The Saint-Germain Chronicles (18 page)

“No, no. Don’t be foolish. Machines are far from perfect, after all. And first class is not wholly filled. We will be accommodated easily.” He looked down at her with steady, compelling eyes. “I have no wish to impose on you.”

Jillian waved her hands to show that there was no imposition and almost lost the book she was holding. She blushed and felt abashed—here she was, almost twenty-two, and
blushing
for chrissake. A swift glance upward through her fair lashes showed her that the stranger was amused. She wanted to give him a sharp, sophisticated retort, but there was something daunting in his expression, and she kept quiet.

A moment later the stewardess: “I’m sorry, sir,” she said to the man. “Apparently there was some difficulty with the print-out on the card. Yours is seat B, on the aisle. If this is inconvenient…”

“No, not in the least.” He took the boarding passes from her and handed one to Jillian. “I thank you for your trouble. You were most kind.” Again the smile flashed and he bent to put his slim black leather case under the seat, saying to Jillian, “I am, in a way, grateful you have the window.”

“Oh,” Jillian said, surprised, “don’t you like the window?”

“I’m afraid that I am not comfortable flying. It is difficult to be so far from the ground.” He seated himself and fastened the seat belt.

Jillian started to open her book again, but said, “I think flying’s exciting.”

“Have you flown often?” the man asked somewhat absent-mindedly.

“Well, not very often,” she confided. “Never this far before. I flew to Denver a couple of times to visit my father, and once to Florida, but I haven’t been to Europe before.”

“And you’ve spent the summer in Italy? What did you think of it?” He seemed to enjoy her excitement.

“Oh, Italy’s okay, but I did a lot of traveling. I decided to fly in and out of Milan because it seemed a good place to start from.” She folded down the corner of her page and set the book aside for the moment. “I liked Florence a lot. You’ve been there, I guess.”

“Not for some time. But I had friends there, once.” He folded small, beautiful hands over the seat belt. “What else did you see? Paris? Vienna? Rome?”

“Not Paris or Rome. I went to Vienna, though, and Prague and Budapest and Belgrade and Bucharest and Sofia, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Trieste, and Venice.” She recited the major cities of her itinerary with a glow of enthusiasm. It had been such a wonderful summer, going through those ancient, ancient countries.

The man’s fine brows lifted. “Not the usual student trek, is it? Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia… hardly countries one associates with American students.”

On the loudspeaker, the stewardess said in three languages that cigarettes must be extinguished and seat belts fastened in preparation for take-off.

Jillian frowned. “Is my being an American student that obvious?”

“Certainly,” he said kindly. “Students everywhere have a kind of uniform. Jeans and loose shirts and long, straight blond hair—oh, most surely, an American, and from the way you pronounce your r’s, I would say from the Midwest.”

Grudgingly, Jillian said, “Des Moines.”

“That is in Iowa, is it not?”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of engines roaring as the jet started to move away from the terminal.

The stewardess reappeared and gave the customary speech about oxygen masks, flotation pads, and exits in English, French, and Italian. Jillian listened to the talk, trying to appear nonchalant and still feeling the stir of pleasure in flying. The man in the seat beside her closed his eyes.

For five minutes or so they taxied, jockeying for a position on the runway, one of three jets preparing for takeoff. Then there was the fierce, lunging roll as the plane raced into the air. The ground dropped away below them, there was the ear-popping climb and the hideous sound of landing gear retracting, and then the stewardess reminded the passengers that smoking was permitted in specified sections only, that they were free to move about the cabin, and that headsets for the movie would be available shortly, before lunch was served.

Jillian looked out the window and saw Milan growing distant and small. Without being aware of it, she sighed. “You are sad?” asked the man beside her. “In a way. I’m glad to be going home, but it was such a wonderful summer.”

“And what will you do when you get home?” was his next question.

“Oh, teach, I guess. I’ve got a job at the junior high school. It’s my first…” She looked out the window again.

“You don’t seem much pleased with your job.” There was no criticism in his tone. “If it is not what you wish to do, why do you do it?”

