Chapter 18
The apartment had a formal dining room at the rear of its first floor that looked out on the beautiful brick walled garden behind it. Glass doors stood open to the cool night air, framing the view of the little porch area immediately outside and giving the small room just enough access to the outside to keep it from being stuffy with a large china and crystal laden table dominating it.
Elena stood at the doors, dressed in the lightweight white dress that Mary had brought with her from the farm. It was the dress she had worn the day Byron had bitten her for the first time, she thought, deep in the dark little alcove of the stables and the memory made her sigh.
Edward entered the room, meticulously dressed in one of his better dark suits with a bow tie. He gave her a formal little bow and she couldn’t help but smile at him. They made their way to one end of the table, where the settings were for the two of them to dine across from one another.
“I phoned the Orphanage,” he began, “to check on little Brian and they say he’s already shown some improvement Elena.”
“That’s good.” She answered, unfolding her napkin onto her lap. “I didn’t like being in the sick ward again. I’m sorry that I didn’t help you more there.”
“I imagine its full of unfortunate memories for you.”
She nodded.
Conrad saved her from having to say more on the subject. He was a tall silent man in his forties or so, with vaguely curly, inky black hair that he kept plastered to his rather small skull with heavy use palmaide. He carried in a bottle of white wine and had a towel over his arm.
This was the sort of thing Elena had trouble getting used to.
“Sir?”
The manservant offered Edward the cork to smell after he’d professionally opened the bottle. The doctor dutifully took it, smelled it with a wink at Elena who was watching him carefully, just in case she ever needed to do it. With a flourish he tasted the wine glass he was offered and the ritual was complete.
He nodded to Conrad who then filled Elena’s glass with the yellow liquid. She thanked him and waited for him to leave before she tasted it.
It was bitter and acidic like every other wine she’d ever tasted and she made a very unladylike grimace.
Edward laughed.
“How can you drink that?” She accused.
“You get used to it.” He offered with a generous smile. “Try it again with some food. Quality wine unlike the cheaper sweet variety takes time developing your taste buds.”
“I think my taste-buds are sub-par.” She muttered, which caused him to laugh again.
“Dear girl, I am so happy to have you as company! It’s refreshing to have someone who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Refined society is often so boring.”
She supposed that was the case, but she waited patiently to respond because Conrad was back with the first course. It was a salad, made of what looked like fancy weeds. She raised a questioning eyebrow behind Conrad’s back.
Edward chuckled.
The servant dodged out and she started in again.
“Why is the food here so much fancier than at the upstate house? In fact, why is everything so much fancier here?”
Edward picked up a fork from the outside of his silver and took a bite of the bitter greens. Elena followed suit; noting that he held his fork upside down.
“It has to do with being in the city where the upper class that he does business with reside. Byron has to be able to impress someone if he needs to. The people here can be very fancy. It also has something to do with his personality. He likes to be extravagant sometimes in the same way that he appreciates something simpler, quieter.”
She thought about that a while, impaling another forkful of weeds.
“Why are you so strangely quiet, dear?” He asked her fondly. “Surely a little bit of fancy dining in my moderately underwhelming company isn’t enough to bring such a sad expression to that pretty face…”
“You’re hardly underwhelming!” She waved his comment away but then she grew serious, deciding to confide in this sweet man who had tried to do so much for her.
“I’m really not sure about this future.”
“All this is so bad?” He gestured at the house around them.
“No I it isn’t that.” She thought hard trying to gather her feelings into some coherent shape. “The fact that I can never really go back home. That’s part of it. That even if I did ask Byron to stay here and let me work at the school, I don’t think that would be enough to make me happy anymore.”
Letting her fork fall she raised her eyes absentmindedly to the glass chandelier above the table, but she didn’t really see it. She saw herself studying the books she could have now; going to classes and at the end of the day discussing what she learned with Byron and Edward and maybe other people she would meet that were like her.
“In a way who I am now is a different person than the girl I was. I knew that I was sick. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, and it made sense that I give what time I did to something worthwhile. It was all I knew.” She paused, looking into her past.
“But now it isn’t all you know and you aren’t going to die soon,” he encouraged.
“And I feel bad about that.”
“You feel guilty that you aren’t going to die?” He asked, incredulous.
