Lady Killer (16 page)

Clio and Miles got similar responses from a dozen other people they asked, including a man whose body was entirely wrapped in snakes, three girls who offered to paint birthmarks on their “cheeks” for Miles’s personal and private inspection, and a woman who proposed to sing a song that the girl with the birthmark would not be able to resist and would cause her to appear before them in a matter of minutes from anywhere in the world.

But despite these handsome offers, Clio felt increasingly uneasy as they pushed deeper into the fairgrounds. There was something in the way people eyed her that began slowly to erode her sense of relief.

“Try yer luck, win a brooch,” a stooped figure croaked from a booth next to her, and Clio jumped.

“Are you all right?” Miles asked. He had been watching her closely, and had seen her expression go from enjoyment to concern. “You look pale. Perhaps we should come back later.”

Clio shook her head. “No. Now. I want to find out now. Whatever there is to find out.”

“Three tries for a penny, sir,” the stooped figure went on. It appeared to be a woman, and if her looks were anything to go on, she was old enough to be one of the original Fates. “Try your luck and win a brooch. Guaranteed to bring long life to the winner. Try it for the lady, sir,” she cooed at Miles, blowing stale breath in his face and pressing three wooden balls into his hand. “Hazard is but a penny, sir, and all you have to do to win is get one of those balls into this basket.”

Miles shook his head.

“Almost the lady’s birthday, my lord. Brooch would make a fine present, it would,” the woman continued her sales pitch, and Miles was about to relent, merely so he would be allowed to leave, when he saw the color drain from Clio’s face.

He dropped a penny on the woman’s table, then put an arm around Clio and led her to one side of the crowd where a felled log provided a place for them to sit. “What is wrong?” he asked.

“She knew it was almost my birthday,” Clio stammered. “No one knows my birthday is tomorrow.
I
nearly forgot. How did
she
know that? How
could
she have known that? Unless I was here earlier and told her.”

Miles exhaled with relief and had to repress a smile. “Is that what is worrying you? What she said about your birthday?”

Clio’s eyes unclouded slightly in her surprise at his tone.

“I can assure you she says that to all her customers,” he went on. “Most of the couples you see strolling around here probably never met before tonight,” Miles explained, aiming for delicacy. “It is merely a ruse to get more people to spend more money. I suspect if you asked three quarters of those women they would say it was ‘almost’ their birthday, if it meant they could pry their companions’ purses open a bit wider.”

“You mean they are prostitutes? And she thought I was a prostitute also?” Clio asked.

“That is not what I meant to imply,” Miles said quickly. He braced himself for her anger.

“How marvelous!” Clio declared, smiling. “No one has ever thought anything like that about me before. I read in a book once that prostitution was the only honest life for a woman,” she rushed on. “Because there are no lies between a prostitute and her client, not like between a husband and wife or a man and his mistress.”

“I think Aretino meant that as a satire, not a suggestion,” Miles said quietly, astonished at her reading.

Clio ignored him, musing aloud. “Perhaps other people here think I am a prostitute as well. Perhaps it is only because I am with you that no one has approached me.”

“If you would like I can wait in the carriage,” Miles offered.

“Yes, perhaps that would be better,” she agreed quickly. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Lady Thornton, I will have to insist—”

Clio burst into laughter. “I was only fooling, my lord. You need not look so ghastly.” Clio leaned in and scrutinized him. “I don’t know how you do that. You seem to grow both taller and older simultaneously.”

Her face was too close to his. Her eyes, her nose, her lips. The curve of her eyelashes over her cheek when she blinked. The angle of her chin. Her playful smile, her even teeth, the dry crack on her bottom lip, the wisp of her hair that had escaped from its pins and hung between their faces, the slight flush on her cheeks, the smell of roses, the line of her smooth neck, the question in her eyes—Miles was aware of all of them, aware with every inch of skin on his body. He reached out with a finger, caught the truant tendril of hair, and pushed it back behind her ear.

Then he stood up, pulling her up with him. “We should go.”

Clio’s mind buzzed confusingly for a moment. “But we have not learned who the girl is,” she reminded him. “Or who she was seen with.”

“We’ll have to do that another way. I think I am too tired—”

A man careened out of one of the establishments along the back wall of the fair, known as Sinner’s Alley, stumbled against Clio and then fell, unconscious, at her feet. Before she could bend over to make sure he was still breathing, another man, face red with anger, followed him out of the establishment, wielding a twig broom.

“Don’t come back until you can pay,” the broom-brandishing man yelled at the man on the ground, whacking him a few times for good measure. “I ain’t running a church here, Ginny, so we don’t give out no charity.” He raised the broom to give Ginny another whack, and found it stuck.

“I think he’s gotten the message,” Miles told the man from behind.

“This ain’t none of your business, sir,” the broom-brandisher told him, swinging around and giving Ginny a chance to crawl to safety. “Ain’t nothing to do with—” He broke off, spotting Clio. A smile spread over his face. “Well I say. I knew you’d be back. I told Flora so, I did. We’ll see her again, I said. And there you are.”

Clio looked behind her to see who the man could be speaking to, then raised a hand to her chest. “Me?”

“You think I mean some other pretty young thing with a monkey? Hell, lass, I haven’t seen anyone get taken with the flavor like you since my own Mary, rest her soul.”

“You must be mistaken,” Clio said. “I have never been here before.”

The man looked skeptically from her to Miles. Then he winked. “You got nothing to worry about. He won’t care if you was here earlier. The gentry all love my place. They all got a bit of the hunger for it, too. Don’t you agree, sir?”

Miles, who seemed to be paying only marginal attention, said, “Oh yes. Of course. You are very correct.”

