Gingerly, I felt my head, braced for some sort of wound that would indicate I had hit it when I had fallen, but there was nothing there but normal, undamaged head. I took a deep, deep breath and, with only a few minor muttered imprecations, turned to the left and started walking down the (now dirt) road that wound down the hill and led to the town in the valley below.
I was on a flattish stretch that curved through some forest—not the haunted one—when I heard the dull rumble of thunder. “Oh, great, this is just what I need—rain while I have to walk the three miles into town. Someone really does not like me today.”
I increased my pace, hoping against hope that I’d make it at least into town before the rain hit, muttering to myself about my spate of bad luck of late, and why that needed to change immediately. The sound of the thunder increased.
“Screw this,” I snarled, and sprinted down the road, bits of dirt worming their way into my sandals, grinding painfully against my soles. Despite the slight decline of the road, I ran like crazy, my eyes on the lights of the town just visible in the valley below. The road hairpinned back and forth up the side of the mountain, however, and just as I was contemplating taking a straight route across a rocky bit of land that dropped down to the stretch of road below, the devil rose up out of the darkness, and ran me over.
12 July 1703
“You’re sure you do not wish to spend the night, Gnädiger Herr?”
The woman’s voice was as smooth as the pearly white skin that he had moments ago been caressing with his mouth and tongue. Nikola gave the invitation serious consideration for a few seconds, aware that this particular pigeon could be his with just a nod of his head, but despite the rather insistent urges of his body, he declined.
“Another time, my sweet.” He dropped a few coins onto the table next to where the innkeeper’s wife sat in boneless grace, and he worried for a little moment that he had taken too much of her blood. But one look at the sultry eyes with their obvious invitation reassured him that the woman was under the influence of the peculiar form of bloodlust common to his donors, rather than the loss of blood itself.
With a little bow, he strolled out of the inn, giving his waiting coachman orders to return home. His daughter would be home awaiting him, no doubt, and as his journey from Heidelberg had been delayed by bad weather, she would be worrying. Imogen was a worrier, he mused as the carriage lurched forward in the cooling night air. She got that from her mother.
Pain spiked through him at the memory of Margaret, pain and guilt that he hadn’t loved her as she had deserved, and certainly not to the depth with which she had worshipped him. And that irritated him, for Margaret had been a gentle, loving woman who had spent the last twenty-three years of her life attending to his every need.
“Women,” he muttered to himself, staring blindly out into the night as the carriage left the town and began the long, winding climb to Andras Castle. “They insist on being loving and kind and caring, and why do they do that? To make a man feel guilty, that’s why. And then they lure innocent men who are busy with important scientific research into impregnating them, and then said busy men end up caring about said spawn. And these ladies smell good, too. Deliberately. The wenches.”
Nikola nursed his sense of injustice as long as he could—about ten minutes—but even he knew it was a foolish attempt to avoid the truth: He had honored Margaret as best he could, but it wasn’t what she was due. And now she had been dead seven years, and their youngest child, his son, his Benedikt, was off to university in Heidelberg. Margaret would be pleased by that. She had been the daughter of a cobbler, and had never imagined herself catching the local baron’s eye, let alone being his wife and bearing him children.
“And the truth is that I would never have married her except for the curse.” Saying the words aloud seemed to make the guilt ease a little, as if acknowledging it took away some of its power. “I could not love her, but I gave her my name, position, and wealth.”
But not your heart, a tiny little voice pointed out. You gave her everything but your heart.
“I did the best I could,” he argued with the voice, shifting uncomfortably. Why the hell did he always end up having these arguments with himself? Did other people do such? Or was it something particular to his nature? He made a mental note to ask Imogen if she regularly held mental debates with herself, or if it was something that came with the curse. “I gave her all I had.”
That lie stung him even as the words passed his lips, and he slumped back against the cushioned seat, wondering why his conscience had chosen this moment to flagellate him. “It’s not as if I can change anything. It’s not as if I could go back in time and—”
A flash of white caught his peripheral vision just a scant second before the carriage rocked, and the coachman shouted angrily.
