abroad, poor thing. She only came with me out of extreme devotion. I should never have expected it of her . . . it was wrong of me.” And she rooted around for a handkerchief, which she pressed to her face.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” I asked.
“No, I’d rather be alone, thank you,” she said stiffly.
“Send one of the servants for me if you need me, then,” I said.
She nodded. As I reached the door she said in a flat voice, “She sensed it, didn’t she? The moment we arrived she called it a house of death. But she never realized it was her own death that she was sensing.”
I closed the door behind me and hurried back through the halls to my room. Again Darcy was nowhere to be seen. I slipped into the bed, still warm with his presence, and lay there, thinking how comfortable and secure it had felt to lie in his arms. Then an image swam into my mind of Siegfried lying in bed beside me. No! I wanted to yell. I just wanted to be away from this horrible place and to feel safe again. Because something had struck me on the way back through the hallways. If Miss Deer-Harte had been killed because she had spotted the murderer and could identify him, then I was also in similar danger.
I lay awake, staring at the dark canopy of the bed over me, trying to make sense of things.
Someone creeping into my room, bending over my bed. The portrait on the wall being changed. Matty with blood around her mouth. Pirin drinking from a glass intended for Nicholas. And now Miss Deer-Harte lying dead. What did they mean? What linked them together if I was trying to be rational and not believe that I was in a place inhabited by vampires? But I couldn’t come up with a rational answer. In fact I didn’t like the only answer that kept coming back to me—what if the young man we had seen was a vampire who haunted this castle and now Matty, Dragomir and God knows how many of the servants were under his spell. That would account for nobody else except for Miss Deer-Harte noticing him as he stood in the archway and watched the banquet. I knew this theory sounded ridiculous, but up in Scotland you’d meet plenty of people who swore that they had seen fairies, and we had a couple of ghosts at Castle Rannoch. So who was to say that vampires didn’t exist?
Eventually I suppose I must have dozed, because when I opened my eyes slanted sunlight was shining on that hideous portrait on the far wall. I was lying alone in the enormous bed and there was still no sign of Darcy. I got up, washed and dressed, then went down to breakfast. The breakfast room was full of people, chatting amiably as they ate. Nobody seemed to know or care about last night’s tragedy, but then to them she was only a companion who had lost her footing and fallen. Only Lady Middlesex was not present.
Nicholas smiled at me as I poured myself some coffee. “Lovely bright sunshine for a change. Good day for hunting, I think, if the snow is not too deep.”
“My bridesmaids can’t come, so don’t try to entice them,” Matty said. “It’s our final dress fitting this morning.”
“I wouldn’t dream of luring young ladies away from their dress fitting,” Nicholas said. “I want you all to look your beautiful and radiant best on the big day.”
I happened to be looking at Matty’s face. I saw the briefest flash of annoyance or panic before she smiled. “Of course we will all be radiant and beautiful, my dear Nicholas. We must look our best for the big day.”
I continued to watch her as she took a nibble of toast. Something he had said had made her upset or angry. And now I studied her, I thought she looked terrible—white and drawn, with bags under her eyes. Not at all the radiant bride-to-be. She was now playing with the rest of her slice of toast, crumbling it into tiny pieces, before she pushed the plate away from her, got up and left. I got the sense that she was under a good deal of strain. So why would that be? I found an interesting train of thoughts creeping into my head. My grandfather, the former policeman, had always quoted his superior officer, an inspector he