The Companion (32 page)

“What is it?” Ware asked. “What does she say?”

Ian glanced to the Major. The room shivered back into place. “You know very well. Did you take the letter to the Foreign Office in Whitehall? Or the Admiralty?” He watched
Ware try to dissemble and the anger drained away. “It doesn’t matter. Patriots should not be despised.”

“What will you do?” Ware studied his face. The letter confirmed exactly what Ian was. Ware knew Ian drank blood like Asharti’s army. He thought him evil, like the bitch Queen herself. But then, why was he here? Only to obey Asharti? That was reason enough. Still . . .

“What do your betters want me to do?”

“I told them you . . . you might be able to stop her.”

“Whatever made you think I would try?”

“I wasn’t sure you would.” Ware had eyes only for his glass. “But I thought it possible.”

Ian tossed the letter on the writing desk and drained the brandy, pretending calm. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” He shot a glance at Ware. “Can your contacts wait while I decide?”

Ware shrugged and rose. “I don’t know.” He looked curiously at Ian. “How long were you . . . with her?”

Ian kept his face impassive. “Until she discarded me. I won’t submit to her power again.”

Ware shuddered. “Of course.” He picked up his hat and headed toward the door. “I am at the Hart and Hounds. I’ll tell Whitehall to wait until Wednesday, that you’re making plans.”

He was gone. The Countess slipped back into the room. She went silently to the desk, read the letter while Ian poured himself another brandy. “So,” she said at last.

“Indeed.” His gut churned. If he did not go to Asharti, she would come to find him.

“She offers you a position at her side.” Beatrix Lisse, Countess of Lente, still thought one who got letters from Asharti might be her minion.

“No. For her there is no relationship of equals. She offers a return to slavery, or she wants to kill me in case I pose a threat.”

“And why exactly would you pose a threat?” The Countess’s eyes were black metal.

Ian considered her for a moment, revulsion and fear plunging inside him for all his calm exterior. This woman knew things Ian must know. He must understand what he was and what he was up against, what tools and skills were
at his disposal, if he was to have any chance to escape the fate Asharti planned for him. It might be clutching at straws, but he needed this woman. “Because I was infected with Asharti’s blood
after
she got the blood of the Old One.”

The Countess leaned over the desk. “You have the blood of the Old One in you?”

“Only once removed. Asharti drank a drop from his veins. She tore her lip on my teeth.”

“That is why she is strong enough to best the champion Rubius sent against her,” the vampire woman whispered. “Now she is making others. Her army drinks blood openly.” She paced to the window, sprinkled with diamonds of raindrops against the blackness. After a moment she whirled. “If she is not stopped, there will be more vampires than humans on which to feed, to say nothing of drawing unwanted attention to our kind. It will mean war between the races. The delicate balance that sustains our society will be overturned forever.”

“Then stop her,” Ian snapped.

Lady Lente lifted her chin. “I am not sure we can. She killed Ivan Remstrev last month. He was second only to Rubius in strength.”

“Muster your own army,” Ian said, exasperated.

“Making vampires is forbidden. Rubius would never consent to spreading the Companion and later hunting down all we made to kill them before they could go mad or make others. We ourselves are strung out over the world. By the time we could gather, there might be too many of them to stop. And then, she has the blood of the Old One.”

Revulsion filled Ian. If they could not stop her, Asharti would lay a swathe of destruction from Algiers, to Rome, to Paris, to London, and even to Stanbridge in order to eliminate him. He was the only other source, however diluted, of the power of the Old One.

Premonition filled Ian. As one, he and the Countess turned toward the rain-spattered window. It was almost dawn. With a start he remembered that he had a duel to fight this morning. As silly as that seemed at this point, he did not want it spread about that he had failed to appear.

She seemed about to speak and thought better of it. “I am sorry it took so long to find you tonight.” She rose and took a card from her beaded reticule. “Call on me at sunset. Decisions must be made. There are things you must know. Do not fail.” It was a threat, uttered in that musical contralto, but a threat nonetheless, the second against him tonight. She stepped toward the door, but she did not open it. Instead she paused. A whirling blackness overtook her that made Ian dizzy. When the shadows dissipated, she was gone.

