The Companion (29 page)

Only this morning, Lady Rangle had been crowing, though always in her languid way, that Beth would be invited to whatever entertainments were to be had in London. Almack’s would not begin until next month. But her aunt did not despair of them being given an invitation to several
country houses, so that they might hardly call their time their own until Christmas.

The prospect chilled Beth. She could imagine nothing more deadly. She was a good rider, and she might enjoy careering over the countryside on a cold November morning very well. But the long stately dinners, the dances where she would no doubt drink punch and watch others dance just as she was doing now, or the circles of women plying their needles, the endless games of whist with indifferent players—she hardly knew how she would support it.

Behind her, Beth heard several young women chatter as they sat at one of the tiny tables. Rising over the whispering of her aunt and the Countess, she recognized the childish voice of Chlorinda Belchersand, not a child at all but a very self-assured young lady.

“I told them they must bring our ices here. We were too fagged to dance again.”

“You are a harsh mistress, Miss Belchersand,” another remarked. They all giggled.

“I suppose I am, but what more can men expect? If they want to dance with women of the first stare of fashion, they must do as they are bid.”

“Yes,” one of the others agreed, laughing. “If they don’t do as they are told, they will end up dancing with that horrid brown girl Lady Rangle is trying to foist onto the
ton
.”

“Have you seen her eyes? Like some kind of barbarian. They look diseased.”

Beth flushed with anger and mortification. Crofts School for Girls hung in the air.

“Rangle will never bring her off. Who would have her?”

“A foreigner like that? No one, I’m sure. I haven’t seen her dance all night.”

“My mother invited them to a card party we are giving next week.”

“Why would she do that? I can’t imagine inviting them to my birthday ball.” This from a Miss Campton.

“My mother and Lady Rangle were bosom bows as girls.
Rangle is received everywhere, and she is calling in her chits. We are like to trip over the Rochewell girl at every turn.”

“That will soon grow tiresome.”

More tiresome for me
, Beth thought. The anger ebbed. It was no more than she’d expected. She thought of faking a headache and asking to go home. But how could she look like she did not appreciate her aunt’s effort? It would be nothing short of ungrateful. No, until she could find a place somewhere, she must put up with all of this.

Her search had not been going well. The agency had been very short with her when she had said she could not supply a reference letter. It would humiliate her aunt to ask one of her friends. Making up a letter would suffice only until the reference was checked. She had been over all of it again and again to no avail.

She raised her cup mechanically. The punch was tasteless as paper in her mouth. An elbow in her ribs from her aunt brought her attention back from her melancholy thoughts. She found a man in his late fifties stalking toward them. He wore an old-fashioned bobbed wig and a bottle green coat that pegged him as unfashionable.

“Why, Admiral Anstey, what a delight!” her aunt breathed. “May I present my niece, Miss Elizabeth Rochewell?”

“Just what I was thinking to ask you to do, Lady Rangle. ‘Go straight at ’em,’ Nelson always said.” He bent at the waist, emitting a distinct creak from his stays.

“Lizzy, Admiral Anstey is one of the Duke of Clarence’s set.”

Beth nodded. “The Duke is on the seafaring side of the royal family, I believe?”

The Admiral chuckled. “You could say that. Prinny don’t like it much, though.”

“I expect that is because it is quite a practical occupation,” Beth agreed. “And the Regent doesn’t seem the practical kind, himself.”

“Oh, ho! You’ve the right of it there, Miss Rochewell.”
He smiled on the Countess and Lady Rangle. “Though it might not be politic to say it out, just like that.”

Beth smiled up at him. “What happened to ‘Go straight at ’em’?”

The Admiral looked taken aback. Then he grinned. Beth realized he was wearing rouge. Why would a bluff seafaring man be wearing makeup? Because he was hanging out for a wife, of course. “Just the kind of female I like.” He nodded again to the Countess and Lady Rangle. “I ain’t much in the dancing line, or I would positively ask her to dance.”

Beth was relieved. She couldn’t imagine creaking around the floor with those stays.

“Perhaps my niece would like some refreshment,” Lady Rangle suggested.

“Capital idea! I’ll crowd sail over to the refreshment table and be back before you can get under way yourself.” And, bowing, he turned and stalked away.

