Ravensclaw

by Maggie MacKeever

  Val paid little attention to the conversation. He didn’t know what to make of this hey-go-mad Emily. What he wished to do with her was simpler. He wanted to give her slow, sweet kisses until her toes curled.

  Emily tugged him down on the sofa. Val tucked an errant tendril of hair behind her ear. Machka leapt down from his shoulder to curl up in his lap.

  Val dropped his hand to the cat’s soft fur. Somehow, when he wasn’t paying attention, Emily had stolen past his guard.

  Or had crawled under his skin. Damned if it didn’t feel like she was inspecting him from the inside out. From the inside of his elbows to the outside of his knees. His shoulders to his thighs. His—

  Emily’s body grew warm. Her heartbeat speed up. Val’s own body warmed apace until Machka growled and bit his hand, and Val recalled that they were not alone in the drawing room.

  Emily. Stop staring at my mouth.

  Lady Alberta rapped her knuckles on the table. “It seems I must be blunt! Whatever else the two of you have been doing, Val, I trust that you haven’t given Emily the Kiss.”

  He had given her any number of kisses. Val found himself at a loss for words. Emily said, “What a very vulgar question. Lady Alberta, I am shocked.”

  Lady Alberta was briefly distracted by the arrival of Jamie with a tea tray bearing Tantallon cakes, border tarts, and raspberry buns, sent from the kitchen to sustain them until more hearty fare had been prepared. After informing them that Isidore had said that an army of stags led by a lion would be more formidable than one of lions led by a stag, Jamie was persuaded to depart.

  Once she had performed the tea-pouring ritual and in the process snatched several delicacies for herself, Lady Alberta returned to the attack. “Don’t be obtuse, Emily. I was referring to the Kiss. The Dark Kiss. The Kiss of Souls.”

  Emily took a bite of border tart. “I didn’t know kisses had names.”

  “Oh, but they do, my dear! The basic sort include the Peck, which I think of as the Chicken Kiss, the Lip and Nip, the Neck Nibble, and the Butterfly. Among the more advanced varieties are the Buzzing Kiss, and the Tickle Kiss, and the Reverse Lips.”

  Emily said, “Hmm.”

  Val sipped his tea. She would require a demonstration. Miss Dinwiddie’s thirst for knowledge was unquenchable.

  As had been Val’s thirst for her. Emily was making him remember what it was like to have life, and be in love. Although love as Val remembered it had been a simple emotion, nothing like the complex muddle of feelings he felt now. Did he regret the complicated tangle Emily had made of his existence? Val decided he did not.

  He did regret his appalling lack of control.

  Lady Alberta had not stopped talking. “Not that I should be speaking to you of that! Mr. Ross came to call during your absence. He was most unhappy when I informed him that not only were you not here, I had no notion where you’d gone.”

  Emily licked cake crumbs from her fingers. “Lady Alberta, do you believe in the undead?”

  “The Celtic Dearg-dhu, the Red Blood Witch, supposedly rises once a year from her grave to seduce men into her embrace and drain them dry of blood. Personally, I consider once a year entirely too seldom for any creature to feed.” Lady Alberta gestured toward the stack of books at her elbow, which included Dissertation on the Appearance of Angels, Demons and Spirits; and on the Revenant Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, written in 1647, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. “I have been reading all sorts of curious material, since I had to do something to distract myself from worrying about you.”

  Emily looked startled. “You worried about me?”

  “Of course I worried. As did Isidore. Jamie and the girls scoured the town in search of you.” Lady Alberta’s hand hovered over the remnants of the Tantallon cake. “Why do you find it such an odd notion that someone should be concerned on your behalf?”

  “I suppose because no one ever has been.” Emily selected another raspberry bun. “Oh, Mama worried that I would behave inappropriately, with some justification, I admit. But she never worried about me. Papa simply refused to let me do anything that might have become worrying. Lest he be distracted from his experiments.”

  In that case, the Professor must be spinning in his grave. And if he were not, Val might give him a good shove.

