Silver in the Blood (3 page)

Added to the strain of travel, of being in a strange place and meeting strange people every day, having snobbish maids who pretended they didn't understand you even though you had been told for years that your French was perfect, there was also That Awful Man to deal with.

That Awful Man, as Lou had dubbed him, was the man from the ship who had approached her without invitation and
spoken so strangely. He was here, in Paris, and he seemed to appear out of nowhere whenever Lou left the house. She saw him watching her as she strolled the boulevards with her family, saw him sitting alone a few tables away at restaurants, even saw him on the bank of the Seine as they took a riverboat cruise. He was tall and dark, and perhaps twenty years old. His clothes were good, without being exceptional, and he was always watching her. Every time he was near, Lou felt the most uncomfortable tingle up her spine, and she was coming to dread leaving the hotel.

What if he approached her again? What if he spoke to her? His words were meaningless, truly, but there was something upsetting about them all the same. He didn't appear mad, and yet he spoke nonsense with the greatest air of conviction! She wished Dacia were there, and not only so they could discuss the strange events that her cousin had witnessed. Lou had gotten a letter from Dacia that very morning, describing Aunt Kate's scandalous tryst on the train and her enigmatic words about someone (or something) paying tribute.

Full of questions about this, Lou didn't even notice as That Awful Man sidled up to her outside a milliner's shop. Her mother was still inside, trying on hats, and had asked Lou to step out on the sidewalk and wait for her father, who was meeting them for lunch.

The day was beautiful: the spring sunshine sparkling off the glass windows of the shops, and the Parisians out in their finest pastels. Lou tried to put the scandal with Aunt Kate and the man on the train out of her mind and enjoy the weather and the glory of being in Paris, when she felt that sensation travel up her spine.

“You are the Wing, I see it clearly,” said a voice behind her.

She whirled to see That Awful Man standing no more than a pace away.

“And you are more than that,” he said. “You are a houri, taunting me with your gray eyes and your delectable form!”

Once again, his words did not make sense, although that bit about her delectable form sounded quite vulgar, and Lou was absolutely at the end of her tether. Without thinking, she raised her still-furled parasol and struck him about the head and shoulders with a violence that surprised both of them.

He shouted an oath in some unknown language and ran off. Lou looked after him for a moment, panting, and screamed when someone came up behind her and asked if she was all right. She spun around to see her father standing there with a concerned look, and promptly burst into tears. Mr. Neulander quickly hailed a hansom and took her back to the hotel, where she lay on her bed with a cool cloth over her eyes until evening. Her mother insisted that she take supper on a tray in her room, and Lou did not object, but while everyone else was dining she pulled on a dress and went downstairs to the hotel library, to look up the word
houri
.

Then she rather wished she hadn't.

 

THE DIARY OF MISS DACIA VREEHOLT

4 May 1897

The ship from London to Greece was deathly boring. The train from Greece to Romania (Bucharest, to be exact) was grimy yet interesting. But the last few days shut in this house with no callers and no one to talk to but the servants were truly awful! I thought that I was brought here to get close to my mother's family, yet the only member in evidence is Aunt Kate. I have known Aunt Kate all my life, and she is therefore not all that interesting to me. (Unless she continues to have secret trysts with strange men, in which case she becomes very interesting, but not much of a role model for a young lady of my tender years.)

My disgraceful behavior in England was only a ruse, after all, and Lord Johnny explained it all very well. It wasn't as though a marriage announcement appeared in the papers, or any such thing! Must I be exiled because of it?

I say no!

I shall now test the bonds of my captivity. More later, if there's time.

“Dacia, where do you think you are going?”

Looking down at her lavender-and-white-striped walking gown with its eyelet lace trim, and then back at her aunt with an assumed expression of utmost innocence, Dacia shrugged her shoulders. “Why, out shopping, of course, Aunt Kate. Do you need anything? Some ribbons, perhaps?”

Aunt Kate didn't even bother to argue with her, just stood in the hallway looking impeccable as always in a morning gown of dove gray. She didn't sigh, didn't speak, just Looked.

Dacia knew that the best way to prove to her aunt that she was mature and in control was to remain silent and simply look back, but she never could. She stayed still for all of two seconds before she began her one-sided argument.

“I can hardly get into trouble; I don't know anyone here! And I'll take a footman with me. A large, burly footman. I have my own pin money, and I'll be back by lunchtime. Just please let
me go, Aunt Kate! I haven't been anywhere by myself in weeks and weeks and I just can't stay in this house another minute!”

Steely-eyed, Aunt Kate just Looked.

Irritated, restless, and several other emotions she could not accurately describe, Dacia looked back. She was just moments away from tearing off her walking gown and sliding down the banisters in her underthings, whooping like a savage, but she fought that urge with an effort. Instead, she played dirty.

“Very well, Aunt Kate. I suppose I shall just go up to my room and write a letter to my mother. Perhaps she will be able to tell me who it was that you were embracing on the back of our train that night.” She turned slowly and put her hand on the doorknob of her bedroom.

“Oh, take two footmen and get me some blue ribbons for my striped poplin, you terrible child,” Aunt Kate said, then she disappeared back into her own room.

Dacia couldn't believe that her ploy had worked, and simply stared at her aunt's door for half a minute. Then she really did whoop like a savage and ran down the stairs so fast that she might as well have slid on the banister.

She already had her hat on and her purse dangling from her wrist. All that remained was to find a pair of footmen to accompany her, and that was easily done. There was one right there in the entrance hall, staring at her. She quickly told him to find a friend and come along, and went out on the front steps to wait while she put on her gloves.

