Gordon Dahlquist Read online

  She stood and poured just a touch of tea into her cup to see if it was dark enough. It was. She then poured in a bit of milk and took up the teapot again, tipping it slowly. For the first cup, if one was careful, it was usually possible to forgo the strainer, as most of the leaves would be sodden and at the bottom of the pot. The tea was a perfect pale mahogany color, still hot enough to steam. Miss Temple sat down and took a sip. It was perfect, the kind of hearty, savory brew that she imagined really ought to be somehow cut up with a knife and fork and eaten in bites. Within another two minutes, passed affably with sipping, the rest of her dishes had arrived and she was again pleased to find that the jam was a deeply colored blackberry conserve and that the fruit was, of all things in the world, a lovely orange hothouse mango, arranged on its plate in finger-thick, length-wise slices. She wondered idly how much this tea was going to cost, and then shrugged away her care. Who knew if she would even be alive in the morning? Why begrudge the simple pleasures that might unexpectedly appear?

  Though she did make a point, when she remembered, to glance at the restaurant doorway and scrutinize whoever might be entering, Miss Temple spent the next twenty minutes assiduously focused on slicing and preparing the scones with just the right thickness to each half, applying an under-layer of jam, and then on top of that slathering the proper amount of cream. This done, she set these aside and indulged in two strips of mango, one after the other, spearing each with her silver fork on one end and eating her way from the other, bite by bite, down to the tines. After this, she finished her first cup of tea and stood again to pour another, this time using the strainer and also pouring in a nearly equal amount of hot water to dilute the brew that had been steeping all this time. She sampled this, added a bit more milk, and then sat once more and essayed the first half of the first scone, alternating each bite with a sip of tea until it had disappeared. Another slice of mango and she went back to the second half of the first scone, and by the time she had finished that it was also time for another cup of tea, this one requiring just a touch more of the hot water than before. She was down to the final half of her second scone, and the final slice of mango—and trying to decide which of the two to demolish first—when she became aware that the Comte d’Orkancz stood on the opposite side of her table. It was to Miss Temple’s great satisfaction that she was able to smile at him brightly and through her surprise announce, “Ah, it seems you have finally arrived.”

  It was clearly not what he had expected her to say. “I do not believe we have been introduced,” replied the Comte.

  “We have not,” said Miss Temple. “You are the Comte d’Orkancz. I am Celeste Temple. Will you sit?” She indicated the chair near him—which did not hold her bag. “Would you care for some tea?”

  “No thank you,” he said, looking down at her with both interest and suspicion. “May I ask why you are here?”

  “Is it not rude to so interrogate a lady? If we are to have a conversation—I do not know where you are from, they say Paris, but my understanding is even in Paris they are not so rude, or not rude in such an ignorant fashion—it would be much better if you would sit.” Miss Temple grinned wickedly. “Unless of course you fear I will shoot you.”

  “As you would have it,” answered the Comte. “I have no wish to be … ill-mannered.”

  He pulled out the chair and sat, his large body having the odd effect of placing him both near to her and far away at the same time, his hands on the table but his face strangely distant beyond them. He was not wearing his fur coat, but instead an immaculate black evening jacket, his stiff white shirt held with gleaming blue studs. She saw that his fingers, which were disturbingly strong and thick, wore many rings of silver, several of them set with blue stones as well. His beard was heavy but neatly trimmed, mouth arrantly sensual, and his eyes glittering blue. The entire air of the man was strangely powerful and utterly, disturbingly, masculine.

  “Would you care for something other than tea?” she asked.

  “Perhaps a pot of coffee, if you will not object.”

  “There is no evil in coffee,” answered Miss Temple, a bit primly. She raised her hand for the waiter and gave him the Comte’s order when he arrived at the table. She turned to the Comte. “Nothing else?” He shook his head. The waiter darted to the kitchen. Miss Temple took another sip of tea and leaned back, her right hand gently gathered the strap on her bag and pulled it onto her lap. The Comte d’Orkancz studied her, his eyes flicking at her hidden hand with a trace of amusement.

