“Of course he is, the evening’s young. I should have known. This way then.” He took hold of the Count’s arm to turn him toward the stairs. “Say, there’s not a lot of meat on your bones is there? Now me, I think a little stoutness shows a man’s place in the world.”
“Indeed.” He stared down at the fleshy fingers wrapped just above his elbow, too astonished at being so held to be enraged.
Fortunately, he was released before the astonishment faded, for it would have been the height of rudeness to kill the man while they were both guests in another’s home.
At the top of the stairs they crossed a broad landing toward an open doorway through which spilled the sounds of men… and women? He paused. He would not be anonymous in this crowd. He would be introduced and be expected to take part in social discourse. While he looked forward to the opportunity of testing his ability to walk unknown and unseen amongst the living, he also found himself strangely afraid. It had been a very, very long time since he had been a member of such a party and it would have been so much easier had the women not been there.
He had always had a weakness—no, say rather a fondness, for he did not admit weakness—for a pretty face.
“Problem, Count?” March paused in the doorway and beamed back at him.
On the other hand, if this man can move amongst the powerful of London and they do not see him for what he is… “No, not at all, Mr. March. Lead on.”
There had been little imagination involved in the naming of the green salon, for the walls were covered in a brocaded green wallpaper that would have been overwhelming had it not been covered in turn by dozens of paintings. A few were surprisingly good, most were indifferent, and all had been placed within remarkably ugly frames. The furniture had been upholstered in a variety of green and gold and cream patterns and underfoot was a carpet predominantly consisting of green cabbage roses. Everything that could be gilded, had been. Suppressing a shudder, he was almost overcome by a sudden wave of longing for the bare stone and dark, heavy oak of home.
Small groups of people were clustered about the room, but his eyes were instantly drawn to the pair of facing settees where half a dozen beautiful women sat talking together, creamy shoulders and bare arms rising from silks and satins heavily corseted around impossibly tiny waists. How was it his newspapers had described the women to be found circling around the prince? Ah yes, as “a flotilla of white swans, their long necks supporting delicate jeweled heads.” He had thought it excessively fanciful when he read it but now, now he saw that it was only beautifully accurate.
“We’ll introduce you to the ladies later,” March murmured, leading the way across the center of the room. “That’s His Highness by the window.”
Although he would have much preferred to take the less obvious route around the edges, the Count followed. As they passed the ladies, he glanced down. Most were so obviously looking away they could only have been staring at him the moment before, but one met his gaze. Her eyes widened and her lips parted but she did not look away. He could see the pulse beating in the soft column of her throat. Later, he promised, and moved on.
“Your Royal Highness, may I present a recent acquaintance of mine, Count Dracula.”
Even before March spoke, he had identified which of the stout, whiskered men smoking cigars by the open window was Edward, the Prince of Wales. Not from the newspaper photographs, for he found it difficult to see the living in such flat black and gray representations, but from the nearly visible aura of power that surrounded him. Like recognized like. Power recognized power. If the reports accompanying the photographs were true, the prince was not allowed much in the way of political power but he was clearly conscious of himself as a member of the royal caste.
He bowed, in the old way, body rigid, heels coming together. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Your Highness.”
The prince’s heavy lids dropped slightly. “Count Dracula? This sounds familiar, yah? You are from where?”
“From the Carpathian Mountains, Highness,” he replied in German. His concerns about sounding foreign had obviously been unnecessary. Edward sounded more like a German prince than an English one. “My family has been boyers, princes there since before we turned back the Turk many centuries ago. Princes still when we threw off the Hungarian yoke. Leaders in every war. But…” He sighed and spread his hands. “… the warlike days are over and the glories of my great race are as a tale that is told.”
“Well said, sir!” the prince exclaimed in the same language. “Although I am certain I have heard your name, I am afraid I do not know that area well—as familiar as I am with most of Europe.” He smiled and added, “As related as I am to most of Europe. If you are not married, Dracula, I regret I have no sisters remaining.”
The gathered men laughed with the prince, although the Count could see not all of them—and Mr. March was of that group—spoke German. “I am not married now, Your Highness, although I was in the past.”
“Death takes so many,” Edward agreed solemnly.
The Count bowed again. “My deepest sympathies on the death of your eldest son, Highness.” The report of how the Duke of Clarence had unexpectedly died of pneumonia in early 1892 had been in one of the last newspaper bundles he’d received. As far as the Count was concerned, death should be unexpected, but he was perfectly capable of saying what others considered to be the right thing. If it suited his purposes.
“It was a most difficult time,” Edward admitted. “And the wound still bleeds. I would have given my life for him.” He stared intently at his cigar.
With predator patience, the Count absorbed the silence that followed as everyone but he and the prince shifted uncomfortably in place.
“Shall I tell you how I met the Count, your Highness?” March asked suddenly. “There was a bully smash up on Piccadilly.”
“A bully smash up?” the prince repeated lifting his head and switching back to English. “Were you in it?”
“No, sir, I wasn’t.”
“Was the Count?”
“No sir, he wasn’t either. But we both saw it, didn’t we, Count?”
The Count saw that the prince was amused by the American so, although he dearly wanted to put the man in his place, he said only, “Yes.”
“And you consider this accident to be a gutt introduction to a Carpathian prince?” Edward asked, smiling.
If March had possessed a tail, the Count realized, he’d have been wagging it; he was so obviously pleased that he’d lifted the Prince of Wales’s spirits. “Yes, sir, I did. Few things bring men together like disasters. Isn’t that true, Count?”
That, he could wholeheartedly agree with. He was introduced in turn to Lord Nathan Rothschild, Sir Ernest Cassel, and Sir Thomas Lipton—current favorites of Prince Edward—and he silently thanked the English newspapers and magazines that had provided enough facts about these men for him to converse intelligently.
He was listening with interest to a discussion of the Greek-Turkish War when he became aware of Mr. March’s scrutiny. Turning toward the American, he caught the pudgy man’s gaze and held it. “Yes?”
March blinked, and the Count couldn’t help thinking that even the horse on Piccadilly hadn’t taken so long to recognize its danger. It wasn’t that March was stupid—it seemed that old terrors had been forgotten in his new land.
“I was just wondering about your glasses, Count. Why do you keep those smoked lenses on inside?”
Because the prince was also listening, he explained. “My eyes are very sensitive to light and I am not used to so much interior illumination.” He gestured at the gas lamps. “This is quite a marvel to me.”