“What the devil is going on?” Nikola was out of the carriage when it lurched to a stop, his gaze, always good at night, immediately catching sight of a body lying to the side of the road.
“’Tis a woman, Master Nicky. She was suddenly right out in front of me, and ran right into Heinrich.”
Old Ted, the coachman, slid down out of his seat with an audible grunt of pain, hobbling over to where Nikola crouched over the body of the woman. “Be she dead, do ye think?”
Nikola placed a hand on her neck. Her pulse was a bit fast, but present. “No. Just stunned. Let’s roll her over to see if she’s injured.”
“I’ll get the lantern,” Ted said, limping heavily to the carriage to lift off a hook one of the lamps that illuminated the road before them. The light bobbed and jerked as he returned, but Nikola didn’t need its yellow glow to see that there were no signs of blood or obvious injury on the woman who had run so heedlessly into his horse.
“It’s just like women,” he said with a glower at the form lying before him. “Always doing things like running headlong into a man’s carriage without the least thought of the damage they could do to a valuable horse.”
“Aye, that they are,” Old Ted agreed, spitting to the side as he considered the body of the woman. “Looks like a proper hoor, she does, too.”
“Hoor?” Nikola was momentarily distracted from the fresh injustice that had been brought into his life by this heedless woman. He cast his mind around his knowledge of the English language, which was excellent given that he had spent several years of his youth in England. It was in that country that he had first encountered Ted.
“Aye, Master Nicky, a hoor. Doxy. Woman who ain’t no better than she should be.”
Nikola looked over the woman with a critical eye. “She doesn’t appear to be a prostitute.”
“She’s runnin’ around in naught but her underbits. That’s the sign of a right hoor, that is. No proper woman’d be scamperin’ down the road in her chemise, now, would she?”
“An excellent point, and one I can’t dispute. She is no doubt a whore, and best left to her own.”
Carefully, he gathered her up in his arms and stood, surprised to find that not only did the woman feel exceptionally good pressed against him, but she smelled wonderful, as well. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply to capture the scent. It danced elusively on the edge of his awareness, something that was vaguely floral, but not at all like the scents used by the women with whom he’d been familiar. It was earthy, and yet delicate, intriguing and mysterious.
“I don’t like mystery,” he told the unconscious female.
“That’s right, ye don’t. And don’t ye be having nothin’ to do with the hoor, now, Master Nick. I’ll just move her to the side of the road and we’ll be on our way home.”
“It’s certainly what she deserves, scaring poor Heinrich like that.” Nikola wondered who the woman was, and what she was doing running down the road clad in a flimsy garment.
The bay, one of the two horses harnessed to the carriage, tossed his head up and down, and whinnied his agreement, pawing the ground to add a further comment on the travesty that had been done to h
im. His nearly hairless stump of a tail twitched in aggravation. Lucy, the one-eared mare next to him, leaned over and tried to bite him. Heinrich bared his teeth in return.
“Madame. I would have your name so that I might know who to send the bill to should Heinrich prove to be injured.” Nikola gave the limp body in his arms a little shake to wake her up, but she simply lolled there, warm and soft and smelling of things that made him feel too warm for his wool coat, not to mention the fact that his breeches had suddenly grown two sizes too small. His gaze traced down the soft swell of her bare arms up to lightly freckled rounded shoulders, and even more rounded breasts that were just barely visible at the square neckline of her chemise. He wondered what it would feel like to touch her arms, to sweep his hands along the delicate lines of her shoulders and neck, to dip his head down into the valley between her breasts and taste—
“Just you leave her on the grass.” Ted’s voice interrupted his thoughts. Nikola tore his gaze from the woman to see his coachman hobble over to the edge of the road, gesturing at a spot suitable for the removal of whores from the road. “Her people will find her sooner or later.”
