Marie d’Auvergne’s athame.
He felt it, resting in its special sheathe, hidden underneath his shirt.
Light glimmered from the windows of a tall stone-faced building. A knock, a nod, and he was granted entrance. No door in Edinburgh was closed to him, not opera house or oyster bar, New Town mansion or Old Town gaming hell.
A suite of rooms on the first floor had been given over to various games of chance. Against one wall of the front room stood a buffet bearing food, liquor, and wine. In the middle of that same chamber was the
rouge et noir
table, on each side a croupier with
a green shade over his eyes and a rake in his hand.
His entrance did not go unnoticed. A buxom brown-haired woman quickly made her way to his side. She murmured a welcome. He replied in kind.
He noted her drawn features, the shadows around her amber eyes. No more than eighteen, she was already weary of nights spent working these stifling rooms in a gown cut so low it showed a goodly portion of her plump breasts.
He felt no sympathy for her. This was the life she’d chosen, having abandoned a husband and babe to take up with a Captain Sharp, and so it was the life she was stuck with, and there was no use in crying over spilt milk.
“I’m for deep basset tonight,” he said.
“
A bon chat, bon rat,”
she murmured, and beckoned a passing waiter, and took a glass of wine from his tray.
The slender man did not. He no longer had a taste for spirits of any kind.
“ ‘To a good cat, a good rat’,” she’d said. An appropriate remark, in view of the character of this establishment. Pigeons ripe for the plucking. Flats waiting to be fleeced. Elbow shakers playing with loaded dice.
None of the gamblers paid him any heed as he passed through the crowd.
Basset was a sort of lottery, said to have been invented by a noble Venetian, whose creativity led to his exile. The banker, or
talliere,
had the sole disposal of the first and last cards. He also had a much greater prospect of winning than those who merely played. Nonetheless, the game was of so beguiling a nature, because of the several multiplications and advantages it seemed to offer an unwary player, that it was vastly popular despite the fact that the odds were hugely in favor of the bank.
The punters sat around a table, the
talliere
in their midst with the bank of gold before him. Each player held a book of thirteen cards and lay down the number that he pleased, with stakes. The
talliere
picked up the deck and turned up the bottom card or
fasse,
and paid half the value of the stakes wagered on any card of that sort.
The slender man took his seat, lay down his cards, placed his stakes. “King wins, ten loses.” “Ace wins, five loses.” “Knave wins, seven loses.” He paid little attention to the game.
Across the table from him sat a fair-haired young gentleman. It took no preternatural abilities to read the panic in his pale eyes. The high points of his crisp shirt collar had wilted like lettuce during the excitement of the play.
The young gentleman was not destined to win tonight. The
talliere
had decided, and the
talliere
had the power to let a player have as many winnings as he found convenient, and no more.
It was one of the slender man’s small vanities to influence such matters. He considered it in the nature of the cat giving the rat a sporting chance. As a result, when several shocking strokes of fortune brought the young gentleman’s stake to
sois-sante-et-le-va,
thereby breaking the bank, the dealer was even more shocked than the young gentleman himself.
The slender man rose from the table a couple hundred pounds richer, it being impossible for him to sit down to play and lose.
The brown-haired woman was standing where he’d left her, empty wineglass in her hand. The gambling hell would be hard pressed to cover the losses suffered this eve. Later, when the hell had closed, her Captain Sharp would add new bruises to those already hidden by her gown.
It mattered not. The d’Auiergne athame was cool against his flesh. The slender man stepped out into the night.
Talk of the devil and he is bound to appear.
(Romanian proverb)
Emily studied herself in the looking-glass. Silvery grey merino crepe over black sarsenet, trimmed with lace and artificial roses around the hem— Ravensclaw must have paid Madame Fanchon a fortune to have the gown sewn up so quickly. It was the most beautiful garment Emily had ever owned.
She hated it. Almost as much as she hated what Zizi was doing with that hair brush. “You’re hurting me!” Emily snapped.
Zizi tugged one last time on the brush, then stepped back to regard her handiwork. “Fine as fivepence, if I do say so myself.”
Emily conceded that she had never appeared to better advantage. She didn’t look the least bit like herself. Zizi’s clever fingers had arranged her rebellious hair in an antique Roman style, the long braid wound up back and around, a few curls allowed to casually fall free. Emily was afraid to move her head for fear the whole thing would come tumbling down.
