Read Online James Asher 1 - Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Barbara Hambly
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really are more logical explanations, when you think of it. And there's something definitely odd about this bone."
She took a deep breath and relaxed as her worst fear—the fear of being left alone while her fate was decided elsewhere and by others— receded into darkness. James, evidently resigned to his fate, took his arm from around her shoulders and began picking out the reticule's contents, laying them on the lace of the counterpane—yellowing bills, old theater programmes folded small, appointment cards, invitations— in his neat, scholarly way.
“Are you going to get in touch with the killer?”
“I certainly intend to try.” He held up an extremely faded calling card to the light. “But I'll have to go very carefully. The vampires will know it's a logical alliance to make . . . What is it?”
Against his side, through the bed, he had felt her start.
Lydia dropped the card she had been looking at, her hand shaking a little with an odd sort of shock, as if she'd seen someone she knew . . . Which, she reflected, was in a way exactly what had happened. She didn't know what to say, how to define that sense of helpless hurt, as if she'd just seen a very brainless cat walk straight into the savaging jaws of a dog.
He had already picked up the card and was reading the assignation on the back. Then he flipped it over to see the front, where the name of the Honorable Albert Westmoreland was printed in meticulous copperplate.
“I knew him,” Lydia explained, a little shakily. “Not well—he was one of Uncle Ambrose's students when I was still in school. His father was a friend of Papa's in the City.”
“One of your suitors?” The teasing note he sometimes had when speaking of her suitors was absent. She had had flocks of them, due in pan to the Willoughby fortune, which had paid for this house and everything in it, and in part to her waiflike charm. After being told for years that she was ugly, she enjoyed their attentions and enjoyed flirting with them—though not as much as she enjoyed a good, solid analysis of nervous lesions—and charming people had become second nature to her. A just girl, she didn't hold it against those earnest young men that they'd frequently bored her to death, but the distinction was something her father had never been able to grasp. With Baptista-like faith in man's ability to change a woman's personality, he had encouraged them all, never, until the last, losing his touching hope that he'd see his wayward daughter marry her way into the peerage,
She smiled a little, mostly at the recollection of her father's face when she'd announced her intention to marry a middle-aged Lecturer in Philology without an “Honorable” to his name, and shook her head. “He was already engaged to Lord Carringford's daughter. But he was in their set. So I saw him a good deal. I knew—well, nobody spoke of it before me, of course, and Nanna would have killed them if they had, but I guessed that when they went larking about in town it wasn't with girls like me. I remember Dennis Blaydon coming round and telling me Bertie had died.”
She shivered, and he drew her close again, his hand warm and strong on her shoulder. Oddly enough, the news hadn't upset her much at the time, though she'd felt shocked and sad, for Bertie had been the first contemporary, the first of her set, who had died. Even then, she had been familiar with death—old Horace Blaydon, chief Lecturer in Pathology at Radclyffe, had said it was positively indecent to watch her carve up cadavers—but it was different, it seemed, when it was someone you knew. Dennis, she recalled, had done his best to comfort her, with disappointing results, “Did he say how?”
She shook her head. “But it was very sudden. I remember thinking I'd seen him only a few weeks before, when all their set went down to watch Dennis play in the rugger match against Kings. Poor Bertie.” The memory made her smile again wanly. “The Honorable
She took a deep breath and relaxed as her worst fear—the fear of being left alone while her fate was decided elsewhere and by others— receded into darkness. James, evidently resigned to his fate, took his arm from around her shoulders and began picking out the reticule's contents, laying them on the lace of the counterpane—yellowing bills, old theater programmes folded small, appointment cards, invitations— in his neat, scholarly way.
“Are you going to get in touch with the killer?”
“I certainly intend to try.” He held up an extremely faded calling card to the light. “But I'll have to go very carefully. The vampires will know it's a logical alliance to make . . . What is it?”
Against his side, through the bed, he had felt her start.
Lydia dropped the card she had been looking at, her hand shaking a little with an odd sort of shock, as if she'd seen someone she knew . . . Which, she reflected, was in a way exactly what had happened. She didn't know what to say, how to define that sense of helpless hurt, as if she'd just seen a very brainless cat walk straight into the savaging jaws of a dog.
He had already picked up the card and was reading the assignation on the back. Then he flipped it over to see the front, where the name of the Honorable Albert Westmoreland was printed in meticulous copperplate.
“I knew him,” Lydia explained, a little shakily. “Not well—he was one of Uncle Ambrose's students when I was still in school. His father was a friend of Papa's in the City.”
“One of your suitors?” The teasing note he sometimes had when speaking of her suitors was absent. She had had flocks of them, due in pan to the Willoughby fortune, which had paid for this house and everything in it, and in part to her waiflike charm. After being told for years that she was ugly, she enjoyed their attentions and enjoyed flirting with them—though not as much as she enjoyed a good, solid analysis of nervous lesions—and charming people had become second nature to her. A just girl, she didn't hold it against those earnest young men that they'd frequently bored her to death, but the distinction was something her father had never been able to grasp. With Baptista-like faith in man's ability to change a woman's personality, he had encouraged them all, never, until the last, losing his touching hope that he'd see his wayward daughter marry her way into the peerage,
She smiled a little, mostly at the recollection of her father's face when she'd announced her intention to marry a middle-aged Lecturer in Philology without an “Honorable” to his name, and shook her head. “He was already engaged to Lord Carringford's daughter. But he was in their set. So I saw him a good deal. I knew—well, nobody spoke of it before me, of course, and Nanna would have killed them if they had, but I guessed that when they went larking about in town it wasn't with girls like me. I remember Dennis Blaydon coming round and telling me Bertie had died.”
She shivered, and he drew her close again, his hand warm and strong on her shoulder. Oddly enough, the news hadn't upset her much at the time, though she'd felt shocked and sad, for Bertie had been the first contemporary, the first of her set, who had died. Even then, she had been familiar with death—old Horace Blaydon, chief Lecturer in Pathology at Radclyffe, had said it was positively indecent to watch her carve up cadavers—but it was different, it seemed, when it was someone you knew. Dennis, she recalled, had done his best to comfort her, with disappointing results, “Did he say how?”
She shook her head. “But it was very sudden. I remember thinking I'd seen him only a few weeks before, when all their set went down to watch Dennis play in the rugger match against Kings. Poor Bertie.” The memory made her smile again wanly. “The Honorable
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