“Told you.” The broom brandisher shot another wink in Clio’s direction. “No need to hide it from him. We’ll not tell him how much you won though, that can be our secret. But you best come inside so you’re not standing on that ankle of yours.”

“What did you say?” Clio demanded.

“It must be hurting something fierce after that fall you took trying to get closer to the pit,” the man elaborated. “You’d do well to sit down.”

“You know about my ankle?” Clio asked. Her voice was strangely hoarse.

“Course I do. Didn’t I have my Flora bandage it up herself. Didn’t I have her—”

“Flora,” Clio repeated the name. Her face was ashen. “You call her that because she has a birthmark in the shape of a flower on her cheek.”

The man nodded. “It was my sister’s idea. She’s buried now, near the old house in Devonshire, but she left me Flora. Thought the flower on the girl’s cheek meant good luck. And the girl has been good luck, at least for me. Never was another who could sing so sweetly. Makes a man’s heart glad to hear her.”

“Where is your niece now?” Miles asked abruptly.

“Last I saw her I think she was going to bed,” the man told him. “That’s where all good girls ought to be now. Excepting those who have the taste like your friend here. Once you got the taste, you don’t want to sleep or eat or do anything. The taste gets into you and you always got to have more.”

“What taste?” Clio half whispered. “The taste for what?”

“What taste?” The red faced man laughed at the ridiculous question. “Why, the taste for blood.”

Chapter Nine

Taste for blood, taste for blood, taste for blood.

The horrible feeling of being trapped in a nightmare was back, wrapping itself around Clio more and more tightly until it was almost suffocating.
You are not what you think you are.

What you think you are, you are.

You are exactly what you think you are.

She had been at the fair the night before. She had hurt her ankle. She had met Flora. And she had killed her.

Clio took a deep breath. “My lord, may I speak to you apart?” she asked Miles. The moment of her confusion had passed. She felt calm, in control. Relieved. She knew what she had to do.

Miles had been worried that the broom-man’s words would upset her. Her tranquility was a relief.

“My lord, I would do this myself, but I am afraid I might bungle it. Would you please tell that gentleman that I killed his niece and that you are taking me to the Special Commissioner? There is no need to bother him with the details of my being a vampire, he seems to know. After that, I propose we go directly to Newgate or the Tower, or wherever they put criminals of my type.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We have incontrovertible proof that I am the vampire. There is no reason for me to remain in your custody any longer.”

If she had not looked so serious Miles would have been tempted to laugh at her idea of incontrovertible proof. But there was nothing funny about her expression, or her intent. “Very well,” he said finally. “You stay here and I will go and speak to the gentleman, as you generously called him. Then we will discuss the question of where to take you.”

Clio nodded and stood ramrod still while Miles approached the man. A few words were exchanged, which Clio could not hear, but she saw the man’s eyes grow huge as he looked at her. Then he spun around and doubled over, holding on to Miles for support, and Clio felt as though her heart would burst. The man was sobbing, absolutely uncontrollable, and it was her fault. When he turned back he had tears streaming down his face and Clio saw that he was avoiding looking at her.

“Get that filthy bitch away from me,” he said and began to sob again, so hysterically it sounded like laughter. Clio shuddered and looked away.

Her entire body felt heavy, leaden, solid with grief and self-loathing. She barely saw or heard anything as they left the fair, did not even notice the man who said, “Good to see you again, sweetheart.” She was only slightly aware of Miles’s hands helping her into his coach and of his following her in after giving orders to his horsemen.

They were reentering the city gates when she spoke. “Thank you for telling the gentleman about Flora. He seemed very distraught. He must have loved her very much.”

“Yes. Certainly.” Miles debated informing her that what he had told the man had nothing to do with Flora but rather was an off-color joke about a man who confused his wife and his dog, and that Flora’s uncle had been laughing rather than crying, then decided against it.

“Did he remember Flora leaving with me last night?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

“I guess it does not matter,” Clio conceded. “Still, I would like to know how I spent my last hours. I wonder if there is something that triggers me to act like a vampire, or if it just comes upon me all at once.” She paused. “Poor Flora. Will her uncle come to Which House and get her body? I suppose it would be more courteous for me to have it delivered. Do you think I should offer to pay for the funeral?” Before Miles could even dream of how to answer her questions, she went on. “I
would
have to go and kill someone beloved.”

Miles shook off his astonishment. “Clio, you did not kill that woman, you did not suck her blood, and you are not a vampire.”

“Of course I am.” She leaned forward. “If I am not, why are you taking me to Newgate?”

“I’m not,” Miles replied. “I am taking you to Dearbourn Hall, although I am beginning to think I should take you to Bethlehem Hospital.”

Clio looked surprised. “But at the fair, you told me—”

“I did not tell you anything. I led you to believe I was going to do what you said because it was the only way to get you into my coach. When we arrive at my house, we will have a very long conversation in which I explain to you, for the final time, that you are not the Vampire of London.”

“Impossible. Flora’s uncle recognized me. He knew about my ankle. He knew about my taste for blood. He even—”

“He recognized a woman with a monkey. And I am more inclined to see his information about your ankle as proof that you were not there than as proof that you were. The idea of you tripping over yourself to get a better view of a cockfight is one I cannot believe.”

“A cockfight?” For the first time there was a crack in Clio’s practical armor. “You mean where two birds fight one another to the death in a pit and people bet on it?”

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve read a book about it. That is the entertainment that Flora’s uncle’s establishment provides. That is what he meant by ‘a taste for blood.’ ”

“Are you sure? A taste for cockfighting?” For a moment, Clio felt relief again, but it vanished as quickly as it had come. “If you don’t believe I was at the fair, if you don’t believe Flora’s uncle saw me, then is everything that happened just a coincidence?”