Blood Marriage (29 page)

"Then don't lose him," the man's voice, his words slightly slurred, drifted out of the darkness behind her. 

Elizabeth whirled and squinted into the shadows. He sat just beyond the reach of the candlelight, the tips of his boots visible, but little else. Elizabeth lifted the candle from its place near her mother's feet and held it out. He brought his brandy glass up to shield his eyes. 

"Put that back. It's past midnight. No decent time to be shining light on a man." The Duke of Marlbourne was drunk. He wore the same black clothes he'd worn to Grubner's funeral that morning. His blond hair was wild and his cravat untied. He looked older tonight, more like Nicholas's father, less like his brother.

"Put it down," he insisted. Elizabeth returned the candle to its place at the end of the coffin. "Good girl. Now, since that fool son of mine has allowed you to wander off from his bed, come sit by me, child. Keep me company while I fin...finish this drink."

Elizabeth hesitated. The duke rose and leaned into the circle of candlelight. His head seemed to float, disembodied by the darkness behind him. He smiled a tipsy smile. His mouth and teeth seemed overlarge. Elizabeth glanced at the door.

"I'm 'armless, my dear." He put a hand on the back of a chair and tugged it into the darkness. Brandy sloshed from the glass in his other hand, leaving a glistening trail, dark and wet, on the wood floor. The trail followed him into the shadows. Elizabeth heard the sound of furniture colliding and a thick wooden stick, sharp at one end, rolled out of the darkness. It clattered across the floor and came to rest at the base of one of the candle pillars. 

"Truly, I'm harmless," the duke repeated. "Not like them. Bloodsuckers! Murder'rs!" Air whooshed from beneath a leather cushion. Marlbourne had fallen back into his chair. "Where'd my damn brandy go? Lizbeth, be an angel and bring me the decanner...the tecander...more damn brandy." 

A hand shot out of the darkness, one finger pointing to a table Elizabeth remembered was near the door. She took the candle from the head of her mother's coffin, found the table and picked up the brandy decanter. She paused, tempted to dash out the door and return to her room. Would her father-in-law even remember such rudeness in the morning?

"Leave the light. Bring the brandy," he said. 

Elizabeth returned the candle to the head of the coffin and stepped to the edge of the light. She held the decanter out into the darkness that shrouded everything past the duke's boot tips. She expected him to take it. His hand wrapped her wrist instead and he jerked her down into the darkness beside him. Her thigh bumped hard against the chair arm as she slid into the empty seat. 

"Good girl." The duke patted Elizabeth's thigh, then took the decanter from her hand. She shivered despite the heavy black mourning gown she wore. She wished she'd taken the time to don a shawl before leaving her room to search for her husband. 

It was becoming a pattern with them. They went to bed together, but when Elizabeth woke in the middle of the night, Nicholas was gone. Last night she'd found him asleep in a chair in the library with piles of books surrounding him. Most, like the one Lennie had given her, were about vampires. A few were about even more frightening things: demons and demonic possession. Reluctant to wake him and unwilling to leave him alone, she'd curled up on a leather couch nearby. She'd fallen asleep there beside him, only to wake the next morning in their bed, a white rose on the pillow where Nicholas should have been.

"Hard to believe he's gone." The decanter clicked against glass. The glug of brandy being poured followed. Elizabeth's eyes were adjusting to the dark. The duke's shadow, denser than the surrounding gloom, leaned sideways to set the decanter on the floor. 

"Good man, Karl," the duke said. "Past seventy, though he didn't look it. My father said Grubner was the best man with a horse ever born in this county. Thought well of him. Left him a fine little farm and that house in the village when he died."

Marlbourne slammed his palm hard on the arm of his chair, causing Elizabeth to jump in her seat. Perhaps she'd take her chances on what the man would remember in the morning. She started to stand. He pressed a hand on her shoulder. She sank back into her chair. The strong smell of brandy told her his face was close to hers. He slapped the armrest again and a shower of droplets wet Elizabeth's arm. 

"But Heaven's Edge was Grubner's real home. After he los' his only boy in the war with that damned Napoleon, his brother's boy took over the farm for him. Grubner and his wife came back to Heaven's Edge. Never left again." The duke's voice turned softer, sadder. "Our wives died just days apart. Influenza."

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth said. 

"Sad days. Then and now. For all of us." 