“I certainly have no need for a stray woman, let alone one of such dubious background,” Nikola agreed, and strode over to the carriage, gently placing her on the seat. He pulled down a small footstool and placed it next to the coachman’s box. “Let us go home quickly, Ted, before Heinrich is forced to suffer any more indignities.”
Ted sighed as he limped over to the carriage, but said nothing when Nikola held out an arm, instead grasping the carriage rail with one hand while stepping up onto the footstool, then more or less pulling himself into the coachman’s seat.
Nikola tucked the footstool away again, and swung himself lightly into the carriage. As he closed the door, he heard a muttered, “So it’s going to be like that, is it?”
“I can do without the jaded comments. I’m quite likely to find myself no longer in need of your services should they continue,” Nikola called loudly, tucking the carriage blanket around the still-unconscious woman.
“And just what will the young lady say about you bringin’ home a hoor? That’s what I’d like to know,” Ted yelled back, clucking to the horses to get them started.
Nikola was careful to brace the woman as the carriage lurched forward again, finally leaning back against the cushions when he was sure she would not roll off the seat. “I am master in my own house, and none would dare gainsay me. Imogen does what I tell her.”
He could have sworn that a disbelieving snort was the answer to that statement, but it could well have been Heinrich, so he let it pass without comment. Instead, he spent the rest of the ride home alternately fighting the need to slide down the blanket so he could stroke that luminous, soft skin, and worrying about just how he was going to explain the strange woman to his daughter.
“Papa!”
Imogen was at the entrance to the large dwelling he called home when the carriage finally rolled to a stop outside the massive oak double doors. It might be a run-down, ramshackle sort of castle, but it was still his, and he loved every crumbling stone, every rotted board, every grimy window of it. Wrapped in a large woolen shawl, Imogen stood alongside a small group of servants, several of whom held torches. The smile on his daughter’s face warmed something cold and tight inside him. His little Imogen, now a woman grown, but still his, and in the very likeness of her mother with soft blue eyes, and golden hair so bright it all but glowed.
Odd how he used to think that blondes were the epitome of beauty in a woman. He realized with a start that now he had a preference for brunettes, ones with freckled skin that seemed to beckon to him.
“I was worried that you had an accident,” Imogen said, coming forward when the footman opened the carriage door with powdery flourish. “I thought you would be home three days ago.”
Nikola held out his arms for her, suffering her to hug him, giving her a squeeze and kiss on the forehead in return. Like her mother, Imogen was an emotional sort of woman, not at all the clearheaded, logical beings that he and Benedikt were. Odd how families worked that way. “I was delayed by the rains. You look peaked. Are you unwell? Have you been eating enough? Frau Leiven! Why is my daughter as pale as the moon?”
Imogen laughed as he bellowed at the short woman who was as round as she was tall, her spherical self topped with a huge mound of fat sausage curls. The woman toddled forward, her hands twisting around themselves. She made a bobbing gesture that passed for a curtsy. “The Fräulein is very well, Baron, very well indeed. I have seen to it that she has eaten plentiful meals, and she has slept without interruption, and has indeed been most studious during your absence.”
“She is as pale as a ghost!” he said sternly, waving a hand toward Imogen, now giggling in a most inane fashion. “I did not employ you to ignore my daughter when I am away from home, madame. If you wish to keep your position, you will see to it that my orders are carried out to the fullest extent.”
“You would not…you could not be so cruel as to cast me from your very fireside?” Frau Leiven clutched at her throat, her eyes huge with horror. “Please, my lord, I am but a poor widow with no family who will take me in!”
Imogen rolled her eyes and put an arm around the rotund woman. “Papa, you’re scaring poor Anna. Pay him no heed, my dear.”
“I shall perish in the cold!” the woman wailed.
Nikola sighed to himself.
“I am too old to start again with a young child! Oh, please, please, Fräulein Imogen, do not let your father do this terrible thing and cast me out to the wolves!”
“He’s not going to do anything of the sort, Anna. He doesn’t mean a word of it. You know as well as I do that Papa is never so happy as when he is stomping around pretending he’s a tyrant.”
