The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (18 page)

I shook my head, tried to draw my hands free, but he held on to them in a pleading kind of a way.

“Countess...Caroline, please—” He broke off as the door opened and Zsigmund walked in.

“Come to do your duty, Karl?” Zsigmund said unpleasantly.

Karl dropped my hands. I wished he didn’t look quite so guilty, since it made us both seem so. “I’m afraid so,” the major said. “You’ve been seen out after curfew, Zsigmund. I can cover it up this time, but I can’t do so forever. Please do yourself the favour of staying at home in the evenings.” Karl glanced at me and added, “You do have plenty of incentive.”

Zsigmund laughed.

I jumped to my feet. “Excuse me,” I said. “I have some letters to write before my engagement this afternoon.”

Although Karl leapt up, it was Zsigmund who opened the door for me. A swift glance showed me that his eyes were hard, his mouth thin as it got when he was angry. If I hadn’t known better, I could have imagined he was jealous. Or just dog in the manger.

On the way back to my room, I saw Gabor disappear into the old count’s study. I wondered what Zsigmund had said to him earlier. In fact, I wondered about him quite a lot. In my room, I wrote down the title of the book he’d had with him in the attic, and again, I was sure, in the study last night. It was mere curiosity; I wanted to know what interested such a strange man. And besides, it was a distraction from all the unpleasant ideas Karl had planted in my head.

****

I
smoothed the piece of paper out on the table and glanced expectantly from Margit Borruth to her friend Elizabeth. I’d spent an enjoyable afternoon with Margit, who was full of quite revolutionary ideals concerning the independence of women. In fact, although unmarried, she lived apart from her family in a little house she shared with another older but similarly minded lady. We repaired there after a long visit to the museum, and I happily agreed to attend the next meeting of their “society,” for although they were just a little too serious, they did have some very interesting ideas.

It was then I remembered I still hadn’t found out the meaning of Gabor’s book title:
Garabonciás
.

The two women looked at the word. Margit laughed. Her friend Elizabeth sniffed.

“It’s a kind of magician,” Margit said. “In folktales. Why do you ask? Has someone been teasing you?”

“Oh no. I just saw the title on a rather beautiful old book and wondered what it meant.”

“Peasant superstition,” Elizabeth said. “Nothing to be taken seriously.”

Although I was tempted to stay for dinner when they invited me—the notion of returning to the Andrassy house knotted my stomach—I declined in the end. For I’d meant what I’d said to Karl. I did mean to look out for Zsigmund. And, if I were honest, despite our sudden estrangement, there was some deep need in me just to be around him.

Since they lived some distance from the Andrassy house, Margit kindly sent me home in her rather antiquated carriage. As I stepped into it, I acknowledged it was a rather fine autumnal evening. The sun was just beginning to go down, and the sky remained clear and blue. I sat on the slightly lumpy seat and waved to Margit and Elizabeth as the carriage rumbled forward at a much more sedate pace than the hired vehicles I’d travelled in with Zsigmund.

I didn’t notice just when the weather changed, for although my eyes were turned in the direction of the window, my mind was all on the Andrassy house and its occupants. It was the sudden neighing of the horses that finally caught my attention. The carriage jolted, and another shot by the window in the opposite direction. The coachmen seemed to be yelling abuse at each other as their vehicles almost collided in the sudden, impenetrable mist.

“Where the devil did that come from?” I murmured. Pest was more troubled by dust storms blowing in from the Great Plain than by mists, but this one was worthy of London itself. I couldn’t tell where we were and could only hope the coachman’s sense of direction was better than mine.

It was peculiarly isolating, travelling through the dense whiteness, as if there was nothing else in the world but this carriage. The rumble of the wheels, the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves were all muffled. Only a few muted sounds penetrated from beyond.

At last, the carriage came to a halt. I peered out of the windows on either side and eventually made out the familiar cast-iron gates of the Andrassy house. Margit’s old coachman climbed down and opened the carriage door for me, letting down the steps.

“Take care driving home,” I said to him as I descended. “In fact, why don’t you wait in the kitchen until it passes?”

