Damn! I turned and made my escape. The corridors outside were more dimly lit, but there were still any number of guests milling around in them. I had the impression that several of the couples were looking for a quiet, private corner somewhere, and right opposite the ballroom, there was a kind of gambling salon to which a few gentlemen had withdrawn. Cigar smoke wafted through the half-open door. I thought I saw James’s red coat at the end of the passage, just turning the corner, and I ran after him as fast as my dress would let me. When I reached the next passage, however, there was no sign of him, which meant that he must have gone into one of the rooms opening off it. I opened the nearest door and closed it again at once when the glimmer of light caught a chaise longue in front of which a man (not James) was kneeling, busy taking off a lady’s garter. Well, if you could call her a lady in those circumstances. Smiling slightly, I made for the next door. These party guests behaved very much like people partying in my own time.
I heard raised voices in the corridor behind me. “Why are you in such a hurry? Can’t your sister be left on her own for five minutes?” Unmistakably the voice of Lady Lavinia!
Like lightning, I slipped into the nearest room and leaned against the door from the inside to get my breath back.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR
NINE
IT WASN’T DARK as I had expected. The room was lit by a few candles, casting their light on a bookcase and a desk. Obviously I was in some kind of study.
And I wasn’t alone.
On the chair behind the desk sat Rakoczy, with a glass and two bottles in front of him. One bottle contained something liquid with a red glow—it looked like red wine—while the contents of the other, a delicate and gracefully curving flask, were a suspiciously grubby gray. The baron’s sword lay right across the desk.
“That was quick,” said Rakoczy. His voice, with its harsh east European accent, sounded slightly blurred. “I was just wishing for the presence of an angel, and lo and behold, the pearly gates open and send me the most charming angel that heaven can offer. This wonderful medicine is better than any I have ever tried.”
“Er … weren’t you supposed to be watching over us from the shadows, or something?” I asked, wondering whether it mightn’t be a better idea to clear out of this room right away, even if I risked running straight into Gideon’s clutches. I didn’t much like Rakoczy, even when he was stone-cold sober.
However, my remarks did seem to bring him some way back to himself. He frowned. “Oh, so it’s you!” he said, still in a blurred voice but sounding considerably less ecstatic. “Not an angel, only a stupid little girl.” And with a single, supple movement, almost faster than I could blink, he had picked the delicate little flask up from the desk and was advancing on me with it. Heaven knows what kind of substance he’d been taking, but it didn’t seem to affect his ability to move fast. “Although a very beautiful stupid little girl.” He was so close now that his breath hit my face. It smelled of wine and something else, a sharper, strange odor. He stroked my cheek with his free hand and ran a rough thumb over my lower lip. I was transfixed with terror.
“I’ll wager these lips have never done anything forbidden, am I right? A little of Alcott’s miraculous potion here will change all that.”
“No, thanks.” I ducked under his arm and stumbled out into the room. No, thanks—oh, great! Next thing I knew I’d be bobbing him a curtsey! “Keep that stuff away from me, will you?” I said rather more firmly. Before I could take another step, with the vague idea of jumping out of the window, Rakoczy was beside me, forcing me over to the desk again. He was so much stronger than me that he didn’t even notice my resistance. “Ssh, ssh, never fear, little one, I promise you’ll like this.” There was a little plop as he took the cork out of the little flask, and then he tipped my head back by force. “Drink this!”
I pressed my lips together and tried to push Rakoczy away with my free hand. I might just as well have had a shot at shifting a mountain. Desperately, I thought of what little I knew about self-defense—Charlotte’s knowledge of Krav Maga would have come in very useful at this point. When the flask was already touching my lips and the sharp smell of the liquid inside it rose to my nostrils, I finally had a good idea. I snatched a hairpin out of my towering wig and dug it as hard as I could into the hand holding the flask. At the same time, the door flew open and I heard Gideon call, “Let go of her at once, Rakoczy!”
Too late, I realized that it would have been better to run the hairpin into Rakoczy’s eye, or at least his throat. It stuck there in his flesh, but he didn’t even drop the flask. However, his iron grip on me did slacken, and he turned around. Gideon, who was standing in the doorway with Lady Lavinia, looked at him in horror.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Nothing at all! I only wanted to help this little girl to … to gain a little more enlightenment!” Rakoczy threw back his head with a raucous laugh. “Will you venture to try a sip? I assure you, it will give you sensations such as you have never known before!”
I took my chance to break free.
“Are you all right?” Gideon was looking at me with concern, while Lady Lavinia clung anxiously to his arm. Would you believe it? The pair of them had probably been looking for a room where they could smooch in peace, while Rakoczy was trying to get heaven knew what kind of drug inside me and then do heaven knew what else. And now I was expected to be grateful to Gideon and Lady Big-Tits for picking this, of all rooms!
