The Remarkable Miss Frankenstein (2 page)

The sudden sound of bells clanging in the far distance overloaded Clair’s senses. Heart palpitating rapidly, she shivered. It was midnight. The witching hour.

“ ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls,’ ” she quoted, whispering to herself and tasting fear. She had not realized that the taste of fear was metallic.

Quickly she scanned the darkness, sensing something she could not define. Cold air stirred in currents around her. The darkness felt oppressive, like a great dank weight resting upon her chest. She felt as if Fate crouched nearby, watching with jaundiced eyes, waiting for her to make a mistake.

Moving her candle in a clockwise circle, Clair once again searched the shadows. There was nothing, yet she couldn’t help feeling as if something wicked this way came—and right at her! But only dark silence met her fears. She was alone, wasn’t she?

Biting her lower lip, Clair nervously squared her shoulders and continued her descent. She couldn’t quit now; she had put too much time into her research. Her meticulousness had unearthed the unearthly living and feeding in London.

Yes, Clair in fact believed that a whole nest of vampires were in hiding here, though no deaths had been attributed thus far to such creatures. However, her assurance in her theories and her eventual scientific jackpot made Clair’s journey into the unknown much more palatable. She knew that many Nosferatu hid among the English aristocracy’s ton, in the perpetual dark of night and the perpetual motion of the affluent. For what better place to be than among those who seldom went to bed before dawn? Vampires couldn’t select a more perfect place to thrive than among the upper crust of English society, who so loved the night, its decadence and lechery.

“Yes,” Clair muttered. “London is the perfect place for the bloodthirsty fiends. Like it or not, Baron Huntsley, here I come.”

Clair had never met the baron face to face. Her interest in him had been stirred to frenzy when she met a stranger on the train, both of them staring out the rear window, watching the night flash by. The younger woman, a Miss Hitchcock, had served the Huntsleys for several years as a maid. And on the train the maid regaled Clair with the baron’s exploits. Some Clair had heard before. She’d known the baron was handsome and wealthy, his cunning for making money almost magical. He owned estates in the north of England and several also in northwestern Wales—rather a north by northwest arrangement of land holdings. A notorious womanizer, the baron was said to love the hunt better than the actual conquest. It was, however, the other tales the maid confided that kept Clair spellbound and aroused her suspicions.

Now, a year after that fateful train trip, Clair had gathered enough background information to warrant a scouring expedition into the baron’s estate, though she’d decided to move when he wasn’t in residence. And that piece of information had been delivered two nights before, after her great-aunt Abby’s predictions with tarot cards. It had accompanied the icing on her suspicions’ proverbial cake, when Clair’s great-aunt had dramatically stated that the ominous Baron Huntsley was a creature of the night. And so the last damning piece of evidence had fallen at Clair’s feet—or, to be precise, on the card table—at the same time Clair discovered her opportunity: the ton believed Huntsley would be attending the Amberton Ball, an affair to last until dawn.

Clair grinned, wanting to pat herself on the back. “While the vampire’s away, the scientist will play,” she whispered as she reached the bottom of the stone steps.

A heavy wooden door loomed to her left. Cautiously, Clair inched it open. The bottom scraped against the hard stone floor and the sound echoed off the walls. Her heartbeat did a staccato dance in her chest.

“You can do this,” she said. “Be the brave Frankenstein I know you sometimes are.” Gathering her courage like a warm coat against brutal wind, she prepared to enter the room which she believed held Baron Huntsley’s coffin.

She knew she must be brave and must loose caution to the winds in the search for truth. No matter the danger or the hardship, she must march onward and prevail. “The truth at all costs,” she reminded herself. It was the Frankenstein family motto, and mottoes must be upheld—else why have them, she reasoned quietly.

Still, sneaking about in the dark in the minutes just past midnight, the witching hour, looking for the coffin of a vampire, might be throwing a bit more than caution to the winds. In fact, some people might just call it pressing her luck. She knew her aunt Mary felt that way. Unlike her great-aunt Abby, who, eccentric and mad as a hatter, was always remarking, “Off with their heads.” Of course, Abby was Queen Elizabeth this week, and that was one of her favorite Queen Elizabeth lines.

Clair entered the room, thinking to herself, “I shall prevail.”

