Jonathan Barrett Gentleman Vampire (2 page)

She’d just as swiftly assumed the running of the household in her own manner, subtly and not so subtly disrupting every level of life and work for everyone on our estate. Surprisingly, only a few servants left. Most were quite loyal to Father and had the understanding that this was to be a brief visit. When things were settled back to normal in Philadelphia, Mother would depart.

A likely chance
, I thought cynically. Surely she was enjoying herself too much to leave.

She paused in her speech; apparently I’d been delinquent in my latest response.

“This is . . . is marvelous to hear, Mother. I hardly know what to say.”

“A ‘thank you’ would be appropriate.”

Yes, of course it would
. “Thank you, Mother.”

She nodded, comically regal, but not a bit amusing. My stomach roiled in reaction to the tempest between my ears. I had to get out of here.

“May I be excused, Mother?”

“Excused? I should think you’d want to hear the rest of the details we have planned.”

“Truly I do, but must confess that my brain is whirling so much I am hardly able to breathe. I beg but a little time to recover so that I may give my full attention later.”

“Very well. I suppose you’ll run off to tell Elizabeth everything.”

To this, a correct assumption that was really none of her business, I made another courtly bow upon which she could apply her own interpretation.

She sniffed. “You are excused. But remember: no arguments and no more foolishness. Going to England is the greatest opportunity you’re ever going to receive to make something of yourself.”

“Yes, Mother.” I bowed again, inching anxiously toward the door.

“This is, after all, for your own good,” she concluded serenely.

Anger rushed through me again as I turned and stalked from the room. How fond she was of
that
idea. God save me from all the hideous people hell-bent on doing things for my own good. So far there’d been just one in my life, my mother, and she was more than enough.

Quietly shutting the door, I slipped down the hall until there was enough distance between us for noise not to matter, then began to run as though the house were afire. Not bothering with a coat or hat, I threw myself outside into the cold April air. The woman was suffocating. I needed to be free of her and all thought of her. My feet carried me straight to the stables. With its mud, muck, and the irreverent company of the lads, this was one place I would be safe.

“Over here, Mr. Jonathan!”

My black servant, Jericho, waved at me. He was just emerging from the darkness of one of the buildings. Though he was primarily my valet and therefore supposed to keep to the house, neither of us paid much attention to such things. He was fairly high up in the household hierarchy and able to bend a rule here and there as long as nobody minded. If he chose to play the part of a groom, he suffered no loss in status, because working with horses was a source of pleasure for him. Right now, he was a godsend, for he’d saddled Rolly, my favorite hunter, and was leading him out.

I couldn’t help but laugh at his foresight. “How did you guess? Magic?”

“No magic,” he said, smiling at the old joke between us. He used to tease the servant girls about being able to read their deepest thoughts, and as a dedicated observer of human nature he was right more often than not. The younger ones were awed, the older ones amused, and one rather guilty-hearted wench accused him of witchcraft. “I’d heard that Mrs. Barrett wanted to speak to you. Every other time that’s happened you’ve come here to ride it off.”

“You’re uncanny. Thank you, Jericho. Will you join me?”

“I rather assumed you would prefer the solitude.”

Right again. Perhaps he did have hidden powers of divination.

He held Rolly’s head as I swung up to the saddle and helped with the stirrups. “I’ll tell Miss Elizabeth where you are,” he said before I could ask him to do exactly that.

I laughed again, at the wonderful normality he represented, and took up the reins. Knowing what was to come next and how eager I was to get started, Rolly danced away and sprang forward with hardly a signal from me. Doing something that Mother would disapprove of was what I needed, and leaving the stable yard at a full gallop to jump over a wall into the fields beyond was a most satisfying form of rebellion.

Rolly was almost as perceptive as Jericho and seemed to sense that I wanted to fly as fast and as far as possible. The cold wind roaring past us deadened the strident echoes of Mother’s voice and swept clean the memory of her distorted face. She shrank to less than nothing, lost amid the joy I felt while clinging to the back of the best horse in the world as he carried me to the edge of that world—or at least to the cliffs overlooking the Sound.

