Awaiting the Moon (39 page)

“Don’t warn me, Nik. Don’t treat me as if I have no stake in this!”

He rose and towered over her. As big as he was, she did not feel menaced but could see he was suppressing his anger. “You
have
no stake in this, so do not pretend you do,” he said coldly.

It was like a knife to her heart, and the pain plunged through her; he couldn’t love her and say such a thing. Her joyful determination of the morning was replaced by desolation. So it was only a sexual relationship between them, after all, and nothing more. And as much as she wanted to persist, her sense of pride would not allow her to beg him for his love. What good was love grudgingly offered anyway? “I don’t think I can stay,” she said, and she wasn’t even sure if she meant with him that night, or at Wolfram Castle.

“Elizabeth,” he said, his expression distraught. “I’m sorry. Please stay; I need you.”

“I don’t think you really do,” she said. She headed to the door. “You may want me, but you don’t need me.” She frowned, thinking perhaps he just didn’t wish to acknowledge that he needed her, and it amounted to the same thing. “I’m through with creeping through the walls like a ghost, Nikolas. I’ll go by way of the corridor, and gossip be damned!”

She fled down the hall, tears welling in her eyes and impeding her view. She lost her way, turned, and stopped, blinking away the wetness. Where was she? She doubled back, ascended some stairs, then realized she was in her own corridor near Countess Gerta’s door, and there again was the high-pitched giggle and then the amorous sounds of a woman being loved.

Pain in her heart, she padded along the corridor, but her tears blinded her; she wandered past her own room and soon she stood in the hallway near the gallery wondering what to do.

Where could one go to escape the pain of a breaking heart? Voices below on the staircase made her stop and sidle into the shadows. Despite her bold words to Nikolas, she did not relish being caught where she ought not to be. There was enough gossip in this place without adding to it. She recognized the cultured accents of Cesare Vitali, but he was speaking Italian, and Elizabeth, though she knew French and English and now a decent amount of German, had never learned much Italian beyond the basics.

That raised an interesting question to her curious mind. Who else in the household knew Italian besides Nikolas?. The voices were getting louder as the two conversing climbed the stairs and paused on the landing. Cesare was speaking long and earnest, with no break. About to furtively return to her own room, Elizabeth sidled out of the shadows and caught a glimpse of the two on the stairs; a tall, stooped figure moved up to the next stair into her line of sight, replying to the secretary in perfect Italian. It was Count Delacroix!

But… Elizabeth looked back towards her own hallway. If the Frenchman was here, then who was with Gerta von Holtzen in her room? Some noise she made must have alerted the two men, for they both looked up and caught sight of her.

Count Delacroix, with his customary aplomb, bowed and said, “Mademoiselle, may I guide you anywhere, or—”

“I think she knows perfectly well where she is going… or where she has been,” the secretary said, a peevish tone in his voice.

Elizabeth felt her face heat, and she said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, if I interrupted your conversation. I was about to… to go to the kitchen and get some milk, but I think I will retire instead.”

With more questions than answers, Elizabeth turned back to her own room. She stopped in front of her own door, but all was quiet in Countess Gerta’s chamber. She retired to her bed, staying awake awhile, wondering if Nikolas would come to her to try to make up their quarrel, but he did not come.

She arose the next day and raced to dress and descend, anxious to speak to Nikolas before he left. She had a sleepless night, thinking of him and how she had left things. But she was too late; he and Cesare had left at daybreak.

The day drifted on, and she learned some about Melisande’s father from Countess Uta, who told Elizabeth that he was a useless kind of man, part art thief, part swindler, a man who had pretended to be Russian aristocracy to seduce Melisande’s poor mother and then abandoned her after going through some mockery of a wedding ceremony.

That topic could not hold her attention like her concerns for Charlotte, though, and Uta agreed with her that there was some cause for concern. The old woman urged her to go see Charlotte again, and so Elizabeth, as the late winter sun sagged toward the horizon, made her way to Charlotte’s room.

