Lady Marguerite had abandoned her chair, and was now pacing the room angrily, pausing from time to time to glare at the door. ‘Where is the man?’ she muttered. ‘How does my Percy endure this casual slackness? Any actor so lax in attending rehearsals would deserve to lose his part.’

Eleanor was equally concerned, but didn’t want to admit to it: it felt as if both of them saying it out loud might make the feared danger become true. ‘It isn’t his fault,’ she tried.

‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not,’ Lady Marguerite said, ‘but who else am I to blame? Well, besides the whole of Oxford, and its professors in particular, as no doubt it’s their dilatory habits which are keeping Charles waiting, and us more so. But still, a woman has a right to expect punctuality! We each have a duty to report in as and when agreed. And you and I cannot go traipsing around the city this evening without informing him of our plan first. I’m certainly not leaving a written summary of the day’s work for him. The tales I could tell you about what happens when people do that sort of thing . . .’

She glanced out of the window again. The rain had come and gone, but the clouds still filled the sky. Eleanor could guess the hidden reason for Lady Marguerite’s flighty behaviour: a coach could have reached London and be well on its way back by now, and it was possible that unwelcome visitors might be showing up at their door very soon. ‘You are certain you’re feeling better now, my dear?’

‘Quite certain, milady,’ Eleanor answered, not for the first time. She had been rather staggered by how drained and exhausted she’d felt after exercising her powers earlier. She’d encouraged storms to break before and been left with only a headache – well, to be fair, they had been extremely painful headaches, but that wasn’t the point. Yet calling up that breeze from nowhere had left her fit for nothing more than bed for the next few hours.

Once more she wished desperately that Anima was still with her. She might have been able to explain it all, give reasons for her weakness, and help Eleanor find ways to be stronger. Though . . . if Anima had been willing to acknowledge her as her apprentice earlier, and been willing to teach her, then . . .

With an effort she forced away the mingled grief and resentment. It was something to which she’d never have an answer now, and brooding on it was little use when there were so many other desperately urgent problems to concern herself with.

‘Perhaps we should consider at least a short trip to scout out the location you identified,’ Lady Marguerite mused aloud. ‘We could always leave a very brief and uninformative note in case Charles returns—’

She was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Eleanor answered it, opening it a crack and peering out. A boy stood there, barely ten years old by the look of him. His clothing was cheap – trousers rather than breeches, reminding Eleanor of France – and his hair poorly brushed. In one hand he carried a letter, and with a finger of the other he was excavating his nose. At the sight of Eleanor he straightened, removing finger from nostril, and said, ‘You Mrs Hardcastle?’

‘I am her maid,’ Eleanor replied, adopting the tones of the haughtiest personal maid she’d ever had the misfortune to hear. ‘Is there a message for her?’

‘Letter for her. Said as she’d pay me a shilling for it.’

Eleanor knew this was an extortionately high rate for a boy to carry a message like this, and she fixed him with a cold eye.

He shuffled. ‘Sixpence?’

‘You’ll get tuppence and be grateful for it,’ Eleanor snapped. She held out her hand, and the boy dropped the letter into it. With a spasm of relief, she recognized Charles’s handwriting. She fished out a couple of pennies from her purse. ‘When and where were you given this for my mistress?’ she asked, holding the coins in his view.

‘Quarter of an hour ago, on Queen Street,’ the boy said. He snatched the pennies from Eleanor’s hand and was off down the corridor at a run.

Lady Marguerite in turn snatched the letter from Eleanor’s hand as the door closed. ‘Let’s see what Charles has to say. He writes rather too much, given the chance that his message could have been intercepted, but I’m grateful to know that he’s safe and well. Hmm – it seems that he has spent all day in search of information, much of it futile, but he believes he has found a scholar who can assist us. Apparently the fellow is known for being a skinflint and an iconoclast, as well as for general disagreement with – well, with everything. But he also makes claims about vampires which align with the information that Bernard hinted to you about, my dear. Charles has obtained an appointment with this Professor Johnson, at his house, and he suggests we meet him in the hostelry nearby afterwards – the Black Boar – where he has secured a table for us to dine. And we should be careful on our way, as apparently Oxford is feeling particularly rebellious tonight due to the arrest of various notable student firebrands. Something I could have predicted, but let us not be petty. Excellent! Where are my shawl, my hat, my gloves, my boots?’

‘So he’s safe, at least?’ Eleanor said, a little wistfully.

Lady Marguerite paused in her preparations and turned to Eleanor. ‘I’m sure if this letter had been addressed to you rather than to me, he would also have added some personal expressions of affection,’ she said, more quietly.

It grew no easier to say it: it still felt like biting into a lemon and brought a pricking to her eyes. ‘Milady, you shouldn’t encourage him. Or me.’

‘Why not, my dear?’

‘Because nothing can come of it.’

‘A nobleman can marry an actress,’ Lady Marguerite said, referring to herself and Sir Percy, ‘and did.’

‘You were already a person of quality,’ Eleanor said, trying to be resigned and practical about it, as she went down on her knees to lace up Lady Marguerite’s boots. ‘How could he ever take me to meet his father?’

‘You assume he’d want anyone to meet his father.’ Lady Marguerite tapped her on the shoulder with her fan. ‘You give up too easily, Eleanor. I can see this will need my guiding hand. Have no fear! I am an expert in these matters.’

Eleanor swallowed nervously.

‘But before that, I believe I am going to make some alterations to Charles’s plans . . .’

Queen Street, like most of its neighbourhood, was overshadowed by the nearby Oxford Castle, which loomed in the distance like an ancient relation – the sort who was decrepit and gouty, but still held the purse-strings and must therefore be taken into account in all family calculations. Lady Marguerite had said it had been turned into a prison fifty years ago, and it was difficult for Eleanor to think about the place without imagining herself in its cells.