Ian stood for a single moment, breathing hard, in the middle of the room. Then he strode down the hall and out the door to the waiting carriage. He must get to the dueling ground. The Mulgrave woman had bragged that they were lovers, false though it was, and her fool husband had challenged him in the middle of White’s. Now he would be late. The sun might even have risen before the face-off could occur. Painful, but all he had to manage was a retreat to the drawn curtains of the carriage after letting himself be shot. The carriage pulled off at a brisk trot. Ian sank into the squabs, the enormity of what had happened this evening overwhelming him. Beatrix Lisse, Asharti, Major Ware, the letter, all whirled in his brain.

He was afraid of Beatrix Lisse. She was old and strong. But he was more afraid of Asharti. A sense of predestination filled him. What would Lady Lente want of him? Faustus selling his soul to the devil probably wouldn’t touch it. Still, there must be some way she could help him escape Asharti, who would appear one day looking, literally, for blood. He glanced at the card.

Number 46 Berkeley Square.

Fifteen

“You refused Blakely?” Lady Rangle let her voice rise, all languor forgotten. She thrust up from the chaise longue in her boudoir and began to pace among the pale pink and lavender colors laid in swaths of fabric across windows, bed hangings, and upholstered furniture.

Beth did not relish the scene to come. “I cannot marry without love, or even respect.”

“Respect!” Lady Rangle actually wrung her hands. Beth had never seen someone really do that. “I don’t know whether you have looked in the mirror lately, my dear, but not all of us will have a variety of suitors from which to choose.”

Beth knew she was not pretty. Still she had her pride. “He was at least four years my junior, Aunt, and he had little experience of the world. We should not have suited.”

“Suited!” Lady Rangle cried. “He had a reasonable portion. He was not ill looking. He actually
offered
for you! And you refused him, after all the trouble I took to let you two be alone in Ranelagh Gardens. I can present them, but I cannot accept for you. You must do
something
on your own.” She turned abruptly. “Still, if the Admiral can be brought to the mark . . .”

Beth repressed an urge to hang her head. “I shall refuse him as well, dear Aunt.” She saw her aunt’s eyes grow alarmingly protuberant. “Older than my father!” she said hastily. “And I hardly understand a word he says, his speech is so full of naval expressions.”

“All you want to talk about is your precious North Africa, or some arcane study of something or other,” her aunt accused. “For God’s sake, what young lady plays
chess
?”

“I have been very careful not to talk about anything I was interested in, once I knew the effect,” Beth said, her voice tight. “I have no wish to be a bore.”

Lady Rangle was struck by a thought. “That nice young Major—he seemed to enjoy talking about foreign places with you last night. . . .”

“I would not hold out hope of the Major,” Beth said severely, realizing that her aunt had eavesdropped on her conversations. “I believe he uses me as an excuse only to address Emma Fairfield. I expect an offer will be made, but not to me.”

Lady Rangle sighed and collapsed upon an upholstered stool in front of her dressing table. “Ungrateful child!”

Beth’s heart clenched. “I do not mean to be a charge upon you,” she murmured. Perhaps her aunt was ready to hear that Beth was looking for a situation. After all, who else could provide her a recommendation? Beth was growing desperate. “I think I would prefer living retired in the country. If I could find a way to earn my bread, I would brush the soot of London from my shoulders in an instant.”

Lady Rangle looked up, her eyes suddenly calculating. “Would you?” For the second time, Beth found herself examined like a commodity by her aunt. She saw the vague blue eyes sharpen as she rejected the possibility of governess, milliner, even lady’s maid. “A companion,” she said at last, “to an invalid. Though, to be sure, it would have to be a particularly snappish person who had run through several other attendants to resort to taking on someone with so little address.” She nodded to herself. “I could make discreet inquiries.”

Beth felt some door inside her close back emotions with a
clang, remembering Jenny’s lot with Mrs. Pargutter. “I would be grateful, Aunt. The sooner I am settled, the better.”