  “So … you were expecting me, it seems,” he offered.

  “It did not particularly matter who it was, but I knew one of you would arrive, and when you did, that I would meet you. Perhaps I preferred another—that is, perhaps I have more personal business elsewhere—but the substance remains unchanged.”

  “And what substance is that?”

  Miss Temple smiled. “You see, that is the kind of question one might ask a foolish young woman—it is the kind of question an idiot suitor would ask me when he is convinced that the path to groping my body on a sofa leads through flatteringly earnest conversation. If we are going to get anywhere, Comte, it will aid us both to be reasonable and clear. Do you not think?”

  “I do not think too many men have groped you on a sofa.”

  “That is correct.” She took a bite of her scone—she had been regretting the interruption for some minutes—and then another sip of tea. “Would it be better if I asked questions of you?”

  He smiled—perhaps in spite of himself, she could not tell—and nodded. “As you prefer.”

  But here his coffee arrived and she was forced to hold her tongue as the waiter set down the cup, the pot, the milk, the sugar, and their requisite spoons. When he was gone, she gave the Comte time to sample his drink, and was gratified to see that he consumed it black, minimizing the delay. He set down the cup and nodded to her again.

  “The woman—I suppose for you there are so many women,” she said, “but the woman I refer to was from the brothel, one Angelique. I understand from Doctor Svenson that you might have been genuinely troubled—even surprised—at the unfortunate results of your … procedure, with her, at the Royal Institute. I am curious—and it is not an idle curiosity, I promise you, but professional—whether you possessed any genuine feeling for the girl, either before or after your work destroyed her.”

  The Comte took another sip of coffee.

  “Would you object if I smoked?” he asked.

  “If you must,” replied Miss Temple. “It is a filthy habit, and I will have no spitting.”

  He nodded to her gravely and fished a silver case from an inner pocket. After a moment spent considering its contents, he removed a small, tightly wrapped, nearly black cheroot and snapped the case shut. He stuck the cheroot in his mouth and the case in his pocket and came back with a box of matches. He lit the cheroot, puffing several times until the tip glowed red, and dropped the spent match on his saucer. He exhaled, took another sip of coffee, and looked into Miss Temple’s eyes.

  “You ask because of Bascombe, of course,” he said.

  “I do?”

  “Certainly. He has dashed your plans. When you ask of Angelique, someone from the lower orders we have taken up to join our work, to whom we have offered advancement—social, material, spiritual—you also inquire about our feeling for him, another, if not from such a dubious social stratum, we have embraced. And equally you speculate, indeed are ferociously hungry to know, what reciprocal feeling our work receives from him.”

  Miss Temple’s eyes flashed. “On the contrary, Monsieur le Comte, I ask out of curiosity, as the answer will likely dictate whether your fate is a more perfunctory retribution at the hand of objective justice, or lingering, stinging, relentless torment at the hands of vengeance.”

  “Indeed?” he replied mildly.

  “For my own part—well, it matters only that your intrigue fails and you are powerless to further pursue it—which could equally mean the law, a bullet, or
fierce persuasion. Roger Bascombe is nothing to me. And yet, as I must feel about your lady friend who has profoundly wronged me—this, this Contessa—so others feel about you—concerning this very Angelique. Because it is rash to assert there are no consequences when a ‘mere’ woman is at stake.”

  “I see.”

  “I do not believe you do.”

  He did not answer, taking a sip of coffee. He set down the cup and spoke with a certain weariness, as if expanding his opinion even this far involved physical effort. “Miss Temple, you are an interesting young lady.”

  Miss Temple rolled her eyes. “I’m afraid it means very little to me, coming from a murderous cad.”

  “I have so gathered your opinion. And who is it I have so foully wronged?”

  Miss Temple shrugged. The Comte tapped his ash onto the edge of his saucer and took another puff, the cheroot tip glowing red.

