The Dark Blood of Poppies (54 page)

“What? And her husband puts up with it?”

“Yes, because he worships her. She gets away with anything. She couldn’t marry this other man because he’s a semi-invalid, mentally unstable. He couldn’t have provided for her. She simply looks after him, out of love.”

“Oh God,” Charlotte whispered. “Edward.”

“Yes, Edward. Remember him? David’s dearest friend, who nearly died and was fit only for a mental asylum after Karl attacked him? He’s lucky to have Maddy and us, but he’ll never be really well. And you wonder that I’m upset, when David sees Karl’s face in the paper, and you with him, laughing!”

Charlotte shrank under the pressure of Anne’s distress.
How can I defend myself, when she’s right?
The Anne of her daydreams was the friend she used to know; lively, confiding, forgiving. They kissed like sisters, and exchanged a sip of blood as a bond… Of course Charlotte knew the dream could not come true, but nothing had prepared her for this mature, angry, harassed woman.

“It should have stayed a dream,” Charlotte murmured, “coming to see you.”

“Why? Do vampires feel guilt? Karl’s gone, but the things he did stay with us. They almost wrecked our lives. You knew, yet you went with him anyway!”

The words struck like fangs.

“I was selfish, I know. But I loved Karl to the point of madness and I still do.”

“Damn it,” said Anne. “I swore to myself, no recriminations. Not at a time like this.”

“But if it wasn’t a time like this, I wouldn’t be here.” Charlotte’s tone was gentle, cool. She was drawing away. All she wanted was to be alone with memories of her father. “I’m grateful you asked me here. So glad I was with Father. I only wish…”

“Don’t we all. But wishing won’t bring him back.” Another hard glance. “And it won’t bring you back either, will it?”

“No. I can’t become human again.”

“Would you want to? That’s the question.”

Charlotte didn’t answer. “Would you mind – would the others mind – if I came to the funeral?”

Anne’s stark expression revealed that this was an appalling prospect. Charlotte knew Anne would never accept what she’d become. Yes, she might use vampiric influence to change her friend’s mind – but it wouldn’t be real. Charlotte couldn’t do it. She waited.

“You don’t need my permission,” Anne said after a moment, her tone not exactly kind, but resigned. “It’s your right.”

* * *

Dressed in black, heavily veiled, Charlotte arrived late at the chapel and sat alone at the back. She knew her presence would disturb her family, and she didn’t want to worsen their grief.

She’d spent the intervening few days in Cambridge, exploring the city she loved so dearly, avoiding anyone who might know her. She telephoned Karl every day; all was quiet in Salzburg. She longed to see him, but it seemed important not to leave until her father was buried. A mourning ritual, of a sort.

The chapel was full of eminent people; fellows from Trinity, her father’s colleagues from the Cavendish, many of his former students. Seeing how well loved and respected he was moved her to tears. She wept silently behind the veil. The eulogies were unbearable.

I wish Karl were here
, she thought.
He would hold me steady against this terrible greyness.

As they walked to the cemetery afterwards, she recalled another burial: that of Janacek, whom she’d killed in order to free Violette. She had felt detached then, completely in command of herself. Now she felt vulnerable, as if made of glass: not of the same flesh as her family, but hard and fragile.

Earth fell on the coffin. David and Anne cried, leaning together. Elizabeth held Madeleine. Henry was there too; her father’s assistant, virtually a son to him – and once, for a brief time, Charlotte’s husband.

She didn’t look at him, nor he at her.

When it was over, she meant to slip away – only to find her family all around her, Maddy’s hand through her arm, and David’s sombre voice in her ear.

“Will you come back to the house, please, Charlotte?”

* * *

“We thought you should know,” David said, “that Father cut you out of his will. There’s nothing for you, I’m afraid.”

Charlotte felt a dart of misery – for the loss of her father’s affection, not his property.

“It’s all right, I didn’t expect anything. I hadn’t even thought about it.”

They were sitting around the breakfast room table; David, Anne, Henry and herself, while Elizabeth and Madeleine played host to mourners in the drawing room. Henry had aged visibly, well on course to becoming a bumbling professor. A bulky, bespectacled figure, pompous yet shy and embarrassed by emotion, he was just as Charlotte remembered. So far he hadn’t said a word to her, though it was obvious her presence made him acutely uncomfortable.

