The vampyre moved with fluid grace beside her in the quiet of the lamplit hallway, and from beneath her lashes she caught the golden glint of the pin secured at his neckcloth. Emma made to pull her hand from the crook of his elbow, but he only passed the limp closer to his large torso, tacitly denying her even the smallest distance between them.
At length they reached a pair of pitted double doors, with rusty iron brackets, in a part of the castle yet unexplored. She had begun to suspect that there was no ball at all, for the atmosphere was positively sepulchral. There was no pausing to open the doors. No sooner had they halted before them than the ancient-looking portal groaned open without any assistance from its master.
Emma's eyes widened beneath her mask to see the two silent footmen revealed behind the doors. They were attired not in livery but in dun, wax-covered robes, black gloves, and wide-brimmed hats. Quite authentic-looking, she had to admit. They stood to attention, their miens austere as though Winterly himself were the Duke of Wellington. But it was the eerie leathern masks, protracted into stork-like beaks, and their glass eyes that gave her dreadful pause. To her mind there was, until recently of course, little else more disturbing than the look of the plague doctors of yore with their awful bills stuffed with herbs and spices, and their muffled words and incoherent prognostications.
Her companion, however, passed them by with staid equanimity, and lead her down a dextral stone declivity that was ever and anon interrupted by moderate stairs.
Here, in the the sinister hush of what looked like a rudimentary passageway better suited to the Roman catacombs, the tapers seemed to dance morbidly in their darkened scones. Where he meant to lead her she was sure she had no idea, and finding the anticipation too much to bear, she halted abruptly and pulled her hand forcibly from his arm.
Winterly, as stony as the walls that enclosed them, turned to regard her so that his black horns were angled with the questioning tilt of his head.
"W-where are w-we going?" she asked him cautiously.
"I thought we'd already established that. A masquerade, of course. But, tell me, do you imagine me to have instead formulated some nefarious scheme to entrap you?"
"I do," she replied.
"Think you I mean to ravish you in my lair?"
In your crypt, I do. Instead she answered, "Goodness! must your insinuations always be so lascivious?"
"Answer me." He had not moved even a little, excepting his mouth of course, since she'd pulled away.
"Your behavior thus far, you must admit, has not been wholly honorable, sir."
Her dubiety coupled with her nervous censure only seemed to amuse him the more, for he — as was his habit of late — pressed himself closer so that the pin at his cravat, that she'd admired earlier, was level with her gaze. An insistent, shadowy finger thence materialized at her chin to lift her face up to his. "So suspicious," he admonished lightly. "Tsk, tsk, that will not do." Without awaiting a response — she had none to offer besides — he closed the distance and placed his lips at her ear with slow deliberation, a devil in his dark, lento voice. "Only quiet your mind, madam, and hearken closely." He whispered nothing more.
So listen she did. Her heart beat in lively allegro, but when she closed her eyes to listen, doing her utmost best to ignore the fact that Winterly's lips were inching towards her pulse, she caught the faint strain of music, almost imperceptible. It was like a discord in the unearthly weight of silence — no more natural to the ear, she imagined, than hearing the "Hallelujah Chorus" at the plutonian gates. And was that not where she was bound ... on the arm of the devil beside her? To the underworld? His underworld.
"There now, nothing like a little music to steel one's courage." He pressed his lips languorously to the sensitive skin below her ear.
"And nothing," she quipped, her voice thick with desire, "like a little darkness to steal a kiss."
Winterly pulled himself away from her with an appreciative laugh. "Touché, Miss Lucas. There is, however, time enough for kisses, but not just yet; and this dank tunnel won't do at all. We've tarried quite long enough." He held out his arm to her. "Shall we?"
He was right. Do, in future, stop being so demmed gothic, Emma! she chided herself silently, slipping her hand once more over his lordship's waiting arm. "I think we'd better."
"Have I told you yet how exquisite you look this evening?" said Winterly, his footsteps as quiet as before.
