by Minda Webber
“I have never looked like one of those creatures.” Glancing down at herself, she revised her statement. “That is, not until I met your benighted brood. They are little monsters, each and every one of them.”
He threw the poker against the grate and stood, hands on hips, glaring at her. “Wife, you go too far!”
“Me, go too far!” she shrieked. “I think not. Last night, two of the little wretches came to my bedchamber. Your eldest and one of the twins. The twin said you were an ogre that turned during the full moon.”
“Nap? Ernst?” An enigmatic smile settled across the baron’s rugged face, and in that moment Rae was surprised to discover he was not homely at all, but rather intriguing and manly. Just like Greta had said.
“Well, yes, they were both very earnest, making it difficult to disbelieve them,” she replied, hating the fact that she had caught amusement in her husband’s voice. It did sound rather stupid in the clear light of day, especially after being attacked with flour and the ferocious little ankle-biter.
“No, Ernst. The twin.”
“Yes, I know. Most especially the twin,” she agreed. “Though they both were earnest.” The big lout was rather dense, it seemed. At least he couldn’t expect her to go around spouting Latin and Shakespeare.
Fen snorted. “No. Ernst. It’s the name of one of the twins. Remember? I told you that he wants to be a writer when he grows up…or an actor. God knows he’s good enough at both.”
“You mean he tells great big fat fibs.”
Fen shrugged, enjoying her discomfort. For once Rae didn’t seem to be a seething mass of vanity. “You could call it that.”
“Of course I call it that. They told me you were an ogre, and then this morning locked me in the far tower. When I escaped, they dumped a bucket of flour all over me.”
He grinned again. “Ah, the ogre bit. Rae, I find it hard to credit that you believe such unsinn—nonsense. Why, you’re as bad as that English footman we hired last year. The children took a thorough disliking to him, and they told him that I ground the bones of Englishmen to make the bread we eat. The poor fool lost a stone, declining anything made with flour. When the full moon arrived, he locked himself in his room and carried on crying hysterically. I finally had to let him go, given that he was a ghost of the man I first employed.”
“Why, how utterly horrid! What punishment did your children receive for tormenting the poor man? Did you spank them all harshly and put them to bed without supper for a month of Sundays?” Rae asked, appalled.
Fen remained silent momentarily, enjoying the sparks in his wife’s eyes. “Actually, the man was proven to be a thief. He’d been stealing from me for quite some time. The children called for his unconditional surrender, which he gladly gave. My brood can be quite without mercy when need be. They were only looking after my interests.”
“That may be, but on this point I insist,” Rae began, her eyes flashing pure blue fire. “They must be punished for treating me this way. The youngest bit my ankle.”
Fen glanced down at her ruined gown, with the flour, grime and many small tears. “I will reprimand them, never fear,” he agreed. “Does it hurt?” And was that actually smoke coming out Rae’s ears, he wondered, or just the fire in the hearth?
“Of course it hurts, you big oaf! I was bitten, attacked like I was a choice piece of roast.”
“Alden is merely going through a stage. Besides, be glad that my children did nothing worse. You haven’t exactly endeared yourself to them.”
“Worse?” Rae couldn’t imagine anything worse than being locked in a dusty, spider-ridden room, doused with a bucket of flour from a chamber pot and then attacked by a small child with razor-sharp teeth. Not to mention that she hadn’t found any jewels and had ruined her new gown. She stared at her husband warily.
“Why, yes. Worse.” Assuming a relaxed pose, Fen crossed his arms on his chest and planted both feet firmly apart. “The last governess was subject to having frogs placed in her topfchen.”
“She was Chinese?”
“No, she was from Bavaria. The frogs were placed in her chamber pot. The silly woman would forget, and when she was, well, ah…the frog would unfortunately jump. After the last such episode, she decided to go back to Bavaria.”
Rae scowled. The children appeared to have an unhealthy interest in chamber pots. “What else did they do?” she asked. Better to be forewarned.
“It seems,” he replied, scratching his chin, “I recall they took her captive, tied her to a tree and then made her eat baboon tarts.”