“Oh no, I must get back,” he said in awkward French, which made me frown. I really did need to learn more Hungarian. Zsigmund had been going to teach me...

The coachman tipped his hat at me and climbed back up on his box. I turned to the iron gates and pushed the left-hand one open. Even though Zsigmund had oiled the hinges before the party, they still creaked and squeaked.

I couldn’t even see the short, curving path to the front door. I’d no real idea where I was putting my feet before they landed, and inevitably, stray overhanging branches brushed against my cheeks like grotesquely thin, bony fingers. I knew I must have come off the path, because Zsigmund and János had cleared away inconvenient growth between the gate and the front door. I tried to correct my steps back on to the flagstones again, but the ground beneath my feet was still soft; thorns tore at my clothes, and mist-dampened leaves and branches slapped at my face.

I stood still and peered through the mist in all directions. I could see nothing but the ghostly foliage closest to me. Ridiculously, I had no way of telling the direction of the gate or the house. How could I have got lost in such a short distance?

I resolved to walk as far as I could in one direction. Eventually, I was bound to come against a boundary that would at least give a clue as to direction. So I straightened my feet, placed one closely in front of the other and began to walk with tiny steps. Eventually, much to my relief, I felt stone under my boots once more, and knew I’d found the path, I followed it, paying much more attention to my feet this time.

The tall iron gates loomed out of the mist like prison bars. I was back where I’d started. Still, at least I now had my sense of direction back. I turned to face the house I couldn’t see and began to walk once more. The mist swirled in front of me, clinging to my skin, my nostrils. I imagined I could smell the sand and dust from the Great Plain in it; I could certainly feel the rough grit on my lips and cheeks.

But I refused to be distracted. I walked slowly and carefully along the curving path, one foot in front of the other until I thought I saw the fading red paint of the front door. I felt as if I’d just navigated through some thick African jungle instead of just finding my way to my own front door.

Only it wasn’t
my
front door, and I had the oddest fancy that the house was keeping me out. It didn’t want me either.

Another thick swirl spiralled heavily around my head. It clogged my nose, forcing me to open my mouth, and then it was in there too, wet and gritty on my tongue, gathering at the back of my throat and making it hard to breathe. Instinctively, I grasped my neck as if I could pull out the vile mist, but of course I couldn’t. It only thickened in my airways, my lungs, choking me.

The last remnants of humour and irritation vanished into a surge of panic. Something terrible was happening to me. The very air around me was alive and malevolent, cutting me off from everyone who might have helped me, killing me as surely as my unseen attacker last night. But this was worse because I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know
how
to fight it.

I must be dreaming. It must be a nightmare. I have to wake up...

I scratched at my throat, straining for wakefulness—but I was already awake. A stranger’s face loomed out of the mist, ugly, brutal, and scarred, and I cried out. Or at least I seemed to; I only heard a faint, hoarse moan, and then hands grabbed me and dragged me through the mist.

I
fought and kicked in instinctive defence, but the solid strength of the man’s arms was even more frightening now than the impossibly evil mist.

I heard a muffled crash, a creak of hinges. The man pushed me into a blaze of light just as the unmistakable sound of a door slamming filled my ears.

I blinked in the silence, staring around the empty entrance hall of the Andrassy house. There was no mist here. I was safe. Or at least alive.

With trembling fingers, I began to untie my skewed bonnet.

“What in God’s name just happened?” I murmured. I stared at the closed front door, wondering if I dared open it to see the direction of my attacker. I scowled with incomprehension. “Who opened the door?”

“I did.”

I spun around. Gabor Andrassy moved out of the shadows beside the door. I was in such a state that I hadn’t even seen him there. But then, he seemed to have an unconscious knack for stealth, no doubt from years of sidestepping the wrath of the old count.

He walked towards me, frowning with obvious concern. “I thought I heard a cry... Caroline, are you hurt? What happened?”

“I...I don’t know,” I said, still bewildered. I dragged off my bonnet, dangling it by the strings. “I couldn’t find the door in the mist, kept wandering around the garden, and then this man seized me. If you hadn’t opened the door, I think he’d have—” I broke off, swallowing convulsively. “He must have taken fright when he saw you and pushed me inside instead.”

