Page 11 of Kept 2
“Sire,” I shook my finger at him, “I believe you are asking me to divert this woman’s attention away from the royal personage, but I must tell you, I have been receiving the same invitations for nigh-on six months, and insist as I do that she look elsewhere, it seems she will not.”
“Until now,” the King said, looking me in the eye, “do you think this is a ruse on the lady’s behalf, this invitation to me, in order to put more pressure on you?”
“I do.”
“Then I shall not ask you to divert her attention; plainly, you do not wish it so. No, we shall see if she will take the bait of one of my court dandies. Who do you suggest?”
I tipped my head to the side and considered his question, but no name came to mind immediately.
“I will think on it, my king. But now, we must to court, as much as we both wish it not so.”
He laughed then, and we left, but the conversation has left me disturbed.
Countess Elsbeth is a hot topic on the quills of my parents in all their letters of late, since Mother and she became friends while at court. Father writes that she, newly widowed, is one of the wealthiest women in England, and he pressures me constantly to make myself agreeable to her. He says the state bedroom has put a bigger dent into the Estate’s funds than he first anticipated, and that apart from raising the rents of the tenants, which he knows I am firmly against, he can see no other way of recharging the coffers than to have me marry the lady in question, forthwith.
For myself, I find her attractive in a strange and hypnotic way when speaking to her, but repulsive also, on some base level that I cannot fully describe. She has the age of a woman, as I told the king, and yet the countenance and guile of a young girl – she lacks all piety and openly flaunts her wealth and her lovers before all. As I wrote to Father, I do not believe she intends to wed for anything other than money herself if past actions are an indication of future resolve, and I am therefore of little use to her for marriage. And I have let it be known widely throughout the court that I do not dally with the maids, despite their many and sometimes overly enthusiastic overtures.
And yet she persists.
I have written to Constance of her, and she advised I would do well to keep my distance, as rumours have reached her ears, no doubt via my vile mother, that we are closer than mere acquaintances.
I have assured her of my fidelity and continued chastity, and I know her dear heart would never doubt my words or mistrust my deeds. But still, it pains me that such rumours are reaching her and that I have to means of redress other than via letters, where so much can be left open to interpretation. I hope that one day when she reads my true account in this journal and my recount of every conversation in its entirety, she will understand the veracity of my rebuttal against such insidious claims against my reputation.
I pause my reading for a second.
“Mmmm, methinks the lady doth protest too much,” I murmur, “if you ask me, Lord Montague, you are not telling all there is about this woman.”
I pull out my phone to google the name of the woman he is talking about. Sure enough, she is a real person, not that I doubted that now, I have accepted the fact the maniac chasing me is either a vampire or a history major.
The woman, Countess Elsbeth Deauforte, was as he said, a beauty. One of the few portraits online shows her as a young woman with dark-eyes, long blonde hair and porcelain skin. She is dressed in a rich, velvet gown that highlights a tiny waist any person could span with both hands. Google says she was married at twelve; she had her first child at thirteen and was widowed the same year. She almost died on the childbed and was rendered unable to have further children – and yet she had five more marriages after that, each one to more and more powerful and rich men, all of whom died before her. Apparently, she wielded a great deal of political power and was so rich she lent money to the crown.
I am intrigued by this woman, and rapidly falling down a rabbit hole of websites and information, when my research is interrupted by a message from James, once again via Blake’s phone, and I suddenly see red.
Closing the book firmly, I dial my dead boyfriend’s number.
“Josephine, you are still alive,” James says, as though he is genuinely surprised.
“Of course.”
“Where are you?
“James, in case you haven’t worked this one out yet, I will spell it out for you – I am not fucking telling you where I am because I don’t fucking trust you – and stop using Blake’s phone, can’t you see it might upset me to see messages from a dead lover?”
“You barely knew him, Josephine, you’d been sleeping with him what? A fortnight? Please don’t play the broken heart card right now when there is so much at stake.”
I frown down at the phone in my hand.
“How do you know I’d only been seeing him a couple of weeks?
“Because I was watching you, obviously.”
“Watching me? For how long?”
“Josephine I was trying to protect you. I knew what you had would draw the vampire to you, and I wanted to save you if that happened.”
“For how long, James?”
“Since I started at the school.”