Rae gasped. “How depraved.”
“It was summer, and they were playing pirates and she was their prisoner,” Fen explained, his voice tinged with amusement. “They had captured her ship and the tarts were really lemon.”
She shook her head in stunned disbelief. Obviously the house was lacking in discipline. “How can you be so blasé about all of this? How can you be so disobliging when I have suffered such appalling acts of violence against my person? I insist upon a new gown for the one they ruined.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Fen offered. Then he turned to go back to his desk and his real work.
“You’re dismissing me just like that? Why, we’ve settled nothing. What about my gown? My ankle? What about my sensibilities? I am quite overset with nerves. A husband is to never deny his wife’s requests,” she snapped, perfectly serious. “He is to pamper her and keep her in style and luxury, no matter the cost. When she is this unsettled, he gives her trinkets of his affection—like a diamond necklace or a pearl brooch.”
He stopped and looked her over carefully, from top to bottom. “You do look nothing like a baroness should look. Whatever will the servants think? They might call me a pinchpenny and accuse me of beating you with a sack of flour.” He stopped and put finger to his lips. “Why, anyone seeing you as you are right now would think I wedded a hag.”
Staring at him with a stricken look, she acknowledged his words as truth. If anyone saw her, they would never believe such a ravishing beauty could be made to look such a fright. Till now, only her immediate family had ever seen Rae looking less than her best, but now her new husband had seen her at her worst, and somehow she didn’t think he was talking about her appearance. She hurried from the room to address the problem as quickly and quietly as possible.
Fen watched the conceited bit of baggage leave the room as if her skirts were afire. But, then, he had speculated that his words would work, since he had appealed to her rather shallow character. He shook his head with more melancholy than amusement. “Vanity, thy name is Rae.”
Already in the long hallway, Rae heard the words, which outraged her as well as leaving her self-conscious. “Why, if anyone walked a mile in my shoes today…they’d be heartbroken, weeping with self-pity,” she said to herself. “And if these rowdy ruffians think I will let them walk all over me, they are very much mistaken! I learned from masters the art of terrible tricks!” Raising her fist high in the air and shaking it furiously, she made a solemn vow. “They think they have won the war, but I’ve only just begun to fight! If I have to lie, cheat or use stealth, I’ll get those wicked little dwarfs if it’s the last thing I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Greta’s Red Riding Hood
As Rae dealt with devilish little imps, Greta was searching for information on Frau Choplin, the woodcutter’s mother. After traveling for quite a distance, she at last arrived at her destination. Glancing out the window of her carriage, she dismally noted the small threadlike path, thick with snow, which wended off and disappeared in the heavy foliage of the woods. “It looks like I’m on foot from here,” Greta told the driver.
As she left the warmth of the carriage, attired as she was in her scarlet cloak, plaid scarf and scarlet woolen gloves, she nonetheless braced herself against the weather. The narrow path ran beneath the ancient trees, which towered tall with their snowcapped leaves, and she breathed in deeply the scent of pine and snow.
She had told her aunt’s driver that she would be a while, and had bribed him with gold coins so that he would not mention this stop before she returned to Snowe Manor. She had tried bribing him to stop by Baron Schortz’s house as well, but the driver, unfortunately afraid of her aunt, had declined.
“What an old biddy she is,” Greta griped. Aunt Vivian had expressly forbidden Greta from visiting her sister for the next few days, to let the newlyweds get to know each other. Normally Greta would have agreed, but Rae’s marriage wasn’t exactly normal.
As she trudged along, she tried to stop worrying about Rae. Instead she would concentrate on monster hunting. It helped keep her worries at bay and made her feel less lonely. Besides, she was cursed with an overactive curiosity. At least it kept her overactive imagination company.
High above, birds chirped in the trees. As Greta walked, the air was full of a fine mist that couldn’t seem to make up its mind to be either fog or rain. Still, a little bad weather would not defeat her. She would climb every snowbank, ford every frozen stream, or skate across it, till she found her vampire. Thus, she needed to speak with Herr Choplin, the woodcutter, about his mother’s death. It’s a vampire, she thought; nothing but a vampire and nothing less than a vampire. She was certain.
