Awaiting the Moon (25 page)

And then she was gone, the door silently closing behind her.

THE day was long and felt like drudgery after the sweet moments of utter bliss, being in Count Nikolas’s arms. Elizabeth endured the afternoon, then visited Countess Uta, and after, before retiring for the night, she read
The Mysteries of Udolpho
for a while to Frau Liebner.

The count, luckily for her fragile hold on rationality, was absent from the dinner table, and she excused herself from the after-dinner ritual of the drawing room, pleading a headache.

Charlotte was still not feeling well and so had gone back to her bed.

And then silence and solitude. Blessed, blessed solitude in her own room, cold and lonely as it sometimes seemed. Reflecting on the moments with the count, touching his hair, feeling him melt against her, his strength deserting him as she sheltered him against her bosom, she wondered if she had ever felt so about John—the tenderness and solicitude—even in the midst of thinking she loved him and would forever. But she had been deceived in those emotions.

She felt barely a twinge about John now and experienced only disgust when she remembered their times together. Those precious stolen moments that had once felt sacred right now seemed, in retrospect, hurried and wicked, the merest satisfying of bodily urges with neither tenderness nor affection to sanctify them.

But what had possessed her when she saw the count so weary and troubled to take him to her breast like that? It was the action of a moment, the decision made somewhere else than in her mind. And what followed had been heady, sweet, thrilling… and dangerous.

Sleepless, she abandoned her bed and instead huddled in the window seat of her room, which looked out over the back and side of the castle, the stables dark, the snowy fir-clad hills beyond gleaming from the light of the full moon. How long she had been awake, she didn’t know, but it had been hours, some spent pacing, some spent laying on her bed gazing at the ceiling, and now, in the window seat, staring out.

As she gazed down at the stables she saw that there was one solitary light burning, and it was moving. Fascinated, she watched. A stablehand—though she now knew some of them by sight, she couldn’t tell which one from her height, for his form was foreshortened—came to the door and looked out, then paced the stable yard and went back in. After a time, he did the same thing again. Was he merely sleepless, too? She didn’t think that was likely; the stable hands worked too hard and their life was too grim. Sleep must be a kind of refuge for them, a release from the unutterable weariness of their long day.

It was one of the older men, she could tell by his walk, which listed to one side as if he had a bad leg. As she watched, she saw him stiffen and hold his lantern up high; he stood so as a rider galloped into the yard, splashing through the slush. It was a large man in a black cloak, and he was burdened by something… or someone. For it was, in his arms, no inanimate object, but a child, or a woman.

Her hands pressed to the cold glass, she watched, but her breath kept misting the window, and she didn’t see him in the act of dismounting, distracted as she was by wiping the fog away.

Where had he gone?

And then she saw him, still burdened and striding out of the stable. He headed toward the castle, his step sure, his pace hurried.

Who was it? And what, or whom, did he carry?

When he disappeared from sight, she grabbed a robe, slipped it on, and fled the room, moving down to the gallery, but there was no one in the great hall. If it was a servant she might never catch sight of them, for they would enter by a servant’s entrance. She paused and waited in the shadows, but still there was no one.

Shivering, she retreated back up toward her room but heard a noise and shrank back against a wall. A heavy tread— of a large man in boots, perhaps? But from where? Any sensible woman would retreat to her room… or would have stayed in her room in the first place. But she couldn’t.

Down the hall… her own corridor! She crept along the wall in the shadows toward the servants’ stairs at the end of the new wing, for she could hear the footsteps get closer, and then the door that topped the staircase opened. A cloaked figure pushed through, and there he was, with his burden. But who? She moved slightly and the man turned.

Nikolas! She gasped and he caught sight of her, his face almost unrecognizable, it was so twisted in fury. The cloak that covered his burden shifted, and one silvery blond ringlet fell out. She started forward but in that instant, as he growled, “Go back, Elizabeth,” a cold hand clutched her and yanked her backward, through a door.

She shrieked, but a hand covered her mouth. She fought, but the figure was stronger than she.

“HSST, BE quiet, Miss Stanwycke!”