Gabor took my hand. “Come into the drawing room,” he said quietly. “No one is there.”

Pathetically grateful for the kindness, I went with him into the drawing room and took the seat he offered me beside the fire. He set another opposite me and sat in it.

Leaning forward, he said, “You’re quite safe now. He won’t trouble you again.”

“There’s more,” I blurted. “The mist... The mist was trying to choke me.” As soon as I said the words, I knew they were a mistake. His unexpected understanding had led me into indiscretion. Now he would merely think I was mad.

“You seem a little...overwrought,” he observed.

My smile was lopsided. “I do, don’t I? In fact, I am.” I looked him in the eye. “Someone tried to kill me last night too. They put a pillow over my face when I was asleep and tried to smother me.”

His profound, unreadable eyes searched mine, one to the other. “You are imagining it was the same man?”

“I’m certainly wondering. How many people can there be who want to kill me? Why would
he
want to kill me? I’ve never seen him before in my life!”

Gabor seemed to hesitate, then he said apologetically, “I have. He was Zsigmund’s sergeant in the Hungarian army.”

The world stopped. There was only the pain clawing at my stomach, ever harder and deeper.

“No,” I said. “I will not believe Zsigmund put him up to this.”

“Oh, of course he didn’t,” Gabor soothed. “Never think it. He’s just another rootless soldier left without a job now the war is over. He’s probably trapped in Buda-Pest with no money to get home to his family. He’d probably be ashamed if he knew he’d attacked his captain’s wife, but desperate men do desperate things.”

“Like breaking into strangers’ homes and trying to massacre them in their beds.”

Gabor curled one side of his lip. “That is unlikely.”

“And yet it happened,” I retorted. “I can even show you the torn pillowcase—provided my maid didn’t throw it out or send it to be mended and laundered.”

“Do that,” Gabor said, surprisingly. “It will be useful evidence. Come, it’s almost time for dinner, so you can show me before you change.”

I can’t deny it felt good to have an ally. It would have felt better too to have a suspect outside of the household, if only there had not been that connection between the man in the mist and Zsigmund.

No one had taken the torn pillow—one benefit of being so understaffed, I supposed. I picked it up and took it to Gabor, who waited on the stairs. Gravely, he took the pillow from me and examined it, turning it over in his hands to see every part of it.

“Let me see your hands,” he said.

I held them out, and he looked from my fingers to the torn holes in the pillowcase.

He nodded, and passed the pillow back to me. “Hold it across your face as it was then —or lower down if that disturbs you too much. Show me how you grasped the pillow in your efforts to throw it off.”

I showed him, holding the pillow across my neck and chest, and, of course, my fingernails fitted perfectly to the tears.

“I tore it in my effort to be free,” I said with a trace of anxiety I couldn’t quite understand.

“Yes, I can see that,” he assured me. “So presumably, your attacker’s hand would have been
here
?” He laid his right palm flat in the middle of the pillow, between my clawed hands. “Or more likely, he would have used both.” His left hand joined the right, and our fingers brushed and tangled. “Or maybe he held the edges of the pillow?” he suggested, moving his hands to the sides. “Here?” Again our fingers overlapped.

Gabor dropped his hands and met my curious gaze. “Did you feel his hands?”

I frowned. “I don’t remember.”

“Perhaps his skin was particularly hot or cold, maybe unpleasantly clammy? Rough? Bony? Smooth and soft?”

“I... I didn’t feel that. I don’t think I felt any of those things.”

“Perhaps he wore gloves,” Gabor suggested. “That would account for the fact there are no other marks on the pillow. No dirty fingers or signs of tearing anywhere but where your hands gripped the pillow.”

“I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “I didn’t feel his hands at all.”

“You must have,” Gabor said. “There’s no way you wouldn’t have come in contact with even one hand pressing in the middle of the pillow.”

I stared at him. “Are you saying I
imagined
this attack?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Not exactly. I think you dreamed it. I think you woke up with the nightmare still so close that you held the pillow over your own face while you thought you were fighting it off. As you woke up more, you let go and were able to throw the pillow away.”