The Ondine Collection

by Ebony McKenna

  Everyone around them looked momentarily stunned. Pyotr kept his composure and handed the tray back to the grateful waitress. She then carried on serving guests as if nothing had happened, but Shambles could tell by her rapid breaths that she hadn’t fully recovered.

  No sign of the Duke, which was odd – he’d invited them, so surely he’d be here by now? The Duchess, holding a glass of red wine, approached Col. Suddenly the world dropped from beneath Shambles, and he hung on for dear life.

  What the?

  Old Col was curtseying! After her graceful bob, things righted themselves and he was back to eye-level again.

  “My Lady Duchess, it is an honour,” Col said.

  The Duchess enunciated her words far too carefully as she said, “You. Are. Too. Kind.”

  Duchess Kerala wore her dark hair in a neat helmet shape. Light bounced off her hair, it was that shiny. The hand holding the glass of wine looked soft and fleshy, as if she’d never performed a manual task in her life.

  The waitress appeared and asked the Duchess, “Your Grace, may I offer your guest an aperitif?”[103]

  “Thank you, but soda water is fine,” Old Col said.

  Surprise jolted Shambles. He felt sure Col would help herself to the best of whatever was on offer. The twig snapped – Col wanted to keep a clear head.

  The two young boys who had tripped up the waitress were now eyeing Shambles with undisguised glee. Thank goodness he was out of their reach. Oh great! Old Col decided to walk towards them. In the time it took the thought ‘I’m still safe up here’ to travel from one side of his ferret-sized brain to the other, Col had bent down to the boys’ level.

  “Hello, there,” Col said, “This is my pet ferret, Shambles. He’s very friendly. Would you like to pat him?”

  Wrong on so many counts, but if he uttered a word to them it would blow his cover. He turned his head towards Col’s ear and murmured, “If they pull my tail, I’m out of here.”

  “He’s funny looking,” one of the boys said.

  One of the little snipes pulled his tail, while the other clonked him on the head with a forceful pat. The impact was so great his teeth crashed together.

  From across the room, Duchess Kerala said, “Boysh, be gentle.” She didn’t take a step closer to intervene; instead another woman stepped in and calmly directed the boys away. Shambles rummaged around in his brain: had the Duchess slurred her words? When she spoke again, he was sure of it.

  “Thank you, nanny. The boysh can have their dinnersh now,” the Duchess said. Looking at the boys, Shambles could see them growing into little Lord Vincents, attitude and all. He made a mental note to keep clear of every one of the Duke’s offspring, even if he was supposed to be a docile “pet”. Nervously, he scanned the room, but saw no sign of Vincent. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. If he were here, he could keep an eye on him, but Vincent also knew he was a ferret who could turn into a man, and might blow his cover.

  At the other end of the room, the double doors opened. A woman wearing a starched white apron over black trousers and a black shirt nodded to the Duchess. The Duchess handed her empty wine glass to the nearest member of staff and announced to the room, “Dinner is sherved.”

  Shambles licked his chops. Wonderful aromas of caramelised onions, roast meat and crispy potatoes wafted in.

  The dining room looked decidedly blue. Blue walls, and in the middle of the room, a long table with a blue-and-white table cloth. A swift team of waiters, all dressed in black with starched white aprons, placed several bowls of salad at intervals along the table. The bowls were filled only with green leaves, thin slices of spring onion, shavings of Parmesan cheese and white beans.[104]

  Shambles saw the table was set for eighteen. A quick headcount told him there were a couple of spare seats. Hope sprang inside him as he wondered if he might get fed. He’d be extra nice to Col. She’d give him some food. He might even charm some of the guests into feeding him as well. With so many people, and such large silver domes over all the plates, surely there would be plenty of leftovers?

  Duke Pavla entered from another set of doors. Everyone bowed their heads as he walked in. He stepped towards Kerala and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. A lump formed in Shambles’s throat. They made such a lovely couple. He hoped he and Ondine would still be as affectionate when they were that old.