We slowed at last, though for a moment I thought that if Rolly decided to leap out over the sea instead of turning to trot parallel to it he would sprout the necessary wings to send us soaring into the sky like some latter-day Pegasus and Bellerophon. What a ride that might be, and I would know better than to try flying to Mount Olympus to seek out the gods. They could wait their turn with him . . . if I ever let them have one.

The air cutting over us was clean with the sea smell and starting to warm as the sun climbed. I drank it in until my lungs ached and my throat burned. Rolly picked his own path, and I let him, content enough with the privilege of being on his back. We went east, into the wind, him stretching his neck, his ears up, me busy holding my balance over the uneven ground. The trot sped up to a canter and he shook his head once as though to free himself of the bridle as we approached another fence.

The property it marked belonged to a farmer named Finch who kept a few horses of his own. His lands were smaller than Father’s, and he could not afford riding animals, but the rough look of the mares on that side made no difference to Rolly, aristocrat though he was. In his eyes a female was a female and to the devil with her looks and age as long as she was ready for mounting. Obviously one of them was in season. I barely had time to turn him and keep him from sailing over the fence right into the middle of them all.

Rolly snorted and neighed out a protest. One of the other horses answered and I had to work hard at getting him out of there.

“Sorry, old boy,” I told him. “You may have an excellent bloodline, but I don’t think our neighbor would thank you for passing it on without permission.”

He stamped and tried to rear, but I pulled him in, not letting him get away with it.

“If it’s any consolation, I know just how you feel,” I confided.

I was seventeen and still a virgin . . . of sorts. I’d long since worked out ways around certain inevitable frustrations that come from being a healthy young man, but instinctively knew they could hardly be as gratifying as actual experience with an equally healthy young woman. Damn. Now,
why
did I have to start thinking along those paths again? An idiotic question; better to frame it as a syllogism of logic. Premise one: I was, indeed, healthy; premise two: I was, indeed, young. Combine those and I rarely failed to come to a pleasurable conclusion when the desire was upon me. However, I was not prepared to come to any such conclusions here in the open while on horseback. That was definitely something guaranteed to garner maternal disapproval . . . and I’d probably fall out of the saddle.

The true loss of my virginity was another goal in my personal education I’d planned to achieve at Harvard—if I ever got there, since Mother had said that everything was settled about Cambridge. I wondered if they had girls at Cambridge. Oh, God, this wasn’t helping at all. I kicked Rolly into a jarring trot, hoping that it would distract me. The last thing I needed was to return home with any telltale stain on my light-colored breeches. Perhaps if I found a quiet spot in the woods . . . .

I knew just the one.

As children, Elizabeth, Jericho, and I had gone adventuring, or what we called adventuring, for we knew the area quite well. Usually our games involved a treasure hunt, for everyone on the island knew that Captain Kidd had come here to bury his booty. It didn’t matter to us that such riches were more likely to be fifty miles east on the south end of the island; the hunting was more important than the finding. But instead of treasure that day, I’d found a kettle, or a sharpish depression gouged into the earth by some ancient glacier, according to my schoolmaster. Trees and other vegetation concealed its edge. My foot slipped on wet leaves and down I tumbled into a typical specimen of Long Island’s geography.

Jericho came pelting after me, fearful that I had broken my neck. Elizabeth, though hampered by her skirts, followed almost as quickly, shouting anxious questions after him. I was almost trampled by their combined concern and inability to stop fast enough.

The wind had been knocked from me, but I’d suffered nothing worse than scrapes and bruises. After the initial fright passed we took stock of our surroundings and claimed it for our own. It became our pirate’s cave (albeit open to the sky and to any cattle that wandered in to graze), banditti’s lair, and general sanctuary from tiresome adults wanting us to do something more constructive with our time.

Still a sanctuary, I guided Rolly down to the easy way into the kettle, but we were not alone. Far ahead were two people near the line of trees marking the entry. A man and woman walked arm in arm there, obviously on the friendliest of terms.