“Yes, kind of.”
Conrad peeked in at them so she took a moment to finish the small bowl of greens off, and then push it away. He came in with the next serving announcing that it was a “mint and cucumber consume.”
Since these were the only words she’d yet hear him speak besides “sir” she paid some interest to it. His voice was low and decisive in everything he said, though he said little, but soon he was clearing away their old dishes. She took the opportunity to sip at the wine again and discovered that indeed it was getting a little better. When Conrad left she continued, gesturing with her wineglass.
“In a sense I feel like I’m being selfish. That if I live like this I’m a bad person when others don’t have it, and yet I think that maybe I deserve it. And I don’t know which of the two feelings bother me more!”
She finished the glass and waved an extravagant hand towards the east.
“I want to go to England on one of those huge steamships with Byron and see where he’s from. I want to travel all over the world, read every good book that’s ever been written, and though I wish that the others could have it too, I want it for me! Isn’t that selfish?”
“Dear, I really don’t think it is!” He too gestured with his wine. “The world is not a fair place, and you know this better than most. Should someone who’s had a bit of luck, refuse to benefit of it? If you and Byron devote yourselves to still do work for the unfortunate, how would it be bad to take some happiness for yourselves? The world is a hard enough place as it is.”
He took his largest spoon and began to eat the consume´. She followed suit, thinking, and almost didn’t notice that the soup was cold. Since Edward didn’t react strangely she supposed it was supposed to be that way and she ate it in a companionable silence with him.
When the next course arrived, pork loin with mint jelly, baked apples and mashed potatoes, she was overwhelmed with another emotion; longing.
“Eat your dinner, Elena, doctor’s orders.”
She sighed.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You can moon over Byron as well on a full stomach, as you can on an empty one.” He pointed out.
“Are you always on duty?” she questioned him tartly.
“Of course I am. So you are mooning over Byron then?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, feeling that surely no other girl was as long suffering as she.
“Yes I miss him.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re in withdrawals yet. That’s good.”
Now that was something she was interested in.
“How will I know if I start to be?”
“You’ll become distracted. You won’t feel well. You’ll be lethargic and tired. It isn’t so bad, but then I wouldn’t want to have to go through real withdrawals from the blood.” He gave a little shutter at the thought and there was something about the way he said that that raised a red flag in her mind.
“Seems like you’ve thought about it.”
He paused in mid-chew, swallowed with difficulty and covered it all by taking another swig of wine.
“I have.” He answered with hesitation. “Byron explained it to me once. I thought that it might be something I could use as a panacea to heal people. I’ve studied the blood and I hope to be able to find a way to use its healing properties without making someone addicted.”
Ah so that was how it was, she thought.
“So you tried it on someone and they did become addicted. You tried it on you.”
The doctor stared at her across the table, his skin sallow and pale suddenly. She tried to look innocent. Like she wasn’t having mean thoughts about how she was going to take the price of not telling her this out of her beloved Byron’s hide.
“You’re mad aren’t you?”
She tried to hold it in, but it was just a fraction above the amount of control she could manage.
“Of course I’m mad!” She exploded, “Nothing is ever what it seems around here! I’m just starting to get used to the idea that I’m trapped with a person who I have feelings for but am not even sure we will get along together well enough to last my lifetime and now I found out that I’m not the only one he’s keeping!”
“Please don’t yell, Elena, we have secrets that need keeping. I know it seems bad, but in my case it was my fault. He didn’t want me with him for my lifetime. We were close friends; we worked together, he was trying to make something good out of this so called ‘curse!’”
Edward’s voice had risen on the seeming verge of hysteria.
“Elena, why are you determined not to be happy? Why is everything around you so horrible?”
He pushed back his chair and stood glaring down at her over the table.
“Yes I have to stay with you and Byron. Yes I have to take his blood once a week, but in my case I take it with a syringe and not in an intimate way at all. There isn’t any reason to be jealous!”
“But,” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her.
“You and I get along. I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I’m sorry he didn’t tell you first. He probably thought that you would be mad and didn’t want you mad at him again. I can’t say I blame him, you can be a terror when you’re angry! Its time you grew up!”