"Indirectly," she assured him, blushing in the darkness, pleased to note that the music had amplified exponentially. She no longer felt so alone with him.
"Are you ready?" There was note of relish in his words as they reached a second pair of doors that were almost an exact replica of the first they had passed through. Two wooden relicts, at all appearances.
As before, these too were opened to them betimes by two more morbid footmen also masked and disguised as plague doctors. But that was not what drew from her a dazed gasp. No, indeed! She was met with such an impressive spectacle as could not have been imagined even in her strangest dreams.
They had indeed entered an underworld — a magnificent and vivid one. It was some sort of vast and pillared undercroft, the stone walls bathed in a subaqueous candlelit gold. And all around them, for Winterly was now leading her into the crush, a glittering array of bejeweled gowns and frightening masks.
There were no pastels here, and this was no debutante ball. All was bold; and dark; and rich: emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and suchlike. As she watched, a woman in a peacock mask was whisked past them in the waltz, the velvet of her dress a deep viridian. Next followed a Cytherean beauty, her hair as fiery as her garnet gown and her eyes concealed by a black strip of gauze. Then came an ice queen in dark silver crape with a white mask of glittering diamonds.
With grand and effortless grace were the movements of the dancers orchestrated; they floated about, these mysterious guests, as though silk upon air. Emma's eyes flickered every which way, at once beguiled, stunned, and intimidated.
She gave another startled gasp as a man in a black vulpine mask — which, unlike Winterly's, covered even his mouth and nose — leapt at her with alarming precipitance, laughing like a jackal as he frisked about.
"O Rose, thou art sick!" cried this leering fox. "The invisible worm that flies in the night, in the howling storm, has found out thy bed of crimson joy. And his dark secret love does thy life destroy!" And then, with another vulgar whoop and a valedictory salute, betook himself elsewhere.
Winterly's smirk perfectly suited the satyrical shape of his mask as he watched the fox gambol away. "I've always liked that poem."
"Who was that?" she asked, unaware, at first, of the fact that she'd moved instinctually closer to him. Ironic, really, for he was the greater danger.
"William Blake," said he, unnecessarily.
"I meant the fox." She knew very well who had penned the verses.
But Winterly, ostensibly deeming the query satisfactorily answered, progressed their tête-à-tête. Either that or he cared not to answer her. "I'm quite partial to his darker verses. Are you an admirer of his works?"
"As it happens, I am. But I never knew quite what to make of that poem." It had, to own the truth, quite disturbed her to be thus serenaded by a fool in a frightful mask.
"No," Winterly agreed, grinning. "nor I. But that is the beauty of poetry: we must interpret as we wish."
"What do you make of it?" she asked, lifting her eyes to him. "The meaning. For I know you are a great reader and must have an opinion." One had only to see his library to know that much about him. "And you have, so far, had an answer for everything."
With obvious appreciation for her little gambit, he said, "A rose is an earthly thing, beautiful and fragile. The worm signifies death or decay, does it not? Perhaps a wyrm — a serpent — has secretly corrupted the purity of this unwitting rose, like the snake did to Eve. Perhaps he has stolen every night into her bed under the guise of offering a fruitful joy, yet tainted with the crimson warmth of shame and lost virtue." He raised his hand and touched a finger gently to Emma's cheek. "My rose—" running the finger softly down her jaw and neck "—does not yet even know she is being corrupted."
"Oh! but she does." Emma's breath hitched noiselessly, the music notwithstanding. "You speak of ... moral corruption?"
"I speak of the carnal appetites of man, and beast, and the sickness of love as it blinds those that would, so ingenuously, be consumed by it. And when they awake, once the passions of the night are spent, they feel the weight of their ignominy and see it writ in blood atop the ivory counterpane."
"Well," she replied breathlessly, no longer surprised by the shocking thoughts that he never seemed to want to spare her from, "I believe I shall never read anything more f-from ... Blake without thinking of 'The Sick Rose', I daresay."
