused my pink and white body, if it were offered. Curiously enough, such debasing knowledge caused me only a momentary pang.

  I tripped over a cobblestone, bruising my ankle and cursing pungently in Arabic. Mildred forgot her haste long enough to fasten her fishlike stare at me.

  "What was that?" she demanded, fascinated.

  "Bad words, Mildred," I replied. "Very bad words in­deed. You are too young to know the meaning."

  She flushed then, absurdly pleased, and patted her too- youthful orange frizz of ringlets. And then her demon of speed caught up with her once more. "We must hurry," she panted. "The count is expected home tonight . . . I doubt he'd approve of this little foray."

  My heart gave an uncontrollable leap. "He is? When did you find that out?" If my voice was breathless it was only to be expected at the speed we were rushing through the narrow lanes and squares of Venice.

  Mildred shrugged her thin shoulders. "It seems obvious enough, though no one has said a word. Suddenly, after two weeks of sloth and idleness the Italians are making halfhearted attempts at cleaning. Your wretched cat has taken to stalking through the place looking for all the world like his master, and Maddelena has been uncom­monly close-mouthed since last night. None of us had heard a thing, of course, but just watching that old witch scurry around has convinced Mrs. Wattles to plan on a full dinner."

  "With no garlic," some demon prompted me to add, re­membering with a fondness the nice garlicky meals we had enjoyed in Luc's absence. Mildred was too preoccupied to have caught my implication, for she merely nodded.

  "If my guardian is returning tonight," I questioned pa­tiently, "why did you wait until today to invite me out? We could have gone any time during the last two weeks."

  "But he only asked to meet you yesterday," she replied artlessly, her eyes scanning the crowds at the cafe in the Piazza San Marco as we came to an abrupt stop.

  "He? Who?" I demanded, soundling like an owl. "Who asked to meet me? What's going on?"

  An ugly flush stained her faded cheeks, and she ducked her plumed head. "There he is now. Come along, dear." The clawlike hand fastened once more on my silk-clad arm, and she half pulled, half dragged me through the ta­bles. I made no more than a token resistance, my curiosity thoroughly aroused.

  A moment later we were standing in front of an exceed­ingly attractive, exceedingly British young man, while Mildred was making stammered introductions, beaming proudly, like a mother hen presenting a prize baby chick. I met the calm blue eyes of the well-dressed gentleman oppo­site me and nodded coldly.

  "Mark Ferland," Mildred's voice died away as she saw the chilly expression on my face. I turned on her with an icy glare.

  "So, it is not an innocent visit to Florian's you had in mind after all, Mildred," I said acidly. "For some reason the two of you," my withering glance swept over Mr. Fer­land, "have concocted this scheme. I wonder what my guardian will have to say when I tell him of this afternoon's work." I reflected with some compunction that I was becom­ing a wretched little tattletale, but as usual I made the prop­er response for the superstitious Mildred.

  "Oh, no!" she said faintly, obviously distressed. Her ac­complice put one strong, tanned hand on my arm, forcing me to meet his troubled gaze.

  "I hope you won't do that, Miss Morrow," he spoke for the first time in a slow deep voice, and despite my irritation I warmed to him. "Not before you've given me a chance to explain. You've been deceived, you're angry about it, and I can't blame you. But if you'll just give me a few minutes of your time you may find it in your no doubt generous heart to forgive me for this deception."

  I regarde
d him coolly for a moment, half tempted to turn on my heel and leave him with the fluttery Miss Fenwick. He smiled then, such a nice, handsome smile, as dif­ferent from that of my saturnine guardian as the day was from the night, and I told myself there would be no harm in at least giving him a chance to explain himself.

  "All right," I said in the same cool tone, not giving him any encouragement. "You have ten minutes."

  Once more he flashed that dazzling smile as he hurried to pull out a chair for me. In another moment he had placed an order for two strong coffees with the waiter and seen to the disappearance of Mildred.

  "Where has Miss Fenwick gone?" I demanded as he seated his long, sturdy frame opposite me.

  "She had graciously consented to let us alone for this short time. She, like most spinsters, has a very romantic nature."

  Some hard little part of me broke at this, and I spoke with far more frankness than I usually reserved for the male sex. "If you are about to tell me, Mister Ferland, that you have conceived a desperate passion for me, and that all you desire is my company and, as a side benefit, informa­tion about my guardian, I will tell you right now you are wasting your time!" I sounded quite snappish, but the fum­bling flirtations of Holger and Perrier had tried me more than I had realized, and I was damned (mentally I savored the sound of that word) if I would add another to my list of spurious beaus.

  The Englishman looked momentarily disconcerted, and then he charmed me completely by laughing—a light, in­fectious laugh that melted an inch or two of my suspicious nature. "Very well, Miss Morrow. I will have to be frank with you. I was told you were very beautiful, but no one happened to mention that you were also equipped with a brain. I wouldn't have attempted subterfuge if I'd known you could be reasoned with."

  Naturally I was not displeased with this blatant flattery, but I kept my stony expression. He sighed, and wasted more time stirring the steaming little cup of coffee the waiter presented him. Finally he looked up, his unassuming blue eyes smiling into mine in a way that would have charmed harder hearts than my poor starved one.