Even at that distance I recognized my father. What was he doing here . . . Oh.

The woman with him was Mrs. Montagu, his mistress for the last dozen years. She was a sweet-faced, sweet-tempered widow who had always been kind to me and Elizabeth, was everything that Mother was not. Mother, thank God, knew nothing about her, or life for all of us would truly become a living hell.

It was a quietly acknowledged fact in our household that most of Father’s business errands took him no more than three miles away so he might visit Matilda Montagu. Their relationship was hardly a secret, but not something to bring up in open conversation. They had not asked for this privacy, but got it, anyway, for both were liked and respected hereabouts. They were discreet, and that was all that was required for people to turn a blind eye.

I’d pulled Rolly to a stop and now almost urged him in their direction to tell him what had transpired, then changed my mind.

No. Not fair to interrupt them
, I thought.

Father had little enough happiness of his own since Mother’s return; I would not trespass upon their tryst with my present troubles. We could talk later. Besides, I had no wish to embarrass him by bringing up the disagreeable details of his wife’s latest offenses while he was in the company of his beloved mistress.

Father and Mrs. Montagu continued their leisurely morning walk, unaware of me, which was just as well. It was interesting to watch them together, for this was a side of Father that I’d never really seen. I was somewhat uncomfortable with my curiosity, but not so much as to move on. Not that I expected them to suddenly seize each other and start rolling on the cold damp ground in a frenzy of passion. Nor would I have stayed to watch, my curiosity being limited by the discretions of good taste. But between the demands of my preparatory education and all the other distractions of life, I’d had few opportunities to observe the rules of courtship in our polite society. So far it hardly looked different from the servants’, for I’d occasionally seen them strolling about with one another making similar displays of affection.

He had one arm around her waist, one hand, rather. Her wide skirts kept him from getting much closer. He also leaned his head down toward her so as to miss nothing of whatever she was saying. And he was laughing. That was good to see. He had not done much of that in the last month. What about his other hand? Occupied with carrying a bundle or basket. Full of food, probably. It was hardly the best weather for eating comfortably out of doors, but they seemed content to ignore it as long as they were together.

Interesting. Now they paused to face each other. Father stooped slightly and kissed her on the lips for a very long time. My own mouth went dry Perhaps it was time to leave. As I dithered with indecision their kiss ended, and they turned to walk into the shadow of the trees. They did not come out again.

Rolly snorted impatiently and dropped his head to snatch a mouthful of new grass just peeping through last year’s dead layer. At some point my fleshly cravings had also altered so that carnal leanings had been supplanted by extreme hunger. The sun was high and far over; I’d been out for hours and had long since digested my breakfast. Elizabeth would be wondering whether I’d been thrown. She loved horses too, but didn’t trust Rolly to behave himself.

I turned him back up the rise leading around the kettle, heading home.

The horse being more valuable than its rider, I took care of Rolly myself when we reached the stables. As a menial job, I could have left it for one of the lads to do and no one would have thought twice about it. Especially Mother. I was raised to be a gentleman and imagined her disapproval while going about my caretaking tasks. But where horses were concerned, such work was no work at all for me. Defiance doubled, I thought, humming with pleasure. Jericho wasn’t there or he might have helped out—if I’d invited him. I made quick work of it, though, and before long was marching toward the kitchen to wheedle a meal from the cook.

Then someone hissed from around a corner of the house. Elizabeth stood there, eyes comically wide and lips compressed, urgently waving at me to come over. Curiosity won out over hunger.

“What is it?” I asked, trotting up.

“Not so loud,” she insisted, grabbing my arm and dragging me around the corner. She visibly relaxed once we were out of sight from the kitchen.

“What is it?” I repeated, now mimicking her hoarse whisper.

“Mother was furious that you missed lunch.”

I gave vent to an exasperated sigh and raised my voice back to normal. “Damnation, but I’m an adult and my time is my own. She’s never minded before.”