a waltz, and then the ballroom dissolved and they were on the streets of Venice, with revellers laughing and running past them amidst torchlight and gondolas and canals. And then the streets of Venice winked out and they were in the forest again, just the two of them, with the carriage and the servants vanished.
‘Please allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, bowing low over her hand. ‘It is an honour to meet you, Mrs Darcy. But what is this? You do not return my greeting.’
‘I do not know your name,’ she said, finding that her mouth, at least, was her own.
‘Then I must tell it to you. I am called many things by many people, but you may call me husband.’
‘I already have a husband,’ she replied.
He gave an unnatural smile.
‘You have nothing. You have a man who is afraid to touch you. He has married you but he has not bedded you. He is no husband to you.’
‘What do you want with me?’ she asked.
‘I want nothing but to make you happy,’ he said in a whisper as he walked round her, trailing his hand across her shoulders. ‘I want to give you your heart’s desire. You are so beautiful,’ he said as he stopped in front of her, lifting his cold white hand and stroking her hair, then running his fingers down her cheek and across her lips, trailing rivers of ice down her spine.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, appalled.
‘I have already told you,’ he said, resting his hand on her shoulder and bending his head towards her throat.
‘What are you?’ she asked.
‘I am vampyre,’ he said. ‘Oldest of the old, most ancient of an ancient line. I am fear and dread.’
She began to tremble. She wanted to run but she could not move. She was held rigid by his will.
‘So beautiful,’ he said reverently, as his head moved ever nearer her throat. ‘So ripe, so rich, so full of life; so vital, so healthy, so bloody.’
He bent his head and his teeth grazed her skin…
…and a voice rang out threateningly across the clearing.
‘Step away from her.’
Elizabeth turned to see Darcy springing into the clearing with a look of fury on his face.
‘Let her go,’ Darcy snarled, ‘she is mine.’
The vampyre was amused.
‘Yours?’ he said mockingly. ‘She is not yours. You have not had the strength to take her. There is no smell of you in her blood, there are no signs of you on her body.’
‘Step away from her,’ said Darcy, threateningly.
The vampyre’s mockery left him, to be replaced an accursed and sinister manner.
‘Do not attempt to come between me and what is rightfully mine,’ he said.
His voice was full of menace and with the menace came the storm. Black clouds blew up from nowhere. They sped across the sky at a ghastly rate, boiling and rolling with hideous malevolence as they ate up the sky and consumed the stars and a terrible power was revealed. It roared around the clearing, unspeakable in its dreadfulness, an appalling, unnameable entity; something vile and grotesque and old.
Darcy recoiled from the tumult and the vampyre smiled.
‘Oh, yes, you know me now,’ he said, and his voice was as vile as the storm.
‘No. It can’t be,’ said Darcy in fear and loathing. ‘You’re dead! The mob ferreted you out of your ruin and destroyed you.’
‘A creature of my age does not die lightly, whatever your friends might think.’
‘But they came on you with torches when you were too weak even to feed—’
‘They came upon me in my helplessness and they laughed at me,’ he said. ‘They knew that my children had abandoned me and that I could not defend myself. They drew near me, fearful and wondering, and when they took no hurt they grew bold.
‘“Send him to the guillotine!” they cried. “Let him see that she too has fangs!”
‘And therein lay their mistake. They took me to a place of carnage and it fed me through the skin. When I grew strong I rose above them, borne aloft on mighty wings. They froze before me in horror, afraid at what they had done, and then I fell amongst them, drinking with greedy pleasure. Long I drank, slaking my thirst, and as I did so my skin revived and my bones returned to strength until I was restored to some semblance of youth and vigour.
‘At last I had done. I left that place of carnage and returned to life in all its glorious wonder. To Paris I went, and to