Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0]

by The Companion

  She was expected, or taking her luggage to a bedroom would be out of the question. Beth stripped off her tan leather gloves and unbuttoned her russet pelisse as she looked about her. The town house was furnished in the latest style, always. Lady Rangle refurbished it continually to be slap up to the echo of fashion. Just now, with all the interest in the French exploration of Egyptian antiquities, that meant the entry hall and indeed what Beth could see of the front saloon were crowded with faux Egyptian pieces. Crouching cats held up the table upon which visiting cards were scattered. A most uncomfortable-looking pair of wooden chairs on U-shaped legs flanked a trio of ceremonial lances striped with lapis lazuli. She half-expected to see a mummy laid out upon the sofa in the large room where Edwards led her. She wandered about the room comparing the reproductions to her memories of the real treasures of Egypt. Lady Rangle could afford the best, but their very newness made them tawdry. She smiled to herself to think that what was lacking for verisimilitude must surely be the ever-present grit of the desert.

  That humorous perspective was still floating about Beth when her aunt drifted into the room. Lady Rangle always seemed to drift. She was long past youth, yet her frame was willowy, her complexion pale and skin fragile. Her faded beauty (and she had been a great beauty in her day) was framed by ethereal curls helped to their palest shade of blonde by a much more delicate hand than Mrs. Pargutter used. There was not a hint of brass. Her morning dress was lustring faintly striped with lavender. Slippers of delicate lilac kid peeped from under her hem. Over her elbows, a shawl of Norwich silk draped negligently. A beaded reticule hung from one wrist even indoors, so her smelling salts were always close at hand in case her sensibilities were assaulted in any way. A magnifying glass hung around her neck by a ribbon, since she was very myopic and disdained the use of spectacles.

  “Lizzy,” she breathed. Her voice was always either languid or breathy. “How good it is to see you.” Beth wondered if she meant it. She wafted forward and pecked Beth on each cheek.

  “I hope my letter was not too inconvenient, Aunt—” Beth’s anxiety banished her wry perspective. She did not even correct her aunt’s use of a diminutive of Elizabeth she hated.

  “Of course, dear Lizzy. And who should you come to in such shocking circumstances but your only relative?” She draped her figure on a pale satin chaise designed for comfort, not an Egyptian pedigree. “Do sit down, my dear. You always were such a dreadfully active child.”

  Beth perched on the edge of a sofa whose arms were inlaid with an ibis pattern.

  “Now, let me look at you.” Lady Rangle raised her glass. Her pale blue eye grew monstrous and distorted to Beth’s view. It was all Beth could do not to squirm under that unblinking gaze. “Well,” she said at last, letting the glass fall and looking world-weary. “It could be worse. You don’t squint. And I detect no spots of any kind. I suppose your complexion can’t be helped, or those eyes. Your mother gets the blame for them. You could hardly be shorter. But I don’t despair of bringing you off creditably. We can’t look too high, of course. You would never do for the fashionable set. But I’m sure there are some widowers of reasonable means who might not expect better. Old Marksby is in town just now to call in at Harley Street about his gout. Or there is always the City.”

  Beth’s flush rose during this speech along with her indignation. She pressed her lips together against her first retort. After a moment she said with some constraint, “If you think I have cast myself upon you to arrange a marriage for me, Aunt, you do me no credit.”

  “But you must be married, child.” Her aunt smiled kindly. “What else is there for you?”

  “I am perfectly capable of independence, I assure you. And I might also say that it is my firm intention never to marry except where there may be love on both sides. In lieu of finding that, I shall do fine on my own.” She saw her aunt’s dubious look turn to amusement. “I shall call on my father’s bankers at Drummond’s tomorrow.”

  “A young female cannot simply set up house for herself,” her aunt protested, chuckling. “Why, no one would receive you. I doubt the shops would sell you an ell of cloth. As for love, girls say they must have a love match as though that existed in real life. Many of us grow very fond of our husbands, however. Why, I positively doted on Rangle.”