“I am a tyrant, woman, and I will thank you to remember that,” Nikola growled, setting the footstool in place before turning back to the carriage interior. “Be so good as to have a fire lit in the Chinese room.”
“Why?” Imogen asked, releasing her former governess, and now companion, to peer over Nikola’s shoulder. “Are we having a guest? Papa! Who is that woman?”
“Sainted Mary,” the round little Anna gasped, crossing herself as Nikola turned with the unknown woman of obviously ill repute in his arms. “She’s dead! And that is exactly what will happen to me should the baron order me from your side, my dearest Fräulein Imogen!”
“She is not dead,” Nikola corrected. “She merely knocked herself insensible by running into Heinrich on the road below. Imogen, see to the room. You, Robbie—”
“But who is she, Papa?”
“RobEHR, monseigneur,” the slim young footman said in a heavy French accent. He wore a powdered pale salmon wig, white satin breeches that Nikola felt were entirely too tight for viewing by innocent damsels like Imogen, and a navy blue jacket, part of the livery of his former employer. Copious rings bearing large jewels of dubious authenticity glittered on his fingers, while in one hand he held a lacy handkerchief that waggled when he spoke, leaving faint clouds of powder that drifted gently to the ground with each gesture. “My name, she is Robert, not the so mundane Robbie of the English.”
Imogen tugged at Nikola’s arm. “Is she a friend of yours? How did she run into Heinrich? Have you known her long?”
“My father, he was named Robert, as well,” Robert said with a haughty sniff and a curl of his lip as he eyed the unconscious woman. “It is a family name, monseigneur. A French family name.”
“I shall die, die, I tell you, if you make me leave Andras Castle! It will be nothing short of murder!” Frau Leiven danced around him, her hands clutched together.
“I don’t care if your name is Louis XIV, remove my trunk and things to my bedchamber. Imogen, cease fussing this instant and do as I ordered. Frau Leiven, if you continue to drivel in that annoying fashion, I really will cast you from the house.”
“Aaargh!” The governess clutched her sausage rolls and wai
led. Imogen fluttered around her, offering reassurances that no harm would befall her.
Nikola hoisted the unknown woman higher up on his chest, annoyed that no one did as he commanded. He was lord and master of his home, by the saints, as he had long been telling his servants and children. The fact that they all disregarded that point was more than any sane man could bear. Not that his actions the last half hour had been particularly fraught with sanity, he thought as he looked down at the warm body that pressed so solidly against him. Men of intellect did not, as a rule, bring home stray women who insisted on flinging themselves on horses.
Then again, perhaps they did, and he just hadn’t been in such a situation before. He was in the middle of wondering whom of his acquaintance he could consult upon the matter when it struck him that he was once again arguing with himself.
“Imogen!” he said loudly as he strode up the stairs and into the great hall.
“Yes, Papa?”
“Do you debate various subjects with yourself?”
“Debate?”
“Yes, debate. Argue. Discuss.”
“With…myself?”
“Yes, with yourself.”
“Do you mean actually speak out loud?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just an argument carried on in your head.”
Imogen appeared at his side as he headed for the staircase in the center of the hall, her brows pulled together in puzzlement. “No, Papa, I don’t.”
“Ah.” Perhaps it was something that came down the male line of the family. Or it could be the curse after all. That would imply Benedikt was stricken with it, as well, then. “I will write to Benedikt and ask him,” he said, nodding his head as he mounted the stairs, all five members of his household on his heels.
“Gone barmy the master ’as,” Young Ted the stableboy said in a voice filled with dark portent.
A smacking sound answered that statement, immediately followed by a howl of pain.
“Mind yer tongue, lad. Master Nick isn’t barmy; he’s just eccentric. All them lords are,” Old Ted said, then turned back to the door, shoving his son in front of him. “Ye come help me get the harness off of Heinrich. Ye know how testy he gets when he’s not groomed right away….”
A Tale of Two Vampires Page 4