Christoph was there by her side as she lay sleeping. He was staring at his sister with a worried expression. Elizabeth had not spent much time with Christoph, and then only in the company of others, so she hastened forward, putting out one hand when he would have arisen to give her his chair.

“Please, Count, don’t get up. I am delighted to find you with your sister.”

He gazed at her distrustfully, and she realized the gossip had no doubt made its way to him and he likely considered her in league with his uncle.

“I’m worried for Charlotte,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, gazing down at the pale form.

“I, too, worry for her.”

Elizabeth glanced over at him and caught his speculative eye on her. He looked conflicted, as if he had something he wished to say but was undecided as to whether it was appropriate.

“I’m especially concerned right now, while your uncle is away,” she said.

He snorted, and her suspicions were confirmed. He was ready to talk to someone, and perhaps he may speak to her, if she persisted.

“You seem… skeptical, Count, as to your uncle’s devotion to your sister. Do his plans not auger well for her future?”

“He just wishes to get us both out of here, out of the country.”

She waited.

“He doesn’t like anyone clearheaded, or anyone young and strong, who might put a stop to his plans, to know the truth.”

Confused, Elizabeth thought for a moment and then decided just to say what she felt. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

Christoph frowned and shook his head. “My… my English is not so good as Charlotte’s, so perhaps I do not explain. Uh, how should I say it?”

She waited longer.

“He is hiding secrets,” he said finally.

“Secrets?” She wondered if it was his aunt’s condition of which the young man spoke.

“His past. Our mother. He killed her.”

The shock hit Elizabeth like a fist, and she grasped the bedclothes in her hand. “What… what do you mean? How is that possible? He wasn’t even here that night… or at least, not until it was too late.”

He nodded wisely. “You have been told the lies.”

Elizabeth stayed silent, trying to understand what was being told to her. “No,” she said. “No, I can’t believe it. You’ve been misled.”

“Ah, but I know from one who was here that night and who knows everything. Everything!”

“Sources like that can be wrong, or misled, or… or malicious,” she said gently, more sure of her ground now.

Christoph gazed down and took his sister’s hand in his own. “I wish that were true, Miss Stanwycke… I only wish that were true. But he was here that night, and he set the fire, for he wanted my mother for himself and was maddened that he could not have her. So he lured her out there, set fire, and then stood and watched… and listened while she died.”

A shiver coursing through her at the vivid image, Elizabeth whispered, “Who has poisoned your mind against your uncle? If that was true, then why was your Aunt Gerta’s husband, Hans, in the cottage? Why did he not save your mother?”

“I do not know. Perhaps he tried to save her; I do not know.”

“Who told you all of this?” Elizabeth said impatiently.

He looked up into her eyes. “So he has you under his spell, just as Charlotte said.”

Even her pupil knew of her relationship with Nikolas? Had she been so very indiscreet? “Did Charlotte tell you this ridiculous story?”

“No, she does not believe it either. She thinks our uncle merely could not save our mother, but she does not believe he killed her.”

The tangle of stories was tightly knotted, but there was some snarl at the center, some binding mystery. It was as if there was some dark presence, some overarching deviltry here that confounded reason to untangle. But if that was true, did it indeed go back fifteen years?

“And now,” Christoph whispered, with tears in his eyes, “and now, he is poisoning Charlotte!”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous!” Elizabeth said, fear cleansed by the absurdity of such an accusation.

Charlotte stirred, so Elizabeth leaned towards the young count and lowered her voice. “You cannot believe such a story! You cannot believe your uncle capable of cold-blooded murder.

For what purpose?”

He looked confused, blinked, and said, “I don’t know what to think.”

What was clear to Elizabeth in that moment was that someone was originating these wild tales and implanting them in the impressionable young people of the von Wolfram family, and she would not stand for it anymore. She was going to find out the truth. She remembered that moment Charlotte’s worry for her brother, and how he had told her he was evil. How did that figure into this snarl of lies and mystery? Or was it a separate knot?

“Count,” she said gently. “As difficult as your relationship with your uncle has been, you must know he is not guilty of such a heinous crime as murder… and of his own sister-in-law?

