The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (10 page)

The old man’s eyes gleamed. “You don’t care for my manners, do you?”

“No,” I said frankly, “but this is your house. I think we might all be more comfortable if Zsigmund and I found another.”

The count stared at me. I realised the room was silent, that Zsigmund and Gabor were also regarding me from the desk. The count’s gaze flickered in their direction, then back to me. “You don’t like my house?” he mocked.

“My concern is rather that you don’t like me. I have no wish to inconvenience you in any way.”

The old man grunted. “Well, you can’t live anywhere else. Zsigmund is bound to stay in this house as a condition of his return.”

Zsigmund took a step forward. “Then hadn’t you better assure Caroline of her welcome in it?”

“Or what?” the count said, curling his lip. “You’ll throw my work off the desk again?”

“Grandfather,” Zsigmund said quietly.

The count waved one irritable hand. “Of course she’s welcome. That was never in doubt.” He glared at me. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to my manners.”

“I’m sure we’ll get used to each other’s,” I said.

The count gave an unexpected crack of laughter. “I think I like her,” he told Zsigmund. “You’ll have your work cut out with her, but I like her.”

“It’s a compliment,” Zsigmund said to me. “Look gratified. Come, Caroline, I’ll show you our rooms, and we can settle in.”

“Come back later,” the count barked at Zsigmund. “We’ll talk.”

The cousin, Gabor, politely held the door for us.

“Sorry,” Zsigmund said almost as soon as the door closed behind us. “I should have warned you about him. Foolishly, I imagined he’d be on his best behaviour. But clearly, he’s got worse without me to thwart him occasionally. No one else ever stands up to him.” He flung his arm around my shoulders and hugged me as we walked. “Apart from you. He’ll like you all the better for it, and behave better too. I’m afraid we live in a bit of a madhouse.”

It was certainly a neglected house. It bore an air of faded splendour, and I caught the occasionally musty whiff of damp. Beyond the ground floor, the floors, walls, and ceilings were all in need of at least decoration if not repair. The passage to our room depressed me, so that I was almost relieved to discover the room itself was bright and well aired. A fire had burned recently in the grate, and the furnishings, although masculine, were comfortable and tasteful, in a pleasant, slightly eastern way.

“It’s my old room,” Zsigmund said with a rather lovable hint of anxiety. “Through here used to be my dressing room.” He threw another door wide. “But I thought you could use it as a private sitting room, if you wished. You could arrange it to suit yourself.”

The smaller room contained a wash table, a sofa, and several chests and cupboards.

He said, “There’s unused furniture all over the house and in the attic. We’ll take what we want and move things around. I just thought it might be more comfortable, sometimes, than being with my overbearing family.”

“Thank you,” I said, touched. “It’s a very nice room—they both are! It will be fun.”

He slipped his arm around my waist and drew me back into the main bedroom. “Why don’t we make sure this bed is comfortable enough for you? After all, it hasn’t been slept in for two years.”

“You’re insatiable,” I said breathlessly as his fingers crept over my breast.

“I am for you,” he said, finding the fastenings on my dress.

“What if the servants come in?”

“Then I’ll send them out,” he growled, tugging the dress down my elbows until I let it fall to the floor.

“Can’t you lock the door?” I gasped.

“Yes, but I want you too much to wait.”

I loved when he said such things to me. His urgency made me feel beautiful and desirable in ways I’d never imagined. And in truth, when he was making love to me, I was so lost in him that an entire troop of servants could have marched in and out of the room without my noticing.

And as the ecstasy exploded inside me, I cried out, biting his sweat-dampened shoulder to smother the desperate, joyful sounds. Zsigmund had no such inhibitions. I clawed my fingers through his hair, though whether in abject gratitude or in warning, I had no idea. Colours danced across my blurred vision, lazily forming into the hazy shape of a man, much as our imagination forms shapes out of darkness. I smiled with slack, satisfied lips, because I knew exactly what man my imagination would conjure. I blinked, and for an instant saw his face. Not Zsigmund’s but his cousin Gabor’s.

I jerked to sit up, and the illusion vanished. There was only Zsigmund, rolling me over so that I lay on top of him.

“I could spend whole days just doing this with you.”