Scanning the looming blackness, she nervously sucked on her lower lip, moving her candle to her left hand while her right hand grasped the rather large silver cross around her neck. A bit of wax dropped on her skin and she gasped slightly at the pain as she moved slowly into the eerie room. Candlelight danced across the damp stone walls, highlighting the large marble crypt in the corner.

“Aha! I have it!” she announced joyfully, her eyes dancing with both pride and excitement. The vault room was exactly as she had pictured in her overactive imagination: dark, dank, gloomy, with a hidden treasure… her treasure! Some might consider it hideous, but not Clair. She found the coffin absolutely, magnificently marvelous. She was a genius. But then that was never in doubt, with her Frankenstein genes, she thought cheerfully.

Clair grinned. It felt like Christmas morning and she could hardly wait to open her gifts. Except this time her gift was in the form of a marble crypt.

“Eureka! You’re mine, all mine,” she cried.

But the best-laid plans of mice and women sometimes come crashing to a grinding halt. Unfortunately for Clair, this was one of those times. A deeply compelling voice interrupted her self-congratulation.

“Beg your pardon, but just what is yours?”

Clair spun around, almost losing her balance. Stunned, she took careful stock of the owner of the voice. He was holding a five-stemmed candelabrum, the candles’ dancing flames revealing a strong, formidable face. His cheekbones were high and well-defined, as was his nose, indicative of his Welsh heritage. Clair noted that his brows and hair were so dark as to blend in with the night, and his hair was long, the edges curling several inches past his collar. The intruder was tall and sturdy, with wide, muscular shoulders filling his broadcoat. His cravat was loosely tied, and he was attired entirely in black and gray. In essence, he was a study in shadow.

Wide and sensuous, his lips gave the parody of a smile, with gleaming white teeth. Big white teeth, Clair thought, gasping, which stood out in sharp contrast to the darkness surrounding them.

From somewhere deep within her a scream rose, but Clair managed to swallow it. She was standing face-to-face with a real, live vampire.

Well, perhaps not live, she reminded herself.

“Hmmm?”
Now that was an answer, she noted dismally. She was finally rendered speechless. Uncle Victor would be stunned. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Clair knew she should be running for her life. But no, that was too melodramatic. Instead, she stood her ground like one of the Elgin statues all London was agog over.

Should she apologize for dropping in unannounced at his bedtime, or should she pretend to faint? No, fainting was too dangerous. The sly baron might decide a midnight snack was in order, and she would be the main aperitif.

Peeking up at him from beneath her eyelashes, Clair felt her adrenaline surge. Her morbid curiosity seemed to be overcoming the worst of her fears. Her mind, a steel trap-like device, was already compartmentalizing facts. She was in the presence of a vampire. He could be centuries old. Who knew what secrets he had learned over the years? It was utterly terrifying, utterly illuminating, and utterly bloody remarkable. Clair was spellbound. Her host had a powerful, predatory air, a wild energy about him that was almost primitive. If he was centuries old, he was well preserved. Hmm, very well preserved.

“Madame, and I use the term loosely, I am waiting for an answer!” Baron Harold Ian Huntsley’s voice was clipped, the evident rage enough to release her from her bemusement.

As nonchalantly as possible in the presence of the Baron and his very predatory glare, Clair took a tiny step back—an infinitesimal step. When the attractive aristocrat remained absolutely still, she took another step backward, putting as much distance as possible between herself and the threat of danger.

Clair had the strangest sensation that the baron was stalking her, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle. “So this is what a mouse feels like,” she muttered.

“I beg pardon,” he asked arrogantly, watching her with blazing eyes.

Clair blinked. The man radiated hostility, and most of it she feared was directed at her. “This isn’t what it looks like. Not at all. This is a mission of science,” she explained.

“Science?” Baron Huntsley snarled, once again revealing sharp white teeth. He studied her with a hard glint in his eyes. “You look as though you are standing in my basement uninvited.”

“Well, I am. I mean, I obviously am here in your basement uninvited. If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Not at all,” she protested, biting her lower lip nervously, wishing she were in India right now, or even the London stews, that hotbed of thieves, murderers, and prostitutes. She wished she were anywhere but here. Baron Huntsley would be a frightening figure even if he were not part of the supernatural world. Quickly she recited to herself again, “The truth at all costs.”

