where we first met, and then you will begin to remember.”
The Count opened both doors of the heavily carved medieval wardrobe revealing dresses of many colors and fabrics. “I have selected for you clothing for every occasion, but I suggest you dress simply. Ireland is a poor and hostile country. You do not want to appear as a haughty Englishwoman flaunting her wealth.”
“I have no wealth,” I protested. “And I am not going to Ireland!”
“You are wrong on both counts. You will find first that you do, indeed, have wealth and second that you are going to Ireland. Select the things you would like to take on our journey,” he said. “I will have them packed for you. As a courtesy to you, I brought my staff from Paris to run this house. I happen to know that you speak French. We leave this evening for Southampton and we will sail in the morning. I have purchased a small luxury steamer for the trip. Will you please be ready in an hour?”
He read my thoughts as clearly as if I had said them aloud. “Not accustomed to being told no? You have told me no hundreds of times.” His eyes flared bright and angry. I knew that he could easily hurt me-kill me-if he wished. But if he were going to do that, I would prefer that he do it here, rather than on a boat in the middle of the Irish Sea.
“What would happen if I decided not to go?” I asked, trying to test where I stood with him. He had once said he was my servant and my master, but I saw nothing of the servant.
He took two steps back, and I felt the anger he had hurled at me moments before recede. He shrugged. “The choice is yours. The doors to the mansion are open. Walk through them anytime you like.”
His sharp change of tone disarmed me. I could not think of anything to say that would not sound like a schoolgirl fumbling for words.
“I would enjoy watching you dress, but there will be time for that later. I sense that you require some privacy.” He gave me a perfunctory bow. “One hour. Please be ready.” And then he left me alone in the room.
The vessel he had purchased had fifty first-class staterooms designed to transport one hundred people and considerable cargo, but besides the crew, we were the only passengers. I was given my own quarters, luxurious and small. I opened the wardrobe, which smelled of sweet sachet. Everything in my trunk-from undergarments to nightdresses to gowns to jewelry-had already been unpacked and hung or folded with supreme precision and care. French soaps, lotions, and powders populated the drawers of the vanity, and a vase of white lilies sat on its top. I sat on the narrow bed, looking out through the round porthole to sea, and marveling that three days prior, I had been in an asylum being tortured with the water cure. But was this voyage going to prove any less dangerous? I must have been lulled into a shallow sleep by the undulation of the sea when I heard a rap at the cabin door. A steward was delivering a note advising me that dinner would be served at eight.
I had seen renderings in
The centerpiece of the dining room was an atrium of etched glass surrounded by exquisite plaster crown molding patterned with vine roses. Classical columns held up the lower portions of the paneled ceiling. The room would have seated one hundred at its stately mahogany tables, but we were the only diners. Bowls of fruit and big vases of hothouse violet-blue hydrangeas covered the room’s sideboards. In one corner, a pianist softly played a sonata on a grand piano.
“Do you like the music, or would you prefer to dine in silence?” the Count asked, standing up to greet me as I entered the room. He sat at the head of a table wearing evening clothes, much like those in which I had first seen him on the riverbank.
Another steward rushed over to help me into a chair adjacent to the Count. The steward exchanged a few words with the Count in a language I did not understand, bowed, and hurried away.
“The music is lovely,” I said.
“Chopin. Such talent. A pity that he died so young.”
I was woefully ignorant of serious music, an aspect of my education that Headmistress had ignored. “How did he die?” I asked.
“The doctors thought it was some disease of the lungs, but it was exacerbated by his taste for, shall we say, the wrong sort of woman.” He smiled. “Or rather, their taste for him.”
I had arrived in the dining room with a litany of questions, but the soft light from his luminous face and his incalculable eyes that were devouring me erased them all. I thought of Kate’s advice to be silent so that the words of another might come forth, and I tried to relax, but I felt fidgety under his gaze.
“I knew that the dress would match your eyes, or that your eyes would change their color to match the dress,” he said. “And do not worry. All your questions will be answered in due time. That is why we are making this trip.”
Waiters began to appear with tureens of soup, platters of fish and meat, and bowls of vegetables. Another with a huge gold tasting spoon hanging like a necklace at his chest showed the Count a bottle of wine, which he approved, and when opened, sniffed the cork, and then nodded so that a glass could be poured for me. He ordered the waiters to put everything on the table and retreat to the rear of the room. “I will serve her,” he said. “Tell me what you would like, Mina.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he put a finger to my lips. “Not that way. Tell me with your thoughts.”
Without looking at the food, I directed my attention by scent to the tureen of turtle soup, whose aroma I recognized from my first dinner at the asylum. “Yes, good,” the Count said, ladling out a small bowlful for me. “What else?”
I relished the aromas of the white fish with wine and capers, the lamb with mint sauce, and the carrots, but rejected the turnips, which I had eaten for so many years at Miss Hadley’s that I had come to abhor them. My repulsion made him laugh, and he signaled for a waiter to take the bowl away. He finished serving the food and sat in his chair with an empty plate in front of him. “Bon appetit,” he said to me.
“You are not eating?” I asked.
“When I am fully living in the body, which I am now, I do feed it, but not tonight,” he said. Seeing my confusion, he added, “I will explain all in time, Mina, but I know your appetites as surely as I know my own, and I know that you are dying to eat but wondering how you might do so politely when your dinner companion is not eating with you. You must forget your training for the moment and enjoy yourself.”
Unlike other times when I seemed to frustrate him, now he seemed utterly amused by me. I obeyed him, taking the first bite of food, and, finding it delicious, I proceeded to eat while he watched.
I finished one glass of wine, which made me more relaxed, even blithe. “You seem to know me exceedingly well, Count, while I know you very little, or at least, I do not remember knowing you, as you say that I do. May I please ask you exactly who and what you are?”
“Exactly? At this moment in time, I am Count Vladimir Drakulya. Some twenty years ago, I reclaimed a Carinthian estate and title in Styria that was rightfully mine through an ancestor. He was given them hundreds of years ago by the King of Hungary and inducted into the Sacred Order of the Dragon for his role in assassinating a certain Turkish sultan. Of course, the ancestor is myself, but you are the only person alive with that knowledge.”
As outrageous as his claim was, he spoke with the sort of certainty that made me believe him. “I feel as if I have entered some sort of magical kingdom,” I said. “Forgive me if I do not know how to respond.”
“Respond any way you like, Mina. I must admit that I have been surprised at the way that you have allowed politeness and formality to suppress your higher nature. But that will change,” he said. “You
“Are you speaking of the hallucinations I had as a child?” I asked. “I remember that in one of them, you came to me.”
“Oh yes, and not just once, though that is all that you seem to recall. I have been aware of you since you
