been able to persuade him I should stay. He told me with a bland smile that he meant to spend the morning exploring the castle, and I left him with a feeling of sharp unease. I tried to settle to my work, but every time I lifted my pen, I thought of him falling into conversation with the count and my stomach gave a little churn as if I had just boarded a ship and not yet found my sea legs.
After a pleasant midday meal, Cosmina proposed a visit to the village. She wished to call upon Dr. Frankopan and suggested that Charles might like to see more of the valley. He accepted with alacrity, and it occurred to me that I had seldom seen Cosmina look quite so uncertain of herself. She had always been quieter than most of the girls of my acquaintance, but she had worn a mantle of self-possession. Now, as she looked at Charles, once or twice I detected a hesitancy. I wondered if she were perhaps forming a
We ventured down to the village, and all the while Cosmina kept up a patter of entertaining narrative about the castle and its legends. Charles was intrigued; I had known him too long to mistake that intently arrested air. He was doubtless fitting Cosmina’s chatter into the conversation he and I had shared over breakfast, and it was with only the slightest touch of annoyance that I noted he helped her over the roughest going while leaving me to pick my own way down the Devil’s Staircase.
In the village, Cosmina pointed out to him the fresh improvements, and Charles surveyed it all with great interest.
“It seems as if the new count is making rather excellent progress,” he commented blandly. “Is he not here to oversee matters himself?”
I said nothing but bent swiftly to fuss with a bootlace. The less I said upon the subject of the count, the better. Charles pricked like a pointer every time his name was raised, and it seemed inevitable he would discover my feelings for the man himself. I only hoped such a revelation could be postponed until long after we had both quitted the place.
“Count Andrei does not often go abroad during the day,” Cosmina told him. “He prefers to keep more nocturnal hours.”
I rose to find Charles had turned to me, his brows lifted significantly. “Really? What a singular fellow.”
“Not at all,” I returned, rather too sharply. “He is by way of being an amateur astronomer. He could hardly practise the astronomical arts during the day, now could he?”
Cosmina cut in to point out the graveyard just then and Charles turned away, but his expression was speculative, and I chastened myself. I should have to be far more careful if I expected to keep my feelings for the count concealed.
We walked on to Dr. Frankopan’s little cottage in the woods, and I was pleased to find the old gentleman at home. We were greeted with great warmth, and when he discovered we had a visitor with us, his usual fuss became an outright furore.
“How do you do?” Charles asked politely.
“How wonderful, how wonderful! A Scotsman, I do not think I have ever met such a creature before,” he exclaimed, much to Charles’s chagrin. Like many educated Scots of English descent, Charles had taken pains to banish both Scottish colloquialisms and accent from his speech, although they did creep in from time to time.
I smiled behind my hand, and Charles glowered a little at me as we were hurried to comfortable chairs beside the fire while refreshments were sent for. Madame Popa served us with a sullen humour, and I was not sorry to see her leave. If Charles connected her with the tale I had told him of the man who had taken to the mountains as a wolf, he betrayed no sign of it.
Dr. Frankopan gestured towards the tea things with alacrity. “Ah! Today the good Frau Graben has sent me a wonderful apple tart made from the apples grown in the castle garden. Have you seen the garden yet, Mr. Beecroft? An astonishing thing to find a place of cultivation so high upon the mountain.”
“I have not. I have only just arrived last night,” Charles explained.
“Oh, you must see it, you must!” Dr. Frankopan advised. “Of course, it is not so tidy as it was in the old days, but there is still beauty there in the ruins. And you will see the little trees that produce the famous black apples.”
“Black apples?” Charles looked a trifle alarmed as he poked a fork cautiously into his slice of the tart.
“Only the skins,” I reassured him. “They are quite extraordinary-looking, small and purplish-black like plums. But the flesh is very white and sweet.”
These were the apples Cosmina and I had picked and I knew from experience that they were delicious, although not prepossessing in appearance.
“Like something out of a faery tale,” Charles said, giving me a significant look.
“Precisely, precisely!” Dr. Frankopan said happily. “The whole place is like something out of a faery tale. You will find much to interest you here, sir, if you are not averse to country pleasures.”
Charles strove for diplomacy. “I confess I am a man of the city, Dr. Frankopan, but I am determined to learn the error of my ways. I do already see it is a most remarkable place.”
“It is, it is,” Dr. Frankopan agreed.
With that we fell into conversation about the village and the valley and a little of life beyond, for Charles had the most recent news from Vienna, and the afternoon was one of the most pleasant I had passed since coming into Transylvania. It struck me as I watched them that Charles and Dr. Frankopan were similar men, holding several virtues in common. They both were kindly and worked hard. They were agreeable and decent and they both conducted themselves in such a manner as to help those they could.
It also struck me that they were both solicitous of Cosmina. When it became apparent that she was sitting in the draught from a poorly fitted window, Charles insisted upon changing his seat for hers, and more than once I caught Dr. Frankopan watching her with a little furrow of worry ploughed between his brows. He was still concerned for her health, I realised, and I wondered if there was something more seriously amiss with her than I had known. But she seemed stronger than she had the previous week, and every day her colour rose and she was able to walk further and with more purpose. Even now, roses bloomed in her cheeks, and I was glad of it.
Charles seemed to enjoy the afternoon as well, and as we departed, Dr. Frankopan pressed him with an invitation to come again, alone or in company, whenever he chose.
“I am an old bachelor, you will not disturb me,” he assured Charles.
“We are the pair of us old bachelors then,” Charles said rather too heartily.
We made our way back to the castle then in the waning afternoon light, the drooping sun casting long golden shadows over the valley, gilding the scene to a burnished tranquility. Cosmina drifted ahead, picking an armful of leaves to place in bowls, and Charles fell into step at my side.
“Well?” I asked. It was a testament to our long friendship that the single word was sufficient.
He paused, thinking. “I have finally realised what it puts me in mind of. Do you remember those curious children’s books we published last year? The metamorphoses books?”
I nodded. They were some of the most delightful books Charles had produced. Each had been crafted with clever turn-ups so that the turning of a page produced a feature that popped to life, a bird on the wing, a castle tower rising above a forest ridge.
“That is what this place reminds me of. A metamorphoses book. A turn of the page and something new and wonderful springs to life. Most unexpected,” he said, his voice dropping curiously.
And when he spoke, his eyes lingered on the graceful figure of Cosmina in the distance.
I was not jealous of Cosmina, I told myself firmly. It was absurd to place any importance whatsoever upon Charles’s apparent interest in her. There was no attachment; Cosmina’s antipathy would see to that. But it did not escape my notice that she managed to be just at hand to place herself next to Charles at dinner. And later, when the household adjourned to the library for quiet entertainments, Charles hurried to help her with the arrangement of her silhouette table.
“It is not often that I use the table,” she told him as he lit the candle and placed it opposite the screen according to her instructions. “But visitors here are so rare a pleasure, we try to commemorate the occasion with a silhouette, to bring pleasure to us in the lonely hours after they have gone. I thought I would cut one of you and one of Theodora, to remind us all of this night,” she finished, her colour becomingly pink.
Charles preened a little and seated himself on the other side of the screen from Cosmina and her sharp little scissors. She took up a piece of black paper and began to cut, her eyes darting between her work and the still