He stopped suddenly, not sure that he should have said what he had, but it was too late to take it back. The doctor sat again quietly, glancing cautiously at the stunned girl across from him.
She was looking down at her plate. Not really wanting to eat but not knowing what to say, Elena picked up her fork and knife again and took a bite of pork. It was sand in her mouth but she grimly continued, her face burning with a confusing combination of anger, fear and guilt.
The silence stretched between them. The longer it lasted the more her spinning thoughts turned to self-blame. It was unfair of her to judge them when they had done nothing but try to help her. She swallowed the lump of flesh with difficulty.
“I’m sorry, Edward.” She whispered it quietly, almost not moving her lips.
He looked at her. His hands folded above his finished meal. Waiting and expectant for some sort of answer, his eyes held worry for her, and his kindness undid the hubris that was controlling her.
“I’ve always thought of myself as a logical sort of girl,” she explained slowly, “one who wasn’t prone to fits of emotion like this. But since Byron has come into my life, its like I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know what I want. I just know that I’m lost in my own life now and I’m scared.”
“Elena,” Edward told her, standing again and walking around the table to reach her, “Byron and I care for you more than you can know. Let us take care of you. Let time give you the answers you seek within you.”
He pulled back her chair, taking her in his arms and tried to comfort her. It felt wonderful to be held and though she didn’t have the same feelings for the doctor that she had for Byron, it calmed her.
“I can’t promise to always be reasonable,” Her voice broke, and a little of the heartache she felt, the sense of being lost leaking into her voice, “but I hear that with a real family sometimes people don’t always see eye to eye.”
It was an offer of peace and he gladly took it. Placing a kiss on her brow. She smiled a sad little smile at his gentle expression as he pulled back from the embrace to look at her.
“I would very much like to be your brother, Elena. If you would be my little sister.”
“Id like that.” She answered, a true smile starting out at the curve of her lip made it to her eyes. “Does that mean I don’t have to finish my plate?”
He laughed and told her, “No It means that I have even more authority now. Sit!”
She laughed again and wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes. If life could just slow down a bit she would be able to get used to it all. She hoped when Byron returned that it would mean a normalcy would descend upon them and she wanted that. So she sat with Dr Edward, her adopted brother and dutifully ate her meal, remembering that she needed her strength for when her lover would return to her.
Elena stood at the doors, dressed in the lightweight white dress that Mary had brought with her from the farm. It was the dress she had worn the day Byron had bitten her for the first time, she thought, deep in the dark little alcove of the stables and the memory made her sigh.
Edward entered the room, meticulously dressed in one of his better dark suits with a bow tie. He gave her a formal little bow and she couldn’t help but smile at him. They made their way to one end of the table, where the settings were for the two of them to dine across from one another.
“I phoned the Orphanage,” he began, “to check on little Brian and they say he’s already shown some improvement Elena.”
“That’s good.” She answered, unfolding her napkin onto her lap. “I didn’t like being in the sick ward again. I’m sorry that I didn’t help you more there.”
“I imagine its full of unfortunate memories for you.”
She nodded.
Conrad saved her from having to say more on the subject. He was a tall silent man in his forties or so, with vaguely curly, inky black hair that he kept plastered to his rather small skull with heavy use palmaide. He carried in a bottle of white wine and had a towel over his arm.
This was the sort of thing Elena had trouble getting used to.
“Sir?”
The manservant offered Edward the cork to smell after he’d professionally opened the bottle. The doctor dutifully took it, smelled it with a wink at Elena who was watching him carefully, just in case she ever needed to do it. With a flourish he tasted the wine glass he was offered and the ritual was complete.
He nodded to Conrad who then filled Elena’s glass with the yellow liquid. She thanked him and waited for him to leave before she tasted it.
It was bitter and acidic like every other wine she’d ever tasted and she made a very unladylike grimace.
Edward laughed.
“How can you drink that?” She accused.
“You get used to it.” He offered with a generous smile. “Try it again with some food. Quality wine unlike the cheaper sweet variety takes time developing your taste buds.”
“I think my taste-buds are sub-par.” She muttered, which caused him to laugh again.
“Dear girl, I am so happy to have you as company! It’s refreshing to have someone who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Refined society is often so boring.”
