by Joy Demorra
“Thank you.” Vlad kissed her fingers again before slipping away, following the sound of histrionics in the distance.
*
A little while and several bouts of tears later, Vlad stepped out of the Smaragdine Drawing Room. He leaned back against the closed door and let out the sigh he’d been holding since he’d first entered. Lady Margarete was prone to occasional bouts of nerves—an understandable side effect of being married to Vlad’s father. He tried to treat such moments with kindness; at least, he hoped he did. Vlad knew all too well what it was like to be at the mercy of the dizzying highs and lows inside one’s own head.
But that didn’t make his current predicament any more desirable.
With Lady Margarete retiring for the evening, Vlad was left to host the rest of tonight’s ball on his own. He’d be expected to make polite small talk and, he shuddered, mingle. The thought alone was enough to warrant a lie-down in a darkened room, but Vlad had foolishly promised to see it through to the end. It had been the only way to get Lady M down from the ceiling.
Literally.
“Oh, bother this for a lark,” he muttered and stalked back toward the party, lighting a cigarette and taking a steadying drag as he headed for the nearest tower door. At least, he reflected, the night can’t get any worse.
He was just about to reach the bottom landing when the universe proved him wrong—because of course it did; the universe was physically incapable of turning down a dare. Thankfully, he was saved from tripping over the lone figure crying in the stairwell by sheer vampiric reflexes.
“Oh!” Riya exclaimed, hurrying to hide her face from him in the flickering shadows of the torchlight. “Sorry, I didn’t think anyone would come this way.”
“Riya…” Vlad sank to his knees in alarm; the last of the alcohol drained from his system, replaced by icy sobriety. “Whatever is the matter?”
“I’m fine!” his sister insisted, despite the evidence to the contrary. She dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “How is Mama?”
“She’s gone to bed with a headache. Swithin’s wheeled her off and will stay with her.” At his words, Riya burst into a fresh flood of tears. “Hey now, shhh, it’s okay.” He gathered her into his arms just as he’d done when she was a child, gently rocking her back and forth. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his shoulder, “I’m sure I’m being perfectly silly.”
“Silly about what?” Vlad patted her back while awkwardly extinguishing his cigarette. “Come on, you can tell me.”
“That’s just it, though. I can’t!” Riya gasped between sobs, clinging tighter to his shoulders. “I can’t tell you because then you’ll get upset, and then everyone will be upset, and it will ruin the entire night ‘cause I’m such a goose.”
Tilting her head up with a nudge, he offered her his handkerchief. “Tell me.” Vlad urged.
Riya opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again, shaking her head.
“Riya…”
“Promise me you won’t get angry.”
“I promise,” Vlad said, already hurtling past anger and heading toward tightly controlled boiling fury at the thought of someone making Riya upset.
“After you left,” she began, hiccupping as she dabbed at her eyes, “I stayed up in the gallery with Elizabeth…”
“Elizabeth,” Vlad repeated numbly, his anger doused in a swift bucket of nauseating dread.
Riya nodded. “I was coming to help you with Mama, but Lizzy talked me into joining her and the rest of the brood up in the gallery instead and… Oh, Vlad!” she wailed his name plaintively. She balled her hands into fists in her lap. “How can you stand her? She’s so positively hateful. The things she says—about me, about Mama, about you—and the things she does, especially to you, I can’t stand her! I know Mama says I should love her like a sister, but I can’t! I just plain can’t!”
“What did she do to you?” Vlad feigned a calmness he did not feel.
“Nothing directly.” Riya shrugged defensively. “Nothing provable. As I said, we were up in the gallery, but you know what they’re like—all barbed quips and backhanded compliments. You should have heard the things they were saying about our guests!”
Vlad nodded, able to imagine the entire thing all too well.
She carried on. “I mean, it’s not as though the Collinses can help if they’re poor! Well, anyway, you know I don’t like that sort of thing. So, I left. Except I forgot my fan, so I had to go back and…” Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, it’s so silly.”
“Tell me,” Vlad urged again.
“They were talking… Elizabeth, Jaunty, and Lottie.”