“Well,” Jillian said in what she hoped was her most reasonable tone, “I have to do something. I’m not planning to get married or anything…” She broke off, thinking of how disappointed her mother had been when she had changed her mind about Harold. But it wouldn’t have worked, she said to herself, as she had almost every day since the tenth of April when she had returned his ring.

“I’m intruding,” said the man compassionately. “Forgive me.”

“It’s nothing,” Jillian responded, wanting to make light of it. “I was just thinking how high up we are.”

“Were you.” His dark, enigmatic eyes rested on her a moment. “Perhaps you would like to tell me of some of the things you saw in eastern Europe.”

“Well,” she said, glad to have something to occupy her thoughts other than Harold. “I wanted to see all those strange places. They were really interesting. I was really amazed at how different everything is.”

“Different? How?”

“It’s not just the way they look, and everything being old,” Jillian said with sudden intensity. “It
feels
different here, like all the things they pooh-pooh in schools are real. When I went to Castle Bran, I mean, I really understood how there could be legends about the place. It made sense that people would believe them.”

The man’s interest increased. “Castle Bran?”

“Yes, you know, it’s very famous. It’s the castle that Bram Stoker used as a model for Castle Dracula, at least that’s what most of the experts are saying now. I wanted to go to the ruins of the real Castle Dracula, but the weather was bad, so I didn’t.”

“Strange. But why are you interested in such places? Surely the resistance to the Turkish invasions is not your area of study.”

“Oh, no,” she laughed a little embarrassed. “I like vampires. Books, movies, anything.”

“Indeed.” There was an ironic note in his voice now.

“Well, they might not be great art, but they’re wonderful to…”

“Fantasize about?” he suggested gently.

Jillian felt herself flush and wished that she hadn’t mentioned the subject. “Sometimes.” She tilted her chin up. “Lugosi, Lee, all of them, they’re just great. I think they’re sexy.”

The man very nearly chuckled, but managed to preserve a certain gravity that almost infuriated Jillian. “A novel idea,” he said after a moment.

“It isn’t,” she insisted. “I know lots of people who think vampires are sexy.”

“American irreverence, do you think?” He shook his head. “There was a time, not so very long ago, when such an avowal would be absolutely heretical.”

“That’s silly,” she said, a little less sure of herself. In her travels, she had come to realize that heresy was not just an obsolete prejudice.

“Hardly silly,” the man said in a somber tone. “Men and women and even children died in agony for believing such things. And there are those who think that the practice should be reinstated.”

“But it’s just superstition,” Jillian burst out, inwardly shocked at her reaction. “Nobody today could possibly believe that vampires really exist…”

“Are you so certain they do not?” he inquired mildly.

“Well, how could they?” she retorted. “It’s absurd.”

He favored her with a nod that was more of a bow. “Of course.”

Jillian felt the need to pursue the matter a little more. “If there were such things, they would have been found out by now. There’d be good, solid proof.”

“Proof? But how could such a thing be proved? As you said yourself, the idea is absurd.”

“There ought to be ways to do it.” She hadn’t considered the matter before, but she felt challenged by the stranger in the seat beside her. “It wouldn’t be the premature burial concerns, because that’s a different matter entirely.”

“Certainly,” he agreed. “If legends are right, burial of a vampire is hardly premature.”

She decided to overlook this remark. “The trouble is,” she said seriously, “the best way would be to get volunteers, and I don’t suppose it would be easy to convince any real vampire that he ought to submit himself to scientific study.”

“It would be impossible, I should think,” her seat partner interjected.

“And how could it be proven, I mean, without destroying the volunteer? I don’t suppose there are any real proofs short of putting a stake through their hearts or severing their heads.”

“Burning is also a good method,” the man said.

“No one, not even a vampire, is going to agree to that. And it wouldn’t demonstrate anything at all. Anyone would die of it, whether or not they were vampires.” Suddenly she giggled. “Christ, this is weird, sitting up here talking about experimenting on vampires.” Actually, she was becoming uncomfortable with the subject and was anxious to speak of something else.

The man seemed to read her thoughts, for he said, “Hardly what one would call profitable speculation.”