"I take it you prefer Byron?" He gave a wry grin, dropping his hand and breaking the strange interlude that had cocooned them.
"Ay, I confess I do." She felt suddenly bereft of his touch, though why she should she knew not. It was very shocking behavior in him to have touched her so familiarly at all, and in his own ballroom no less. But I am wearing a mask. Tonight I am not myself. I am Rosalind disguised as Cleopatra. Lord! but she really ought not read so much Shakespeare!
"A true romantic then." Winterly nodded decidedly, his upper lip lifting away in a smile that, for a brief minute, displayed a keen-edged eyetooth on the left side. The hint of a dreaded fang.
"Where is my sister," Emma asked, looking promptly away to scan the sea of masked faces, capes, and gothic opulence, lest she consider the tapered length of his odd canines.
"Over there," replied he, gesturing with a single nod to a golden-haired beauty who was gliding past in her sapphire finery.
Her sister's mask was much the same as Emma's, of Venetian design, only hers resembled an exotic bird of royal blue plumage. Behind the domino Emma could plainly see her sister's enraptured smile as she was whisked along with the throng by a stately man grinning beneath his hawklike mask. Hawksmoor himself, Emma wagered.
A bird of prey and his little blue thrush. Before her ruminating took a darker turn the couple disappeared.
Next came the familiar emerald skirts of Winterly's sister in a gold Romanesque mask resembling the bust of Cleopatra. But, strangely, it was Shakespeare's Tamora that came to mind as Emma watched the beauty spin past her in the arms of a dark giant in a mask even more horrific than Winterly's: a snarling black wolf.
At hearing Emma's startled intake of breath, Winterly transferred his gaze from his sister to Emma. "Gabriel," said he in answer.
"Who?" said she, looking up at him.
"I believe you are ... admiring—" With a mordant snort "—my brother's taste in costume."
"Your brother!" She directed her gaze swiftly back to the wolf man only to realize that he and Victoria had, by now, been swallowed up by the crowd. "I had no idea of your having a brother." Perhaps Victoria had mentioned Gabriel and she'd merely forgotten.
Winterly, however, unconcerned with the members of his menage, swiftly changed the topic. "Come, Emma. Let's not stand about in this idle manner." That said he pulled her into his arms without warning and dexterously waltzed her into the melee.
Though she was half terrified of making a cake of herself and crushing his feet in the process, she was helpless to staunch the full-throated laughter that escaped her lips as they danced. "I feel it incumbent on me to warn you that I have never waltz before; and I cannot promise I shan't flatten your toes abominably!"
"My dear madam," he bent his head to murmur, "you did not come in all this state to decorate my walls." He was holding her so closely that had she been as tall as he there was no question that their noses would have touched. "And I believe you're hoaxing me; you dance as though your were born to it."
She beamed at the compliment, feeling as free and airy as ever any bird might be. Even a fragile cardinal as she must seem to him, predator that he was.
Breast to breast, eyes locked and lips curled, they whirled about the room in gliding rotations. Scandalously, they danced from one dreamy valse to another; and she with no thought to the impropriety of fixing herself to one man alone. As the tempo of the fourth set took on a lusty note, the music crescendoing luridly, she felt herself flying about the underworld as the room spun wildly around her.
Whether from the wine she'd lately drank, the music, or the intoxicating presence of the creature in whose power she was drowning, Emma felt herself under the influence of some strange and stirring intemperance. Colors flashed past her, indistinct and glaring. Leering masks and sighing candlelight interfused peculiarly, so that her fingers tightened in her partner's hand, lest she should fall from the sky. She felt euphoric and befuddled, and knew only that she needed a breath of night air to clear her head and cool her blood.
Winterly, sensing her plight, waltzed her to the fringe of dancers and spun her under his arm so that she stopped, with a twirl of her skirts, before a waiting footman holding a salver of beautiful goblets.