She struggled free and righted herself and saw, by faint candlelight, Cesare Vitali in his dressing gown. She had been hauled into his dressing room, it appeared by the wardrobes lining the walls; she had known his suite was beside her own room but had never seen it.

“That was the count!” she cried. “But who…” She fell silent, not sure she wanted to know what was going on, nor who the blond girl or woman was.

“You should stay in your room at night, Miss Stanwycke.”

She stared at him, wondering at the hint of threat in his voice. “What’s going on?” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“Nothing that should concern you.”

He did not say another word but merely poked his head out and looked up and down the hall.

He pushed her out and said, “Go to bed, Miss Stanwycke, and from now on stay there. And stay out of business that is not yours.”

The door slammed behind her and somewhere else down the hall another door closed, but whether it was in the same corridor or in the old part of the castle, she could not tell.

Shivering with fear, she scurried to her own room and shut the door, pushing the chair from her desk in front of it. That was the last time she would wander at night; she was cured, she hoped, of curiosity forever.

And yet, even as she crawled into her bed and blew out her candle, she was plagued by one thought.
Who, of all the woman in the castle, did that silvery blond lock of hair belong to?

Who had the count been carrying from the stable and beyond
?

She slept, but it must have only been for three or four hours. The questions she had gone to sleep with still plagued her when she arose and sat at her desk in the faint early morning light from her window. Who was the blond woman and why was Nikolas carrying her home from somewhere in the middle of the night? What was he hiding? In the pages of her journal she asked all the questions she was afraid to ask of anyone in the castle, made all the conjectures she did not dare to voice, and then she hid the calfbound book in her wardrobe. It would never do to leave it somewhere it could be discovered.

Whatever was going on, clearly it was something at least Cesare Vitali knew about.

But more, what had come to her as she lay fitfully dozing and waking, was that Nikolas must be the man she had seen the night she arrived at Wolfram castle. Surely it would be too great a coincidence to believe that the man in the black cloak chasing a blond woman and Count Nikolas in a black cloak carrying a blond woman were two different sets of people.

Her whole body ached with weariness. Blond women had run through her dreams all night, and every time it was a different one—Adele, Charlotte, Gerta, and even Melisande, whose hair was honey blond but had streaks of flax through it.

But why did she confine the choices to family members? It could even be Fanny, she thought, as the maid entered. She watched the pretty blond maiden going about her business, drawing open the curtains and serving Elizabeth tea, her preferred drink in the morning. Could she ask her? If it was Fanny, though, the girl must be in some kind of trouble and may be loath to speak of it.

“Did you sleep well, Fanny?” Elizabeth asked, taking a sip from the porcelain cup. An awful thought occurred to her in that moment—that if it was the young maid that Nikolas was carrying home, did that mean perhaps he was having some kind of illicit relationship with her?

“Yes, Miss Stanwycke, I always do sleep well.”

Nikolas’s part in the whole thing might be innocent, though, or perhaps even heroic.

Elizabeth’s rich imagination constructed possibilities and probabilities. If Fanny was having some kind of affair with someone else, that man could be abusing her, and Nikolas could have rescued her from the clutches of the villain, though that didn’t explain the blond woman being chased by the cloaked horseman the first night of her arrival.

And from where could Nikolas be bringing her the previous night? Why would Fanny leave the castle, unless her lover was someone from the village, perhaps? And that same question followed if the blonde in his arms was someone other than Fanny—Charlotte or Melisande, for example.

“Fanny,” Elizabeth said.

The girl turned to her just before exiting. “Yes?”

“I want you to know,” she said carefully, watching her face and eyes, “that if ever… if you ever need someone to talk to, someone a little older than yourself, I am always here. You can tell me anything.”

The puzzled expression on Fanny’s face spoke volumes about her complete innocence of any kind of subterfuge or secrecy. She said, “Th-thank you, Miss Stanwycke.”