He should have known. “Oh, Tweedle-dim and Tweedle-dull.” Groaning, Vlad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Go on, what did they say?”
“I overheard them talking about… about my mother.”
“Lady M? What did they say?”
“No. My… my birth mother,” Riya murmured quietly, wringing Vlad’s handkerchief into knots.
Vlad blinked. “The Duchess?”
“That’s just it though, they were saying she never was the Duchess of Steocidell, and I was…” she trailed off again, squeezing her eyes shut. “They said I resulted from an indiscretion between the Count and a servant. That’s why Lady Margarete adopted me. To save face.” A fresh swell of tears welled up in her hazel eyes. “And Lottie said my dress was ugly.”
Forgotten in his hand, Vlad’s extinguished cigarette combusted, crumbling to smoke and ash between his fingertips. “I see.” He felt oddly detached. There was a dull ringing in his ears like the roar of the tide coming in. “Well, first of all, your dress is lovely. The color suits you very well.”
Aquamarine had always suited her dark brown skin tone. It made the otherwise watery color pop. And with the pearls and ornate seashells strung through her black, cloud-like curls she looked almost like a mermaid. Ready to sink ships and ruin lives. It was, quite simply, dazzling.
“I thought so too!” Riya exclaimed indignantly through her tears.
“And second, that’s not how vampires work—”
Dashing at her eyes impatiently, she cut him off, “I know, I know!” Riya waved his handkerchief urgently at him. “I don’t need the bats and the bees speech. I’m not a child, you know.” It was common knowledge that all vampires were sterile. Only living things could create life.
“Then you know what they are saying is ludicrous and nothing more than the idle mutterings of jealous sycophants.” Vlad reached out to take her hand in his and gave it what he hoped was a comforting squeeze. “You may not be born of my blood, Viktoriya, but you are my sister, and I love you. I hope I never give you cause to doubt that.”
Riya squeezed his hand back. “I know… I just don’t understand why they’d say that. What have I ever done to hurt them?”
“Well, off the top of my head, it’s probably because you’re better than them in every single way.”
“Vlaaaad,” Riya protested shyly.
Vlad held up his hands. “Hey, don’t stake the messenger. That’s just how it is. You are intelligent, witty, kind—all things Lottie and Jaunty can never hope to be.”
“And Elizabeth?”
Vlad faltered, casting his eyes to the ground. “Elizabeth is… not a nice person.”
“Then why won’t you leave her?” Riya grasped both his hands in her own again.
Smiling sadly, Vlad said, “You know I can’t.”
And he knew she did. Everyone knew. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
“I hate her,” Riya said earnestly. “I hate how unhappy she makes you.”
“Be fair, Riya, I’ve always been unhappy.”
“No.” Riya stared him down, and Vlad suddenly felt as young as he looked. He’d never seen her look so angry before. “She’s monstrous to you, Vlad. And you may not realize it, but you’re better when you’re apart. And I know you feel beholden to her—”
/> “I am beholden to her,” Vlad murmured.
“But that doesn’t mean you have to put up with her cruelty. And neither should anyone else.”
Vlad took a moment to absorb her words, then nodded. “You know what, you’re right. To hell with her. And all of them.”
“Really?” Riya asked, startled.
“Yeah.” Vlad shrugged expressively. “Fuck ‘em.”
“I honestly thought you’d be angrier.” She eyed him warily.
“Oh, I am incandescently furious,” Vlad laughed, rising to his feet and throwing his arms wide. “But what can I do about it? Bluster and rage like Father? Storm out there and cause a scene after you begged me not to? No, to hell with that, and to hell with them. If they’re so damn eager for attention that they make up lies, then we’ll ignore them. And we’ll damn well make sure they know it. Now,” he reached down and gently chucked her under the chin, “what do you say we wash your face and then go raid the ice cream table?”
Riya laughed, hiccupping again as she dabbed at her eyes with his now-ruined handkerchief. “I’m not five anymore, Vlad.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything, but all right, fine. What do you want to do? Come on, name it, anything you want.”