Zizi had not achieved this transformation without assistance. Crowded into Emily’s bedroom were Lady Alberta and Ravensclaw’s two other maidservants, Bela and Lilian, both of whom bore a marked resemblance to Zizi as regarded bosomly bounty. One was dark, the other fair.
Bela applied lavender water with a liberal hand while Lilian pinched some color into Emily’s pale cheeks. “Edinburgh society is similar to that of London, albeit more limited,” Lady Alberta informed her. “Theaters and assemblies and musical evenings, gentlemen’s clubs that rival Watier’s or White’s.” The older woman had also been gifted with a new evening gown, yellow with a draped tunic, which she wore with a turban headdress.
Finally, everyone left off their ministrations. Lady Alberta arranged a crepe scarf around Emily’s shoulders and handed her a pair of black kid gloves. Emily snatched up
her reticule, which contained her various protective charms, a small comb and mirror, and a pretty vinaigrette fashioned from bloodstone, its aromatic contents designed to ‘correct the bad Quality of the Air.’ One never knew what manner of creatures one might encounter when one ventured out into the world.
Ravensclaw was waiting at the foot of the staircase. He wore full evening dress: tight-fitting pantaloons and dark blue coat; white linen shirt and waistcoat; starched cravat with discreet sapphire stickpin in its folds; highly polished shoes. His long auburn hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a velvet cord. He looked mouth-wateringly handsome.
Glamour,
Emily reminded herself.
Vampire. Undead.
They descended the outside staircase. A carriage waited in the street. With Ravensclaw’s assistance, Lady Alberta climbed inside.
He turned back to Emily. “ ‘Fair as is the rose in May.’ You are lovely, little one.” His breath was warm on her cheek.
Breath? Did the insensate breathe? “I am ‘presentable’, then?”
Val touched the crucifix that she had refused to tuck away out of sight. “Did that rankle? I apologize. You are more than presentable.” She shivered, and he frowned. “Are you nervous? Don’t be. You are safe with me.”
Emily barely refrained from snorting. She was safe with Ravensclaw like a hen was safe in company with a fox. “You don’t seem to understand how urgent it is that we find Michael and retrieve the athame.”
“I understand that nothing is served by cramming our fences. We’ll find out if Mr. Ross has it in his possession soon enough.” Ravensclaw’s fingers lingered lightly on Emily’s throat.
Pleasure prickled up her spine. “Um. Ah. How will we do that?”
“He will tell us. Have you not read of the persuasive abilities of my kind?”
Emily stared at him. “Then you admit—”
He laughed. “You are so serious, elfling. I could not help teasing you.”
Val was smiling as he helped her into the carriage. Emily was not. She settled beside Lady Alberta, who immediately began talking. Ravensclaw took the opposite seat Emily stared out the window as the carriage jolted and swayed.
Mist wreathed the streetlamps. Easy enough to believe this place was haunted, especially when Lady Alberta was chattering about Johnny One-Arm and Cat Nick; the Mercat Cross, site of countless public tortures and hangings; Lady Glamis, burned alive on the Castle Hill. Ravensclaw remained silent. Emily wondered how much of Lady Alberta’s ghoulish history he had witnessed firsthand.
The narrow, twisting streets of the Old Town by way of the North Bridge to the wider, and hopefully less haunted, neoclassical avenues of the New. Charlotte Square, Lady Alberta explained, had been designed by Robert Adams as a single unified scheme, the entire block fashioned as an urban palace with a grand central edifice and less imposing wings.
The carriage drew up in front of a residence with wide pilasters and balustered Venetian windows. Count Revay-Czobar’s small party joined the people alighting from their carriages to ascend the outer steps where footmen waited, resplendent in white stockings and powdered wigs. Through the arched doorway, then, and into the lobby, a green-painted chamber with a glazed tile floor; past the tall hall clock to join the guests sweltering on the staircase that led to the second floor drawing room. It seemed everyone who was anyone in Edinburgh had come to Lady Cullane’s townhouse tonight to hear ‘A Highland Battle’ played on the violin, and ‘The Pic-Nic’ on fiddle; ‘Black Jock,’ and ‘The Sow’s Tail.’
