The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (21 page)

Countess Narinyi made an appearance, of course, with a clearly devoted young man as her escort. I didn’t want to look at Zsigmund to see if this aroused his jealousy. But he greeted them both with equal civility. When I caught a glimpse of his expression, it was, if anything one of rueful amusement.

One pleasant surprise was the arrival of Karl von Degenfeld with a rather beautiful young lady on his arm. Almost ethereally fair, she had wide cornflower-blue eyes and wore a modest yet pretty gown of almost the same shade. Something about her unworldly, slightly detached appearance reminded me of portraits from the previous century, but this certainly didn’t detract from her beauty.

“My sister, Sofia,” Karl introduced her, with a mixture of pride and anxiety.

I smiled and welcomed her. I could understand Karl’s anxiety. The girl couldn’t have been much more than sixteen years old, and my husband was staring at her.

“Sofia?” he exclaimed. “The little girl in pigtails with the puppy?”

“That’s the one,” Karl said in some relief.

Sofia lifted her chin, flushing yet adorably defiant. “I grew up.”

“I see that you did,” Zsigmund agreed, and the brother and sister moved into the room, drawing considerable attention. Zsigmund watched their progress with veiled eyes. Unworthily, I felt jealousy twist through me. She was the sort of sweet young girl he should have married. Well, maybe in a year or two, but still I could imagine him thinking about it now. He’d tied himself to an older woman while flowers like Sofia von Degenfeld were opening up around him.

“Well,” he said, dragging his gaze away from her at last. “Shall we mingle with our guests? Devotedly newly wed and together? Or married-couple independence?”

I hated the idea that we were playing roles, that we always had been, but I refused to let him see my hurt.

“You choose,” I replied, walking towards Margit. I didn’t expect him to follow me, and he didn’t.

I found this event much more tiring than the first. I suppose the strain of keeping the smile on my face and pretending all was well took its toll. Our guests were curious, eager to learn about me, and I received several more promises of invitations to various events both social and intellectual, never political. Even Countess Narinyi, as she took formal leave of me, begged me to attend one of her afternoon gatherings that week. We both knew I wouldn’t go, but I thanked her quite seriously.

The countess hadn’t stayed long, but then many people didn’t, merely dropping in to greet the prodigal and view his unexpected new bride before going on somewhere else. It meant there was constant movement, comings and goings and different people to speak to. If I hadn’t felt so melancholic, it might have been fun, and as I walked with Margit and Elizabeth to the front door, I began to feel angry with Zsigmund all over again for making me feel like this.

When the temporary servant on porter duty had closed the door behind them, I trailed slowly back towards the reception room, enjoying the coolness of the hall and the moment of peace. Passing the staircase, which was even darker than usual, with no lights on the landing or shining from under the count’s study door, I paused and glanced up in the direction of the music room.

Through the impenetrable darkness, I imagined I could see a faint glow like the one I’d seen last night, and knew an urge to follow it to Ilona’s room. Maybe I could even speak to her again through Barbara—if only to prove to myself that last night’s impossible conversation had actually happened.

Before I meant to, I placed my hand on the banister, my foot on the first step. There was no denying I was drawn to those rooms, had always been, almost as if the ghost of Ilona herself were willing me there. What I really wanted to do, of course, was tell Zsigmund all this, talk to him about it, about what he remembered. To be close again.

If the original closeness I’d imagined had ever been real.

As things were, he wouldn’t miss me for ten minutes. No one would. I slid my hand farther up the banister and began to climb up into the darkness.

At the top of the stairs, I lit a candle by feel and turned towards the faint glow. I remembered the gypsy melody in my head the first time I’d gone into the music room. Now I wondered if that too had been more than my imagination. As I pushed open the door—it wasn’t shut tight, although I was sure I had closed it firmly the night before—I wondered if I’d heard it as an echo of some long-past party of Ilona’s.

Nonsense, of course, but the tragedy of a happy young wife and mother made so miserable by jealousy, and in widowhood so ridden with sadness and guilt that she killed herself, had made a big impression upon me. Surely there had always been a deep, nostalgic feel to the happiness I sensed here...