Elizabeth nodded in the darkness, her eyes on the beautiful woman in the coffin. Sad days. As if signaling their agreement, the candles at either end of her mother's body flickered in a sudden draft and were almost extinguished. The draft died away and they sprang back to life.

"What was Nicholas like as a child?" Elizabeth asked, hoping to distract her father-in-law from unhappy memories. Marlbourne chuckled.

"Trouble. Same as now. But as a child he worried his mother to distraction. We'd already lost four sons."

"Four? Nicholas had brothers?"

"Didn't he tell you? My Sarah gave birth to six strong, healthy children. Five sons and a daughter. Lillian, our girl, lives in Egypt. She married a man old enough to be her grandfather. Spends his time digging in the dirt for broken pots." The duke snorted rudely and lifted the brandy to his lips.

Elizabeth waited, hoping this talkative mood would last. When the duke spoke again the anguish of loss was heavy in his voice.

"Lillian married the old fool to spite me. She blamed me for her mother's death. But I gave Sarah my word I wouldn't allow it. I gave her my word."

There was the sound of soft snoring. The duke had fallen asleep. Elizabeth sighed. She could leave now, but she no longer wanted to. She wanted to know more about the man she'd married, the family she'd married into.

"Four brothers?" Elizabeth poked a finger at a bit of dense shadow she believed to be the duke's stomach. He made a startled sound. The snoring stopped.

"You had four other sons?" Elizabeth prompted.

"Yes, five boys in all. Nickie was the youngest. Patrick, James, William, Michael. All dead before Nick was old enough to know or miss them. But I miss them. And Sarah. And Grubner." The shadow moved. Glass clicked on glass. Brandy poured. 

"What happened?" Elizabeth asked.

"Sarah treated Nicholas and Lillian like china dolls. But Lillian was fine. Healthy. She could fall down stairs, tumble from trees, the sorts of things kids do, and be none the worse for it. But Nickie, he was like the others. Bump him, he'd be black and blue. Cut him, he wouldn't stop bleeding. Not normal. We knew he'd die like the others. That's why I did it. Sarah couldn't have borne the death of another child. And neither could I."

Elizabeth felt as if she couldn’t get a breath. "How did the others die?"

"Falls, cuts, and the like. The doctors called it bleeding disease. Said it was unusual, so many in the same family. That's why Nick's what he is. My fault. Was trying to save him."

"What is he?" Elizabeth held her breath. She knew what her husband was, had known since that night at Maidenstone. Yet she feared her father-in-law's response. As if hearing someone else say it, would make it irrevocably real.

"He's one of them.
Bloodsuckers and murderers
."

Stunned, Elizabeth sat silent.

"My fault. Was trying to save him." The duke's voice was thick with brandy and guilt. "I heard there was a Romanian physician who performed miracles with children like Nick. Took the whole family, Sarah and Lillian too. We went to Romania and found the doctor. He promised to help our boy, make him well again in just three treatments. But he insisted on secrecy. He refused to allow us to be present during the treatments."

The dense shadow that was the duke raised his glass to his lips and drained the last of the brandy.

"After the first treatment, Nickie was better. So much so that we decided to take a tour, see a bit of the country while we awaited the second treatment. We'd been told not to remove the bandage at his neck. But boys are boys. He took it off in a shop in a tiny village where we'd stopped for lunch. I'll never forget the horror on the shopkeeper's face. At first I passed off what they told us as ridiculous. Peasant superstition. I told myself that Nickie was getting well and that's all that mattered. But when it came time to leave him alone with the doctor for his second treatment..."

The shadow-duke shrugged. "I told Sebastian I'd take a long walk. Instead, I hid in his surgery. I saw what he did to my boy and I killed him for his kindness. He'd only been married a few weeks. When his bride found out, she went mad. She took both the children...before she died, she made Nicholas what he is. My fault. I brought this on us all. Bloodsuckers. Murderers."

"You can't believe that?" Elizabeth finally found her voice. "Not about your own son!"

Soft snoring was followed by the rap of a glass hitting the floor.

"Wake up!" Elizabeth poked her finger hard into the man several times. He murmured objections in his sleep, but resumed snoring. "Wake up!" she insisted, but there was no response.