“I’m just fine!” I growled, crossing my arms so that no one could see how my hands were shaking.
Rakoczy, still laughing, took a gulp from the flask himself and then put the cork firmly back in.
“Does the count know you’re experimenting with drugs in this quiet little study, instead of devoting yourself to your duties?” asked Gideon in icy tones. “Surely you had other things to do this evening?”
Rakoczy was swaying slightly. He looked in surprise at the hairpin still sticking in the back of his hand, then pulled it out with a jerk and licked the blood away like a big cat. “The Black Leopard is capable of anything—at any time!” he said. Then he put his hands to his head, staggered around the desk, and fell heavily into the chair. “Although there really does seem to be something about this potion that…,” he murmured, whereupon his head dropped forward and hit the top of the desk with a crash.
Shuddering, Lady Lavinia leaned against Gideon’s shoulder. “Is he…?”
“Probably not, I’m afraid.” Gideon went over to the desk, took the little flask, and held it up to the light. Then he uncorked it, and sniffed. “I’ve no idea what it is, but if even Rakoczy is poleaxed so quickly…” He put down the flask again. “Opium is my guess. Didn’t mix with alcohol and his usual drugs.”
Well, that was obvious. Rakoczy lay there as if he were dead. You couldn’t hear him breathing.
“Maybe someone gave it to him—someone who didn’t want him to have all his senses about him this evening,” I said. My arms were still crossed. “Can you find his pulse?” I’d have felt for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to go any closer to Rakoczy. Shaking all over as I was, it was hard enough even to keep on my feet.
“Gwen? Are you really sure you’re all right?” Gideon looked at me with a frown. I hate to admit it, but at that moment I’d have loved to fling myself into his arms and have a good cry. But he didn’t look at all keen to give me a comforting hug, rather the opposite. When I nodded, he said angrily, “What the hell were you doing here, anyway?” He pointed to the motionless Rakoczy. “It could easily have been you down and out on the floor!”
By now my teeth were chattering so much that I could hardly speak. “I … I had no idea that—” I stammered, but Lavinia, still sticking to Gideon like a very large, very green burr, interrupted me. She was obviously one of those women who hate anyone else to attract attention.
“Death!” she whispered dramatically, looking at Gideon with her eyes very wide. “I felt the breath of Death when it entered this room. Oh, please…” Her eyelids fluttered. “Hold me tight—”
I wouldn’t have believed it—she simply fainted away! For no reason at all, and of course falling very elegantly into Gideon’s arms. I don’t know why, but I was infuriated to see him catch her, so infuriated that I forgot about my trembling and my chattering teeth. But at the same time—as if I hadn’t run the gamut of enough feelings already—I sensed tears coming into my eyes. Oh, damn it, falling down in a faint was definitely the best option. Except that of course there’d have been no one to catch me.
At that moment, the dead Rakoczy said, in a voice so hoarse and deep that it could have come from the world beyond the grave, “Dosis sola facit venenum. Have no fear. Only the quantity makes the poison. It would take more than that to finish me off.”
Lavinia (I’d decided that she was no lady, so far as I was concerned), let out a little shriek of alarm and opened her eyes to stare at Rakoczy. Then she must have remembered that she was supposed to be in a deep swoon, and with a dramatic groan for effect, she sank limply back into Gideon’s arms.
“I shall be better in a moment. No need for any fuss.” Rakoczy had raised his head and was looking at us with bloodshot eyes. “My fault! It should be taken only a few drops at a time, he says.”
“Who says?” asked Gideon, holding Lavinia in his arms like a store display mannequin.
With some difficulty, Rakoczy got himself into a sitting position, let his head drop back, and looked up at the ceiling with a peal of laughter. “Do you see the stars all dancing?”
Gideon sighed. “I’ll have to find the count,” he said. “Gwen, if you could just lend me a hand…?”
I stared at him blankly. “Lend you a hand with her? You must be joking!” With a couple of steps, I was in the doorway and then out in the corridor, so that he wouldn’t see the silly tears flowing down my face in torrents. I didn’t know either why I was crying or where I was going as I ran away. It must have been posttraumatic reaction, the kind you’re always reading about. People do the weirdest things when they’re in shock, like that baker up in Yorkshire who crushed his arm in the dough press. He finished baking seven more trays of cinnamon croissants before he called the emergency services. Those cinnamon croissants were the nastiest sight the paramedics had ever seen.
I hesitated when I reached the stairs. I didn’t want to go down, in case Lord Alastair was already waiting there to commit his perfect murder, so I ran on up. I hadn’t gone far before I heard Gideon behind me, calling, “Gwenny! Please stop! Please!”