  They stood waiting for the Duke to be seated. To Shambles’s surprise, the Duke did not sit at the head of the table. Instead, he chose the centre of one of the long sides, opposite the Duchess. The seat beside the Duchess was empty, and Shambles wondered who would sit there, if not the Duke?

  “Good evening,” Pavla said. “As of now, fish will no longer be on the menu. Be seated.”

  As soon as the Duke sat down, everyone else followed. The waiters lifted the domes off the plates to reveal the banquet beneath.

  Shambles’s stomach did a double take. What tiny amounts of food!

  Even for a man the size of a ferret it was a measly serving. Half a boiled egg, sliced. Two slivers of roast chicken, so thin you could see through them. A tiny clump of fried onions. Sautéed zucchini and more of those white beans.[105] Oh yes, and three thin scallops of potato. All arranged in the middle of a large white plate with a thick band of blue around the edge.

  “This better be the entrée,” he murmured to Col as his stomach grumbled.

  Old Col coughed, then lifted him off her shoulder and placed him on her lap. It got him out of sight, so he could slip under the table, unnoticed, and report back on anything he overheard. Despite the small portions, Old Col came through for him and let a chunk of egg fall from her fork. With a leap he met the food mid-flight and swallowed it before he landed.

  Somewhat recharged, he set to work, ears on alert. Avoiding people’s feet became his main priority. Above the table, the dinner guests looked composed and serene, but underneath there was a fair amount of fidgeting and fenudging going on.[106]

  Heading for the end of the table, Shambles saw a pair of legs crossing nervously back and forth at the ankles. He strained his ears to snapping point.

  “murmur, murmur, food, murmur, right, murmur, murmur, tennis.”

  Not much help there, so Shambles decided to walk behind the twitching feet and sit directly under the speaker’s chair.

  “murmur, murmur, rule out murmur the food,” one male voice said. “murmur, never enough of it.”

  A person sitting beside him gave a low chuckle. “murmur, murmur, Infanta.”

  It sounded promising. Shambles listened some more and heard someone whisper, “running out of time” and “need to move soon” but nothing that made a cohesive whole. A staccato march announced the return of the waiters, who removed the empty plates. He strained to hear more conversation but the sound of feet drowned it out.

  Moving about under the table, he searched and listened for more interesting conversations. Someone arrived late and took the remaining empty seat. He recognised the smarmy voice say, “Good evening, Mother,” and heard him kiss her on the cheek.

  Vincent! Shambles scurried back over the parquet to get away from Vincent’s heavy boots. The last thing he needed was to get too close. All the same his ears stayed on high alert as he heard the Duchess mutter to her son, “One day, all this will be yours.”

  Really now? That was interesting!

  Without warning, pain seared Shambles’s insides. Panic shot through him. He silently cried out for Ondine to take away his agony. In his mind, he fixed an image of her sweet face to help him focus. How had this come on so quickly? His black furry arms buckled and bleached and turned into skin. His legs grew and grew. Just in time he pulled himself away from someone’s twitching foot. Any moment now, Vincent might drop a fork or a napkin, reach down to get it and see him lying on the floor, bare as the day he was born.

  He kept thinking of Ondine. When he angled his head so he could see through the forest of legs, he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. There she was, his beaut
iful Ondine, standing by the door with a tray of steaming hot hand towels. Her proximity must be why he’d changed. Slapping his forehead – silently! – he felt like a silly wee daftie! He could be a ferret any time he liked, but when she came near him, he turned human. Or, if he were already human, and she walked off, he reverted to ferret. If he didn’t start controlling it soon, he’d be in serious trouble!

  Ondine caught a glimpse of him and momentary shock played over her lovely features. Just as quickly, she reset her face, as if she hadn’t seen anything at all. Hamish felt a fresh surge of pride at how well she handled herself, considering the crazy circumstances.

  “Your Grace,” Ondine said, walking towards the Duke. Galloping agony pummelled Hamish from the inside, but now his biggest worry was fear of discovery. He had to change back or he’d be exposed. All the time he said not a peep, made not a single groan or even a loud panting noise.[107] Watching her feet move around the table and stop at each person was another form of torture. But the motivation to remain undetected overrode all else. Revisiting the pain, he willed his body back to ferret form.