“Why did you come back, then?” David said with sudden sharpness. Tired and distraught, he ran a hand over his fair hair. She saw a few silver strands.

“Do you think I loved Father any less, because of the decision I made? How could I not come?” She gazed at her brother, knowing the gleam of her face and eyes disturbed him. “I know I’m making things difficult. I’m sorry. But why on earth did you try to find me? I don’t mean now… I mean last year.”

David cleared his throat. Anne glanced at him, then at Henry, who was looking anywhere but at Charlotte.

“About eighteen months after I left,” she went on, “you sent a private detective called John Milner to find us. And he did.”

“We know,” said David. “Not because he told us, but because he was found wandering in Dover with no recollection of how he’d got there. He was ill for a time; said he was having weird, wonderful dreams of a woman who looked like you. And there were marks on his neck, so faint that most people wouldn’t notice. So we knew, Charli, even though he couldn’t tell us anything. That’s why I didn’t try again, until we saw the photograph. It was too dangerous.”

“But why did you try at all?”

“Because I was worried sick about you!” David exclaimed. “Why d’you think? You’re still my sister; I couldn’t help thinking what that – that man might have done to you!”

“His name is Karl.” From the corner of her eye she saw Henry shudder and put a hand to his face. “All he did was help me become myself.”

“Oh,” said David, “so the kind, shy sister I loved was really a demon all along?”

“David,” said Anne. She touched his arm and he subsided. Anne, it seemed, had already said all she needed to.

Charlotte sat with cruel revelation pouring over her. How they’d changed in such a short time. They had a child already and there would be more; they were growing older, drifting away from her. As Karl had once said, a vampire was like a stopped clock on a landscape: she stood motionless while they travelled without her. The gulf between them felt like a grave. Terrifying.

“You’re right to feel betrayed, David,” said Charlotte. “I did wrong, but love is stronger than reason. I can’t repent. If you want me to say it was all a mistake and I’m coming home – I can’t. It will never happen.”

“I see,” David said wearily. “Just tell me one thing. Does he – does Karl treat you kindly?”

“Of course he does. He always did.”

David sighed. There was an uncomfortable silence. Their unease distressed her, but she couldn’t enchant them into accepting her. They must love or hate her of their own free will.

“Henry wants to say something,” said David.

She turned her gaze to Henry. He could barely look at her, and his voice shook. “I – I have become friendly with a pleasant young lady. We – we want to marry.”

“How nice for you,” Charlotte said frigidly. She could imagine the woman; a prim little Methodist, approved of by Henry’s mother.

“But I can’t marry her, can I!” he exclaimed, slapping the table with both palms. “I’m still married to you! I – I want a divorce.”

A smile frosted Charlotte’s mouth. This became more ghastly by the moment. Thinking she’d lost Karl forever, she’d married Henry only to keep him from walking out on her father. But Karl had come back. She felt cruel, completely a vampire.

“As far as I’m concerned, we were never truly married.”

“Well, as far as the law’s concerned, we ruddy well are!” Henry turned crimson. She felt a sudden ache in her canine teeth.

“Do you really think I’d waste my time, sitting about in court? How can you cite Karl, when the police think he’s dead? I suppose one of us could pretend to commit adultery in a boarding house while some private detective takes notes; David has a friend who does that sort of thing.” This dig caused her brother to blush. “It’s ludicrous. Do what Karl and I do. Live together.”

She knew her words would horrify him. Henry seemed close to exploding with outrage. “This isn’t Bloomsbury! It’s out of the question!” He stood up suddenly. “You are a monster, Charlotte! The Prof was never the same after you left. It should have been you in that coffin instead! You killed him!”

Her fingers tightened on the table edge. She stared at the shine of her taut white knuckles. “I think we’d better continue this conversation in private, don’t you?”

Henry harrumphed. “I suppose so.”

Anne and David looked uneasy. Charlotte said, “Go on. It’s all right.”

They left. Charlotte’s presence seemed to have undone Henry’s composure entirely. Alone with her, he became rigidly correct and unapproachable, but he dabbed his upper lip with a handkerchief. His hands trembling. From the way he stared she knew, with dismay, that her vampire allure was affecting him.