As her feet crunched in the snow, Greta pulled up her cloak around her head. She was hurrying as fast as she could. Just when she thought she couldn’t go much further, the woodcutter’s cottage came into view, right where Herr Nietzsche had said it would be. Sighing with relief, she knocked on the door. No one answered. Although smoke was coming out of the chimney, alas, no one was home.
“Well, isn’t this a fine mess,” she said as she contemplated her options. She could go back to her aunt’s carriage and go home, but she was terribly cold, and her feet felt frozen in her soft kid boots. Perhaps, she thought, she could go inside for just a little while and warm her feet and hands. Perhaps there might be something hot on the stove to drink, neither too hot nor too cold.
“Carpe diem,” she muttered, thinking that she would indeed seize the day and go inside, despite the fact that it was rude.
Once inside the small cottage, her curiosity got the better of her. Although she did warm herself for a few minutes beside the fire, she forgot about the hot drink of tea she had been hoping for and began to search. She wasn’t quite sure what she was searching for, but perhaps she would know if she found it.
“If his mother is a vampire, surely there must be some sign of this. Perchance he’s been bitten and is lying covered over by a blanket of snow awaiting his transformation,” Greta mused thoughtfully. “Maybe she has even visited him? Maybe that’s why he’s not here?”
As Greta searched a drawer in a small dresser by a bed with an enormous bearskin, the door came crashing open with stunning force. Gasping, she looked up to see Prince Rolpe. Undergarments clenched anxiously in her hand, and with a mildly abashed expression on her face, she asked, “What are you doing here?” He must have ridden up without her hearing.
Slamming the door behind him, Rolpe advanced on his nemesis, noting that she had the look of someone on a mission. He knew that the woodcutter Choplin was in town at the tavern and, after speaking with the Snowes’ carriage driver, he’d learned that Miss Greta Grimm was here and unaware of where exactly the woodcutter was. Perhaps that was for the best.
He stopped abruptly, standing a scant few feet away, and fixed his darkest, most arrogant stare upon Greta’s determined face. “What am I doing here?” Mentally, Rolpe counted to ten in Latin, trying to cool his temper at the silly fool’s rash act of rushing into danger.
She nodded, clearly seeking an answer.
“Might I ask what you are doing here, in the woodcutter’s cottage?” he said. “Are you here to eat his food and sleep in his bed, or is your only interest in getting into his drawers?” The prince kept his voice low, but there was no mistaking the underlying anger.
Affronted, Greta asked, forgetting momentarily that she was an uninvited guest, “You are angry with me?”
“How astute.”
“How dare you be angry with me for having the gall to be angry with you!” Aggravated by his haughty stance and haunting presence, she mentally counted to ten in Spanish.
“That’s not why I’m angry, and you well know it,” Rolpe said. She was too lovely to be running around the woods where any manner of man or beast might feast upon her.
She contended, “I have not slept in his bed or eaten his food.”
“But you are in his drawers,” he accused. Then, realizing what he’d said, a slight grin twisted Rolpe’s lips. Greta could search his drawers any time she desired, she with her clever gray-blue eyes and brownish-gold locks. She looked remarkable.
“Reckless. I charge that you did come here alone, which was highly foolish. You don’t need to be traipsing about these dark woods without a chaperon, you and your bright gray eyes and scarlet cloak.” She was everything a big bad wolf, of the human persuasion or otherwise, could want.
Greta retorted, neither too harshly nor too softly, “And what business of that is yours! Why are you here? Are you following me?”
“Apparently,” he conceded. “Although it was not my intent. I saw your aunt’s carriage where the path narrows.”
“So, you came to rescue me from the woodcutter, who is fifty if he is a day.”
“No, I came to rescue you from your own folly. Don’t you know that ’tis dangerous for you to come here alone, prying into secrets that don’t concern you?”
