The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (12 page)

I smiled, because this, at last, sounded like the welcome I’d expected for him from his family. Hastily, I repinned my hair and smoothed my skirts, ready to go down and greet guests. I gave him some time alone with his old friends, and then, with my hand already on the doorknob, I hesitated.

He hadn’t sent to ask for my company, and I realised I wasn’t sure it would be welcome. Despite his almost mechanical remark about being able to show me off, which seemed neither in his character nor suited to mine, I doubted he wanted me with him at this moment.

I let my hand fall from the door, rare uncertainty seeping through me until I actually felt sick with it.

“Stupid,” I whispered to myself, and went and sat down on the bed. I decided to wait a further ten minutes, and if he didn’t ask for me, I’d go to bed. Somewhere, I couldn’t quite understand my reluctance, or why such a tiny social problem should worry me so much. I shivered. The fire had gone out, and I was cold.

With sudden decision, I stood up and prepared for bed. Sliding between the cold sheets felt like relief, and yet I wanted to cry. Because his friends were not my friends and never would be. We were too different in age and character.

For the first time since I’d agreed to marry him, I doubted my decision. And I hated that more than anything, more even than the loneliness I could suddenly foresee in this strange, ghostly house.

****

I
woke to his muffled curse as he bumped into something in the darkness. The lamp must have burned out. As he stumbled into bed, I smelled the wine on his breath, but he fitted his body around mine as he always did, his arm heavy across my waist, as he nuzzled my neck.

“Caroline,” he murmured. I thought his lips were smiling, as though he were pleasantly surprised to find me in his bed.

“Good evening?” I enquired.

“Oh yes. Good to be home,” he said.

I listened to the rhythm of his breath and mine, and the beat of my own heart, soaking up his warmth and presence. He was sound asleep in no time.

I
n the morning, I woke up being turned into his arms, to be coaxed and seduced into love.

Afterwards, as we lay curled together, I asked him abruptly if he were ashamed of me.

Gratifyingly, the startlement in his face gave me an immediate answer. “Ashamed,” he repeated. “Why on earth should you even think that? I’m sure we agreed back in Lescloches that it’s you who should be ashamed of me!” He caught my chin in his fingers when I would have turned my face away. “What is there to be ashamed of?”

I caught his wrist, trying to smile. “I don’t know. It was a fancy I had last night when you didn’t send for me to meet your friends, and I remembered that I was old and staid.”

He grinned. “The woman who just made love with me is neither of those things!”

My whole body flushed, and he kissed my lips. “As for last night’s reprobates, you’ll meet them tomorrow night when they’re sober. They were rather too well oiled to introduce to my wife last night. Even a wife as wicked as you.”

I laughed under his mouth and hugged him close to me, touched by his care and baffled all over again by last night’s silly doubts. I didn’t like myself so clingy and needy.

“Do you know,” he said, just a little breathlessly, “part of me actually likes that you care enough to mind. I’ll make you love me yet.”

Even then I knew that wouldn’t be the miracle. The greater challenge had always been for him to love me. But with the morning sunshine seeping through the shutters and my body sated with his, I revelled in both. Our relationship was constantly novel and exciting.

“How did your private meeting with your grandfather go?” I asked him a little later, as we dressed for the day.

Zsigmund wrinkled his nose. “He’s still a stubborn old goat. The most I can say is that we didn’t come to blows. He still won’t give me an allowance and claims our going to the estate at Orosháza is out of his hands. I don’t believe him, but I kept my temper, and he raised no objection to our entertaining while we’re here.”

“And the servants?”

Zsigmund stamped his foot into his boot. “No more servants,” he said shortly. “But I’ll make sure he pays for the temporary staff we hire.” Reaching for his other boot, he glanced up at me with a faint, sardonic smile. “You can see why I was so eager to fight for my country’s liberty, when I have no personal liberty of my own. It’s a bit like coming home to servitude.”

And I could feel how that grated, how the whole situation grated on him. In time—probably not very much time—it would corrode. I doubted being here was actually much better for him than being in England.