Jillian had the odd feeling that she should be polite and decided to ask him a few questions. “Is this your first trip to America? You speak wonderful English, but…”

“But you know I am a foreigner. Naturally.” He paused. “I have been to America, but that was some time ago, and then it was to the capital of Mexico. A strange place, that city built on swamps.”

His description of Mexico City startled Jillian a little, because though it was true enough that the city had been built on swamps long ago, it seemed an odd aspect of its history to mention. “Yes,” she said, to indicate she was listening.

“This is my first visit to your country. It is disquieting to go to so vast a land, and be so far from home.”

The stewardess appeared at his elbow. “Pardon me, Count. We’re about to
serve cocktails, and if you’d like one… ?”

“No, thank you, but perhaps”—he turned to Jillian—“you would do me the honor of letting me buy one for you.”

Jillian was torn between her delight at the invitation and the strictures of her youth that had warned against such temptations. Pleasure won. “Oh, please; I’d like a gin and tonic. Tanqueray gin, if you have it.”

“Tanqueray and tonic,” the stewardess repeated, then turned to the man again. “If you don’t want a cocktail, we have an excellent selection of wines…”

“Thank you, no. I do not drink wine.” With a slight, imperious nod, he dismissed the stewardess.

“She called you Count,” Jillian accused him, a delicious thrill running through her. This charming man in black was an aristocrat! She was really looking forward to telling her friends about the flight when she got home. It would be wonderful to say, as casually as she could, “Oh, yes, on the way back, I had this lovely conversation with a European Count,” and then watch them stare at her.

“A courtesy title, these days,” the man said diffidently. “Things have changed much from the time I was born, and now there are few who would respect my claims.”

Jillian knew something of the history of Europe and nodded sympathetically. “How unfortunate for you. Does it make you sad to see the changes in your country?” She realized she didn’t know which country he was from and wondered how she could ask without seeming rude.

“It is true that my blood is very old, and I have strong ties to my native soil. But there are always changes, and in time, one grows accustomed, one adapts. The alternative is to die.”

Never before had Jillian felt the plight of the exiled as she did looking into that civilized, intelligent face. “How terrible! You must get very lonely.”

“Occasionally, very lonely,” he said in a distant way.

“But surely, you have family…” She bit the words off. She had read of some of the bloodier revolutions, where almost every noble house was wiped out. If his was one of them, the mention of it might be inexcusable.

“Oh, yes. I have blood relatives throughout Europe. There are not so many of us as there once were, but a few of us survive.” He looked up as the stewardess approached with a small tray with one glass on it. “Ah. Your cocktail, I believe.” He leaned back as the stewardess handed the drink to Jillian.
“Which currency would you prefer?” he asked.

“How would you prefer to pay, sir?” the stewardess responded with a blinding smile.

“Dollars, pounds, or francs. Choose.” He pulled a large black wallet from his inner coat pocket.

“Dollars, then. It’s one-fifty.” She held out her hand for the bill, and thanked him as she took it away to make change.

Jillian lifted the glass, which was slightly frosted, and looked at the clear liquid that had a faint touch of blue in its color. “Well, thanks. To you.” She sipped at the cold, surprisingly strong drink.

“You’re very kind,” he said, an automatic response. “Tell me,” he said in another, lighter tone, “what is it you will teach to your junior high school students?”

“English,” she said, and almost added, “of course.”

“As a language?” the Count asked, plainly startled,

“Not really. We do some grammar, some literature, some creative writing, a lot of reading.” As she said it, it sounded so dull, and a little gloom touched her.

“But surely you don’t want to spend your life teaching some grammar, some literature, some creative writing, and a lot of reading to disinterested children.” He said this gently, kindly, and watched Jillian very closely as she answered.

“Sometimes I think I don’t know what I want,” she said and felt alarmed at her own candor.

“I feel you would rather explore castles in Europe than teach English in Des Moines.” He regarded her evenly. “Am I correct?”

“I suppose so,” she said slowly and took another sip of her cocktail.

“Then why don’t you?”