“Yes,” her aunt murmured, already making mental lists as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror and pulled one indolent curl back into place. “Yes . . . I know just where to start.”

Beth slid from the room.

Number 46 Berkeley Square was an exquisite example of a stepped-back town house built in slate-colored Portland stone in the last century, its tall arched windows lined in white, its doors painted a rebellious but elegant blue. Ian spent an hour in the morning recovering from the bullet wound in his shoulder. He had not allowed an examination by the doctor but ducked into his carriage, squinting in the painful sun. It would never do to let the gossiping physician let on that he’d been badly wounded. Mulgrave had been quite put out that he deloped. Perhaps now he would ask his stupid wife for the truth about the whole affair.

The servant answering the door at number 46 said the Countess of Lente was expecting him. Ian stepped into one of the loveliest drawing rooms he had seen. Shades of blue and taupe traveled from thick carpet to striped and flowered upholstery and through the draperies on the windows that looked into the street and the park beyond. A heavy rococo sideboard seemed born to accompany a tiny inlaid gaming table. Who would have thought to place them in the same room? Each balanced the other. A painting whose small gold plate said it was painted by J.M.W. Turner attracted his attention. A beautifully rendered cloudscape of a coming storm, all light and threatening air, loomed over a bucolic harvest scene still sunlit. It seemed prophetic somehow.

He stared at it, his thoughts whirling darkly in North Africa around the horror he thought he’d left behind. He had considered all through a sleepless day bolting from London to some backwater like America. But that would leave Henry and his family, Miss Rochewell, and all of England as fair game for Asharti. He told himself he did not care. In any
case, he could not go without knowing more about what he was, what made Asharti different now that she had the Old One’s blood, and what it might mean that he had an infinitesimal portion of that blood.

Ian felt his hostess’s presence behind him. He turned to find her contemplating him with piercing eyes. He had felt that kind of evaluation before in a slave market. She wore a gown of deep peach silk that echoed the auburn in her hair and made her eyes look black indeed. “So, you came. Excellent choice. We have much to do.” She pulled the bell rope. “Simington, bring the gentleman some brandy. Champagne for me. And cakes or some such.”

The servant disappeared with a brief bow.

“I have come for knowledge, Lady Lente.”

She draped herself on a chaise upholstered in taupe and cream stripes. “Have I not asked you to call me Beatrix?”

“I know nothing about you. Our connection hardly warrants familiarity.”

“And you will not know anything about me. But Beatrix is the name my kind have called me for seven hundred years. Surely you, newly made though you are, can do no less.”

He did not answer. He did not relish being admitted to “her kind’s” inner circle.

The servant brought a tray with two cut glasses, a decanter, and a plate upon it. Ian waved away the nuts and
petit fours
, but as the servant retired the Countess poured him a brandy. “You will need this.”

He did not doubt it. The first fiery gulp was most welcome.

“You are right,” she observed. “You must be given information. We will start with questions and progress to practicum. I shall evaluate.”

At least she was honest about the evaluation part. “First I would know what you will demand in return,” Ian said stiffly. He had experience of demands by women such as this one.

She raised her brows at his temerity, then set her lips. “I will demand nothing if I do not find you capable. What I would ask I could not compel. So, you will choose.”

Ian reddened. This woman knew Asharti. She knew compulsion. She might know what Asharti had done to him. Regardless of what she said, she might want to do the same.

“I shall determine your ability in the course of our studies. Sit.” She pointed. “And ask.”

He had been thinking all the hours of a sleepless day about what he must know. So he pushed down his rebellion and sat. “First, what is the Companion?”

“A parasite,” she said simply. “A symbiotic partner, if you will, that shares our blood. It is not a disease, you know, but a new level of existence. If it gets into your veins you must acquire immunity from a vampire’s blood to survive. But once you live, your Companion-partner shares power with you that mere humans cannot imagine.” His face must have shown his repugnance. “You
are
still human, but now you are more, two beings in one.”

“What can the power do?” He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hanging on her words.

“Our Companion rebuilds its host, for convenience’ sake, indefinitely. That gives us what can be, for practical purposes, immortality.”