  Doted? From what Beth remembered of her aunt’s relationship with the stout and stern man who talked incessantly of sporting ventures, she was sure Lady Rangle confused “doted on” with “ignored.” She schooled her countenance to polite reserve. “I would simply like to feel doting before I marry. I might seem distrustful, but I have no desire to buy a pig in a poke.”

  Lady Rangle reached out a hand and Beth came to stand in front of her. “My poor, dear Lizzy, raised in barbarian lands far from civilization. What was Edwin about? My foolish brother! It is no wonder you do not know how to go on. But you will be invited to the best houses, though town is thin of company until after the holidays. My name is not nothing. It opens many doors.”

  Lady Rangle meant to be kind. Beth knew that. And for someone so languid to take upon herself the task of steering an ignorant girl through the shoals of London society was an act heroic in and of itself. Especially when the girl thrust upon her doorstep was nearly unknown to her and of questionable experience. So Beth did not say she had no desire to have doors opened or that she had no ambition to a knowledge of society. She did not reassert her determination to set up for herself even if it meant a lonely life. Instead, she cleared her throat. “You are very good, Aunt. And I am very sorry to put you to so much trouble, foisting myself upon you.”

  “I shall enjoy the dressing of you, my dear, and you must strive to do me credit. Of course, you will put off your blacks. No one would offer for a girl in mourning. Edwin has interfered quite enough in your life already.”

  Beth was about to protest, but instead managed a weak smile, feeling adrift in unfamiliar territory. Her father would not care if she wore black or not. She realized her aunt had never even asked her about her journey or commiserated on her father’s death.

  Ian waited in the comfortable drawing room outside Dr. James Blundell’s consultation chamber in Harley Street, excitement and dread beating in his breast. All his hopes were pinned upon what would happen in the next hour. He had been in London three days, having posted up from Portsmouth with all haste. But Blundell was not easy to see, being so renowned a practitioner when it came to diseases of the blood, and Ian required an appointment in the evening, which occasioned several notes back and forth with the great doctor’s secretary. However, that gave Ian time to read Blundell’s treatise on transferring blood from one patient to another. The doctor had started as an obstetrician, perhaps not a sterling recommendation in the present case. His drive to perfect transfusion arose out of the terrible hemorrhages he had seen in childbirth, and he had since concentrated almost solely on researches in blood. The man was without doubt on the edge of some new and fascinating discoveries. If anyone could help, he could.

  Ian had struggled with how to describe his symptoms in order to avoid being clapped up in Bedlam, chained in dirty straw, and beaten twice a day. He must never talk about compulsion or disappearing. Yet he had to interest the great man in his case. He dared not talk about needing to take human blood, did he? Yet was that not the crux of the matter?

  One by one, the patients who shared the drawing room were called in. A frail man, supported by a servant, then a portly gentleman with a florid face, all disappeared, not to return. There must be another exit by which they were let out. They had eyed him most strangely. Indeed, he had been attracting attention everywhere he went in London. He had only to walk into the lobby of the Clarendon Hotel and everyone stopped what they were doing. They moved out of his way as though he had the plague, which, in fact, he did. But strangers could not know that, could they? There was no trace of his change in the mirror that he could see, except perhaps a certain vibrancy. And it was not quite fear he felt in those around him. Th
ere seemed to be an air of awe about them. Ian couldn’t understand it. But the effect had been growing.

  Ian leaped up and paced the room when at last he was alone, trying to calm his mind.

  When finally the young secretary called him in, he found himself bowing to an older man with an open countenance, his grizzled hair worn long about a bald pate.

  “Thank you for seeing me so late in the day,” Ian began.

  The doctor was dressed conservatively, his coat finely tailored but claret-colored, a shade from another age in these days of black and dark blue coats. The room was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, bulging with leather volumes, and to one side a long table was covered with glass tubes and flasks that emitted strange odors. Ian recognized a microscope fitted with several lenses. He had seen one at Cambridge. Near the long windows that gave on to the street, framed by burgundy velvet draperies, sat a huge desk. It was covered with a green blotter on which sat a book with blank pages, a pen, and an inkwell. The doctor motioned Ian to take a seat in the leather wing chair, while Blundell sat at his desk. His first cursory glance at his newest patient had turned into a rapt examination.