“We don’t need to stay here,” I said gently. “Not in this house. You can come here every day to meet Karl. No one will know or care if I take a house somewhere else.”

He caught my hand and dragged me down on the bed beside him for a quick kiss. “Actually, they would. This is a country of secret police and whispers. We’ll be fine here.” And yet his eyes were distant, the muscles bunched in his shoulders as he stood up almost immediately. Being financially dependent on me was probably worse for him than relying on his grandfather, but we were married. What was mine was also his, and we could be happy here or anywhere.

I would write to my solicitors today—or at least some time this week since today and tomorrow were likely to be busy—to arrange proper settlements. And then, together, we would assert our independence from the old count. In such a way, of course, that wouldn’t alienate Zsigmund from the country estate he was so fond of.

“This could be a lovely house,” I said brightly. “Full of light. Why don’t we begin with the most urgent repairs, and then open up your parents’ old rooms? Have them cleaned and redecor—”

“No,” he interrupted, swinging on me with such sudden ferocity that I blinked. For an instant the dark eyes, which had shown me little but laughter and tender passion, were hard and bleak and just a little desperate. Then, as if by deliberate action, they softened. He gave a slightly forced little smile. “I beg your pardon. But no, we have enough public rooms. Let’s just make what we need habitable first.”

“Whatever you want,” I agreed, although even then I wasn’t prepared to leave it, not just because I liked those rooms so much, but because I sensed some kind of mystery in Zsigmund’s attitude to them. Or to his dead parents. The rooms were like a mausoleum, and that wasn’t healthy for anyone.

****

T
he house was a pleasant whirlwind of activity over the following days. János and Zsigmund cut back the worst of the overhanging bushes at the front of the house, and I gave instructions for the arrangement of furniture in the public salon next to the ballroom, where we’d decided to hold our evening party. I discussed catering with János’s wife and made a list of the things I needed to do tomorrow, and then I repaired to the attic to see if there was any furniture suitable for the private sitting room we meant to create out of Zsigmund’s old dressing room.

About half the roof space was taken up with servants’ quarters—barely used, of course. The rest was a storage area reached from a door and a wooden staircase at the opposite end of the corridor to our bedroom. I climbed up briskly.

Thick dust floated in a beam of sunlight flooding in through a large skylight, showing me shapeless hunks that were, presumably, furniture covered in dust sheets. However, it didn’t smell nearly as musty as I’d expected, given the state of the rest of the house. Here was another mausoleum to long-dead generations of Andrassys. I could almost see them lined up around the walls gazing at me, the foreign incomer, with disdain.

The whole house seemed redolent of some presence, or presences, unaccounted for by the live occupants, and the attic was no different. Trying to ignore my unease, my sense of being watched, I began whisking covers off furniture to see what was underneath. I’d just discovered a rather nice embroidered sofa, when something fell with a clatter.

I jumped, dropping the dust sheet and peering in the direction of the noise. Though I could see nothing but more and more covered furniture, my heart was hammering. Annoyed by my own silly fear, I forced myself to walk towards where I was sure something had fallen to the floor.

It had. A large, ancient-looking book lay at my feet. It must have fallen off the uncovered table to my left. Surprised, I blinked at the book before bending to pick it up. It was bound in crumbling red-brown leather. As I reached for it, breath prickled the back of my neck, and I couldn’t help the frightened cry that broke from my lips.

I jerked my head up to see a man kneeling beside me. I gasped, almost crying out before I registered it was Gabor.

His pale, long-fingered hand closed around the book. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I didn’t know anyone else was up here,” I managed.

“Neither did I. I’m afraid I’ve grown used to regarding this as my own space. I come up here for quiet, when my duties allow.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to demand why he didn’t have some better room than a dusty old attic to call his own, but I swallowed the words with difficulty, saying instead, “Then I’m sorry for disturbing you! Zsigmund said I might find some furniture here for our sitting room... What is your book?”

His hand twitched. For a moment, I thought he might actually hide the tome behind his back, but in the end, he drew back his fingers to allow me the briefest glimpse of the title stamped into the leather in gold leaf.
Garabonciás
. I was none the wiser, and he didn’t elaborate. It was, I supposed, none of my business.