“Anything?” Riya glanced up at him sideways, and Vlad realized his error in judgment too late.
He sighed fondly. “Anything.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“And that over there is Miss Cait—a Catherine—well, one of the Catherines,” Mrs. Collins informed him, nodding discretely toward a short brunette wearing a green velvet dress that, even to Nathan’s inexperienced eye, was several decades behind the times.
The short woman leaning on a shiny green cane turned; her eyes caught Nathan’s briefly. He noted a flash of fang that mercifully did nothing warm and funny to his insides. Thank Gods, that seemed to only happen with one particular vampire.
“Are there many Miss Catherines?” Nathan asked. He inclined his head politely as the vampire did the same.
“Eight.” Mrs. Collins waved to someone in the crowd with jovial animation. “A veritable Coven of Catherines as the Viscount likes to call them. His father collects them, you know.”
“Catherines?” Nathan asked.
Mrs. Collins laughed. “Gracious me no, covens, my dear Captain.” She lowered her voice incrementally, forcing Nathan to bow his head to hear her. “The Count takes them in. There were a lot of vampire covens broken up by the Lich Wars. He brings them here and treats them like family. Very familial, Count Blutstein,” Mrs. Collins said approvingly. “Very paternal. Why, one need only look at Lady Riya to know how fond he is of the girl.”
“Lady Riya?”
“The Count’s adopted daughter. Her mother was the Duchess of Steocidell. She and the Countess were firm friends. The Duchess came here to escape the revolution. Terrible business that.”
“Yes, I recall.” The memory of the riots in Steocidell floated across his mind’s eye. Sometimes if he closed his eyes, he could still recall the scent of charred sand and gunpowder. All wars were bloody affairs, but Steocidell had left almost as many marks on him as Bhalein had.
“I suppose you would.” Mrs. Collins glanced at the medals on his chest. “So the Duchess came here, newly widowed and, well, we all know the dangers of childbirth. But the Count and Countess took the poor mite in, raised her as their own. Master Vlad adored her. He’s very good with children, you know.”
Nathan tried to imagine the Viscount holding a baby and found himself unable to reconcile the mental image with the dandyish rake he’d met earlier in the week. But he’d have been lying if he said there wasn’t some appeal to it.
Mrs. Collins brightened. “Oh, there they are now.”
Nathan followed her line of sight to where the Viscount escorted a young lady through the crowded dance floor. They locked eyes briefly, and Nathan felt the same jolt he’d had the first time he’d laid eyes on him. He really is devastatingly attractive, Nathan decided, tilting his head to the side as he admired the tapered cut of the midnight blue silk suit and the gold details that glittered in the candlelight. The Viscount was eclipsed, however, by the dark-skinned woman on his arm. She floated forward in a cloud of vivid color; her smile gleamed with the intensity of a miniature sun.
And she was aiming it squarely in their direction.
“Oh my, good heavens,” Mrs. Collins breathed beside him, flapping her hands for her girls to rally round her. “They’re coming this way. Girls. Girls! Attend!” Her cheeks bright, she whirled around. “Viscount, how good to see you. And Lady Riya, how wonderful you look, as ever.”
“Mrs. Collins,” the Viscount greeted warmly. He reached out to take her hand and bowed floridly over the top of it, exuding liquid grace. “So thrilled to have you with us this evening. I see you brought your sisters.”
Mrs. Collins chuckled. “Don’t tease me, Viscount. You know very well these are my girls.”
“Impossible!” The Viscount turned amused eyes to the girls, who fluttered around him. “The last time I saw them, they were only knee high to a splinter.”
“Maybe you ought not to be so tall,” Kitty replied with a grin. “I imagine that confuses things.”
“Kitty!” her mother hissed, but Nathan caught the wry curl of the vampire’s smile before he hid it away again.
With a gleam in his eye, the Viscount said, “Miss Kitty, I see you have found the ice cream already. Well done.” Those captivating eyes landed on Nathan. “And Captain Northland, I’m so glad you could make it on such short notice. Captain, may I present my sister Lady Viktoriya Blutstein. Riya, Captain Northland.”