  Through blurry vision, he saw Ondine’s feet approaching the Duchess and Vincent and nearly miss a step. Oh no, this was hardly the quiet sneaky start he’d hoped they could all make. Vincent now knew Ondine was here, so they’d have to be extra careful.

  Staggering on to his four paws, Shambles wobbled and hobbled back to the safety of Old Col. Lovely meaty aromas assailed his senses. When he looked up, he found a tiny lamb cutlet dangling from her fingers.

  “Aye, yer a good woman.” He kept his voice quiet, so that only Col could hear.

  He buried his face in the meat, biting off chunks and swallowing them without chewing. He heard rather than saw Ondine leave via the servant’s door. A pang gripped his heart at her departure, but he knew she’d want to get as far away from Vincent as possible.

  Safely back in his ferret shape, and feeling better for having eaten, Shambles thought some more about how he might control his magic. With another pang he realised something awful: in order to do his job properly without detection, he’d have to keep his current form.

  And that meant keeping away from Ondine.

  A furious barking sound came from the guests’ entrance. Two of the waiters opened the double doors. In stepped the Infanta Anathea holding a white ball of fluff under her arm. It barked and yapped like a lunatic. (The dog, not the Infanta.) With the frozen expression of a woman caught in a strong wind, the ash-blonde Infanta looked around at everyone seated at the table. For a while Shambles tried to work out what was wrong with her face. Everybody knew the Infanta was at least a decade older than the Duke, but her eyebrows were up near her hairline and her forehead looked ironing-board flat.

  Keeping that imperious look on her face, perhaps because she was incapable of any other expression, Infanta Anathea turned to the Duke and snarled, “You started dinner without me?”

  Everyone stopped talking. The room reverberated with clunks and clangs as they put their cutlery down. A flash of silver caught Shambles’s eye – he turned to see someone dropping a small fish knife into a clutch bag and clicking the top closed. Shambles snuck over to the patent-leather bag. It was so shiny he could see his furry reflection in it.

  The Duke rose from his chair. “Dear sister. Dinner is at seven sharp. Just as it always is. Your seat is waiting.”

  “You’re so rude,” the Infanta said.

  Shambles used the distraction to his advantage, the Infanta’s voice drowning out the quiet “snick” as he opened the clutch bag. He grabbed the stolen knife with his teeth and brought it to an empty spot under the table, well clear of anyone’s feet.

  At that moment the Infanta’s little dog spotted Shambles under the table. The dog wriggled and spasmed like he’d been struck with an electric prod.

  “No, Biscuit,” the Infanta said.[108]

  Biscuit paid the Infanta no mind. With a blood- curdling “ru-ru-ru-ru” the white hairy thing launched itself into the air. He landed on the ground and charged for Shambles.

  “Biscuit! Heel!” the Infanta commanded, but Biscuit had another master – blood lust!

  For a terrifying quarter of a second Shambles considered transforming into a human to save his skin. But he could only do it if Ondine were still here, and she’d gone.

  Panic surged through his furry body as he looked up to see Old Col’s worried face.

  With a lunge he shot up the leg of the chair, but his claws tangled on the hem of Col’s skirt.

  “Ru-ru-ru-ru,” Biscuit barked.[109]

  Quick as a flash, Old Col’s hands grabbed Shambles around the middle to pull him to safety. Biscuit hurled himself into the air, his mouth open, white teeth and red gums bared.

  The pretty white dog sank his fangs into Shambles’s ferrety neck and chomped down hard.

  Three people screamed at once, Shambles wasn’t sure who.

  Old Col began muttering something.

  Forty-two teeth skrittled onto the floor.[110]

  Shambles’s world went fuzzy and he passed out.