The sun was shining and it was pleasantly warm. She smoothed her gloves a final time and then unfurled her parasol. An entire city awaited her, and she could hardly wait to walk its
streets. Even the view from her bedroom window had been enticing: the Calea Victoriei, where her family's townhouse was located, was the most prosperous street in Bucharest. Every house, including their own, was enormous and gorgeously appointed with carved cornices and elegantly draped windows, manicured lawns, and lush gardens.

All her life it had been the same routine: New York City society, with its same old families in their old houses having their old parties, enlivened only slightly in the summer with a trip to Newport, where one stayed at the same hotel with the same families and the same parties once again, but at least there was sunshine and the shore to walk along. Lou never seemed to understand, but to Dacia the old routine was not remotely comforting. Instead it was becoming more and more stifling, and Dacia perpetually felt as though there was something fighting within her chest, ready to burst out. She wanted to run and leap and scream and do a thousand forbidden things all at once.

Aunt Kate; Dacia's mother, Ileana; and Lou's mother, Maria, had traveled to America from Romania as young women and ended up staying when Ileana and Maria fell in love with two of New York's most eligible bachelors. They had not been back to Romania since, but all her life Dacia had heard stories about glorious Bucharest, with its elegant boulevards and magnificent homes. She had been taught Romanian from birth, she knew the country's history backward and forward, and she knew the details of each uncle and cousin still living there, even though she had met only a handful of them on their infrequent trips to New York.

And now that she was in Bucharest at last, Aunt Kate
seemed determined to keep Dacia away from it all. Dacia had practically been a prisoner for a week, and Aunt Kate would only give her a quelling look when she asked why. She knew why, but she wanted to make Aunt Kate say it aloud. If she was to be punished by being kept in a beautifully furnished prison, she wanted someone to have the humanity to tell her outright. Dacia was sure things would be better once Lou arrived with Uncle Cyrus and Aunt Maria, but she wasn't sure she could wait that long.

So she had played her final card, dangerous as it was. The footmen stepped out of the house to join her, and Dacia strolled forth at last.

The weather was very fine. The streets were lined with beech trees, and giant lilac bushes bloomed in every garden. The purple flowers filled the air with scent, and Dacia drank it all in. She knew New York so well that none of it excited her anymore, and she had spent the last few months in London, which was like New York only older and dirtier, in her opinion. But Bucharest was magnificent. Exotic without being off-putting, she decided. She recognized the French influence of the architecture, mixed in with some decidedly Eastern styles that pleased her a great deal, like houses painted bold colors, colonnades with striped and pointed arches, and exotic plants that stretched toward the sunlight. Dacia beamed at them and stretched herself, standing even taller.

She had studied a map and a guidebook assiduously back at the house so that she could make her way to the best shops without having to ask the footmen to lead her. They seemed almost
nervous, and she could see them out of the corners of her eyes, scowling at anyone who dared to look at her. Was the city really that dangerous? She was not the only young woman out and about, and the streets were full of carriages bearing wealthy men and women who seemed not in the least bit anxious for their pearls. She herself wore only a small gold locket, and carried just enough money to buy some trinkets, so she was hardly a target for pickpockets, and even if she were robbed, it would be no great loss.

Dacia glared over her shoulder at one of the footmen when he moved in too close, and that's when she knew they were being followed.

Just as she had looked over her shoulder, someone behind them had moved a little too quickly for this lazy spring afternoon, though no one else seemed to notice.

Telling herself that it was a silly fancy, she kept on going. But the feeling that they were being watched—that she, in particular, was being watched—would not leave her. It prickled down her back, little hot pinpoints beneath her dress. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, but the feeling persisted. She adjusted her parasol over her shoulder so that it concealed more of her, but still something was not right.

The city began to feel less and less welcoming. The lines of the buildings were foreign, and she took a sudden dislike to the mixture of French and Eastern architecture. Couldn't they find their own style, rather than copy from everyone else? There was a rococo-fronted hotel just next to a restaurant with striped Byzantine arches over the doors, and she shook her head. She glared
at a bank and, consequently, a banker coming down the stone steps, and he looked startled.

When she saw a shop selling ribbons and lace, she let out a little huff of breath and almost ran to the door, telling the footmen tersely to stay outside. In the dim coolness of the interior, she relaxed, and the shopkeeper had to ask her three times if he could help her before she came to herself.

“Ah, yes!” She remembered to speak Romanian. “I am looking for blue ribbons, dark blue, and perhaps something the color of the lilacs outside.”

The man smiled at her indulgently and agreed that the lilacs were very beautiful, and very suited to her coloring as well. Dacia thanked him, though she knew that it was merely the empty flattery of someone trying to sell his wares. She was very tall, and too slim for true beauty, and added to that she appeared to be the only woman in Bucharest who didn't have masses of beautiful dark hair. Her hair was blond with ashy streaks that she secretly contemplated dyeing some brighter shade.

The shopkeeper brought out bolts of ribbons, but Dacia was distracted again. There was a scent in the air, not of dust and silk, but something else. It was familiar and strange at the same time. Dacia resisted the urge to raise her head and sniff, and focused on the shopkeeper and his wares.

At last Dacia selected wide dark blue satin for Aunt Kate, who had bought a straw hat in London that Dacia thought needed some ribbon to really make something special of it. And some narrower ribbon to go with her aunt's poplin walking gown. Then Dacia bought herself some lilac silk ribbons in different widths.