concealing them when anyone entered the room was a lifelong habit-and rose in a rustle of lace, crossing to her side of the bookshelves, where she settled on the floor, her long red hair hanging down her back, her plans to work at the Radcliffe Infirmary's dissection rooms that afternoon laid aside. By the time Ellen reappeared with a tray of sandwiches and onion soup-for it was well past noon- Lydia had remembered when and in what context she'd come across Karolyi's name, and the recollection made her more uneasy still. She left the tray untouched and ascended to the bedroom two hours later to continue her researches in the back issues of Lancet and Medical Findings stored under the bed. She might not remember whether Germany had a Parliament these days or be able to tell a Bolshevik from a Menshevik, but she could remember to within a few months when secretin had been discovered or the address of Marie Curie's laboratory in Paris.
She was still reading at teatime when Ellen came up with another tray and bullied her into eating half an egg and part of a scone while Ellen built up the bedroom fire and turned up the gas. Lydia had tracked down the reference, which had given her, in turn, another name; she was dimly aware that she had begun to count the hours between now and midnight, when, at her best guess, James was due home.
If he didn't elect to remain in Paris overnight.
If something didn't go wrong.
If Ernchester hadn't seen him...
If he's staying in Paris, she thought, dabbing jam and Devonshire cream on a scone and then setting it on the plate to gaze at the darkening windows, he'll wire me. He'll let me know.
And if he didn't?
She wondered if she could reach him by wiring the consulate or the Foreign Office- or was it the War Office that operated the Secret Service? Where was the Foreign Office in Paris, anyway? Like most girls of wealthy family, her experience of the City of Lights had been stringently limited by her preceptors to the Champs Elysees and the Rue de la Paix. If she telephoned the Foreign Office in London -would that be in Whitehall? Parliament? Scotland Yard?-they would only tell her lies .
She felt helpless, frightened, uncertain of what to do, because, unlike medical research, this was something for which she had never prepared. And in any case, she realized, only now seeing the darkness beyond the curtain, they'd all have gone home by this time. As if to echo an affirmative, the Louis XV clock on the parlor mantel downstairs sang its five clear notes. So all she could do was wait.
She fell asleep sometime after midnight across the foot of the bed, still wearing her fluffy rose-point tea gown, the eye of a maelstrom of medical journals that spread to the bedroom's door, and dreamed of crumbling houses in ancient cities, their stones mortared with dark blood and cobweb; of half-seen forms whispering in shadows centuries deep.
By morning James had not returned. But it wasn't until his second telegram that she decided to go up to London and seek out such a house herself.
Chapter Two
"The Earl of Ernchester is a vampire."
Streatham-a fussy, chinless man whom Asher had never liked-regarded him for a moment with narrow surprise in his light blue eyes, as if asking himself why Asher would perpetrate such a tale and if it constituted a threat to his position as head of the Paris branch of the Department. Asher had spent a good part of the previous night, sleepless aboard the Dover ferry and the train from Boulogne, trying to phrase an argument that would convince those in charge to either have Karolyi arrested in Pans-scarcely likely, since Karolyi never went anywhere without diplomatic credentials-or to assign a man to follow him, to at least see what his next step would be.
Lack of sleep, hunger, and sheer exasperation when the green-painted door of the town house on the Rue de la Ville de l'Eveque hadn't opened to his knock at five minutes after nine had had their effect. Sitting on a bench under the bare trees before the Madeleine, watching the town house for signs of life, with the chilling threat of rain blowing over him for twenty freezing minutes, he had finally thought, To hell with it. I'll tell them the truth.
Streatham ventured a small chuckle, like an agent offering a read newspaper on the Underground to the