Beth let out her breath. Her aunt leaned in. “He’s right. You mustn’t talk about the Regent that way.”

“You were just talking about him that way,” Beth pointed out.

“To a bosom bow! A different thing entirely. He seemed to like you,” she mused. “Rich as Croesus from taking prizes in the dreadful wars with Napoléon. He would do very nicely.”

“He is near sixty, Aunt.”

“One can’t be choosy with your background. Don’t talk about Africa or archaeology as you did with Clowe’s second son. You quite put him off.”

“But if I can’t talk about current events, or my experience, or about anything scientific, whatever is left?” Beth whispered frantically as the Admiral set sail again across the busy room.

“The weather,” her aunt declared.

The Countess nodded. “The weather is always safe.”

Beth rolled her eyes. But she had no desire to embarrass her aunt.

The Admiral balanced a tiny plate of sweetmeats and a glass of ratafia as he bowed again.

She took a breath. “Fine fall weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“Capital!” the Admiral said with real conviction. “Capital!”

Fourteen

Ian paced the deserted waiting room outside Blundell’s office in the growing dark. Where was the damned quack? He had been to Stanbridge and found, to his shock, that all his preconceptions were wrong. Henry had not put the place to rights. On the contrary, his hopeful family had been forced to sell almost everything and let the servants go, just to hold on to the land. Henry hunted to supplement the family table. Curse his wastrel father! The debts had been much worse than anyone supposed. And Mary? Instead of the shrewish, domineering wife Ian expected, she was Henry’s chief support and his redemption. The looks of love that passed between them had been . . . unnerving. They said Ian could be wrong about women, at least some women. Henry was saving to buy Mary a cow, so she could make cheese for the family, for God’s sake. Ian rubbed his chin, irritated; whether with the doctor for being late or his brother for being in love, he did not know.

The one thing he did know, after seeing Stanbridge, was that he could never belong there again. His very presence was a danger to his brother and his family. Ian could not satisfy his cravings in a society so small. But it was more than that. A life composed of endless rounds of hunting, shooting,
and small social engagements seemed . . . inconsequential. In Africa, Ian had thought that was what he wanted most. Now he understood that his experience in the desert and the new existence thrust upon him had shoved him beyond that simple life. The life that Stanbridge represented was lost to him. Even if Blundell could cure him, he was cut off forever from everything he had been. He could not go home again.

A parlor maid came in to light the fire, ducking her head apologetically.

Ian realized he had been glaring at her and consciously softened his expression. “Thank you, young woman,” he said as she bowed herself hastily out of the room. She was as young as Miss Rochewell, though not as beautiful.

When had he realized Miss Rochewell was beautiful? In Gibraltar? Or even earlier when he saw her bent over a chessboard in swaying lamplight? How her exotic looks contrasted with her practical approach to living! He still marveled that she knew what he was and yet accepted him, had even tried to help him discover the principles governing his new nature.

Well, that was over now. She had moved on to her own life. He had been tempted to call upon her aunt. But Miss Rochewell would no doubt have decided long ago that she was well out of his acquaintance. After what he had done to her? He winced at the memory. Her acceptance, her friendship, was a result of the proximity forced on them by the voyage, the strange intimacy of those long nights of translating. It
was
friendship. A little island of friendship in what was likely to be a long and lonely existence brought on by his condition, if he could not cure it. He would treasure that friendship always.

He heaved in a breath and straightened. With any luck his condition would shortly be a thing of the past. The door to Blundell’s inner sanctum opened and the doctor himself beckoned.

“Mr. Rufford . . . Will you not step this way?” He motioned to his study. As Ian brushed past him, Blundell’s eyes were wary. “Please, sit.”

“I shall stand to hear the verdict, Doctor. What have you found?” The harsh rasp of his voice surprised him. He thought he had better control.

Blundell pretended to study a sheaf of notes. “I hardly know how to begin.”

Ian waited. The next seconds would decide his fate.

The doctor cleared his throat. “Well then. I examined your blood under my microscope.”

“And . . . ?” Ian prompted.
Say it, man! Just say it out
.

“There is an . . . organism present throughout the sample, neither red blood cell nor white, and large enough to be seen plainly under the glass.”