  “Shall I guess, then? It could well be the Macklenburg Doctor, for indeed through my efforts he was to die, but I do not see him as your sort of wild revenger—he is too much the raisonneur—or perhaps this other fellow, whom I have never met, the rogue-for-hire? He is most likely too cynical and grim. Or someone else still? Some distant wrong from my past?” He sighed, almost as if in acceptance of his sinful burden, and then inhaled again—Miss Temple’s eyes fixed to the spot of glowing tobacco as it burned—as if to re-embrace the infernal urge that drove him.

  “Why exactly have you come to the St. Royale?” he asked her.

  She took another bite of scone—quite relishing this serious banter—and another sip of tea to wash it down, and then while she was swallowing shook her head, the chestnut-colored curls to either side of her face tossed into motion. “No, I will not answer your questions. I have been interrogated once, at Harschmort, and that was more than enough. If you want to talk to me, we will do so on my terms. And if not, then please feel free to leave—for you will find out why I am here only exactly when I have planned to show you.” She speared the last slice of mango without waiting for his reply and took a bite, licking her lips to catch the juice. She could not help but smile at the exquisite taste of it.

  “Do you know,” she asked, swallowing just enough of the fruit to speak clearly, “this is quite nearly as delicious as the mangos one can find in the garden of my father’s house? The difference—though this is very good—is due, I should think, to the different quality of sunlight, the very positioning of the planet. Do you see? There are great forces at play around us, each day of our lives—and who are we? To what do we pretend? To which of these masters are we in service?”

  “I applaud your metaphorical thought,” said the Comte dryly.

  “But do you have an answer?”

  “Perhaps I do. What about … art?”

  “Art?”

  Miss Temple was not sure what he meant, and paused in her chewing, narrowing her eyes with suspicion. Could he have followed her to the art gallery (and if so, when? During her visit with Roger? More recently? Had he been contacted so quickly by the gallery agent, Mr. Shanck?), or did he mean something else … but what? To Miss Temple, art was a curiosity, like a carved bone or shrunken head one found at a village market—a vestige of unknown territories it did not occur to her to visit.

  “Art,” repeated the Comte. “You are acquainted with it … with the idea?”

  “What idea in particular?”

  “Of art as alchemy. An act of transformation. Of re-making and rebirth.”

  Miss Temple held up her hand. “I’m sorry, but do you know … this merely prompts me to ask about your relations with a particular painter, a Mr. Oskar Veilandt. I believe he is also from Paris, and most well known for his very large and provocative composition on the theme of the Annunciation. I understand—perhaps it is merely a cruel rumor—that this expressive masterwork was cut up into thirteen pieces and scattered across the continent.”

  The Comte took another drink of coffee.

  “I’m afraid I do not know him. He is from Paris, you say?”

  “At some point, like so very many people one finds disagreeable.”

  “Have you seen his work?” he asked.

  “O yes.”

  “What did you think of it? Were you provoked?”

  “I was.”

  He smiled. “You? How so?”

  “Into thinking you had caused his death. For he is dead, and you seem to have stolen a great deal from him—your ceremonies, your Process, and your precious indigo clay. How odd for such things to come from a painter, though I suppose he was also a mystic and an alchemist—strange you should just mention that too—though I am told it is the usual way of things in that garret-ridden, absinthe-soaked community. You carry yourself so boldly, and yet one wonders, Monsieur, if you have ever had an original thought at all.”

  The Comte d’Orkancz stood up. With his cigar in his right hand he extended his left to her and as a matter of instinctive response Miss Temple allowed her own hand to be taken—her other groping for purchase on the pistol butt. He raised her hand up to kiss it, an odd moist, brushing whisper across her fingers, released her hand, and stepped back.

  “You leave abruptly,” she said.

  “Think of it as a reprieve.”

  “For which one of us?”

  “For you, Miss Temple. For you will persist … and such persistence will consume you.”