She laughed at Winterly's skillful maneuvering of her and reached for a golden goblet, the wine within almost black-looking, only to find her wrist promptly seized by her partner. Bemusement instantly banished the laughter from her eyes as he lowered her hand for her, and she marked him peremptorily dismissing his impassive footman with a curt shake of his dark head.
"That wine is no good for you," was all he answered to her questioning gaze.
"Provoking man!" she retorted, her hackles rising at his impertinence. "I believe I alone ought to be the judge of what is good for me." He was, after all, neither her husband nor her father.
"In this instance, though, you will heed me." His hard-featured stare brooked no remonstrance.
And then, as suddenly as the storm had arrived, the darkling clouds left her eyes and she glanced to where a nearby man, dressed outrageously in woman's garb, his face powdered and his lips smeared in lurid rouge, plucked a goblet from another footman's salver and took a deep draft of whatever was contained within. The golden chalice, she noted, looked so much like the picture in "Vampyris".
With a slight narrowing of her eyes, she watched the androgynous stranger lick his lips obscenely before he kissed his hand to her and trotted off with a suggestive wink. She then shifted her gaze to Lord Winterly to see that she too was being just as closely scrutinized by him.
"What if I insist on taking a goblet?" she asked, her voice below even a whisper. She only posed the question out of moribund curiosity, most eager to test his answer, for the viscosity of the red substance that had stained the man's lips, his cosmetics notwithstanding, had not been lost on Emma; and it had not, by any means, struck her as having a wine-like consistency.
"You may insist all you like," he said knowingly, "and see where it gets you."
She'd hazard a guess it would get her nowhere. A shiver of premonition stiffening the fine hairs along her spine.
"And if you spit it out, which I have no doubt you will," he went on, "and took it in your head to heap execrations on mine, you'd be well served, for I have just told you that it is no good for you. No, my dear—" His voice sibilant "—I insist you let the matter rest."
"Then I wish you will not insist so much."
"I wish you will be careful what you wish for." And then, before she could say anything further, he gestured for her to follow him from the would-be ballroom. "Perhaps some fresh air is in order, if only to cool your martial humor?"
"My humor is only upset by your impertinence." She gave him a tight smile and then left him to seek out her sister's company instead.
But Milli, far from pleased by her sisters solicitude, for Emma daren't leave the girl alone, found her elder sister's company, instead, to be a damper and so swiftly dragged her beau back into the crowd for a waltz.
"Let her be, Emma." Winterly had, like a waiting raven, descended upon her once more. "Hawk will attend her."
She nodded then, feeling that strange wave of inevitability lowering over her again, like it did at the abbey the day he'd first kissed her, and allowed him to lead her back into the darkened gallery by which they'd first arrived, past the scarred oaken doors and the watchful plague doctors; and into the silent gloom beyond. All the while they followed the winding tunnel, she wondered at the queer nature of the wine she'd been refused earlier.
Not wine at all, she decided.
"Come, my Rose."
She was startled from her thoughts by his lordship's voice as he stood waiting beside his plague doctors at the outer doors. They had reached the terminus.
"The night awaits us," he went on.
"Alone?" she asked, shooting the cloaked sentinels each a wary look, but they remained like statues. "In the dark?"
"Just so." His smile edged over his sharp white teeth. "There is something I wish to show you."
And it was anyone's guess what secrets she'd discover there. In the dark. Still, she followed him obediently through the doors. Knowing what he was; knowing what might be her fate. Did that still make her The Sick Rose? Being mindful of her doomed futurity and yet unable — nay, unwilling — to deviate from it. And was it not infinitely curious that a branch from a wild rose should serve as an apotropaic? yet she, the rose by any other name, should be drawn to that which might corrupt it. Smother it. Was she sick indeed?
She would soon find out.
🌟What say you? Is she a sick rose? Are you?! Answer truthfully, my lovelies!🌟