Wherever you are getting this idea from… perhaps that person is mistaken. Or misled themselves.” She considered that. She had been told differing stories of the night Anna von Wolfram and Hans von Holtzen died, too. Why was that so? And who did she believe?

She gazed at his pale and beautiful face, his blond hair glowing like an aura in the flickering candlelight. His expression was contemplative, and she thought he appeared like the saints in the stained-glass windows she had seen in the chapel room. Perhaps she had given him something to consider. She hoped so, for as angry as she felt towards Nikolas, she still believed in him.

“Who told you these tales?” she asked.

Christoph, though, was done talking and resisted any further interrogation, merely shaking his head at her questions.

Perhaps he needed to think, or perhaps he would come to her if she just left it alone for the time being. “If you ever wish to talk to someone, Count, please consider me a friend.” She touched Charlotte’s forehead and then left the room.

SOMEONE ELSE had to know something. Perhaps her two old friends would have some ideas. Elizabeth made her way to Countess Uta’s suite, where she found the old countess and Frau Liebner communicating with a distraught Mina. Caught immediately by the frantic gesticulation, Elizabeth crouched, wordless, at her friend’s side while the maidservant whimpered and gestured. Countess Uta, her almost blind eyes wide, peered at her maid with a horrified expression on her face.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Elizabeth muttered to Frau Liebner.

“Hush. I don’t know yet. I have only ever been able to make out a little of Mina’s wild language; it is just between them.”

Uta’s face was gray and her expression became bleak as a wintry sky. When Mina was done, she bustled off to the other room on some mysterious errand.

“What is it? What was she babbling about?” Frau Liebner said.

“I… I cannot believe it.” The old woman stared off in the distance, one tear sliding down her cheek, meandering through the maze of wrinkles and crinkles that webbed her face.

“Please, ma’am, tell us,” Elizabeth said, putting out one hand and laying it on the old woman’s blanket-covered arm, “so we may share your trouble.”

“I sent Mina on little trip last night. I haf been so concerned for Gerta, you both know why.”

She did not even need to talk about the countess’s terrible times of madness and her midnight excursions; they both understood. “To me it seemed dat the key to her trouble lay not in dose times when she is hallucinating, but in dose times when she is not.”

Elizabeth, startled by the thought, realized the wisdom behind it. “Do you mean, ma’am, that you don’t believe Countess Gerta is… mad?”

“I do not know. But even if she is, I had suspicions, concerns… I believe her to haf a lover.”

Startled, Elizabeth said, “Yes, I think she does. I have… heard things.”

Frau Liebner said, “Heard things? I… I never considered it, but true it is that she was ever in need of a man, and I cannot believe she has gone without all this time. She would have no fear of conceiving a child. After the birth of Eva and Jakob, the doctor said she would never have another child; she was left barren.”

“I had thought it was Count Delacroix,” Elizabeth mused out loud, “but… but I now know that is impossible.” She explained her meaning briefly.

“So who is it? Do you know?” Frau Liebner asked of Uta.

The old woman had been silent; she looked ill and clutched at the arm of her chair. “I know for fact dat she once seduced the music master; it was why Nikolas dismissed the poor man so summarily and never engaged another. But of late dere was no man I thought a target for her seducement. I had suspected Vitali—he
is
Italian—and I had believed the man involved in her declining health in some sinister way. Vitali is difficult fellow to fathom; he is secretive and sly. It was connection I was looking for… the link between her illness and her hallucinations.”

“But it’s impossible that her lover should be Signor Vitali,” Elizabeth said. “I… I know that for a fact.” She further explained what she had heard, and her intrusion on the conversation between Count Delacroix and the secretary so soon after.

“It does not matter; I know now who it is who goes to Gerta’s bed,” Uta said grimly.

“Who?” Elizabeth and Frau Liebner said simultaneously.

“Mina did not want to tell me. She has held the awful secret all day, merely telling me she did not know, could not say, but now… she has decided she cannot keep it from me any longer.”

“Who is it?” Elizabeth said, her breath catching in her throat. She was afraid she already knew.

“It is Christoph,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.