if it has been his custom to use the living as servants."
He had been watching the darkness of the street. Now he turned his attention fully toward her again, a ghost-shape in the gloom. "You understand," he said, "that though clues of this kind may lead us to Ernchester or to the heart of this affair with Karolyi, you may not find your husband, mistress."
She looked down at where the moonlight lay on the shawl over her arms. "I understand. I'd been hoping," she went on after long silence, her voice low, as if speaking to herself, "that when I went to the embassy yesterday afternoon-Saturday afternoon-that Sir Burnwell would say something like, 'Oh, of course, he's staying right across the way at the Pera Palace.' And the day would finish with Italian ices on the terrace and telling stories in bed half the night."
She drew the shawl's long fringes through her fingers, to keep them from trembling.
"You have never been alone, then."
It wasn't what she had expected him to say-if anything at all-but it was true.
She nodded without looking up.
"Well, I felt I'd been alone for years and years, before I knew him. But I expect most children feel that way. And I knew him-I mean, he was in and out of Uncle Ambrose's house- when I was fifteen, sixteen. I don't remember a moment of falling in love with him, but I remember knowing there was no one else I'd rather live with. I remember crying because I knew they'd never let me marry him. I was underage. And he wouldn't ask. He didn't want me to be hurt in a family row. He didn't want me to lose my inheritance over him."
"I daresay your father put his own interpretation to that." The soft voice was like the wind flowing down an empty hall. "What happened?"
"Father disinherited me over my studies. Jamie was away in Africa. That was during the war. Someone... someone said he was dead. I was terrified because I didn't know if I could succeed in an actual practice. Most women have a terrible time. My research is sound, but pure research would be out of the question, and I... I didn't know if Jamie was coming back. But without him I didn't care, really, what became of me. When he came back he asked me to marry him because I hadn't any money, and Father permitted it. Then later he changed his will again."
"But you never thought of giving up your study?" The vampire sounded amused. Lydia raised her head, shocked. "Of course not!" He was regarding her, she found, with a curious, unreadable intentness in his sulfurous eyes. For a moment she thought he would speak, but then like a ghost he seemed to withdraw a little from her.
"In truth," he said, "we can only do what we can. I spoke not to crush your hope, mistress, but only to warn you that not all grails are found intact. Nor, indeed, found at all."
"No," Lydia said softly, "I understand. Thank you."
He rose. She held out her hand to him, as she would have to a brother if she'd had one, or a friend. After a moment he took it, his thin hand emerging from the dark folds of his lap robe like Death's, oddly bereft of its native scythe, fleshless knuckles and fragile bones dry as bleached bamboo under her touch.
She'd taken down her hair while drinking her tea; its natural straight-ness had almost destroyed the remains of earlier curls, so that it lay in unswagged cinnabar heaps on her shoulders and back, like seaweed on a beach after a storm. With her free hand she propped her spectacles again, a schoolgirl's gesture.
Remembering it later she had the impression that he'd said something else to her- or maybe just spoken her name-and that his cold hand had brushed her face, pushing back the flame of her hair from her cheek. But that wasn't clear to her, as if she'd dreamed it. Perhaps, she thought, she had.
It did occur to her that it was not at all like Ysidro to be concerned whether her hopes were crushed or not.
The street of the brass sellers lay four or five aisles in from the main entrance of the Grand Bazaar, according to the dealer in attar of roses of whom Lydia made her inquiry... "Or more or less," added the man in excellent French; the beaming smile that split his dark face reminded her forcibly of