Elizabeth gripped the arms of her chair. All Marlbourne had said spun in her mind with the events of the past few days: Margaret's attack, the frightening wedding, the horror at Maidenstone, the runner's accusations, her husband's hands at her mother's throat when the door finally opened, Grubner's death, the twin puncture wounds on her own body. She pressed her fingers to her temples. None of it mattered. The man she loved was innocent.

But his own father's words whispered through her mind.
Bloodsuckers. Murderers.
 

Cold air, ripe with the smell of the stables, washed over her, adding to the chills the duke's words had raised on her flesh. The candles at either end of her mother's coffin flickered again. One went out, but the other held fast to life, bobbing and dancing. Elizabeth rose on wobbly knees and entered the light, using one candle to relight the other. 

She glanced back at the duke. The tips of his boots slid further into the light as if he'd sunk deeper into his chair. The snores increased in volume. Elizabeth left the duke with her mother and slipped out of the parlor. 

The corridor was pitch black except for a faint glow at one end. But even without that beacon, Elizabeth could have found her way. Her night vision was gone, apparently as temporary as her reprieve from pain, but the draft that had blown out the candle continued to stream over her skin, washing her in the scents of hay and horses and night. She moved into it, seeking its source, and passed out of the hall, across the entry and through the door leading to the kitchens.

The kitchen door stood wide to the night, a box of kindling propping it open. The faint jingle of harnesses drifted in with the chill breeze. On the wood table at the center of the room lay a pretty blue quilt, white horses cavorting playfully against a blue background. Near the quilt were several large barrels. Even if the words 'Blackfish Oil' hadn't been painted on them in bold red letters, Elizabeth would have known what was inside. The strong fishy odor of the cheap lamp fuel was unmistakable.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel path outside. Someone was coming. Elizabeth dodged behind the half-open door separating the servants' dining room from the kitchen. From where she stood, she could peer through the thin space near the hinges where the door joined to its frame. She could see into the kitchen beyond. Two men in black cloaks entered the kitchen. One stopped, searching the darkness with his eyes.

"What is it?" Nicholas asked. He picked up the white horse quilt and threw it over one shoulder, then lifted two barrels of blackfish oil from the table.

"Nothing. Probably," Bergen replied. "Thought I caught a familiar scent. Couldn't be her. She drank tea with the rest of them before you went upstairs tonight. Besides, she doesn't smell the same anymore, not since you bit her. Still tempting, but not quite as overwhelming." Bergen picked up the remaining barrels of blackfish oil, wrinkling his nose and turning his head away.

"Who then? runners?" 

"No runners. I took tea round to all of them. Even the runner set to watch at the edge of the woods. He's fast asleep against a tree. They'll be no trouble tonight."

"Careful Sebastian, you're becoming a regular poisoner."

"Bergen the Poisoner and his friend Nicholas the Murderer." Bergen laughed. "We'll make a lovely pair hanging from the gallows if Fielding has his way." 

"Then let's be sure he doesn't. Drugged or not, I don't trust Lennie to sleep for long." Nicholas went out the door. 

Bergen took one last look around the kitchen and followed.

Elizabeth stepped out from behind the door and tiptoed across the kitchen, fingering the tea stain on her dress as she went. Her mind struggled to pull up some memory, but she pushed it aside. If she'd been drugged before, that knowledge could wait. Right now she needed to know what her husband and the doctor were doing, and why. 

Across the lawn from the kitchen, a wagon and two strong horses waited in front of the stable entrance. Jimmy was checking the harnesses. The barrels of blackfish oil from the kitchen table now sat in the wagon among a jumble of shovels, ropes, and old blankets. Dr. Bergen appeared at the stable doors and called to Jimmy. The boy left the horses tied to a post and followed the doctor into the stable.

Elizabeth stooped low and dashed out the kitchen door and across the yard, wondering as she did so if she'd lost her mind completely. Climbing into the wagon wasn't easy. Her joints protested even that simple exertion. But the men were up to something, and judging by the fact that they'd attempted to drug her along with the rest of the household, asking sweetly was unlikely to yield any answers. So she hurried to find a spot, away from the shovels and other sharp tools, among the oil barrels. Her knees pulled tight against her chest, she tugged the tangle of old blankets over herself, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head to make herself as small as possible. The reeking fumes of the blackfish oil made breathing more than unpleasant but it was too late to move. She used the edge of a blanket to cover her nose and mouth.