But maybe, I thought as I walked across the room, that was the message I was meant to take from Ilona’s story, Ilona’s ghost. Not to spoil the happiness I had with the uncertainty of things I couldn’t grasp. I had been happy with Zsigmund until I’d been forced to see a different motivation in his courtship. One didn’t necessarily negate the other. Hadn’t I learned as a young girl the value of compromise, of the happiness that could be found in simply making the best of a situation? With Zsigmund, I seemed determined to make the worst of it.

I couldn’t help smiling as I set the candle down on the side of the piano. Zsigmund was altogether a much more turbulent character than either Neil or I. He wasn’t given to compromise. I’d threatened to leave him, and therefore I should go home on his terms. It would probably be best, even if just for a little. Maybe in a year or six months, when our emotions had cooled, we could meet again, begin again...

I gazed around the room. The musical instruments seemed to stare back at me, like people or ghosts, or perhaps the receptacles of ghosts. They must have watched the happiness and the tragedy of Ilona’s life unfold, seen Matthias and Ilona die and witnessed the small Zsigmund’s discovery of his mother’s body...

I shivered and, on impulse, lifted the lid on the piano, propping it open. Then I sat down on the stool, placing my fingers on the shadowy keys. I played them idly and softly; they no longer seemed so badly out of tune, and I quickly learned which keys to avoid.

After a little, I realised the tune I played was rather like the gypsy melody in my mind. I tried harder to summon and recreate more of it. I imagined I could feel Ilona at my shoulder, pushing and pushing at the veil between our worlds, just to warn her son. Of what? Of whom?

Barbara...
Could I really have imagined last night’s strange conversation?

“Where did you learn that?”

The voice coming out of the darkness startled me. My hands flew off the keys, and I leapt to my feet. It was Zsigmund, advancing across the room with his own candle, which he set down on a stool. He straightened, regarding me, waiting for an answer.

“I didn’t,” I said quickly. “It was just in my head. I thought I must have heard it on the journey here.”

“My mother used to play it.”

Without meaning to, I took a step nearer him. “These rooms are strange. Beautiful, happy rooms, and yet they seem to put lots of ideas into my head.”

“They’re certainly putting some in mine right now,” he said. “I suppose you know how beautiful you are in pale candlelight?”

“Hides the wrinkles and the grey hairs,” I said lightly. I wasn’t sure where he was going with the compliments, but I expected a shock of some kind—his eyes were too bright, the curl to his lips too sardonic beneath his shadowed cheekbone.

He said, “You know you have none.”

I lifted one eyebrow with conscious boldness. “Did you follow me here just to pay me compliments? Or to summon me back to our guests.”

“Neither. I had much more selfish intentions. I haven’t had you for three days and three nights.”

My face, my whole body flamed. “Well, there’s the shock I was waiting for,” I managed.

“It shouldn’t be a shock to you. You’re my wife. I need to enjoy my marital rights while I have them.” He walked towards me.

I took a step back, which jammed my back against the side of the piano.

“You might enjoy them too,” he said, coming closer. “You used to. Up until three days and three nights ago.”

I slid round into the curve of the piano, but he followed me. A pulse began to hammer in my throat. I might have been a little afraid, but mostly, I was assailed by physical memory. I said, “I think it’s best if we sleep alone just now. You’re not welcome in my bed.”

“I’m nowhere near your bed,” he mocked, placing his hands on the edge of the piano, on either side of me. “And I’m not interested in sleeping. I want you here. Now.”

My stomach dived, flooding me with lust I couldn’t admit to. “No, you don’t,” I snapped. “You want to reassert control over me. You can’t.”

“
Re
assert?” he repeated. “Did I ever control you?”

Too late, I saw the pitfalls of this discussion. Worse, I couldn’t think with him so close, hemming me in, pushing against my skirts.

“You lied to me,” I said, desperately.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then you hid some of the truth. It amounts to the same thing.”

He shrugged. “Insofar as I didn’t show you all my personal letters? You didn’t show me yours either.” He inched closer, leaning over me, making my treacherous heart gallop in anticipation of his kiss. I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips as he talked, fascinated all over again by the tiny nick caused by his wound. “Just ask and I’ll show you.”

He dropped his hands from the piano, but not to release me. Instead they landed on my skirts, which he smoothed once over my hips before beginning, with intense deliberation to draw them upwards.