“It looks very old,” I observed.

“It is. May I help you with anything, or do you wish to rummage in peace?”

“I’m definitely still at the rummaging stage,” I said. “But thank you.”

He inclined his head and walked past me towards the stairs. He’d gone before I began to wonder how it was I hadn’t seen him until he’d actually been kneeling beside me.

****

A
fter dinner that night—which neither the old count nor Gabor took with the rest of us—Zsigmund and I took a pleasant walk.

“There’s so much I want to show you,” he enthused. “We should go to the café where the revolution truly began, and the square where the people made everything happen. There’s a very fine museum there.”

“I’d like that. We could go tomorrow.”

His pace increased as if he’d decided we should go that very moment; and then he slowed again, no doubt with the realisation that it was almost curfew time.

He glanced at me with a sardonic half smile. “A glass of wine and a cup of coffee might have been nice.”

I squeezed his arm. “We can have them at home.” I just hoped the curfew was lifted soon, for I couldn’t see him sticking to its conditions for very much longer.

“Or we could just go to bed,” he murmured in my ear.

I blushed, as he’d meant me to, which seemed to restore him to good humour. But since neither of us had slept particularly well the night before, we did indeed go to bed almost as soon as we returned to the house. He made love to me by the light of a solitary candle, with sweet, gentle intensity, and then fell asleep in my arms.

I smiled as I stroked his hair, savouring the soft, pleasurable ache in my heart and the satisfied glow of my body as I too drifted off to sleep.

I woke suddenly to the creaking of the bed in the darkness. Zsigmund was rising to his feet.

“Zsigmund?” I said sleepily. “Are you well?”

He didn’t answer me, merely walked across the room. Hastily, I relit the bedside candle, just as he, stark naked, opened the bedroom door.

“Zsigmund, what are you doing?” I demanded, throwing off the covers and flying after him. I swept up my morning robe, flung it around me, and fastened it as I grabbed the candle with my free hand and dashed to the door. Zsigmund’s own dressing gown hung on a hook there, so I seized it on the way past.

The passage was in darkness, but the pale glow of my candle picked up Zsigmund’s rather beautiful naked back and buttocks as he walked steadily and purposefully towards the stairs. I hissed his name, hurrying after him, but he never responded, not even when I snatched at his hand and tried to make him stop.

“Zsigmund, what’s the matter?” His eyes open, he gazed down at me blankly. I frowned. “You’re sleepwalking!” I discovered. “Oh, Zsigmund, wake up!”

He didn’t answer, merely pulled on towards the stairs. I managed to throw the robe around his shoulders, and after a moment, he actually put it on, even fastened it. By then, we’d reached the stairs, and I made more strenuous efforts to dissuade him.

“Come back to bed,” I pleaded. “You’ll fall here.”

But it seemed he wouldn’t. Although he didn’t push me away, he kept inexorably to his path, which apparently meant descending the stairs. He put one hand on the banister, and I took his other arm in an effort to protect him. My candle wobbled precariously, casting distorted shadows up the walls and steps. I didn’t dare try to waken him here in case he fell with the shock of awakening, for I was by no means sure of my ability to save him. He was far too big and strong for me to control.

I wondered if I should call for help, but even as I opened my mouth, I realised he was too sure-footed. He knew the way, as if he’d taken it many times before. On the first floor, he turned away from his grandfather’s study, which I’d been afraid was his goal, and towards the library. He walked straight past it. I’d stopped even thinking of waking him. In truth, I was too curious to see where he went. He walked on past the music room, and I felt hard, dusty floorboards beneath my bare feet.

At last he turned, breathing hard, and pushed open a door on his left. I squeezed inside with him and discovered we were in the bedroom I’d found yesterday. His parents’ bedroom. His erratic breath had become a strange, distressed, wordless noise, deep in his throat. Looking up, he raised his hands high and cried out in terror.

“Zsigmund!” I set the candle down on the bedside table and threw my arms around him, then held his face between my hands. “Zsigmund, it’s fine. All is well. You’re just sleepwalking, just dreaming.”