  Lady Alberta sat up straighter. “I see! As I was saying, my own efforts at distraction led me to reading, and I have consequently discovered that there are apparently a great many more things than hitherto dreamt of in my philosophy. I know now that if a gentleman pricks an orange all over and sleeps with it under his armpit, then presents it the next day to the object of his affections, and if the lady eats it, she will return his regard, unless instead she eats lizards dipped in urine. It hardly requires a leap of faith to also credit the existence of Mr. Polidori’s vampires.” Lady Alberta reached for the teapot.

  Not for the first time, Val wished Polidori to perdition. Emily licked jam off her lower lip and he squelched an all-too-mortal urge to turn her tap-salteerie and acquaint every freckle on her little body with the Besotted Vampire kiss. Instead he gave Lady Alberta a brief, expurgated summary of recent events, to wit that Emily had been set upon and rescued in the very nick of time, omitting any mention of demons and ghosts lest he try her newfound tolerance too far.

  Lady Alberta clasped her hands together. “How very romantic! You rescued dear Emily in the nick of time.”

  “How very paper-skulled, you mean. Emily could have been killed.”

  Emily twinkled at him. “But I wasn’t killed, was I? Because of you. My hero.”

  Damnation. If not for the presence of Lady Alberta, Val would have had his wicked way with Emily there and then. And then he remembered that he mustn’t have his wicked way with her then or ever, and was suddenly cross.

  And about to become more so. Steps sounded in the stairway. Isidore’s irritable tones intertwined with familiar sultry tones. Val cursed as he rose from the sofa. Emily’s hands clenched into fists. Machka padded across the carpet to curl beside Drogo on the hearth.

  Lisbet pushed past Isidore and into the room, elegant in a gown of embroidered silk gauze with a sarsenet slip and very likely nothing underneath. Her hair was drawn up in an Apollo knot. Around her shoulders she wore a velvet mantelet trimmed with white swansdown. “Mea amant, I could not imagine what had become of you. You do recall that you are engaged to me tonight, for the theater and after, Val?” She linked her arm possessively with his. “Zau! Lady Alberta, you have grown quite plump. My dear Miss Dinwiddie, has the cat got your tongue? You will forgive my plain speaking, but you look like something that creature dragged in.”

  Lady Alberta spoke before Emily could respond in kind. “Least said, soonest mended! Dear Miss Dinwiddie has been having an adventure, but we shan’t bore you with that, not being at a loss for manners, unlike some I could name… What an interesting gown you are wearing, ma’am, but I fear you have left part of it behind. It is unwise to bare your chest in this climate, lest you catch your death of cold.”

  Never had Val been so grateful for Lady Alberta’s chatter. Elfling—

  Emily turned her face away from him. Go to the devil, Ravensclaw!

  Chapter Thirty

  Good words cool more than cold water.

  (Romanian proverb)

  The sun was shining on Auld Reekie, a rare occasion at this time of year. The streets of the Old Town were crowded with pedestrians: children escaping orphanages and the slums beneath the city; street vendors selling everything from herbs to hardware; perambulating pickpockets and prostitutes; judges in their satin robes; dissolute lordlings staggering home to their beds.

  Among those savoring the sunlight was Lady Alberta. She beamed with approval at the cerulean blue sky. “What a lovely day! For once the rain isn’t pouring down like cats and dogs. Wherever did that expression come from? No matter how hard it may rain, I cannot imagine miniature Drogos and Machkas descending from the heavens. Why not ducks, or perhap
s, frogs?” Neither of her companions commented, though Jamie might well have, had he not grown fond of the auld bletherskate. Didnae Miss Emily look bonnie without her spectacles, and wisna he the lad o’ pairts in his finery and with the knife tucked in his boot, Miss Emily being set on going out, and Lady Alberta being equally determined not to let her go out alone.

  Lady Alberta pointed out places of interest as they strolled along the High Street: Brodie’s Close, home to a Town Council member whose penchant for midnight burglaries climaxed in an abortive armed raid upon the Excise Office in the Royal Mile, and who was consequently hanged; John Knox’s House, near its door the street well which at one time had been the only source of water in the neighborhood; the spot that had once marked the end of Edinburgh, the Canongate having been a separate town envied for its gardens and orchards. Jamie added his own observations, of a more ghoulish nature, concerning Fleshmarket Close and Coffin Lane; Greyfriars Cemetery where a mountain of corpses, executed Covenanters and plague victims, had been dumped to rot in unmarked graves.