  Chapter Eight

  Being neither a witch nor a woman possessed of supernatural powers to see into rooms without being in them at the time, Ondine remained oblivious to Shambles’s current plight. To her credit, she had realised her presence in the Duke’s dining room during the evening meal had been a huge mistake. She knew Hamish and Old Col would be at the dinner, but she couldn’t refuse Draguta’s request to take the hot hand-towels in. Guilt spread through her at the huge amounts of pain it must have caused Hamish for her to appear like that and make him transform. It didn’t help that Vincent had been there too. Thankfully he only gave her a greasy look and had kept his mouth shut. The moment she’d done her job, Ondine had nodded to the Duke and Duchess and quickly scarpered out of there. Her assumption being that Hamish would revert to ferret form and remain safe and undetected, if a little green around the gills.

  Not knowing Hamish was bleeding from the neck after Biscuit’s attack, Ondine followed Draguta to the staff lounge and ate a bowl of vegetable soup and a multi-grain dinner roll. Unaware that the Infanta was screaming profusely at Old Col about the chance “that revolting thing” had given her champion rabies, Ondine accepted a second bowl of soup.[111]

  She was also completely insensible to the next development, where Old Col made an incantation to the powers of the earth, stars and moon, at which point Biscuit’s teeth fell out.

  But the Infanta’s high-pitched screams that could open a can? Yes, Ondine heard them loud and clear. Just about everyone in the palechia heard them. They ripped through the halls and the thin plaster walls like daggers of foul temper. The piercing noise reached the staff lounge, where Ondine’s second bread roll beckoned, but ultimately lay untouched.

  In a heartbeat Ondine took flight and ran towards the horrible sounds of chaos and terror.

  Only to find herself face to face with her worst nightmare. OK, her second worst nightmare. Her first worst nightmare was being separated from Hamish. But her second worst nightmare was Lord Vincent.

  He was standing right in front of her. His eyes glinted with anger as he scraped his blond highlights back from his forehead. A gleam of satisfaction stole through her as she saw remnants of a blue stain on his hand, left over from the night they’d caught him robbing the family hotel. Did he not wash, or was it sheer guilt keeping the stain there? Not for the first time, Ondine wondered what she’d ever seen in him. He might have been handsome if he weren’t so ugly on the inside.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked straight back. “And don’t stand there like an idiot. Bow to your betters.”

  Just because you’ve got a title it doesn’t mean you’re better than me. The memory of the night he slapped her hard on the face came flooding back.[112] In defiance, she kept her back ramrod straight. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Fort Kluff ?”

  “It didn’t take
.” He examined a fingernail and said, “Why are you here?”

  “I’m working.”

  Vincent mimicked, “I’m working.” He made no sideways movement to let her pass.

  Frustration surged through Ondine. “May I pass?”

  Silently he stepped to the side and made room.

  Ondine took a step but something smacked her hard in the shins. A lurching, falling sensation lasted all of half a second before she hit the floor with a thud. She looked up and saw a smirk on his face.

  “Not quite a bow, but it will do.”

  Picking herself up, Ondine brushed away the hurt in her palms. “You’re a –”

  “– tut tut! When I’m Duke, you’ll show me more respect.”

  “When you’re Duke I’ll emigrate to Slaegal!”[113] Ondine stomped off as best she could, head high, limping slightly, but all the same savouring the victory of getting the last word in.

  Just as she turned the corner Vincent yelled out, “Witch!”

  His tone carried such a sting she was sure he used it in the derogatory sense. Indignation on behalf of her great-aunt surged through her. A retort sprang to her lips just as Old Col arrived, carrying a prone Shambles in her arms. Around his neck she’d wrapped a white linen napkin.

  Correction, some of it was white but mostly it was covered in deep burgundy stains.

  “Shambles!” Ondine cried.

  Lurch. Her stomach did that horrible sinking-with-fear thing as she looked at him. Then lurched again as another nagging, awful, this-is-not-right feeling took hold. She was standing right next to him, close enough for her to touch his head and say, “Oh, you poor darling.”

  So why hadn’t he changed back into a man now that they were close again? Did he not want to? Gasp. Was he too injured?

  “Quick, let’s get to my room,” Old Col said. They ran up the stairs and rushed down the hall, then shut the door behind them for privacy.

  Ondine grabbed a couple of towels and placed them on the bed, so they could lie Shambles down without staining the duvet.