Deanna Raybourn - The Dead Travel Fast

Charles absently took a sweet from his pocket and sucked at it, furrowing his brow. “I did not think on that. I suppose it is possible.”

“Of course it is possible. Charles, I have been on the observatory walk. He did not fall. He was never careless and he is surefooted as a chamois goat. I would wager my life upon it-either something supernatural has attacked him or there was a deliberate and malicious attempt upon his life by someone in this castle.”

“Perhaps the same person who killed the maid Aurelia?” Charles offered.

“Yes!” I whirled to face him, my conviction rising. “I am certain of it. The peasants would say it was his father, Count Bogdan, who tried to destroy him. But what if the superstitions and monsters are merely a diversion? What if there is nothing afoot here more sinister than simple human evil?”

“And whom would you suspect of the deed?”

I stopped pacing and thought, turning each of the castle’s inhabitants over in my mind. “Frau Amsel,” I said. “Aurelia carried the late count’s child, a possible successor to the Dragulescu name and fortune. She was slain with her unborn child. If the present count died, who then would benefit? The countess would want a male to inherit, it is the way of things here. And who better than Florian, Frau Amsel’s son, who already has a grasp of things and would keep the estate under the countess’s rule? There would be no other direct heir of the Dragulescu line. She would have only to adopt him, and such things are easily arranged.”

“Possibly,” Charles said, his voice tinged with doubt.

“And she loathes me. It would give her great pleasure to dispatch me at the same time by putting my shawl in such a place as to implicate me. She could easily have slipped into the garden to retrieve it. And it was she who named me in the count’s workroom when she retrieved my shawl.”

I was hungry then, suddenly and ravenously hungry. I sat to eat the other things Charles had brought, dipping my spoon into the bowl of mămăligă.

Charles said nothing, turning my pretty theory over in his businessman’s mind. At length he nodded. “It is a sound enough suspicion, I suppose. Although I notice you do not entertain the notion that another, even likelier suspect may have done the deed.”

I took another spoonful of the hearty porridge. “Who?”

Charles sat back, managing to look simultaneously smug and uncomfortable. “The count himself.”

I put down my spoon. “You think Count Andrei did this to himself? You are mad.”

“Am I? Or perhaps you are simply unwilling to consider all possibilities.”

I folded my arms and when I spoke it was with a stranger’s voice, clipped and cold. “Go on.”

Charles leaned forward. “You said yourself that the maid Aurelia carried a rival claimant to the estate. Who better to resent this than the sitting count?”

“Precisely,” I replied by way of retort. “ The sitting count . He had no need to put Aurelia’s child out of the way. He had secured his inheritance as his father’s lawful heir.”

“But was he? How easy might it have been for the girl to produce a piece of paper, a bit of forgery with Count Bogdan’s signature upon it, claiming responsibility for the child and naming it his heir? You said there was a quarrel between the countess and her husband. He meant to put her away and marry the girl. Perhaps he had taken steps to do so, irrevocable steps that would have disinherited your paramour.”

I flinched at his use of the word “paramour” but I did not rise to the bait. “Surely the fact that Count Bogdan was dead put paid to whatever schemes the girl might have had to see her illegitimate child established as a Dragulescu heir.”

Charles shrugged. “If she was cunning and ruthless, she might well have gambled upon her child’s blood. Think how easily one might bribe a country priest or solicitor to draw up a bit of paper to stake her child’s claim. She could promise them a hearty share of the estate upon settlement. Many a villain has been bought with less,” he said sagely.

“I suppose it is possible,” I admitted, though grudgingly so.

“Or perhaps the count simply bears the hot blood of his ancestors,” Charles mused, “and thought to answer the insult done to his mother by dispatching the maid and her offspring. A colder plot, to be sure, but not impossible.”

I did not answer this; I could not. Was it possible? Could he have killed the girl with no greater provocation than the knowledge that she had supplanted his own mother in his father’s affections? It was monstrous; it could not be so. And yet, the possibility of it lived, like a monstrous thorny weed, pricking at my convictions.

“You are angry with me,” Charles said at last.

I stirred the mămăligă , but it had gone cold. “I am not angry, only heartsick and longing to go from here.”

He reached a hand to cover mine. “I will take you, as soon as it may be arranged, wherever you wish to go-to England to see Anna, to the Highlands, to Timbuktu. I will make it so.”

His hand was warm and comfortable over mine, but I was no longer the girl who could reasonably contemplate warm and comfortable. Still, I managed a smile and thanked him, and soon after he left me alone with my thoughts.

That evening it was Cosmina who brought my meal. She entered quietly and put the food upon the table and opened her arms. I went to her, resting my head upon her shoulder.

“I am glad to see you,” I told her, my voice muffled. She put a hand to my head, cradling me close as one might a beloved child.

When she drew back, there were tears standing in her eyes. “I am so sorry, Theodora. I ought never to have brought you here. I hesitated to come tonight because I feared you would be angry with me.”

“Angry with you? Whatever for?”

She grasped my hands in her own. “For inviting you to this place. For this,” she said, taking in my little prison with a glance.

I had not drawn the curtains yet, and she walked to the window where the setting sun had already dropped beyond the mountains and the long shadows of evening were beginning to lengthen.

“There is a Scottish word for this time of day. You told me once, but I cannot remember it.”

“Gloaming,” I told her, coming to stand beside her at the window. “When the light has fled but the stars have not yet shown themselves. That is the gloaming, the loveliest and saddest hour of the day.”

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “And I thought only in Transylvania was there such poetry.”

“It is a poetic place,” I agreed.

“I hope you will remember it with affection,” she said, her brow furrowing anxiously.

“Remember it? Shall I be permitted to leave then?” I asked her, a tinge of hysteria sharpening my tone.

She hastened to soothe me. “Of course! Oh, my dear, you must not believe this is anything other than the most fleeting of circumstances. Andrei began to stir this afternoon. It is only a matter of hours before he wakens and speaks the truth. Then you will be freed. It is simply that the countess is too fearful for his life to take any chances he might be attacked again.”

“And she thinks I am a threat to him?” I asked evenly.

“She does not know what to think. In fact,” Cosmina hesitated, biting at her lip, as if considering whether to share a confidence. “In fact, she fears it is Count Bogdan who has tried to destroy their son.”

“Then why keep me here, locked away like some villain?” I demanded.

Cosmina spread her hands. “She is ill and confused and afraid. She believes the strigoi has attacked Andrei, but she also realises the truth may be more mundane. She will take no risks with his life, and even though she fears the strigoi , she must listen to the Amsels filling her ears with poison against you. Pity her, my friend. She only wants to protect her beloved son. Surely you can understand such a thing.”