“You can say what you like now.” She stood up as she spoke. He edged away to the window. “Go on. I’m a monster and I killed my father?”

“You look –” he stammered. “You look just the same.”

“What did you tell people, when I left?”

“The truth,” Henry said gruffly. “That you’d run off with another man.”

“That was brave. Most men would have felt too humiliated.”

He turned on her, pale with anger. “How could I be any more humiliated than I already was?” As his anguish came pouring out, she could only stand there and let it wash over her. “You were –
intimate
with Karl while you were engaged to me! How could you? You seemed so shy, so virtuous, Dr Neville’s perfect daughter. It was out of the question that I’d do more than kiss your cheek until we were married, but with Karl you – I still cannot believe what you did!”

“Hurt your pride?” His pain roused only mild sympathy, mixed with irritation.

“That is not fair! I loved you!”

Charlotte looked down. “I did you a terrible wrong. I only married you to please my father, not you or myself. The woman you thought would make a quiet, unthreatening wife wasn’t me. My fault, for letting you think it was. But Henry, what were you offering me?”

The question seemed to dumbfound him.

“A respectable marriage,” he said stiffly. “A family.”

“But what about passion? You say you loved me, but the few times we consummated our so-called marriage, neither of us enjoyed it. It was just our duty, and I must be a scarlet woman for wanting anything more! Everything, duty. How could you expect me to live like that?”

Henry’s face coloured. “You are a heathen, Charlotte. In a previous age you would have been burned at the stake.”

“And you would have lit the fire; not enjoying it, just doing your duty to God. I wish you could understand why I gave myself completely to Karl, again and again, and why I left you for him.” She was provoking him now, relishing his discomfort. “I wish I could make you feel just one moment of that passion!”

As she spoke, desire ignited beneath her heart. With excitement dancing through her, she went to Henry, pushed him into a chair and sat on his knee. Too stunned to stop her, he caved in beneath her as if he’d lost all his strength.

Even when she twined her arms around his neck, she knew he was dying of embarrassment. He’d put the fact that she was a vampire out of his mind, because he couldn’t believe it. While he was rigid with outrage, she sensed his puritan nature warring with his secret dark impulses, with the fact that he was and always had been her slave.

Her lips found the artery beating beneath the salty skin. Mouth wide, she bit down, felt blood and salt rushing onto her eager tongue. The red starburst convulsed her. She hugged Henry to her, experiencing perfect happiness, laughing through the blood.

Henry uttered a single cry, as if a wasp had stung him. Then he was silent, passive; not touching her, not resisting, as if he’d found a very deep, dark place inside himself that only her bite could touch.

It was the first exchange of genuine, unfettered passion that had ever passed between them. First and last.

Charlotte found it easy to stop, to slip lightly from his knee as if nothing had happened. Henry’s head lolled forward. He took off his glasses, squeezed his eyes shut and pinched his forehead.

“I wish you joy of the dear little Methodist you wish to marry. She’ll never do that to you. Or will she? Appearances can deceive. One day she may tire of making afternoon tea for Cambridge dons and develop a taste for their blood.”

Now he was staring blankly at her, as if his memory had already erased the unacceptable.

“What?” he murmured. “I feel dizzy. Bit of a headache.”

“You’ll be all right.” She crouched down beside him with the easy affection she felt for her victims. “Henry, listen to me. Go and join the funeral feast, have some tea. When it’s over, come back and I’ll give you my answer.”

He blinked at her. “Answer?”

The solution was obvious. It invaded her, with Henry’s blood, like a kind of insanity. Amid the desolation of her father’s death, the funeral, her family’s grief, the answer was like a jewel, a polished moonstone in a perfect setting.

“I’m going to set you free, dear.”

* * *

Charlotte waited until the guests were leaving as darkness fell. Then she went into the hallway to share the goodbyes and expressions of sympathy, for all the world as if she were still part of the Neville family. The least she could do for her father was to show his friends that his daughter had loved him.

Once they’d gone, she followed the others back into the drawing room: Anne, David, Henry, Madeleine and Elizabeth, all in black. No one sat down.