So, if Elizabeth was as good a judge of character as she fancied herself, and that alone was in question given recent events in her life, then Fanny was not the blonde in Count Nikolas’s arms. She sat in her desk chair staring at the floor and pondering. It was most certainly not Adele, for she was taller, nor could Elizabeth ever imagine the eldest sister of the von Wolfram family falling in a faint or creeping out to meet a lover. Of the other three possibilities, who was most likely the one?

Inescapably, she concluded the most likely candidate was Charlotte. The girl was upset about something and, as she well knew, an affair going awry could cause a woman turmoil and desperation.

Her thoughts a confused jumble, Elizabeth dressed and descended to the breakfast room where she was, as often occurred, the first at the table. She ate slowly at first, as Count Delacroix came in. He was always rather quiet in the morning, and so Elizabeth merely said a good morning to him and continued her meal. Bartol Liebner was next to enter, and he came in with a cheery greeting for her. He asked after her sleeping, and smiled and nodded when she said she had a fitful sleep.

“I, too, was troubled in my sleep. I thought I heard something, and indeed went to my door and peeped out, but nothing there was in the hall. Were you likewise disturbed, Miss Stanwycke?”

She was saved from answer by Countess Adele, who entered and glowered around at those gathered, saying, “Has Charlotte not descended yet? I begin to think she is malingering. I saw her playing the piano with Melisande yesterday and walking with Christoph. If she is well enough to do all that, then she is well enough for morning lessons. Miss Stanwycke, I promise I will ensure the girl is in the yellow parlor at the proper time this morning. No more excuses.”

Countess Gerta fluttered in, planted a kiss on the French count’s silvery hair as Adele scowled, and took a piece of toast from the silver rack on the sideboard. “I feel so invigorated this morning. Did everyone sleep as well as I did? It was a blissful night.” She winked at the Frenchman and smiled innocently at her elder sister.

Charlotte and Melisande entered together just then, whispering to each other. As Charlotte sat without greeting anyone Elizabeth examined her and didn’t like what she saw. There were dark circles under the girl’s eyes, and her complexion was pale and puffy.

“Charlotte,” Countess Adele said, her demeanor severe. “I will have no more excuses. You will, from now on, attend Miss Stanwycke in the yellow parlor in the morning, or I will require you to see a physician.”

It was not a commandment inspired to bring Charlotte to her in a frame of mind amenable to tutelage, and Elizabeth fretted about how the day would go. But there was no way of correcting the impression the countess had left with the girl that Elizabeth had been complaining about the lack of application on the part of her student.

Melisande Davidovich, watchful and sympathetic, squeezed Charlotte’s hand. She whispered something, and the girl scowled and shook her head.

“I promise, Charlotte,” Elizabeth said, trying to soften the countess’s command, “that today will not be onerous.”

“What… shall I pour tea again, or walk with a book on my head, or pretend to speak with some aging English earl so he will grace me with his presence in the marital bed?” Charlotte stood, her voice rising and her face getting red. “I have decided I will no longer take the idiotic lessons,” she said, trembling all over. “I am done. And my uncle can punish me as he wishes, but I will not be some Englishman’s sow to breed healthy babies.”

Cesare Vitali came in that moment, and hearing the last words, looked shocked. “Countess Charlotte!” he exclaimed.

“No, Cesare, I will not be silent any longer.”

Elizabeth stood and watched, waiting for some explanation. She glanced between Charlotte’s face and the secretary’s. His was the more unreadable, his eyes shadowed behind the glinting glasses, but it seemed that he was trying to communicate something to her.

“Things are not right in this house,” she began. Melisande reached up and took her hand, squeezing it in a silent sign of support, but Charlotte faltered and did not go on, her gaze locked with Cesare Vitali’s.

Bartol Liebner, his expression troubled, had stood as well, and said, “My dear niece, tell us all. Tell us your troubles. Surely as a family—”

“Shut your mouth, Bartol,” Countess Adele said, her tone offering no quarter. “Charlotte, you are hysterical. Go to your room and I will come up and speak to you.”

Gerta giggled inappropriately but then stifled her laughter and bit her lip. Elizabeth heard, but she could not tear her eyes from Charlotte’s face.

The girl quailed visibly but rallied and began to speak again. “I just wanted to say—”