Emily’s head began to ache in anticipation of another musical evening just like every other musical evening — save for the Scottish music — she had been forced to attend. The drawing room was furnished with the same classically inspired furniture and crystal chandeliers, exquisite paintings and marble fireplace; populated with the same pale-gowned young ladies whispering behind gloved hands and fans and simpering each time a gentleman younger than their papa came within spitting distance, the same gimlet-eyed matchmaking mamas busy sizing up their daughters’ competition and calculating their matrimonial prospects. Only the windows were different, set deep in curtain boxes with drawn-up festoon drapes. That, and several of the gentlemen wore skirts.
Kilts,
Emily corrected herself, and tried not to stare. Masculine knees certainly came in a great variety. Was that a dagger hilt she saw tucked into that gentleman’s hose?
“It’s a sgian dubh, or black knife,” Val said, following her gaze. “A ceremonial weapon. That pouch worn around the waist is called a sporran. You’re frowning, Miss Dinwiddie. Remember why we’re here.” Emily relaxed her forehead before Lady Alberta could remind her that proper young women didn’t scowl.
They made their way deeper into the crowded chamber. The two women might as well have been invisible, because Ravensclaw drew every eye.
Glamour,
thought Emily again. She watched closely, hoping to see how the thing was done.
Her papa hadn’t believed in shielding children from knowledge of the supersensible. Emily clearly remembered her mama having hysterics at finding her playing with a shrunken head.
Admittedly, Ravensclaw’s allure may have had a little bit to do with muscular thighs and broad shoulders, high cheekbones and ivory skin.
Emily endured another round of introductions. Between the two of them, Ravensclaw and Lady Alberta must have known everyone present in this place tonight. In the background, a young woman’s harp rendition of “The Hen’s March o’er the Midden” sounded less like a march than a limp. And then the crowd parted, rather like Moses and the Red Sea, and Emily found herself face-to-face with the most beautiful female she had ever seen. The woman’s features were perfection, her skin the palest porcelain, her hair so dark it drank up all the candlelight. She wore a gown of crimson-colored gauze, the bodice cut low with corded edging, the sleeves shot with Spanish slashing, the scalloped skirt trimmed in twisted ribbon rolls. Her lush lips were painted crimson, her thick-lashed eyes were raven black. Escorting her was a tall, somberly-clad man as handsome as she was beautiful. His eyes were the color of violets, his hair a startling silver-grey. Had he worn lace at his throat and wrists, and jewels on his hands, he would have been the perfect image of a dissolute aristocrat of the
ancien regime
. Following behind them was a second man with chestnut hair and ice-green eyes and a harsh chiseled face marred by the scar that slashed one lean cheek.
The woman’s gaze flicked over Emily. “Ah, Val, you are so surprised to see Lisbet that you forget to introduce your little friend.”
The muscles of Val’s arm tightened under Emily’s fingers. “Lisbet, may I present Miss Emily Dinwiddie. Emily, meet Elisabeta Boroi. The gentleman accompanying her is Cezar Korzha.” He nodded to the third man, who remained in the background. “Andrei Torok.”
“Mea amant,”
murmured Lisbet Boroi. “So civilized.”
“We are paragons of propriety,” agreed Lady Alberta. “You have been traveling, I believe, in some exotic clime. India, was it? Or the Orient?”
“I have concerns in Budapest,” the silver-haired man said. “Val hasn’t mentioned you, Miss Dinwiddie. I wonder, why is that?”
Emily didn’t think for a moment that this was an idle question. Cezar Korzha was displeased by her presence. She wondered why that was. “Perhaps you should ask him that. Count Revay-Czobar is an old friend of my family.”
“I myself have known Emily since she was a babe,” said Lady Alberta. “Such a precious child she was.”
“I’m sure,” murmured Lisbet Boroi. “All those freckles. All that hair.”
“In some cultures,” Emily informed her, “freckles are greatly esteemed. The more freckles, the more beautiful a woman is said to be.”
“And in other cultures, freckles are said to be an indication of a contentious nature,” Val remarked.
Cezar Korzha smiled. His smile was not seductive like Ravensclaw’s, Emily decided, but instead a little cruel, which was perhaps fortunate, since Ravensclaw’s smile turned a person into a giddy goose. The violet eyes pulled at her. Deliberately, Emily looked away.