“I knew it! A disease!” A disease could be cured, couldn’t it?

“Yes and no,” Blundell temporized. “It seems to coexist harmoniously with your cells.”

Hardly harmoniously
. Ian cleared his throat. “Can it be destroyed? Some herb? A drug?”

Blundell chewed his lip. “The standard remedies—purging to release the humors, bleeding—would have no effect. It is pervasive. It subsists in the same environment that makes you healthy. Any herb or drug would affect it only along with your general physical state.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I poison it, I poison you,” Blundell said, his old eyes hard.

Ian nodded curtly. That was it, then. He should go. But Miss Rochewell’s ancient texts came to mind. “Has anyone else come across this condition? Perhaps others . . .” It was an insult, but he had no choice but to ask.

“George Upcott’s work on blood types may be related, but it hardly touches on the parasitic qualities I have seen here.”

I have a parasite in my blood?
It was dependent upon him. Worse, did he depend on it?

The doctor shuffled his notes, hesitating. “The saliva sample was less elusive.”

“Saliva?” Ian stalked back to the desk. “I came to you for your expertise in blood.”

“And it was my study of anticoagulants which was pertinent to the saliva sample.” The doctor sat down abruptly. “Your saliva contains the same anticoagulant properties one finds in the saliva of a certain species of South American bats.” He peered up at Ian over his spectacles. “They are called vampire bats. They get their nourishment from sucking the blood of their prey.”

The room receded.
Vampire?
Was that what he was? It echoed with such force inside him he felt stunned. Who did not know the legend of the undead who suck the blood of the living? Why had he never realized that he was now one of those dread mythic creatures? Because it was too horrible to contemplate? Because he had never thought them real? Maybe one of those times he had attempted suicide he had really died. . . . He groped for the edge of the desk to steady himself. He must say something.

“What has that to do with their saliva?” he croaked to buy time for composure.

“The bat uses its saliva to keep the wounds made by its teeth open long enough to suck the victim’s blood without clotting.” Blundell kept his face deliberately neutral.

“My saliva could not . . .” But he remembered what Fedeyah had said of Asharti and her saliva.

“It could. As truly as there is an organism in your veins. I cannot tell all the properties of this organism, but it is early days. I may yet find the secret of its nature.”

“I want to get back to the way I was,” Ian almost hissed. “Find a way to kill it.”

Blundell was taken aback. “I cannot remove the parasite without killing you.”

Blundell could not kill him. But if he was impossible to destroy, the parasite must be equally hardy. Hope drained away. Blundell was the best the civilized world could offer. If he could not cure Ian, who could? “I understand, Doctor. Forgive me. I had such hopes.”

Blundell relented. “It is early days. Science takes time.” His eyes took on a glow. “I must understand how you healed so quickly. If I could isolate the positive properties . . .”

Ian hid behind a wry smile. “Then you might infect others with my disease?”

Horror infused the doctor’s eyes. “Anyone who has a cut,” Blundell whispered, “would be susceptible to even a drop of your blood. You must not . . . Not before we know more.”

Ian held up a weary hand. So the doctor had guessed the less savory parts of his condition. “Never fear. I will keep my blood to myself.” He peered at Blundell. He knew about Ian needing blood. Perhaps he would soon know the rest. Indeed, Blundell could be dangerous. “May I rely on your discretion?”

“I am a physician,” Blundell muttered. “What would my practice be worth if my discretion could not be relied upon?”

Ian kept his face carefully closed. “You may find me at Albany House in Albany Court next to Burlington’s great pile if you happen to find a way out of my dilemma.” He spun on his heel and let himself out, leaving the doctor staring after him.

In the street, he turned at random through the night now grown chill with late November. A fine rain fell. He hunched his shoulders against it, brushing past the hurrying crowds. They split ahead of him, giving him unconscious precedence.
Vampire?
How had Miss Rochewell not called him that? Even if the ancient texts had not used that word, she must know. It was so obvious now. His soul trembled. He was the stuff of nightmares. Even now, hunger began to crawl down his veins. He could practically feel the unknown creature floating in his blood. He seethed with self-loathing. But he could not jump into the Thames or put a dueling pistol made by Joe Manton under his chin and pull the trigger. That would do no good. Even if he had actually died once, he could die no more.