Ian, Baron Huntsley, stared at the woman who had dared interrupt his solitude. He asked, his tone icy, “So, why have you broken into my basement?” He didn’t know her game, but he would find it out. No one stole from him. Still, this five-foot-three-inch bit of bluster and bravado didn’t look like a thief. Actually, he surmised as he studied her, with her fraying black cape, she looked like a reject from the London stews.

Clair dramatically waved her hands in the air. Baron Huntsley was truly formidable. “Broken in? Appearances can be deceiving,” she said with a false smile.

Slyly examining him from top to bottom, Clair began compiling scientific facts, wondering if the devastatingly handsome baron could turn into a bat. She wondered too why he was back so early from the party. She wondered if he was going to bite her neck, and if he did, would she mind terribly? He was a rather handsome dog for a vampire. And he had such broad, strong shoulders. His legs were very long, his thighs heavily muscled. She wondered if he ever got cramped in his crypt.

“With what were you planning to make away? Just what in my basement would interest a thief?” the baron asked.

“I was not stealing anything. I could never be a thief. It just isn’t in my genetic makeup,” Clair answered honestly. She hesitated a moment, then added, “With the exception of a corpse or two.” Although Clair really didn’t consider it thievery to rob graves—at least of their bodies. The dead were generally dead— unless they were the undead or her uncle Victor had gotten hold of them.

The baron raised a brow, his aristocratic features sharply delineated by the flickering candlelight.

“Medical purposes… the corpses,” she explained.

She’s insane, Ian thought sadly. Such a beauty. She didn’t look like a lunatic.

Staring right at her, he thought of another reason she might have come. He asked, “Are you here to compromise me, then?”

Clair was shocked. “No! What a ludicrous thought. I value my blood and my bloodline too much to do such an unladylike thing as that. No, I am here to compromise your coffin. But since you seem rather in a hurry and appear to be in a bleak mood, I think I’ll just take my leave now,” she went on in a convoluted manner, hoping to dazzle the wily baron with a profusion of words, allowing her to slip away unnoticed. She took a step around him.

Ian blocked the woman’s route with his muscular body, his eyes widening in surprise. He was momentarily speechless, a first for him. He had seen and done many things in his jaded lifetime, some things he would carry to his grave as scars upon his soul. But he had never seen anything like this small Amazon standing quite proudly, although quite stupidly, in front of him.

In spite of his shock, he couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was, what with her tawny gold-brown hair and her huge eyes. They were gray, the color of the rain-streaked skies over his beloved Welsh mountains.

“My coffin?” He finally processed what she’d said. “What coffin?”

“Baron Huntsley,” Clair started, then stopped. “I assume you are Baron Ian Huntsley of Yorkshire and Balmoria in Wales?” He nodded, so she continued. “That dog won’t hunt, Baron Huntsley. You are not going to play that old game.”

When he remained silent, she scowled. It was so like a man to play the innocent when he was guilty of hiding secrets. But this secret couldn’t be hidden. It was staring them both in the face: his crypt.

Her Frankenstein curiosity taking over, Clair forgot most of her fear. Yes, this was the baron’s crypt. This was where he probably slept the day away, dreaming of ill-gotten gains of blood and who knew what else a creature of the night like himself might dare to dream in the depths of sleep.

“What game are you speaking about?” Ian was fascinated in spite of himself. He should call the Bow Street runners, he thought. He should call his staff and have her thrown out, but he’d rather have his staff throw her into his bed. She was a petite beauty and she was in his territory now, right where she’d put herself.

He drew closer, nostrils flaring slightly as he breathed in her scent. She smelled of winter, fresh and frosty. He found it remarkably stimulating.

Dramatically, the woman pointed and chastised him. “How about that great big stone coffin in the corner? My lord, you are deliberately trying to draw my attention away from it.”

“Oh, that coffin,” Ian replied stiffly, questions flooding his mind. He wondered if any of the enemies he had made spying for the British government had something to do with this. He wondered if she was playing a game, and if so, what were the rules? He wondered if the woman was mad as a hatter. Then he wondered if he himself was mad as a hatter for listening to her demented ramblings in his basement on a Tuesday night. Surely he was. But though curiosity had killed many a cat, he was as curious as any cat— and not as easily killed… nine lives or not.