on the little table before her, dinner would be served in the salon car at eight-thirty, but between anxiety about James and the obscure fear that even yet she would encounter Ysidro, she doubted she would feel much hunger. Her head ached, and she realized she hadn't eaten anything since the three-quarters of a croissant she'd consumed before Margaret Potton had entered the dining room at the hotel.
She watched through the window until the train began to move. Then she settled back and closed her eyes, and breathed a sigh.
Jamie...
"If I may say so, mistress," murmured a voice like the sudden slide of silk over unexpecting bare skin, "you make yourself difficult to look after. Were I your husband, I would school you."
Lydia whipped around in her seat, stomach lurching-anger, fear, and, against her will, a deep flash of relief that she'd have some kind of help and advice. Her relief angered her still more, and she replied tartly, "Were you my husband, I would demand a separate establishment." She pulled off her eyeglasses and slipped them behind her hat.
He stood in the doorway, ivory and shadow. As in his tomb, only the slender hands, the gold ring, caught the light. Behind him, spectacle lenses flashed in the corridor.
"You behold it." He stepped inside and his small gesture took in the rosewood, the velvet, the frosted lily lamps.
He had fed. She could see the faint color that stained his white face and close mouth, so that he appeared more nearly human in the staring light.
Sickness filled her that she had ever felt relief. That she had ever asked help or advice of such a thing.
"Miss Potton has taken a compartment at the other end of the carriage," Ysidro went on. "It would be our pleasure, would you join us there for cards."
Lydia stood up, slender and straight in her traveling dress of carnation faille, jet and amber glittering. "Send her home."
"I've already told you I don't have-" began Miss Potton, and Ysidro raised a finger.
"This is not possible."
"Will it not be possible after we return from Vienna?" Lydia 's face was almost as chalky as the vampire's. "Are you going to kill her when you're safe in London again? And me, and James, to secure the secrets you hope to stop Ernchester from telling the Austrians?"
His expression did not change, but she was aware of thoughts passing through the sulfur- crystal mazes of his eyes. Thinking about options? she wondered. Or only about what kind of story she was likely to believe?
"You have admirably guarded the secrets you learned a year ago," he said after a time. "They are no more believable now than they were then. And I believe Miss Potton as capable of keeping them as yourself."
The tram lurched a little, going over the points; lights cascaded past the window. In the corridor a small dog barked furiously and a woman crooned, "La, tais- toi, p'tit malin!"
"I understand that dinner will be served at half past eight." Ysidro's fingers moved toward the folder on the table but did not touch it. Like everything about him, the gesture was minimal, as though long years had wearied him of all but the smallest symbols of what had been human mannerism, human expression, human speech. Lydia was suddenly reminded of the worn stones of a field circle in a pasture near Willoughby Close, her childhood home, like the white stumps of teeth protruding from olive turf.
"I suggest you ladies partake, if so be your wish, and return after to Miss Potton's compartment. Do you play picquet, mistress? The most excellent of games, and the representation in little of all human affairs. I assure you," he added, saffron gaze meeting the brown, "that neither you nor she has aught to fear of me."
"I never did," Margaret said from the doorway. Ysidro did not so much as shift his eyes.
Lydia said, "I don't believe you."
The vampire bowed. "This news breaks my heart."
And he was gone. Margaret, who no more than Lydia had seen him go, looked startled, then hastened away down the corridor without so much as an excuse, leaving Lydia standing alone.
Miss Potton returned half an hour later, tapping gently on the curtained glass. Lydia, who in the intervening time had neither resumed her spectacles nor taken from her portmanteau the issue of Journal des Etudes Physiochemiques she had brought for entertainment, turned from a somewhat blank contemplation of the lights fleeing by in the darkness and said, "Come."