  “It is not often that I see so fine a male specimen walk through my doors, Mr. Rufford.” The doctor smiled. “You fairly glow with health. Pray, what can one of my specialty do for you?”

  Ian cleared his throat. “I believe I have acquired an abnormality in my blood, sir, one for which I only hope you can prescribe a treatment.”

  Blundell smiled indulgently. “Now, now, young man, it is for me to make the diagnosis. What makes you think it is a disease of the blood?”

  Ian was prepared for this. “I acquired it through blood from one similarly afflicted.”

  The doctor raised his eyebrows and nodded. He put on a pair of spectacles, picked up his quill, dipped it in the standish, and left it poised over the blank book. “Symptoms? Be detailed.”

  Ian swallowed once. “Extreme sensitivity to light, which is why I asked to see you in the evening. I cannot bear the sunlight.”

  The pen scratched. “Eyes or skin affected?”

  “Both. My skin burns within moments, though it does not keep the color. I must wear blue or green spectacles of the darkest hue even to look through windows in daylight.”

  The pen scratched over the page. “Other symptoms?” Blundell peered over his spectacles.

  Here it was. This was Ian’s one chance and his biggest risk, well, almost his biggest risk. He removed a penknife from his coat pocket and pried open the blade. Then, pulling back his cuff, he slit the palm of his hand from the base of his thumb, across the pad of muscle, to his wrist in a clear, deep line that immediately welled blood.

  “Mr. Rufford!” Blundell protested.

  Ian held up the palm so the doctor could see it clearly. He felt the tingling along his veins that always felt so wonderful, the pricking pain in the wound as it stopped leaking blood. He knew what Blundell was seeing. The doctor’s eyes went round.

  When Ian thought enough time had elapsed he checked his palm: a red line only, then a white line of scar, then nothing—no evidence the cut had ever been.

  Blundell scrambled from behind the desk. “Let me see. Is this some kind of a trick?”

  “I wish it was, Doctor.” He had the man’s interest. The doctor took his hand, fingered his virgin palm. “Do you want to see it again, perhaps make the incision yourself? Feel free to use an instrument of your choosing.”

  The doctor peered up at him. “I shall. Take off your coat and roll up your sleeve.”

  The result was the same with the scalpel Blundell used, of course. As a doctor, he had no scruples about slicing flesh, and he cut a vigorous wound deep into the muscle on the inside of Ian’s forearm. When the cut came together and left no trace, Blundell touched the skin in wonder. Then he turned his attention to Ian’s wrist. “It seems you do scar,” he observed.

  “Before the infection,” Ian said shortly.

  “If we could harness this ability . . .” Blundell turned to his desk and pulled out several lancets, then scurried over to the glassware for some vials. “How were you infected? A wound?”

  “A drop of blood on my lips which I touched with my tongue.”

  “Then I must have a sample of saliva as well.” The doctor produced some tubing, fitted it to his lancets. The end of the tube he put into his vial. “But first the blood.”

  Ian rolled up his sleeve farther, baring the vein in the crook of his elbow, which he knew from experience would prove fruitful for lancing.

  “What are these marks?” Blundell asked, peering at the twin scars left by Asharti’s teeth directly over the vein.

  Ian could not tell him about Asharti. “Old wounds.”

  Blundell glanced up at him. “Where were you when you were infected?”

  “The desert of North Africa, northeast of Marrakech. I’m a little hazy about just where.”

  “This is, of course, an entirely new disease. But it might prove a valuable discovery. If we could increase the healing powers of our soldiers or sailors . . . the possibilities . . .” He pressed the lancet into the vein where Asharti had sipped so many times. “I will take sixteen or twenty ounces—a vigorous bleeding, no more.” Blood flowed out the tube and into the glass vial. Blundell filled perhaps five of them. Then he asked Ian to expectorate into another vial.

  “Do you have hope for a cure?” Ian asked. “I should like to be rid of this.”

  “How can I know before I know what happened to you?”

