"He asked what?!" Milli's hand flew to her mouth in astonishment. "Mercy!" she cried, "how shocking!" But, however, as egregious as she found Emma's account of her private carriage ride with Winterly, Milli also appeared to be taking an abominable sort of delight in the whole affair. "And yet," she went on with a sigh, "how utterly romantic!"
"Your notions of romance, my dear," Emma scoffed, tossing her pillow at Milli, "are decidedly primeval."
They were still abed, it being not yet six o'clock, and all throughout the old castle, the cold, sepulchral silence preponderated, its habitual weight almost stifling.
Sharing a bed with her, when there were perhaps a hundred others to be had, was not something Milli would have ordinarily suffered Emma to do had not the latter contrived an effectual ruse — of being so thoroughly disquieted by the house that she could not possibly sleep alone.
Emma's pretext was, by and large, not all fabrication, for the castle was not, by any means, conducive to blessed dreams or easeful sleep; however, she was loth to leave her sister's slumber so unguarded the while they resided amidst unearthly beings in this frightful mausoleum.
There was nothing for it but that Emma should continue to forfeit her own rest, so that Milli could continue to sleep unmolested. As a consequence, she was interminably enervated of late, whilst her sister awoke each morning well-rested, fresh of countenance, and blessedly ignorant of their perilous situation. For Emma's part, she was left to furnish herself with intermittent napping, feeling it safe to do so by daylight alone.
In so doing, she had, tragically, become something of a nocturnal creature, which suited her ill, for there was something atavistically comforting about dawn; and, in defiance of that, something altogether menacing about nightfall.
"You will soon find that we Winterlys are a nocturnal breed." And now she was coming to understand why that should be; and that the devil had, all this time, been so marvelously sly about his innuendos. Wolfishly forthright.
Would that she could go away this very day, leave this place and nevermore return, but that was impossible without arousing the suspicions of her host and hostess. In a sense she felt trapped here.
"Emma!" Milli waved her hand comically in front of her sister's face. "I'm talking to you."
"Yes, yes." She blinked away the cobwebs and refocused her attention on her sister. "I'm listening," she promised, smothering a yawn.
"I was just saying that it smacks of conceit on his part to dare assume that you would consent to be his ...to do ... well, to do such a thing as...!" Milli, poor dear, was evidently finding the notion altogether inexpressible. "What can be the meaning of it!" she finally managed.
"Indeed," Emma replied, giving in to the yawn, at last, as she settled back into her pillows. "He has proved himself to be most daring." Although she assumed an air of composed impassivity, for her sister's sake, she was quite the opposite. She had thought of nothing else since that fateful kiss and the subsequent carriage ride from Whitby Abbey; could neither eat nor sleep for fear — nay, for anticipation — of his asking her that same question again. "As to the meaning of it," she went on, "I daresay he meant to make a mistress of me."
"Like the light o'loves we saw at Vauxhall Gardens!" And then her sister's gaze twinkled with mischief. "Did you refuse him, Emma?"
"Decidedly!" she said disapprovingly, "I wonder at your feeling the need to even ask that of me."
"Well, Lord Winterly is very handsome, I myself should have been tempted. And he is exceedingly tall, to say nothing of the splendor of his figure—"
"Yes, thank you, Milli," Emma grumbled. "I am well aware of all his charms." They were, after all, so indomitable that she'd thought nothing of surrendering her virtue right there on the Saxon tombstones. She'd thanked heaven afterwards that he'd stopped when he had, for whatever reason, because her own probity had been utterly lacking.
"Truly, though, I'd be fair in a quake for you if I wasn't so titillated by it all." Milli stifled her laughter into the same feather pillow that Emma had thrown her with. "Were you at all frightened?"
"To say the least of it," she lied. Well, it was only half a lie. The whole truth of it was that she had been far more thrilled than she wanted to admit to herself. But he is a vampyre! Never forget that.
That inward warning, however, lacked the conviction that might have otherwise been there had not her heart become so delusive where Winterly was concerned. More and more was she becoming dominated by this rush of powerful attraction that she felt for him. But each time she thought to give herself over to daydreams, she would perforce remind herself what he was. And so the cycle perpetuated itself.
"But why should he even suggest such a thing? And out of nowhere besides." Milli chewed the puzzle over on her lip. "Tis most strange."
Emma stroked her own lips with a meditative finger, and than flushed to see her sister's brow arch curiously. "It wasn't ... he did not act without some ... encouragement on my part," Emma admitted. "He kissed me in the abbey; and I'll own to you that I thoroughly kissed him back. Whatever were his impressions or expectations after my ... participation, I did not share them, you may assure yourself of that."