  Cemeteries were, in fact, one of the reasons Emily had been so determined to remove herself from under Ravensclaw’s roof, in spite of addlebrained assailants and the bedamned athame. Canongate Kirk, and its surrounding kirkyard, stood facing the Royal Mile. The Kirk was architecturally interesting, with its Dutch-style end gable and curious, doric-columned portico. The cemetery was even more so. Various notable personages were said to be buried there, including David Rizzio, the Italian courier stabbed to death in the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots.

  Lady Alberta trailed after Emily into the older part of the cemetery. “Might one know what you are looking for, my dear?”

  Emily bent over to read the inscription on a tombstone. “Dirt from the grave of an innocent.”

  Lady Alberta sighed. “I had to ask.”

  Some little time passed while Emily poked and peered among the lichen-covered monuments — Here lye the mortal remains of John Frederick Lampe whose harmonious composing shall out live Monumental register, at the base of the stone a skull and two crossed bones, at the top two figures holding a small book. Jamie aided in her efforts, while Lady Alberta wandered off to inspect the Coachman’s Stone, which displayed a skull and the motto ‘memento mori’, and a relief sculpture of a coach and horse crossing a bridge. It was Jamie who at last found treasure, a lass who expired at seven years of age, and a hundred years earlier, most likely being unkenand. Emily scooped up some dirt into a twist of paper, and tucked it in her reticule.

  Lady Alberta rejoined them. As they descended the steps to the street, she said, “You know he really doesn’t care for Lisbet Boroi.”

  Emily didn’t pretend to misunderstand the identity of that “he.” Had she not lain awake all the night waiting for Ravensclaw to return home so that she could either kiss him, or kick him, or rip off his jacket and do both at once?

  The marks on her neck were fading. Soon that entire encounter would seem no more than a dream.

  Where had Val passed the night? Not in dirt from his native land. Emily could not help but ponder the various permutations of what Val and Lisbet might have done to one another during those dark hours, and wonder whether fangs had been involved. “Then why spend so much time with her?” she snapped.

  Lady Alberta glanced over her shoulder at Jamie, who was pretending not to listen. “Sometimes gentlemen find it difficult to extricate themselves from their little entanglements.”

  Emily doubted Val would find it difficult to untangle himself from anyone or anything. She was a case in point. He might have disengaged himself from Lisbet with equal ease, had he so wished. Therefore she must conclude he didn’t wish to extricate himself, which was most perplexing: Emily had the impression that Val didn’t like Lisbet above half.

  Maybe liking wasn’t of importance in matters amatory. “I’m sure I don’t care.”

  “Doing it rather too brown, my dear, but never mind.” With an assessing eye, Lady Alberta surveyed Emily’s ankle-length pelisse of grey shot sarsenet; the straw and muslin capote with a stiffened brim that framed her face and hid her curls. “Since we are out, may I suggest a visit to the shops? It’s time you left off those somber colors and adapted a more dashing style.”

  Emily wondered how Val would react if she wore her gown cut down to her navel. Maybe if she was more fashionable, he would find it less easy to disengage. More likely he would not, but Emily wasn’t eager to return to his house. Lady Alberta had been kind to her, and Lady Alberta had a fondness for shopping almost equal to her fondness for Mrs. MacCamish’s Honey and Whiskey Cake, and therefore shopping they would go.

  Thus informed, the older woman set out like a foxhound following a scent. Within moments, Emily found herself caught up in a whirl of shoemakers and woolen-drapers, modistes and milliners and manufacturers of fine lace; engaged in the acquisition of, among other things, a Kashmir shawl, not the sort made on hand looms in Edinburgh, or heaven forbid Paisley, but the genuine article woven in a twill tapestry technique with goat’s fleece taken from beneath the coarse outer hair of the underbelly of wild central Asian goats, the result being a light, smooth shawl with a natural sheen.