  “A doctor in Tripoli spoke of humors of the blood, perhaps treating it with hellebore or a bark of some kind.” That was before he knew all the symptoms and recommended a madhouse.

  Blundell barked a short laugh. “Those are old ways. The answers lie in your blood.”

  “When might you have those answers?” Ian pressed as he rolled down his sleeve.

  “Well, you have prevented me from sleeping tonight,” Blundell said, excitement in his voice. He stoppered the little vials. “Several days, I should imagine. Call again Thursday.”

  Ian masked his disappointment. “Thursday it is.” He strode to the door.

  “Mr. Rufford . . .”

  Ian turned to see the doctor peering over his glasses again. “Yes?”

  “Is there anything else you would like to tell me about your condition?”

  Ian hesitated. “No,” he said finally and with what he hoped was firmness. “Nothing. I shall call at twilight on Thursday.”

  Beth came out of Drummond’s into the late afternoon and stared around at the people passing in Cockspur Street without seeing them. The world succumbed to twilight. The gray permeating the city seemed to depress her breathing.

  Gone. Her portion was gone, and with it all hope of independence.

  Mr. Stevenson had been solicitous, but he had nevertheless been unable to meet her eyes as he told her that her father had closed out her account with a draft drawn to a bank in Cairo. He had not needed to say more. Her father had used her future security to finance his last expedition. And to think she had felt guilty about not offering it to him!

  “Oh, Papa,” she breathed. She could not be angry with him. It was so like him to be certain his next discovery would make all right and more. He had not done it to wound her. Indeed, as she thought about it, he could have done nothing else. It was his nature to be optimistic. And the search for treasures of the past was in his blood.

  A man brushed by her, breaking her trance. She took a breath and looked around. A light rain began to fall. Her thoughts careened through the consequences of her discovery. No independent competence for her. She pushed through the shoppers on Regent Street and dreaded telling her aunt she was now an officially indigent relative. She could not trespass on her aunt’s goodwill, however long that lasted. Perhaps not long.

  She must look about her for a situation, if she wanted to avoid selling herself under her aunt’s aegis to some elderly widower who could expect no better. But
what could she do? Governess? Hardly. She spoke French well, but her Latin had the Continental accent rather than the strange English one and she had no Italian. No one wanted Arabic or ancient languages. She could draw. Had she not drawn figures of all the temples and tombs that came in their way? But what of needlework and singing and deportment? She had no skill at being a young lady, and that was what was truly valued in a governess these days. She was not fashionable enough to be a dresser or a milliner. Would anyone think that provisioning a caravan prepared one for a post as housekeeper? She might serve as a translator, or perhaps a tutor at Oxford or Cambridge. But would anyone there hire a woman? She bit her lip. Unlikely. The only thing she could be was a servant who specialized in drudgery. She knew how to work hard.

  The prospect was hardly calculated to delight her. Her thoughts were dark as she turned off Piccadilly into Curzon Street. She went directly to her room to be sure of avoiding her aunt. But she could not do so forever. That evening before going out, her aunt looked in on her.

  Lady Rangle was pulling on long white gloves to go with the gossamer primrose gown she wore. “I am promised to Lady Hildebrand tonight, my dear, but we shall go to the Countess Lieven’s ball on Wednesday if we can procure anything decent for you to wear. I shall alert all my acquaintance tonight that I have a young person staying with me.” She gave a self-satisfied, if languid, smile. “I trust you shall not find yourself wanting for occupation.”

  “You are too kind, Aunt.”

  Lady Rangle peered at her. “What is the matter, child?”

  Beth looked up at her and hated the fact that tears welled in her eyes.

  Lady Rangle heaved a sigh. “So, you had bad news from Drummond’s, did you? I am not surprised. You might have known my reprehensible brother would have spent your portion.”

  Beth drew herself up. “His explorations were more important than any portion.”

  “The whole five thousand?”

  Beth nodded dumbly.

  “Well, then we shall have to get to work, won’t we?” She suppressed the energy that had welled in her voice. “Lord, I am tired already.” Then, looking at Beth kindly, she said, “Never fear, child. We shall bring you safely into the matrimonial harbor, even with no portion.”