"But you kissed him back? No, I don't believe it! You?" At length, however, her sister's eyes narrowed facetiously to see Emma flying her colors so vividly. "Good heaven! you did too, you little hussy! Is it any wonder you've hidden yourself in your room since then? Oh! Emma—" with a sigh, "to be so bold in a tempest, and so missish now..." Thence began the fervent inquisition: how long exactly had they kissed for? Was Winterly devilish good at it? And were they like to do so again? The girl was in an agony of restive curiosity.
Why she had felt the need to tell her sister, she knew not, for now Milli would never let the matter rest until she had chewed it over and turned it inside out. But, in Emma's defense, the compulsion to confess all had been an overwhelming one, for her heart might have burst otherwise. Winterly had haunted what little sleep she'd had these last few days, and, her sister being her closest and dearest friend, she had wanted — needed — to tell somebody.
Now, however, she was ashamed of her long tongue. Moreover, now that she'd had some days to contemplate that wanton kiss in depth, she was appalled at her own conduct. Perhaps in sharing what she'd kept to herself thus far, some small part of her had hoped to dilute the effect of this power he held over her. Yet no such dilution was forthcoming.
"You must tell nobody, Milli. Promise me!"
"Upon my honor, Emma!" Even in the quickening dawn light, she could see Milli's face clouding with affront. "There was never any question of that." She folded her arms across her chest. "And since you will be so stubbornly unforthcoming, you had better get to your own room, and stop hogging my bed and pillows. Tis dawn after all, and we have a long day ahead of us."
"Stubbornly unforthcoming?" Emma sniffed. "What more is there to say? We kissed and then it rained—"
"Well, well, you admit you were so caught up in a passion you did not even notice an oncoming storm?! Nor mind a good drenching to boot? Better and better!" Her sister was getting facetiously animated again.
It was, therefore, time to take her leave and get on with her morning toilette. She uttered a half-hearted good morning to her sister and tiptoed to the door in her nightshift and robe.
"I too would have risked a cold!" Milli sing-songed from the bed, sniggering.
With another flush and a roll of her eyes to disguise her mauvaise honte, Emma swiftly withdrew from the chamber with every intention of hastening down the drafty corridor in favor of the one that had been assigned her.
But she had not moved more than two steps away before she heard Milli's perplexed soliloquy. "Gad, it reeks of garlic in here!" Thereat she expelled a disgusted sigh.
At overhearing the remark, Emma herself uttered a quiet chuckle, for she had indeed rubbed a clove of garlic around Milli's bedclothes and bedstead whilst the girl had slept soundly. Garlic, or so she'd read in Vampyris, was also an effective apotropaic just as hawthorn was.
As to what Milli had said earlier, she was right: Emma had been avoiding the master of the castle since the day he'd kissed her in the rain, and she had been hard pressed to forget that stormy encounter, so profoundly affected was she by the mere memory of it. The fever in her blood had still not abated, nor had his countenance been effaced from her mind's yearning eye.
In all fairness, she could not even blame a contagion, or magischen ansteckung, for she'd already inspected every inch of her neck for bite marks that very same afternoon when they'd returned — lest the beast have infected her blood somehow — but there were none to be seen. She was, therefore, left with the gloomy reassurance that she was, in fact, acting in her right mind, such as it was. Despite her best efforts to the contrary, she thought of him with unbearable constancy, for he held court in her treacherous heart every unremitting moment of each day.
With a grimace, she thought back on how she'd rushed to her room the very instant she'd alighted from the carriage that day, almost a week ago now, his stygian chuckle having mocked her as she'd fled from him. Thankfully, he'd not followed her. Since then she'd ventured downstairs but rarely, and only when she was assured of his being elsewise occupied.
Whether by design or duty, Lord Winterly had, fortunately, been absent from his residence these last four days past. Even so, despite that she imprecated herself for a hen-hearted ninny, Emma had shunned her social obligations to Victoria with an affectation of having caught herself a cold in the storm. But there was only so much convalescing she could do without arousing skepticism or calling for a physician.
Milli, for her part, had taken some little pity on her sister, though she'd made no bones about her suspicion — and rightly so — that Emma was merely shamming Abraham. But not even Milli could deny that Emma was looking a little wan and considerably thinner of late; although, that was more as a result of her agitated heart and lack of slumber. A double-edged sword, admittedly. But trifling cold or no, her sister was quite adamant that Emma should not beg off tonight of all nights. It was the Midsummers Ball after all.