I felt my eyes widen. “You can’t!”

A smile flickered across his hot eyes, caught at his lips. “Yes, I can.” His head dipped, but his mouth missed mine and kept going to my breasts, kissing the top swell visible in my gown’s deep V-shaped neckline. His lips were warm silk on my skin.

“We have guests downstairs!” I reminded him desperately.

“And yet here you are up here. With me.” His hand glided over my naked thigh, under my drawers, before emerging to tug blatantly at their ties. Heat surged through me. My fingers, my whole body trembled as I buried my fingers in his hair. My drawers fell around my ankles, and while one of his hands held my bundled skirts out of the way, the other swept over the curves of my hip, my rear, only to pull back and push suddenly between my thighs.

I gasped in shock, but any notion I might have still harboured about closing him out was prevented by the intrusion of his knee between my legs. I tried to speak, to be stern and tell him this had already gone too far, but when his hot mouth covered mine in silence, I knew there was no point in pretending. I’d missed his kiss so much, it seemed like a physical hurt he both soothed and provoked.

He gave me no time. I barely registered the fumbling of his hand between our bodies, and then he tore his mouth free of mine, lifted me, and pushed deep inside me. My mouth opened wide. I didn’t know if he’d dragged my naked leg around his hip, or if I’d hooked it there myself to pull him closer, but either way, we were locked together in fierce, urgent motion. In the candlelight flickering up the wall, I could see our bodies heaving and straining together, wild, animalistic, mindlessly arousing—and yet curiously beautiful to me. I clung to the edges of the piano, unable to control my own body or his, knowing nothing except the desperate need of this release.

It came swiftly, violently, like a sudden storm. His heaving breath was like a gale in my hair, my ears, as I fell into it and he groaned as if in pain, jerking inside me as he found his own pleasure.

As we sprawled against the piano, half lying across the lid, there was an instant of stillness, almost like peace, save for the panting of our breaths and the thundering of my heart.

His teeth nipped the lobe of my ear.

“Remember this,” he said unsteadily. “I can have you whenever I want. Not because I’m stronger than you, but because you want it too. You were wet as soon as I touched you, and even now, with a house full of curious guests waiting for us, you’re ready for more.”

“And you’re not?” I managed.

Within me, he was still hard. Deliberately, he drew back and pushed all the way back in. “Oh yes, I am,” he said fervently. “So don’t provoke me.”

I gasped as he withdrew, my whole body tingling at the new friction. But instead of releasing my skirts and allowing me some modesty, he kept his gaze on my body as he refastened his clothing, then bent and retrieved my drawers and wiped between my thighs with them. I swallowed.

He dropped them carelessly on the floor and let my skirts fall, smoothing them over my hips. “No one will ever know,” he said wryly, drawing my hand through his arm and stepping over my undergarment. He picked up one candle, blew the other out. “We may return to our guests.”

Part of me felt I should protest—at leaving the soiled garment there as well as at my lack of underwear—but in truth, no one would come in here before I could retrieve them, and we had already been away from our guests long enough.

“We should go back separately,” I pronounced at the door, striving for sense after the madness I’d just surrendered to.

“No, we shouldn’t,” he said, holding my hand in place when I would have withdrawn it.

“My hair,” I said anxiously, touching it with my free hand.

“I was careful of your hair.” He drew me on. “Stop worrying. Anyone would think, Countess, that no man had ever made love to you at a party.”

“While you are quite familiar with such situations.”

“Quite,” he agreed. I wondered if we were exchanging banter or information and wanted to laugh or cry or both. But since by then we were descending the stairs, I concentrated on calming my expression and my person, willing the hectic flush of passion to fade from my skin. Finally crossing the hallway in silence, I tried to recover my social smile, and, God help me, it came much more easily than before.

As we re-entered the reception room, many heads turned towards us. I was in time to catch the fixed gaze of Countess Narinyi on my husband, and the sudden fall of her lashes. Unworthy triumph soared in my breast. For I realised Zsigmund was swaggering in the unconscious way he did after love, and the countess clearly knew him well enough to recognise the signs. I refused to be embarrassed that she knew. Zsigmund might have been impelled in the music room to put his brand on me for whatever reason. But I had just as well put my own on him, and I wasn’t sorry.