  Having declared he’d be struck down deid afore he set foot in a ladies’ emporium, Jamie waited in the street outside, for which his companions were grateful, due to his tarry-fingert tendencies. In no time at all, Emily found herself in possession of a morning cap trimmed with white work embroidery, and an evening cap confection of colored satin trimmed with ribbons and lace; a fichu of fine sheer white muslin embroidered with a continuous band of purple flowers and shaded green leaves, the edges scalloped and embroidered with green silk; ivory satin garters to hold up her stockings; a pretty pair of slippers in robin’s egg blue, another of green leather with blue-green silk ribbon trim and ties, and half-boots of brown kid leather embellished with silk rosettes at the toe. Jamie attempted to balance the pyramid of purchases, and muttered that since he was packed up like a donkey, the ladies might want to bewaur ‘is teeth.

  “Don’t sham it so, you cheeky wee rapscallion!” Lady Alberta caught a package in mid-tumble and tucked it back under his chin. Her questing eye was next caught by a chemist’s shop. There was nothing for it then but they must sample Improved Gowland’s Lotion, Royal Tincture of Peach Kernels, and Olympia Dew. Did Emily know that the juice of green pineapples would take away wrinkles and give the complexion an air of youth, and that if pineapples were not available, onions would do as well?

  Emily did not. Nor had she been aware that powdered parsley seed prevented baldness, or that grated horseradish immersed in sour milk would remove freckles. Of this latter, she remained unconvinced. If her recent adventures had left her freckles unaffected, then they were with her for life, in their vast numbers and various hues.

  Their transactions finally completed — Emily having at the last minute been inspired, or coerced, to invest in some Pomade de Nerole for her unruly hair — the ladies returned to the street. Jamie’s pile of packages now reached almost to his nose.

  “Hsst!” He gestured. Outside the Penny Post Office, from which letters and small parcels were dispatched eight times a day to Leith, stood Michael Ross.

  Michael threaded his way through the traffic. “Emily! I almost didn’t recognize you without your spectacles. Have you broken them again?” He cast Lady Alberta a dark glance. “I must speak privately with you.”

  Lady Alberta drew herself up to her full height. “I trust you jest, young man. Anything you have to say to my niece may be said in front of me.”

  Emily winced as Michael grasped her elbow. Lady Alberta continued, “I trust I make myself clear. You may be as private as you wish with Emily after you are wed.”

  Michael didn’t argue. He simply punched Lady Alberta on the chin. With a screech and a flurry of petticoats, she toppled over, landing on top of Jamie. Packages went flying everywhere. Passersby quickly gathered round to gawk and offer advice and try to snatch some of the scatte
red parcels. Jamie kicked one would-be thief in the knee and elbowed another in the cods and demanded to know what had given anyone the idea he was a chuntyheid? In the midst of the confusion, Michael hauled Emily with him down the street.

  She snatched at her bonnet. “Do slow down, Michael, pray! I will accompany you willingly, if only you stop pawing me about.” Or not-so-willingly, truth be told, but it was past time she discovered what the deuce he was about.

  “You haven’t gone anywhere willingly with me since you came to Edinburgh.” Michael’s fingers dug into her flesh.

  Through a labyrinth of crooked closes he drew her, turning first this way and then the other, so that even if she wished she couldn’t have found the way again. They came at length — if Emily’s sense of direction had not entirely deserted her — to the warren of vaults formed by the arches of the South Bridge. Michael plunged through a crumbling doorway, down a dim passage so narrow that Emily could have laid a hand on either side, so steep that in bad weather the ground would be as treacherous as ice.

  So this was the underground city she had heard so much about. The atmosphere was dense with open fires for heat and cooking, the stink of human excrement, the reek of fish-oil lamps that provided what little light there was. Loiterers littered the broken pavements, unkempt barefoot children, ragged men, women wearing tattered flannel petticoats and ancient tartan shawls. Some were sleeping, some were drunk. Some would never venture out into daylight. Michael grabbed a lantern and dragged her through a series of abandoned tunnels. Emily gasped for breath. The air was noxious, stifling. Michael was muttering under his breath.

  Around one last corner, down a slippery incline. An ancient door loomed ahead. Michael inserted a key into the lock. A tomblike vault gaped open. He pushed Emily into the room. She tripped and fell to the ground.

  The hard ground. Emily cried out as her hands encountered stone so rough it tore the soft kid of her gloves. Behind her, the door slammed shut.