“Lady Viktoriya.” Nathan inclined his head respectfully.
“Captain Northland, how exquisite to make your acquaintance.” She beamed at him, her fangs flashing gold in the candlelight. “Please, call me Riya, everyone does. Are you enjoying the evening?”
Nathan inclined his head again. “Very much so, Lady Viktoriya. Thank you.”
The vampire crooked an eyebrow at his use of her proper title. “Oh dear, I see Vlad was right. You are far too polite, Captain.” She beamed at him again. “But not to worry, we’ll soon mellow you out.”
Rescuing Nathan from having to think of a reply, the Viscount stepped forward to take the older woman’s hand with profound solemnity. “Mrs. Collins, my darling sister has informed me of a troubling dilemma only you can solve.”
“Gracious me, tell me quickly so I might assist!”
“Apparently, at last week's dance, Miss Kitty invited Riya to have tea at your house.”
“Did she now?” Mrs. Collins asked faintly, her face growing pale under her rouge.
“But as you well know, we cannot go where we have not been formally invited,” the Viscount carried on, “it just isn’t the way of things. And you cannot issue a formal invitation to us until we have extended one to you.”
Lady Riya interrupted, giving the Viscount a patiently fond look, “Stop teasing her, Vlad. What my onerous big brother is trying to say is that you are all invited to tea here at the castle. Daylight hours, of course.”
“Tea?” Mrs. Collins repeated as all four girls around her suppressed squeals of excitement. “Here… at the castle? Formally?”
“It would be a delight to have you.” Lady Riya paused, suddenly seeming to realize that Nathan was still here. “My apologies, Captain Northland. You’re welcome to come, of course, but I had my hopes set on it being an intimate affair between old friends. And as you are a new friend, I’m certain you understand.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, but he managed to keep both the relief and the grin off of his face. “I do indeed. Perhaps another time,” he said with the fullest hope that he wouldn’t be held to that vague politeness.
Lady Riya’s eyes twinkled, and Nathan knew that afternoon tea at the castle would most definitely be in his future. He caught the eye of the Viscount, whose expression confirmed his suspicions. Oh well, it could
n’t be that bad, he reasoned. At least he wouldn’t have to wear his dress uniform.
He hoped.
Behind them, the dance master called for a cotillion, and the Collins girls let out another ear-piercing squeal of delight.
“Oh, I love this one!” Sophie reached for her sister’s hand in excitement as the girls pressed forward to watch the dancers. “I’ve been practicing the steps all week.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you bother, it’s not like anyone ever asks you to dance.”
Sophie shot her sister a look that could have kept milk fresh for a week. “Well, I don’t see anyone rushing forward to fill your dance card.”
“Girls,” Mrs. Collins interjected in a light, sing-song tone tempered with an edge of steel. “Manners, please.”
“She started it,” Sophie hissed venomously, but she let the subject drop, sighing. “I suppose we’ll just have to watch.”
There was a split-second pause before Lady Riya subtly nudged her brother—the movement so quick that Nathan wasn’t sure any of the humans would have noticed it—and the Viscount spoke up, “Well, we can’t be having that. Not when you all look so lovely.” He smiled one of those dazzling smiles and offered his hand. “How should we proceed, eldest to youngest or alphabetically?”
“Alphabetically!” Kitty proclaimed, while pale Sophie glared at her younger sister and stated “by age.”
“Eldest it is.” The Viscount extended his hand to Lydia, who took it with delight.
She gave a little squeak a moment later when the vampire whisked her away at inhuman speed, slotting them neatly into a waiting group of six just as the music began to play.
“Oh, look how well my Lydia looks on the dance floor,” Mrs. Collins sniffed fondly. “She always was such an elegant child. When she wanted to be.”
“Am I to suppose you are not dancing this evening, Captain Northland?” Lady Riya asked politely.
Nathan lifted his arm to emphasize the sling. “Regrettably not, Lady Viktoriya. Though I take great pleasure in watching others.” That was, in fact, true. Particularly, he thought as the Viscount glided by, when the subject of his attention was so enticingly pretty. But that was a thought for another time.