“You already have,” I said, laughing at my strange, silly vision. Thank God I hadn’t imagined the old count looming over Zsigmund’s heaving shoulders. “In Lescloches and again while we waited at the border.”

He thrust his hips lethargically upward, gave a teasing little twist until I pushed back down, when his breath hissed out between his teeth. He rolled me under him again and hauled himself to his knees, smiling, his eyes hot and greedy.

“And now I have weeks to lose myself in you, do nothing but make love to you.”

“What, shouldn’t you eat occasionally?” I asked innocently.

“Who needs food?” he said, bending to take my nipple in his mouth. He sucked strongly, and I whimpered, arching my hips, for I was ready for him again. It seemed I was always ready for him.

****

W
e went downstairs in time for luncheon, which was served in the large formal dining room on the ground floor. Like the other room I’d seen on this floor, it was in much better condition than the rest of the house. The massive table of beautifully polished old wood, the upholstered chairs wide and ornate. Covers for four had been set at the end nearest the window.

As Zsigmund, still swaggering in the way he did immediately after love, conducted me to the table, another couple drifted in behind us.

“Zsigmund!” exclaimed the lady, a slightly untidy little woman of middle years with wispy blonde or maybe white hair. I thought she had once been beautiful. Now she seemed curiously unworldly as she glided across the floor to embrace my husband.

“Aunt Gizella,” he said, kissing her.

“Oh my, you’re so tall... Have you grown, Zsigmund? And oh, your poor face...”

“You should see the enemy,” he said flippantly. “Aunt Gizella, this is Caroline, my wife. Caroline, my aunt Gizella and my uncle István.”

István, a corpulent, sleepy-looking gentleman, I knew to be the old count’s younger son. He too embraced Zsigmund, appearing pleased to see him back, although considering his nephew had been gone for two years of war, injury, and exile, I thought he could have been more enthusiastic. Zsigmund, however, seemed to see nothing wrong in their greetings, and certainly, they were friendly, amiable people who soon put me at my ease.

As we ate the meal served by the ubiquitous János and a rather slovenly maidservant, we discussed the late war and Zsigmund’s part in it, so far as was possible from Zsigmund’s frequent deflections, the recovery of Buda and Pest, and the state of the rest of Europe. Gizella and István spoke with rather more intelligence and perception than I would have given them credit for in the first moments of our acquaintance. In fact, I rather liked them. Their attitude to their surroundings was vague to the point of carelessness, but their minds and their perceptions were certainly sharp enough.

While the men were involved in their own conversation over coffee, I took the opportunity to broach a knotty subject I knew from experience it was as well to get out of the way as soon as possible.

“I gather you have been mistress of the house for some years,” I said to Gizella.

“Mistress?” she said doubtfully. “Well, insofar as I’ve been the only lady of the family living here since Ilona died—Ilona was Zsigmund’s mother. Such a beautiful girl. He is like her, you know.”

I thought I could see the problem with the state of the house. No one took the responsibility of looking after it. Probably, no one noticed the state it was in.

I said, “Is he? Is there a likeness of her in the house?”

“Not anymore. The count had them all taken down when she died. Matthias’s portraits too.”

Shocked that Zsigmund could have no likenesses to remember his parents by, I reverted to my previous subject. “Is there a housekeeper here?”

“Not now. János looks after everything.”

“Then it’s János I should see about the running of the house?”

“Oh yes, my dear. He’ll be glad of the help. And direction, probably. The count writes his great work; István and I have our own interests...”

“What about Gabor?” I asked.

“He assists the count,” she said in surprise.

Satisfied that Gizella had no interest in running the house—or any domestic interests at all that I could discover—I turned back to Zsigmund, who said, “What an excellent idea. We should entertain, liven the house up again. Let’s invite a few friends, not tomorrow night but the one after, and plan some other entertainments. What do you say, Caroline?”

“Of course,” I said at once, “if you think there’s time to prepare?”

“The count might not quite like it,” Gizella said in quick alarm.

István tugged his beard. “He might. Run it past him, Zsigmund. It needn’t impinge on his life if he doesn’t want it, so long as you keep numbers down.”

Zsigmund sprang to his feet. “Come on, Caroline, I’ll show you the rest of the public rooms, and we can decide what’s best to do.”

