Lady Killer (6 page)

She had spent the early part of the afternoon having the girl’s body removed to a cool-house. Afterward, she had gone to ask questions of the dead girl’s employer, Mr. Wattles the doll maker, but instead had spent an hour listening as his wife explained that he only did the dolls to make ends meet because really, you see, he was an artist and had several important patrons, very important, who valued his skill at being able to take off a face from a drawing and make it come to life in the round, just as sure as if it were looking at you. The only useful piece of information she had been able to extract from the Wattles was that the boy’s name was Inigo.

He had followed her everywhere, and it was only once she had convinced him she was taking the investigation seriously that she had been able to persuade him to eat something. Although he was dropping from exhaustion, he had refused to stay in the bed Clio had made up for him in the big room with the angel heads carved in the ceiling unless she stayed with him, so she had sat next to him, humming him the song her ancient nurse used to hum for her and holding his hand, until he had fallen into a fitful sleep. She had then retired to the library, putting Toast on the gold cord that doubled as his leash and looping it around her chair to keep him from waking Inigo. When she had procrastinated as much as she possibly could, she gave up and opened her household ledger.

It was the most depressing book ever written, Clio had thought to herself as she again tried squinting. For a moment she could almost pretend that what she was looking at was a sea scene, with a wave caressing the prow of a sailboat over which the sun shone, but as soon as she stopped squinting the traitorous wave once again became a six, the boat showed itself to be a four, and the sun was revealed as a zero.

640. Six hundred and forty. Not an offensive number in itself, Clio knew, but very, very bad when written on the debit side of a ledger as it was on hers. Six hundred and forty was the number of pounds she needed to keep her household—and her creditors, who were not even really
her
creditors but were now her responsibility—content for the next six months. And six hundred and forty was about five hundred and forty pounds more than she currently had.

She knew the money Baroness Von Sturman still owed her for having recovered her prized black tigers would take care of ten pounds, and the job she had done clearing the famous pugilist Thomas “Lay-Ye-Down-To-Rest” Barlow of the charge of killing his mistress would bring in another thirty, but even with the addition of her quarterly allowance there would still be over three hundred pounds unaccounted for. As if to underscore the deficiency, a booming voice wafted down the stairs from the floor above announcing the end of the Roman Empire. Such an announcement could only mean that the Triumvirate—Masters Pearl, Williams, and Hakesly—had almost finished their newest theatrical masterwork, about the end of the Roman Empire, which meant that the time for disappointing her friends by telling them that she could not fund its debut would soon be upon her.

Clio had just begun to think that the six looked more like a noose with which the four—which looked like her—was about to be hung, when her attention was drawn to Toast’s growing agitation. Assuming that it was designed to show sympathy for her and the growling her stomach was doing—she had begun to limit herself to one meal a day, and today she had sacrificed that to be sure the hungry boy had enough—she patted him on the head, put the ledger aside, and reached for her copy of
A Compendium of Vampires and Other Fiends.
But she had not gotten past the half title when Toast gave an enormous jerk, pulled the leg off her chair, and sent her somersaulting onto the ground.

She had recovered quickly enough to grab the end of the gold cord, but not fast enough to keep him from leaping out the open window into the street outside. Her protests only made him pull harder, and he led her on a strange chase through the narrow backways of the city. She had a vague notion that they were headed toward the queen’s palace, but the warren of alleys and byways that ran between the larger houses of London was unfamiliar to her, and it had been all she could do to keep up with the dashing monkey. They were rushing down what appeared to be a dead-end passage when Toast stopped abruptly, turned his head, cocked it to one side, and then jumped through an open ground-floor window. Clio tried to pull him back, but the expression on his face when he turned it to her—urgent, without a hint of mischief—was one she had never seen, and she had resolved to follow, guessing this had something to do with finding the vampire. With Toast leading the way they wound through a maze of dark and empty corridors and up an unadorned flight of service stairs that ended at a closed door. Toast did not pause but threw himself with all his might against the door until it burst open, and then dragged her into the middle of the glittering room in which she now stood, depositing her squarely in front of a man.

He looked like a version of the man she had met that afternoon, the man in the tavern, but not the same version, because instead of a stubbly slovenly wreck, this man was a picture of aristocratic elegance. A picture she recognized. She was so astonished that she dropped Toast’s leash, allowing him to make directly for the refreshment table, while she gaped at the familiar man, who was now making a low bow. She only had time to think,
No, not him,
when he began to speak.

“I am delighted to see you,” he said, his voice a deliciously rich rumble, his teeth even lovelier than she remembered. “I had been hoping for an opportunity to apologize for my conduct this afternoon, but I had no idea you were on the guest list.”

There was a rustle in the crowd and then a piercing voice announced, “She most assuredly was not,” from the other side of the room. “You just could not stay away, could you?” the voice asked, addressing Clio.

Clio did not need to turn around to identify the speaker, but she forced herself to do it anyway, tearing her eyes from the man in front of her. Giving a low curtsey, rendered somewhat more difficult by the fact that she discovered she was still clutching
A Compendium of Vampires
in her hand, she looked Lady Alecia Nonesuch in the eye and said, “Good evening, grandmother.”

Clio was accustomed to being unwelcome by her family, but the twin looks of disgust bordering on hatred that shown on the faces of her grandmother and her cousin, Mariana, were unique in her experience. Not that she could really blame them. After all, she had been receiving her quarterly allowance for the last five years on the single condition that she never bothered any of them, a condition that had been redoubled upon the last payment with the stipulation that if Clio did anything to disrupt Mariana’s upcoming nuptials to Viscount Dearbourn, if she so much as showed a lock of her unbeautiful hair during any of the proceedings prior to the wedding, her allowance would be cut off for all time, and other bad, nameless things, would happen to her.

