Marcus leaned forward in his chair, more eager to hear Fanny’s story than he was to retreat to the library and conjugate more Latin verbs, which was his assignment that day.
Before Fanny could begin her tale, however, Ulf arrived, ashen faced and bearing a silver salver. On it was a letter. Ulf had arranged it so that its wax seal was on top—a distinctive swirl of red and black. Nestled in the pool of color was a small, worn, silver coin.
“Merde.” Fanny took the letter.
“It is not for you, Mademoiselle Fanny,” Ulf said in a sepulchral whisper, his long face grim. “It is for Le Bébé.”
“Ah.” Fanny waved Ulf toward Marcus. “Put it in your pocket.”
“But I don’t know what it says.” Marcus studied the address on the outside. It was penned in dark, distinctive strokes. “To Monsieur Marcus L’Américain, of the H?tel-Dieu and Monsieur Neveu’s shop, who now resides at Mademoiselle de Clermont’s house, a reader of newspapers and a student of Signore Arrigo.”
Whoever had written the letter seemed to know a great deal about Marcus’s business, not to mention his daily routine.
“I do.” Fanny sighed. “It says ‘attend on me at once.’”
“It was only a matter of time, ma cherie,” Madame de Genlis said, trying to comfort her friend.
Marcus cracked the seal and freed the coin. It dropped toward the ground. Fanny caught it in midair and deposited it on the table next to him.
“Don’t lose this. He’ll want it back,” she warned.
“Who will?” Marcus unfolded the paper. As Fanny had divined, the letter contained only a single line—brief, and exactly as she had predicted.
“My father.” Fanny rose. “Come, Marcus. We are going to Auteuil. It’s time to meet your farfar.”
* * *
—
FANNY AND MADAME DE GENLIS packed Marcus, protesting all the way, into a carriage. This one was equipped with better springs than the one that had brought him from Bordeaux to Paris, but the rough city streets were not conducive to a smooth ride. Then they reached the rutted dirt path that stretched out into the countryside to the west of Paris, and Marcus knew he was going to be violently ill if the bouncing and swaying didn’t stop. He’d crossed the Atlantic with nothing more than a touch of seasickness, but carriages, it seemed, utterly defeated him.
“Please just let me walk,” Marcus begged, feeling as green as the wool hunting jacket they’d found in an upstairs cupboard, discarded by one of Fanny’s lovers after he discovered she was a vampire and fled the house in the middle of the night. The coat almost fit him, though it was too snug in the shoulders and too long in the arms, which made Marcus feel both pinched and drowning. Marcus had ruined the only coat that fit him properly at the hospital and was forced to make do with this secondhand garment.
“You are too young, and it is broad daylight,” Fanny said briskly, the feathers in her hat swaying this way and that with the movement of the carriage. “It will take too long to walk there at human speed, and Far does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Besides,” Madame de Genlis added, “what if you meet with a maiden—or a cow—and are overtaken with a pang of hunger?”
Marcus’s stomach flopped over like a fish.
“Non,” Madame de Genlis said with a decided shake of her head. “You must direct your thoughts away from your discomfort and rise above them. Perhaps you could compose your remarks to Comte Philippe?”
“Oh, God.” Marcus covered his mouth with his hand. He was expected to perform for his grandfather, like the trained monkey outside the Opéra who tumbled and danced for a fee. It reminded him of being dragged to Madam Porter’s house when he was a child.
“You should begin, I think, with a few verses,” Madame de Genlis advised. “Comte Philippe greatly admires poetry, and has such a memory for it!”
But Marcus, who had been raised in the fields and forests of western Massachusetts, where verses that were not found in the Bible were suspect, knew no poetry. Madame de Genlis did her best to teach him some lines from a poem called “Le mondain,” but the French words refused to stick in Marcus’s memory, and his constant retching kept interrupting the lesson.
“Say it after me,” Madame de Genlis instructed. “‘Regrettera qui veut le bon vieux temps, Et l’age d’or, et le règne d’Astrée, Et les beaux jours de Saturne et de Rhée, / Et le jardin de nos premiers parents.’”
Marcus obediently did, over and over again, until Madame de Genlis was satisfied with his pronunciation.
“And what comes next?” his martinet of a schoolmistress demanded.
“‘Moi, je rends grace à la nature sage,’” Marcus managed to get out between belches. His sense of the poem’s meaning was hazy at best, but Fanny assured him it was entirely appropriate to the occasion. Ulf, who was accompanying them to Auteuil, looked unconvinced. “‘Qui, pour mon bien, m’a fait na?tre en cet age / Tant décrié par nos tristes frondeurs.’”
“And do not forget the final line! You must say it as though you mean it, Marcus, with conviction,” Fanny said. “‘Ce temps profane est tout fait pour mes moeurs.’ Ah, how I miss our dear Voltaire. Do you remember our last evening with him, Stéphanie?”
At last the carriage slowed to pass through the wide gates of a house that stretched along the hilltop. It was vast and made of pale stone, flanked by gardens that were more impressive than anything Marcus had ever seen. Though they were largely empty at this time of year, he could imagine what they would look like in summer. Marcus looked at Fanny in amazement.
“They belong to Marthe,” Fanny said. “She is uncommonly fond of gardening. You will meet her, no doubt.”
But it was not a woman who waited for them at the base of the wide staircase in the forecourt, but a dignified vampire with silver-flecked hair. Like the rest of the house, the forecourt was grand in scale and neat as a pin. There was a quiet hum of industry coming from the kitchens, as well as appetizing aromas. Grooms led fine horses out of their stalls. Servants and tradesmen shuffled in and out of a warren of offices and rooms in the service buildings that were tucked behind a stone wall.
“Milady Freyja.” The man bowed. “Monsieur Marcus.”
“Alain.” It was the first time Marcus had seen Fanny looking anything less than confident.
“Pepper.” Marcus recognized the vampire’s scent. “You’re the one who has been watching me.”
“Welcome to the H?tel de Clermont. Sieur Philippe is expecting you,” Alain said, stepping aside so they could enter through the central, arched door and into the hall.
Marcus crossed the threshold and entered a house that was far grander than the one he had promised to own one day. The black-and-white marble floors of the hall were polished to a high sheen that reflected the light and made the entrance glimmer. A stone staircase curved up to a broad landing before spiraling up to another floor, and then another. A forest of white pillars added substance and style to the airy space, creating an arcade between the doors through which Marcus had entered and the doors opposite them, which led to an expansive terrace that provided a prospect over the river and beyond.
Marcus’s sense that he was being watched returned, stronger than before. Bay leaves and sealing wax and a fruit Marcus had no name for tangled with the aroma of pepper from Alain, Madame de Genlis’s musky scent, and the sweet hint of roses that always hung around Fanny. There were other, fainter notes as well. Wool. Fur. And something slightly yeasty that Marcus had detected in some of the older patients at the H?tel-Dieu. It was the scent of aging flesh, he supposed.