And no matter that Emma wanted it otherwise, there was very little chance of her avoiding Winterly there. Besides which, she had had more than enough time to gird her loins for this inevitable encounter.
She almost wished she's faced him heretofore, then perhaps she wouldn't now feel so atremble and unsteadied by the prospect. As it was, their very last communion, if one did not consider his dark laughter as she'd fled, had been that of Winterly asking, of all things, to come to her room! And what he might have done once there... Well, it was best not to dwell on that.
"Shall I come to your room tonight, Emma?" She could still feel her flesh reacting to that proposition. It still echoed in her thoughts every day.
Into the quietude of her room, Emma groaned with exhilarated mortification and hid her heated face in her hands. Why had she not yet dragged herself and her sister off at once? Gone home, for pity's sake?!
She'd asked herself that question innumerable times, but what should she have told her sister? "My mind misgives me, Milli," said she, mocking herself, "we are in a den of vampyres!" Ha! Milli was as like to laugh in her face as help Victoria pack her off to Bedlam.
There was nothing for it. She would go to the Midsummers Ball tonight, and she would face Winterly. For now, though, it was imperative that she busy herself with her book — there was nothing like a little vampirology to quell this perverse obsession with him.
After donning a plain little morning gown, the sleeves long and the ruffled lace demure at her throat, Emma settled into the comfortable sofa at her window and opened the volume at the place she'd marked with a piece of ribbon.
What she loved most about this book was the beautiful morbid images that had been so carefully hand painted on each vellum leaf. Despite that they were, more often than not, very grisly in nature — depicting slaughterous wolves, long-fanged ghouls, and suchlike — she still appreciated the skill it had taken to create them all in turn. But the page she beheld just now bore only a benign sort of gilded chalice. Of course, if one presumed the contents within to be nothing more than red wine, then there was indeed nothing sinister in that. She only hoped, very dubiously withal, that it was only wine.
Beneath the image was written a strange sort of charade that instantly excited Emma, for she took great pleasure in a good riddle:
The earthbound Grail who bears the mark
Is bound by fate to bear the dark.
Child of sun and star of night,
Bound in blood and bound by bite.
From the crescent wellspring pours
The plague of night, and death, and wars.
"Grail?" she mused, tapping her chin. "What has the holy grail to do with vampyres."
At length, Emma gave up on deciphering the charade and closed the book to wipe tiredly at her eyes. The long, watchful nights had finally taken their toll. So, ignoring the grumbling of her stomach, she applied a few drops of her hawthorn essence below her ears and then closed her eyes for a little rest.
A little rest, however, turned into the better part of a day, and by late afternoon she called for a bath, for she did not want to rush her toilette and overtire herself before the night had even commenced. Once dressed in her linen chemise, she rang for a glass of claret, which a wraithlike little servant delivered wordlessly, and stole a few moments scribbling in her sketchbook. She had brought only one ball gown with her, a pale blue crepe that she had sent away with the servant to be pressed, and there was time aplenty to sketch till the dress was delivered back to her.
No sooner had she pressed her pen to paper than Milli frisked garrulously into Emma's boudoir. She was carrying a large white box that had been fastened with a bright red bow. "What are you drawing over there?" she asked, shutting the door behind her.
"Nothing," said Emma, guiltily shoving the sketch to the back of the pile of her drawings. "What have you there?" she countered, thinking to redirect her sister's attention, gesturing curiously to the parcel in Milli's arms.
"Why, also nothing," Milli replied mischievously, looking pointedly at the sketch that Emma had hidden.
With a disconcerted compression of her lips, and an unenthusiastic sigh, Emma relented and passed the sketch over for Milli's perusal. She therewith watched as her sister's lips curled wickedly, having instantly, and clearly, guessed the identity of the subject on the sheet of paper. It was Winterly of course.
"A fair likeness, I dare say." But saying nothing else, if indeed one discounted what she did say with her wily expression, Milli returned the sheet with an impish grin and then, as was only fair, placed the large box in her sister's hands. "Happy birthday, sister. You don't look a day over twenty-six."
"That's because I'm not a day over twenty-six, you minx!"
Milli gave a disarming shrug. "Open it," she commanded. "I think you'll like what you find within."
🌟I know you know what it is (no it's not a Dick In A Box) 😈 but I bet you didn't know that I fully intend to update the next chapter perhaps tonight or tomorrow, depending on my wicked mood.🌟