And here she was, bursting into the exact center of her cousin’s betrothal ball, practically accosting the man Mariana was to marry, wearing a tattered gown that was barely acceptable inside her house and certainly not fit for a gala like this. Hoping that making a rapid departure would at least allow her to keep some part of the allowance that she had never needed as desperately as at that moment, she turned to look for Toast.

She saw only Miles. “It appears that introductions are unnecessary between all of you,” he observed with a surprised gesture in the direction of his betrothed, “but allow me to introduce myself. I am Miles Loredan. The Viscount Dearbourn. Who are you?”

Clio did not have time to wonder at the strange tone in which he pronounced his title. “I am Lady Clio Thornton and it is an honor to meet you my lord and if you will accept my apologies I shall be going good night I am sorry to have intruded,” Clio said in a single breath.

“Surely you could spare me one dance before you go, Lady Thornton,” Miles asked, all memory of his business meeting gone.

Clio’s heart was racing. “No,” she said, stepping backward, away from him. “I cannot.”

He lowered his voice. “I promise there will be no repeat of my earlier behavior.”

“It is not that, it is only—” Clio began to protest but was cut off by her grandmother.

“Yes, by all means, Clio. Dance with the viscount. One would so enjoy the entertainment of watching you stumble around the room.”

Miles shot Lady Alecia an unfriendly look for these words, but he was smiling when his eyes returned to Clio. “It would do me great honor. Unless of course you need to get back to your reading.” He leaned down slightly to see the book in Clio’s hand, then stood abruptly. “What are you doing with that?”

All at once, Clio saw the beginning of a solution to her financial problem. Part of her mind knew that there were a thousand reasons it was a bad idea, a very bad idea, but it might also be her best option. Giving Miles a timid half smile—the first he had seen from her—she set the book down on the refreshment table and said, “I shall explain it as we dance.”

The room buzzed as Miles led Clio into the middle of the floor and signaled to the musicians to begin a lively volta. Other couples rushed to join them, jostling to be nearest to the mystery woman for better observation, and even Mariana could not resist, dragging an embarrassed yet enraptured looking Saunders out onto the floor with her when Doctor La Forge refused. Theories about Clio’s identity circled the room faster than the dancers’ feet, ranging from the pedestrian—that she was the illegitimate child of the queen—to the more obscure—that she was one of a band of fairies sent by the Spanish to bewitch England—and everything in between. The Arboretti were somewhat inclined to this latter theory, if only because they could think of no other explanation for the rapid metamorphosis the woman called Clio had worked on Miles. Everything about him that has been wrong suddenly seemed right, and the smile he was giving her was the most Miles-like smile they had seen in years.

Lawrence Pickering, who with his companion had been detained by well wishers on their way up the stairs and had missed the stunning arrival of the girl with the monkey, now stood with Crispin. “Miles and his betrothed certainly make a charming couple,” he said, gesturing at the dancers.

“They do,” Crispin agreed. “But that is not his betrothed.”

“Oh. Oh, no.”

“Exactly,” Crispin nodded. They watched as Miles and his companion spun around the room, stunned by the unfamiliar sound of Miles’s good-natured laughter.

Clio, whose experience with dancing had been limited to the miserable forms she was forced to run through at Mariana’s birthday celebrations, had always thought it was an idiotic pastime designed only to humiliate, but Miles was a sublime dancer and she found that she was having a not entirely horrible time. Indeed, for the first few rounds, she lost herself in the pleasure of dancing with him—of feeling his golden eyes on her, of laughing with him—to such an extent that she momentarily forgot about her plan.

And then he reached out and touched her cheek—unable to stop himself, he had to wipe that smudge of dirt off, he had been thinking about it all afternoon—and the feel of his thumb gently caressing her made Clio miss a step. Or was it Miles who missed a step, Miles who was so undone by the softness of her skin—my God, if her cheek were that soft, what would the rest of her be like—Miles who held her against him for the briefest second—roses, that is what she smelled like, delicate wild roses—Miles who felt her heart beating hard against her dress.

It was then that Clio caught sight of her grandmother nodding knowingly
(You see, you cannot dance. You are a bad, wicked girl)
from her place at the edge of the room. Then that she saw her grandmother frown in her direction even as she discussed something with an overdressed gentleman at her side. Immediately she recollected the reason she had agreed to be led onto the dance floor in the first place.

“You asked about the book, my lord,” she began when Miles had released her. She found she was slightly out of breath.

“I did?” Miles asked, then smiled, recalling. “I did.” He led her in a weaving step among the other dancers. He found he did not want to talk about it much. “None of my business, certainly.”

“It is, actually,” Clio said. “I am reading it because I believe that the Vampire of London is back.”

Miles did not miss a step. “Impossible. He is dead.”

Clio nodded. If anyone should know, it would be her companion, since he was the one who had succeeded in hunting him down and shooting him after the fiend killed his beloved mistress Beatrice. Clio had read all about it in the news sheets, and it was upon this that she had based her plan. “I know that he is
supposed
to be,” she agreed as they came together in a turn, “but this morning I saw the body of a dead girl. With two pricks on her neck. And a gardenia.”

Miles pulled her toward him so they were dancing closer together. “How do you know about the gardenia?” he asked, his face serious.

Clio waved the question away with a shake of her head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that a girl is dead and others may die and I want to see to it that does not happen.”

Miles spun her out, then back, and asked, “Just how do you propose to do that?”

“I am going to find the vampire,” she said, turning away.

Miles turned her back. “I have already found him. And killed him.”