She supposed that was the case, but she waited patiently to respond because Conrad was back with the first course. It was a salad, made of what looked like fancy weeds. She raised a questioning eyebrow behind Conrad’s back.
Edward chuckled.
The servant dodged out and she started in again.
“Why is the food here so much fancier than at the upstate house? In fact, why is everything so much fancier here?”
Edward picked up a fork from the outside of his silver and took a bite of the bitter greens. Elena followed suit; noting that he held his fork upside down.
“It has to do with being in the city where the upper class that he does business with reside. Byron has to be able to impress someone if he needs to. The people here can be very fancy. It also has something to do with his personality. He likes to be extravagant sometimes in the same way that he appreciates something simpler, quieter.”
She thought about that a while, impaling another forkful of weeds.
“Why are you so strangely quiet, dear?” He asked her fondly. “Surely a little bit of fancy dining in my moderately underwhelming company isn’t enough to bring such a sad expression to that pretty face…”
“You’re hardly underwhelming!” She waved his comment away but then she grew serious, deciding to confide in this sweet man who had tried to do so much for her.
“I’m really not sure about this future.”
“All this is so bad?” He gestured at the house around them.
“No I it isn’t that.” She thought hard trying to gather her feelings into some coherent shape. “The fact that I can never really go back home. That’s part of it. That even if I did ask Byron to stay here and let me work at the school, I don’t think that would be enough to make me happy anymore.”
Letting her fork fall she raised her eyes absentmindedly to the glass chandelier above the table, but she didn’t really see it. She saw herself studying the books she could have now; going to classes and at the end of the day discussing what she learned with Byron and Edward and maybe other people she would meet that were like her.
“In a way who I am now is a different person than the girl I was. I knew that I was sick. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, and it made sense that I give what time I did to something worthwhile. It was all I knew.” She paused, looking into her past.
“But now it isn’t all you know and you aren’t going to die soon,” he encouraged.
“And I feel bad about that.”
“You feel guilty that you aren’t going to die?” He asked, incredulous.
“Yes, kind of.”
Conrad peeked in at them so she took a moment to finish the small bowl of greens off, and then push it away. He came in with the next serving announcing that it was a “mint and cucumber consume.”
Since these were the only words she’d yet hear him speak besides “sir” she paid some interest to it. His voice was low and decisive in everything he said, though he said little, but soon he was clearing away their old dishes. She took the opportunity to sip at the wine again and discovered that indeed it was getting a little better. When Conrad left she continued, gesturing with her wineglass.
“In a sense I feel like I’m being selfish. That if I live like this I’m a bad person when others don’t have it, and yet I think that maybe I deserve it. And I don’t know which of the two feelings bother me more!”
She finished the glass and waved an extravagant hand towards the east.
“I want to go to England on one of those huge steamships with Byron and see where he’s from. I want to travel all over the world, read every good book that’s ever been written, and though I wish that the others could have it too, I want it for me! Isn’t that selfish?”
“Dear, I really don’t think it is!” He too gestured with his wine. “The world is not a fair place, and you know this better than most. Should someone who’s had a bit of luck, refuse to benefit of it? If you and Byron devote yourselves to still do work for the unfortunate, how would it be bad to take some happiness for yourselves? The world is a hard enough place as it is.”
He took his largest spoon and began to eat the consume´. She followed suit, thinking, and almost didn’t notice that the soup was cold. Since Edward didn’t react strangely she supposed it was supposed to be that way and she ate it in a companionable silence with him.
When the next course arrived, pork loin with mint jelly, baked apples and mashed potatoes, she was overwhelmed with another emotion; longing.
“Eat your dinner, Elena, doctor’s orders.”
She sighed.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You can moon over Byron as well on a full stomach, as you can on an empty one.” He pointed out.
“Are you always on duty?” she questioned him tartly.
“Of course I am. So you are mooning over Byron then?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, feeling that surely no other girl was as long suffering as she.
“Yes I miss him.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re in withdrawals yet. That’s good.”
Now that was something she was interested in.
“How will I know if I start to be?”
“You’ll become distracted. You won’t feel well. You’ll be lethargic and tired. It isn’t so bad, but then I wouldn’t want to have to go through real withdrawals from the blood.” He gave a little shutter at the thought and there was something about the way he said that that raised a red flag in her mind.
