Page 5 of A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence (The Unexpected Adventures of Lady and Lord Riven #2)
On the first day of their stay here, she had set to work as had been her firm habit for over fifteen years now, bent over papers and ink.
During all the years she’d spent trapped in England, first as a child under her guardians’ control and then as a respectable unmarried lady scholar, that sort of research had been her only option.
However, her parents’ old adventuring journals in the case she held were a burning reminder of their dynamically different approach to the great mysteries in life—and now that marriage to a supportive husband had freed her own steps, she had the opportunity to follow them.
She still hadn’t properly resolved any of the clues she’d uncovered in the Paris archives...
But now that she was finally here, in the setting of some of the continent’s most intriguing mysteries, was she really going to ignore her first chance at active fieldwork in years?
Enough . Letting out her held breath in a sigh of irritation, Margaret gave the door handle a quick twist and dropped her case to the floor. She would return for it later.
As she set out down the long and twisting corridor that led towards the staircase, she felt a cold chill brush past her left shoulder. In this dim light, the eyeballs of her spectral host had not been visible, but the sound of his mournful sigh was unmistakable.
“Doomed...”
“And a good morning to you too,” Margaret said crisply, without slowing for an instant.
There . She could be sociable, after all.
Only a disgruntled sniff sounded behind her in response.
Still, the interaction usefully stiffened her spine.
By the time she reached the inn’s front door, she was moving with brisk confidence.
Even the sight of the lowering grey sky that hovered with tangible pressure above the inn’s small clearing before the dark and leaning press of giant trees could not tarnish her mood.
She did take a moment to regret leaving her umbrella in the carriage, which must be currently locked somewhere inside the stables of a more traditional inn in the closest town—but never mind.
At least she understood now why this inn had so stubbornly refused to house any human servants—and both Thomas and their coachman would certainly enjoy their near-holiday for the duration of the Rivens’ stay here.
Each evening at dusk, when Lord Riven first rose from his slumber, they would hold themselves ready for an hour, just in case they received a message that their services would be required after all for a night-time outing.
However, with no balls or soirees likely to disrupt this splendid isolation, it was understood that both staff members would generally have their time all to themselves, to devote to their own interests and concerns for the duration of their stay, with the carriage and horses at their personal disposal.
It was Margaret’s own fault that the umbrella had been forgotten underneath her seat.
But if nothing else, the last decade and a half in England had certainly prepared her to withstand a bit of rain.
As she let the heavy door fall shut behind her, she caught a flash of dark, blurred movement in the corner of one eye. A gust of air shifted against her back, as if something were moving with impossible speed just behind her?—
But when she turned around, all she found was a single, extraordinarily large black feather—raven-like in coloration, if not in size—lying on the ground between her feet and the closed door, still wobbling gently in place after its fall.
“Hmm,” said Margaret, and made a mental note about another of her fellow guests.
Leaving the feather respectfully untouched, she strode forward into the shadows between the trees.
It felt like stepping into another world.
Even the air tasted different here, infused with the scent of the giant, looming fir, spruce, and pine trees.
Margaret had visited other pine forests as a child, but none of them had held quite this unearthly quality of light.
The deep, dark green of the Black Forest lent nuance to the sunlight that filtered through the trees’ thick canopy, and if it weren’t for the cheerful call of birds in the near distance, Margaret might have wondered superstitiously if she had stepped through a mythical fairy portal.
Fortunately, she was a rational nineteenth-century scholar who knew far better than to imagine any such nonsense—there was only one world, no matter how many supernatural creatures walked within it—but still, she did feel a jab of sudden sympathy for earlier travelers who’d thought these woods enchanted and made up impossibilities to explain it.
It was an acknowledged truth, among scholars, that more supernatural creatures had found their origin in the Black Forest than in any other geographical area of all the various Germanic principalities combined.
However, every legend had a rational explanation at its core.
