Page 565 of Flirting with Darkness

Whoever the servant’s role in his father’s household, whatever tasks he normally fulfilled for the elder Aslanov, he clearly did not understand the adversarial, even predatory intent behind the sign he held. He seemed to not know what to do with Ghost’s reaction at all.

“S-S-Sir,” he stammered. “I was asked to bring you back to the house. Your father––”

“Threw me out with the rubbish while I still lay in my mother’s womb,” Ghost remarked pleasantly, leaning his gloved hands on the ivory-topped cane. “Although perhaps it is gauche for me to mention such a thing. What do you think? Too forward?”

The man gaped at him like a fish.

Ghost waited a deliberate beat.

“Well.” He exhaled, straightening back to his full height. “Clearly you won’t be able to tell me what my fatherreallyintends with this smug little message of his. Whether it is supposed to shame me into some confession. Whether it is meant to intimidate me into leaving these lands totally. Or if, in his fanciful imaginings, he thinks it was cause me to run to him for forgiveness instead, crying and moaning. Begging him, perhaps, not to turn me in. Begging him not to destroy my life and station.”

Ghost watched the servant’s eyes widen in bewildered horror.

He made his voice a few shades colder.

“You can tell that twisted old rapist I don’t scare as easily as twelve-year-old girls,” Ghost continued in a low growl. “I have an invite to his little soiree, and I intend to come. If he wishes to banish me, or to convince me to stay away… or to leave soon after I arrive… he’ll have to deal with it on his own doorstep. Be sure and tell him I doubt he’ll accomplish it, however, before I tell every one of his friends in all their finery and Christmas cheer justexactlywho I am, and how I came to be on this Earth. Perhaps I’ll even see if I can meet my half-brothers and sisters in the bargain. Maybe tell them a few family stories they can pass down totheirchildren about dear old grandpa and his penchant for child servants?”

The servant had gone ghost white by now.

He stared from one of Ghost’s eyes to the other, a look of clear horror on his face.

Ghost hadn’t quite expended his own anger at the situation. However, before he could say more, the servant burst out with a string of words of his own.

He spoke English, but thickly accented.

His words came through with a panicked Russian gruffness.

“Oh, no! No! My dearest, dearest sir! Son of the Count… most honored guest! I am not here toexpelyou from the gathering! The Count… your father… rather instructed me to bring you to his estate at once! He has a room waiting for you. He wishes for the two of you to meet most pleasantly. He would like this time to know you before the event itself, and hopes you will continue on with him for some time after. He is filled with most affectionate feelings upon your arrival, young lord. He merely wishes for you to staywithhim, not in other accommodation in the city. He would have you at his home. With your family.”

The man spoke breathlessly, his face increasingly red.

Ghost stared.

He was practiced in not losing his composure in the face of the unexpected.

Even so, he breathed through two more heartbeats before he made any attempt to answer.

“You are here to collect me?” he asked.

“But of course!” the servant burst out.

When Ghost frowned, the man bowed low to the ground, his fur hat sweeping the top of the icy wooden planks.

“Of course!” he repeated anxiously. “Your father knew of your arrival by train, m’lord. Upon discovering theexacttrain, he instructed me to come fetch you at once. He had the invitation sent to your home in Londonespecially,using the name he knew you had adopted for yourself. He has spoken of little else for months!”

Ghost looked at the man skeptically.

Even so, his interest was piqued.

He wondered if the servant told the truth about his purpose here.

He decided he must be telling the truth, at least the truth as he knew it to be. Unless he was amuchmore practiced liar than he appeared, this one struck Ghost as too stupid and timid to attempt to fool him so brazenly.

But of course what the servant knew was practically irrelevant.

His father would have lied to the servant.

The question was, to what purpose?

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