“Seems like you’ve thought about it.”
He paused in mid-chew, swallowed with difficulty and covered it all by taking another swig of wine.
“I have.” He answered with hesitation. “Byron explained it to me once. I thought that it might be something I could use as a panacea to heal people. I’ve studied the blood and I hope to be able to find a way to use its healing properties without making someone addicted.”
Ah so that was how it was, she thought.
“So you tried it on someone and they did become addicted. You tried it on you.”
The doctor stared at her across the table, his skin sallow and pale suddenly. She tried to look innocent. Like she wasn’t having mean thoughts about how she was going to take the price of not telling her this out of her beloved Byron’s hide.
“You’re mad aren’t you?”
She tried to hold it in, but it was just a fraction above the amount of control she could manage.
“Of course I’m mad!” She exploded, “Nothing is ever what it seems around here! I’m just starting to get used to the idea that I’m trapped with a person who I have feelings for but am not even sure we will get along together well enough to last my lifetime and now I found out that I’m not the only one he’s keeping!”
“Please don’t yell, Elena, we have secrets that need keeping. I know it seems bad, but in my case it was my fault. He didn’t want me with him for my lifetime. We were close friends; we worked together, he was trying to make something good out of this so called ‘curse!’”
Edward’s voice had risen on the seeming verge of hysteria.
“Elena, why are you determined not to be happy? Why is everything around you so horrible?”
He pushed back his chair and stood glaring down at her over the table.
“Yes I have to stay with you and Byron. Yes I have to take his blood once a week, but in my case I take it with a syringe and not in an intimate way at all. There isn’t any reason to be jealous!”
“But,” She tried to interrupt, but he talked over her.
“You and I get along. I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I’m sorry he didn’t tell you first. He probably thought that you would be mad and didn’t want you mad at him again. I can’t say I blame him, you can be a terror when you’re angry! Its time you grew up!”
He stopped suddenly, not sure that he should have said what he had, but it was too late to take it back. The doctor sat again quietly, glancing cautiously at the stunned girl across from him.
She was looking down at her plate. Not really wanting to eat but not knowing what to say, Elena picked up her fork and knife again and took a bite of pork. It was sand in her mouth but she grimly continued, her face burning with a confusing combination of anger, fear and guilt.
The silence stretched between them. The longer it lasted the more her spinning thoughts turned to self-blame. It was unfair of her to judge them when they had done nothing but try to help her. She swallowed the lump of flesh with difficulty.
“I’m sorry, Edward.” She whispered it quietly, almost not moving her lips.
He looked at her. His hands folded above his finished meal. Waiting and expectant for some sort of answer, his eyes held worry for her, and his kindness undid the hubris that was controlling her.
“I’ve always thought of myself as a logical sort of girl,” she explained slowly, “one who wasn’t prone to fits of emotion like this. But since Byron has come into my life, its like I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know what I want. I just know that I’m lost in my own life now and I’m scared.”
“Elena,” Edward told her, standing again and walking around the table to reach her, “Byron and I care for you more than you can know. Let us take care of you. Let time give you the answers you seek within you.”
He pulled back her chair, taking her in his arms and tried to comfort her. It felt wonderful to be held and though she didn’t have the same feelings for the doctor that she had for Byron, it calmed her.
“I can’t promise to always be reasonable,” Her voice broke, and a little of the heartache she felt, the sense of being lost leaking into her voice, “but I hear that with a real family sometimes people don’t always see eye to eye.”
It was an offer of peace and he gladly took it. Placing a kiss on her brow. She smiled a sad little smile at his gentle expression as he pulled back from the embrace to look at her.
“I would very much like to be your brother, Elena. If you would be my little sister.”
“Id like that.” She answered, a true smile starting out at the curve of her lip made it to her eyes. “Does that mean I don’t have to finish my plate?”
He laughed and told her, “No It means that I have even more authority now. Sit!”
She laughed again and wiped the tears out of the corners of her eyes. If life could just slow down a bit she would be able to get used to it all. She hoped when Byron returned that it would mean a normalcy would descend upon them and she wanted that. So she sat with Dr Edward, her adopted brother and dutifully ate her meal, remembering that she needed her strength for when her lover would return to her.