Pulling her gloves back on, she shook her head. There was a certain gleam in the prince’s eyes that made her heart beat faster and her throat tighten. “Ah-ha. What secrets?”
“I was speaking in general terms, not particulars. Do you think Herr Choplin will be happy to have you invading his home? Do you think he would appreciate your questions about his mother’s death?” He moved nearer, wanting to strangle her, wanting to shake her, wanting to kiss her full pouty lips.
She glanced up at the ceiling, as if her answer rested there. Finally she spoke. “I know this must look strange, but you must not leap to conclusions.”
He stepped closer to both the flames within the hearth and those this woman engendered in his soul. “This is no leap. But it is a very firm step.”
“I only wished to ask about his mother’s death. That drunk you have for a doctor in the village is really rather stupid. I don’t think he can tell an ankle from his elbow. Or an asp bite from a vampire bite.”
Rolpe shook his head. “Greta, Choplin said his mother died when a bunch of logs fell upon her after her cart tipped. Such an accident would cause blood loss. If that’s what you’re thinking…”
“Exactly,” Greta remarked. “And a vampire could have easily tipped over her cart. Besides, what person in their right mind travels with wood in a cart at night? The whole story is fishy.”
A shuttered look came over Rolpe’s features, masking his feelings. “Do you know, Miss Grimm, that before you came to Wolfach, the grave was a fine and private place to rest?” Before she could counter this strange comment, he held up his hand. “I really need to talk firmly with you. Very firmly. Perhaps this time you might try and listen.”
“Oh, I hear you,” she replied. “So far in our discussions I’ve found you to be abundantly honest to the point of rudeness. But I know there is a vampire out there, and I don’t give a farthing if you believe me or not. The Nosferatu are real, and when a corpse goes missing in the Black Forest, it is most definitely because of a vampire!”
“There are no undead around!” Rolpe shouted in response. Then, softening his voice: “But there are other things. Do you know there are creatures hiding in the Black Forest that could eat you alive? Vampyrs are not the only things with big teeth. Walking alone in these big, dangerous woods is beyond foolish. And you are making a nuisance of yourself. I want it to cease, all this mucking about in things that are better left in the dark.”
He continued to glower
at her, his loins dangerously hot. To be honest, Miss Grimm was not only endangered by what lay outside the woodcutter’s cottage, but what lay within. Eyes like hers accounted for the ruin of many a good man since Eve first bewitched Adam with that damned rotten apple. In the back of his mind, Rolpe’s instinct was telling him to run, for love was trying to catch him with a well-sprung snare.
Greta shrugged, noting how Rolpe’s dark eyes flickered with emotions she found both disturbing and delightful. Suddenly but not inexplicably, she found it hard to breathe. The man was just too virile and attractive for her good.
“Fools rush in,” he warned, his tone becoming less strident, instead filled with seductive hints.
“Grimms rush in where sterner men have halted,” she replied.
“Are you too thick-headed to note danger when it is knocking on the door?” he exclaimed, grabbing her fiercely by the shoulders. She looked so good; good enough to love, good enough to eat. She was neither too tall nor too short for him, neither too stout nor too thin, but just the right everything.
“You mean, grave robbers?” As she stared into his beautiful eyes, her pulse pounded. He could charm the pennies from a dead man’s eyes, she guessed.
“No. I mean me,” he growled. And then he kissed her lips. They were hot and very sweet, like his favorite apple cake.
Greta sighed in delight as he clasped her to him, enjoying how perfectly she fit against his body. As their kiss deepened, she opened her mouth and breathed into his, felt his tongue touch hers. A tingling began in her body, her veins rushing with fire. She loved the way his arms clasped her closer to him. He made her dizzy with emotion. She had been kissed before, but never as the prince was kissing her now. Von Hanzen kissed as if he had been doing it all his life. His lips were demanding, fiery, earth-shattering. Greta grew light-headed, and her senses reeled. She clasped the back of his neck with her hands, her fingers massaging through his thick, dark hair.