  “Will it indeed?” It was not much of a tart reply as those things go, but the way his eyes glowered it was the best she could do in the moment.

  “It will. And that’s the thing,” he said, placing both hands on the table and leaning close to her face, whispering. “When it comes, you will submit of your own accord. Everyone does. You think you battle monsters—you think you battle us!—but you only struggle with your fear … and that fear will shrivel before desire. You think I do not sense your hunger? I see it clearly as the sun. You are already mine, Miss Temple—just waiting for the moment when I choose to take you.”

  The Comte stood again and stuck the cheroot in his mouth, his tongue flashing wet and pink against the black tobacco. He blew smoke through the side of his mouth and turned without another word, striding easily from the restaurant and Miss Temple’s view.

  She could not tell if he left the hotel or climbed the great stairs to the upper floors. Perhaps he was going to the Contessa’s rooms—perhaps the Contessa had already returned and she had not seen her because of the Comte. But why had he left so abruptly—and after threatening her? She had spoken of the artist, Veilandt. Had that touched a nerve? Did the Comte d’Orkancz have nerves? Miss Temple did not know what she ought to do next. Any plan she might have once imagined had vanished in her moment-by-moment desire to frustrate and best the Comte in conversation—yet what had that achieved? She pursed her lips and recalled her first impression of the man, on the train to Orange Canal, his fearsome bulk seemingly doubled by the fur, his harsh, stark penetrating gaze. He had filled her with dread, and after the strange ritualistic presentation in the medical theatre with a darker dread still. But she was quite satisfied with his reaction to the subject of Oskar Veilandt. Despite the Doctor’s ruthless tale of the stricken woman and of poison, Miss Temple felt that the Comte d’Orkancz was but another man after all—horrid, arrogant, brutal, powerful to be sure, but with his own architecture of vanity that, once studied, would show the way to bring him down.

  * * *

  Thus assured, she used the next minutes to call for her bill and finish what remained of her meal, sucking on a lemon wedge as she dug into her bag for the proper amount of coin. She had contemplated signing the cost over to the Contessa’s rooms, but decided such a mean trick was beneath her. What was more, she felt a profound disinclination to owe the woman for anything (an attitude evidently not shared by the Comte, who had allowed Miss Temple to buy his coffee). Miss Temple stood, collected her bag, and dropped the husk of lemon onto her plate, wiping her fingers on a crumpled napkin. She walked from the restaurant, which was beginnin
g to fill for the early evening service, with a trace of rising anxiety. Chang and Svenson had not arrived. This was good, in that she had not yet accomplished anything of substance and she did truly want to be free of them to work, and yet, did this mean something had happened to them? Had they attempted some particularly foolish scheme without her? Of course they hadn’t—they were merely pursuing their own thoughts, about this Angelique, no doubt, or Doctor Svenson’s Prince. Their not showing up was entirely to the good of their larger mutual goals.

  She returned to the main desk, where the same clerk informed her the Contessa was still to arrive. Miss Temple cast a sly look about her and leaned closer to him. With her eyes, she indicated the curved wall with the mirrors, and she asked if anyone had engaged the private rooms for the evening. The clerk did not immediately reply. Miss Temple brought her voice nearer to a whisper, while at the same time adopting an idle innocent tone.

  “Perhaps you are acquainted with other ladies in the Contessa’s party of friends, a Mrs. Marchmoor, for one. Or—I forget the others—”

  “Miss Poole?” asked the clerk.

  “Miss Poole! Yes! Such a sweet creature.” Miss Temple grinned, her eyes conveying to the best of her ability innocence and depravity at the same time. “I wonder if either of them will attend the Contessa, or perhaps the Comte d’Orkancz … in one of your private rooms?”

  She went so far as to bite her own lip and blink at the man. The clerk opened a red leather ledger, ran his finger down the page, and then closed it, signaling for one of the men from the restaurant. When the fellow arrived, the clerk indicated Miss Temple. “This lady will be joining the Contessa’s party in room five.”