T
he next few hours were fun and, besides, provided a good excuse to talk to János about domestic arrangements without appearing critical.

As well as the dining room and the drawing room, there was a further reception room towards the back of the house, which led into a good-sized ballroom built onto the end of the house. Although it was made mostly of glass and metal, rather like Prince Albert’s crystal palace now being erected in Hyde Park, it didn’t seem to leak. In fact, several tall green plants grew in pots around the floor and looked rather nice. And beneath the canvas covering, the dance floor was in good condition.

Sir Neil and I had done very little entertaining beyond our own closest family and friends. I’d always brushed this off with a joke, but in reality it had been so as not to tire Neil, who had never been strong. Although I’d been perfectly content with this arrangement, the prospect of entertaining Zsigmund’s friends on a larger scale was rather exciting. So, somewhat like children at Christmas, we tripped down to the kitchen in search of János.

We found him sitting at a cluttered table in the centre of the kitchen, beside a plump woman and the untidy maid I’d already seen. All three of them sprang up in alarm, and János quickly introduced his wife Agi and the maid Katalin, who both all but abased themselves.

“Tell them lunch was lovely,” I instructed Zsigmund hastily. When he did, it elicited another flurry of curtseying, while Zsigmund spoke to János in Hungarian. János looked alternately shocked and appalled, and then frightened.

“There are only the three of them here,” Zsigmund said ruefully.

“Well, we should speak to your grandfather about more staff,” I said. “But that will take time and won’t help if you want to entertain this week. Ask János if he could hire temporary staff for a couple of evenings—under his command, of course.”

As that was relayed, János began to nod sagely. So, since he clearly foresaw no problem, we agreed on a small, informal gathering the evening after next, and a larger, more formal reception at the end of the week. János didn’t even blanch at the mention of a ball in less than three weeks. If anything, his eyes began to gleam as if he welcomed the challenge.

Zsigmund then swept me off to fetch my bonnet so that he could show me his city—his two cities of Buda and Pest, recently joined across the Danube by a magnificent chain bridge. They were indeed beautiful cities which I knew I would enjoy exploring in more detail.

For now, it was delightful to be introduced to them by Zsigmund. The autumnal nip in the air was just what I needed to clear my head, and we all but held hands as we strolled out of the square. I wanted to skip like a child, just from the happiness of being with him.

He hailed a hackney in the next street, and gave the driver instructions while I climbed in. Zsigmund had barely sat down beside me before the carriage burst into motion, almost hurling me off the seat. Zsigmund laughed uproariously. “Our drivers have only two speeds,” he said. “Stationary and full tilt!”

“You might have warned me,” I said, straightening my bonnet with one hand and hanging on to a handy strap with the other.

“I might, but it wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun,” he said, swooping in for a sudden kiss.

Forgiving him, I cooperated. “Now, tell me where we are. Tell me the Hungarian for everything as we go...”

By the time we returned to the Andrassy palace, the sun was setting. I was in such a happy frame of mind that I found the creaking of the gate more charming than ominous, and the overgrown garden protecting the dark house did not seem remotely threatening in Zsigmund’s beguiling company. And yet until I acknowledged this, I hadn’t even realised I’d had such thoughts. A branch brushed against my face, almost as if trying to hold me back.

“We should cut these tomorrow,” Zsigmund observed. “My grandfather never goes out, so he doesn’t notice such things.”

“Never?” I said, startled. “Is he ill?”

“No. Just focused on his work. He can get all he needs from Gabor or János. I don’t know what he’ll do if he ever finishes this book.”

“Start another?” I suggested, as the front door opened.

For an instant, everything inside looked black. As I followed Zsigmund inside, I had the oddest fancy that I was stepping into hell. A twinge of nausea tugged at my stomach. János lit the lamps, and I blinked, almost blinded by the difference, and yet the hall couldn’t have been as dark as all that.

I suspected that deep down I was more nervous about my new life and my new family than I was allowing myself to believe, causing some very strange imaginings. The house was too gloomy, too isolated. We would change that, filling it with guests and laughter. We’d repair it and brighten it with a thorough cleaning all over, paint and decorate it as we wished. I couldn’t see the old count objecting to anything that went on outside his own study.