Thus far, Margaret had spent most of her own academic career focusing on the Rose of Normandy, the infamous supernatural artifact that had brought both werewolves and vampires to Britain before being lost to the world’s knowledge; now that she had resolved that particular quest, it was time to turn her attention to other mysteries.
She had spent ages poring over maps of this landscape yesterday; now, she narrowed her eyes as she looked around the deep green expanse, full of scattered branches, pinecones, and moss, but bare of any visible walking paths.
In her enthusiasm to set off, she had accidentally left behind the expensive new pocket compass she had bought in Paris, but if she was right about which direction was north. ..
There. Scooping up a fallen branch from the damp, moss-covered ground, she turned to her right and set off briskly through the trees in the direction that ought to lead her towards the first spot that demanded personal investigation.
Unfortunately, every one of the maps that she’d managed to acquire had been lacking in detail.
There were a number of fallen silver birch trees that Margaret had to clamber over along the way, as well as stands of spruce too thick for her to pierce, unexpected slopes, deceptively boggy patches, and other precarious dips in the hilly ground that forced her to take a more circuitous route than she had planned.
More than once, a sudden rattling or rustling close behind made her pause to peer warily around in a slow circle, imagining what wilder sorts of animals might be watching, camouflaged in that thick greenery.
She had never considered herself to have a poor sense of direction, but she was beginning to feel a sense of real unease about how, exactly, she would find her way back to the inn.
The unmistakable burbling sound of water ahead summoned her like a beacon, removing all her doubts and quickening her steps despite all the obstacles in her way.
“Aha!” Scarcely ten minutes later, nearly out of breath but entirely triumphant, Margaret scrambled and slid over a tall and slippery stack of moss-bedecked boulders to finally discover the source of that inviting sound of water...
Only to find her fellow guest, Fr?ulein Leonie, kneeling on the grassy bank before a small and sheltered waterfall, washing her face in the rock-studded stream that rippled gently past.
“Oh, no .” The young nachzehrer lurched backwards and flung her dripping hands before her in self-defense. “Are you actually following me now?”
“For heaven’s sake!” Groaning, Margaret came to a halt at the base of the obstreperous mound of boulders, still six feet from the water.
Until now, the enthusiasm of her search had kept her moving; now, she abruptly felt all the aches and pains of her unaccustomed exertions across the past two hours.
“What in the world are you doing here?” she demanded.
“As if you didn’t already know!” As she scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping on her long black robe, the girl aimed a venomous glare in Margaret’s direction.
“I always stop here to cleanse myself on my way back from feeding . Isn’t that exactly why you’ve come? To shame me for what I’ve had to do?”
Despite all the awards that Margaret’s scholarly work had won at university, she had never been offered a lecturer’s position.
Generally, she felt only irritation when she remembered that fact.
Now, though, she felt a sudden wave of unexpected compassion for her own past lecturers, who must have had far too much of this sort of drama to manage when it came to teaching undergraduates.
“As it happens,” she said wearily, “I came here for my own purposes, entirely unrelated to you or yours.”
“So you’re not trying to steal everything from me now?”
“I’m certainly not giving up my study table in the inn, if that’s what you mean.
” However, Leonie’s earlier comment might well shed some light on where she’d landed on the map.
Margaret turned to peer into the shadows of the thickly clustered trees beyond.
“Which direction was the cemetery where you fed?”
“I knew it!” The girl’s long black robes shifted as she stamped a foot on the mossy bank with what would have been laughable theatricality—if the crack in her voice hadn’t been so raw with pain. “I knew you wouldn’t simply let me be. Now, you’ ve taken away my final refuge.”
Margaret heaved a defeated sigh. Unlike her husband, she did not enjoy making conversation with strangers, much less those who had already taken against her.
Still, she was not entirely heartless. “Fr?ulein Leonie,” she said, “I am aware that your rebirth received an...unfortunate reaction from the unenlightened residents of your first home. However, ever since you moved into the inn, has a single one of your fellow guests or staff ever once called you any of the insulting terms that you’ve apparently imagined me thinking? ”