That evening we were a smaller company at table, for the countess had kept to her room and Frau Amsel dined with her. The count was distracted, eating nothing but pouring out several glasses of amber Tokay. Cosmina bravely attempted to keep the conversation light and engaging, but although the count replied to her pleasantly enough, the conversation eventually faltered, and when the meal was at last concluded, she excused herself and went directly to bed. Florian followed soon after, and I made a motion to withdraw, but the count intervened.

“I have something to show you in my workroom,” he said, and although his tone was conversational, there was no mistaking the note of command.

Wordlessly I followed him up to the workroom. The candles had been lit and Tycho slumbered peacefully on the hearth.

“Come and see what I have found,” the count said eagerly. I went to the worktable where he had taken up a pretty box of pale wood inlaid with darker wood in an intricate pattern. The front of it was set with a series of knobs, half a dozen, and when he raised the lid I could see they were attached to corresponding rods carved with symbols. A table of similar symbols had been incised on the lid of the box.

I put out a tentative finger. “It is very curious. I’ve never seen the like. Is this ivory?” I asked, touching one of the rods.

“It is. It is a device for making astronomical calculations. The rods are fashioned of bone or ivory, and the whole of it is known as Napier’s bones after the astronomer who designed it.”

“A macabre name,” I observed.

He slanted me a knowing look. “It is the fatal flaw of Transylvanians that we have a fondness for the macabre. Surely you discovered that last night.”

“I cannot begin to understand what happened last night,” I said slowly.

He waved to the sofa by the fire. “Sit. I will try to make sense of it for you.”

I had intended to make my excuses, plead a headache or some other trifling indisposition and effect an escape. But as always, the power of his personality persuaded me to something I had not intended.

But I was determined to preserve some vestige of formality, and as I perched upon the edge of the sofa, spreading my skirts wide between us, I saw his lips twitch in amusement.

He settled himself as far from me as the narrow sofa would permit.

“You think us barbaric,” he began.

“I do,” I acknowledged. “But it is a barbarism I would know better. I do not come from a modern city. Edinburgh is a place where ideas are exchanged and philosophies are born, but no one looks to us for the latest fashions or the most modern conveniences. The Highlands are more backwards still, with folk content to live as they have for a thousand years. And yet Transylvania is a place apart. It is nothing so simple as manner of dress or speech or whether a railway has been put through a valley. It is an acceptance of mythology and feudalism, the two of them tied together in such a way as I cannot separate them, warp and weft of the same peculiar cloth.”

“You think we nobles keep the stories of monsters circulating in order to keep the peasants under our thumbs?” he asked, his tone mildly amused.

“Not deliberately, but I think it suits both master and serf to preserve the old ways. And the worst of it is, all of you and the land itself, conspire to make me believe it as well.”

“Is it so terrible to believe in the dark and terrible things you have been told of? Fear and passion walk hand in hand, you know. We are afraid of being destroyed, being possessed, and yet we crave it. What child has not thrilled to ghost stories whispered under the bedclothes by the dark of the moon? And what man or woman has not longed to be lost in the wood and found again?”

I shook my head. “You speak in riddles and I do not understand you.”

He leaned forward, his grey eyes quite black in the shadowy room. “Then let me speak plainly. You are afraid here and you do not know what to believe. I have told you I will protect you. You have only to trust me and you will be free to enjoy your fears.”

“Enjoy them!”

He gave a little shrug. “Everything may be enjoyed in life, my dear Miss Lestrange. Even fear. It wants only a change in one’s perspective.”

“And what ought my perspective to be?” I demanded.

“That this is an adventure,” he replied, leaning closer still. He was more animated than I had ever seen him, alight with something that nourished and strengthened him. Had he given over taking opium for something stronger still? Or had he begun to feel his power as master of this dark place?

He raised his head slightly, as if catching the scent of me in the air. “You are not thinking as a writer or as a woman,” he chided. “You are trembling and shrinking like a schoolgirl from your fears. If you embraced them, faced them down, you would see the opportunities that lie before you.”

“What opportunities?”

“To create. To find pleasure. To live,” he replied, moving closer still.

But as he spoke, I thought of the villagers lacking even fresh water and my indignation rose within me. I said nothing, but arranged my skirts again, spreading them carefully between us as a boundary he must not breach.

“Stop fussing with your dress. You are vexed with me,” he said, directing that piercing gaze at me. “Why?”

“I am a guest in your home. It is not my place to be vexed with anything you choose to do,” I said evenly.

He laughed, a sharp mirthless laugh. “You do not believe that.” He gave a tug to his neckcloth, as if it were wound too tightly. “Come, we have endured too much together for pretence. Tell me why you are cross with me and I will tell you why you are wrong.”

This last bit of arrogance pricked my temper beyond recall. “I am cross because I find we have no point of connection. I thought there was some sympathy between us, some common feeling, and I learn instead that you are everything I have been taught to despise.” I warmed to my theme and carried on, heedless of the words themselves. “You are a libertine and a rake. You take pleasure in everything and responsibility for nothing. You have wealth and opportunity and you squander them both upon idle pleasures. You are the master of this land, and yet you lift not a finger to ease the burdens of its people.”

He gave me a slow, lazy smile. “I had no idea you were such a revolutionary, my dear Miss Lestrange. Shall I build you a barricade from which to denounce me? Or would you prefer a tumbrel to carry me through the streets to my destruction?”

“You have very kindly and quite thoroughly proven my point. I lay the most serious charges of defect of character at your feet and you laugh. You are amused by my scorn rather than abashed at your own failures.”

“Because you do not scorn me,” he said evenly. “You scorn yourself because you see me for what I am and still you cannot help but think of me.”

I gaped at him, but before I could form a proper response, crafted of equal parts logic and disdain, he continued on. “I know all these things about myself, and if you will but call it to mind, I am the one who first revealed them to you. It should come as no surprise to you now that I am an indolent creature of pleasurable habits. I freely confessed to you I am a hedonist, given to frivolity and idleness. Do you think to wound me with the arrows I myself placed in your quiver? Carry on, my dear. You are welcome to try. But I am immune to your barbs, and in fact, I suspect they strike you more deeply than they ever could wound me, because I am content. It is only you who wish me to be better than I am.”

“I wish you to be what you could be,” I rejoined. “Nature has gifted you beyond compare, and you throw these gifts back at her because you cannot be troubled to exert yourself on anyone’s behalf but your own.”