How did a good girl like me become involved in so many improper and illegal enterprises?

It was only somewhere between seven and eight o’clock on this summer’s evening, but the street lamps were already burning, and already necessary. The cloud-filled sky had brought on an oppressive darkness, earlier than usual for July. Still, there didn’t seem to be too many students in this particular section of Oxford, and the streets weren’t busy. Perhaps they were all attending late lectures given by vampires – or maybe they were simply drinking and talking philosophy.

Eleanor, having left Lady Marguerite sitting in state in the Black Boar, had slipped out of there by the back door – after a few words with one of the servers, who’d been happy to confirm Professor Johnson’s address in Queen Street and provide directions. However, when she caught sight of the house, her steps stuttered and she had to prevent herself from staring.

The owner really was a skinflint. Even in the flaring, unhappy light from the street lamps, the deficiencies of the place displayed themselves like patches on a length of silk. The paint on the shutters was flaking; the brickwork was raddled and half covered with ivy, which was itself dying from lack of water; the glass of the windows was thick with dirt and dust; and the doorstep was most emphatically unwashed. Her lip curled in disdain.

She ducked around to the servants’ entrance at the side. Lady Marguerite had suggested she come here to keep a close eye on the house. To be certain Charles was here, first of all, and also that he left safely, ensuring his note hadn’t been intercepted and that the whole thing wasn’t some devious trap. Personally, Eleanor thought it was all overly complex to be a trap – after all, if their enemies had been able to intercept Charles’s note, then they’d have known where to find the women, and could simply have kidnapped them directly from their inn.

Eleanor rather suspected that milady just wanted to give her and Charles a few moments together without her presence – which was kind and generous of her, even if their future was impossible. Perhaps especially because their future was impossible. Though it was always a possibility that Charles really was in danger, and if that was the case, then . . .

She tried the latch on the side door, and to her surprise it swung open, unlocked. The kitchen beyond was not only empty and unlit, but had a feeling of staleness and disuse to it as she stepped cautiously in. Faint light penetrated through the murky windows, just enough for Eleanor to see. Dirty pots and plates stood waiting in the sink, and on the table a cloth covered something . . . ah, a cold collation, bread and ham and cheese, laid out for someone’s later consumption. The dishes in the sink were freshly dirty rather than caked with days-old food; presumably the cook or maid had left her master’s supper ready and stepped out for some reason, or left for the night.

All the better for Eleanor.

She tiptoed to the far end of the kitchen and opened the door that gave onto the rest of the house. Certainly Lady Marguerite had told her to watch from a distance, discreetly, but now she was actually here . . . well, any of the League would have seized the opportunity to investigate further, so why not her?

The draught that whispered through brought her the smell of old paper and expensive beeswax candles, but most of all the smell of dust. Bookcases and cupboards lined the hall, rising so high that there was no space on the walls for pictures. In fact, there was a total lack of any kind of ornament – no statuettes or urns or mirrors, only the stacks of paper, encrusted with dust and cobwebs. A single candle burned in a wall sconce, providing just enough light to avoid falling over the books or running into the wall.

Very faintly, somewhere above her, she could hear the sound of voices.

Eleanor followed those sounds through the house, along the hall and to the stairwell, testing each step carefully so as not to step on any creaky floorboard – in a house like this, what could the floorboards be but creaky? An impulse to be certain that Charles was safe drove her forward. She was already preparing a story if she should be intercepted by the house’s owner – she was Mrs Hardcastle’s maid, here to fetch Charles for his appointment. Candles burned at irregular intervals in the wall sconces, and she couldn’t help but contrast the quality beeswax with the general air of disarray and dilapidation. The owner of this house – Professor Johnson, presumably – clearly paid good money for what he thought was important and skimped on everything else. Not unlike her previous employer, Lady Sophie.

At the foot of the stairs Eleanor hesitated. She could perhaps draw the words of the distant conversation to her on a breeze, but that would bring so much dust with it she feared her choking would betray her presence. Instead she edged her way up the stairs, moving with careful slowness, her eyes on the lit rectangle of a door halfway along the corridor at the top.

‘. . . and as I’ve pointed out in my work numerous times, Celsus utterly fails to mention vampires in his De Medicina, which is justly regarded as a foundational text on health and related fields. So, given his death towards the end of Claudius’s reign, we can regard that as a terminus point, if you like, a convenient “before which none is known”.’ She didn’t recognize the speaker. His deep voice wasn’t unpleasant, but his sentences were cast in the same form she’d overheard multiple times today in Oxford, from both passing dons and students – as though he was delivering a lecture to anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.

‘Though of course we do only have part of the De Medicina, sadly,’ Charles put in. His tone was quiet and unassuming, but it invited a contradiction. It practically stood up and waved a banner saying, Tell me how foolish I am, and please provide all relevant details so I will recognize my own stupidity.

Eleanor pressed her knuckles against her lips, muffling a sigh of relief. He was here; he was safe; he was well. And he clearly had things in hand. She’d never heard him discuss matters of learning with anyone else before (the other members of the League were not sympathetic to such topics and were prone to yawning). But even the few words he’d spoken demonstrated that he understood the issue in depth. Like forging warrants and other legal niceties, this was something only he, and nobody else in the League, could do.

She felt a flush of pride for him. Even if she barely understood a word they were saying.

‘Yet it’s supported by other evidence! In his Symposium, Asconius mentions the “new arrival of these strangers who by the drinking of blood”, et cetera, et cetera, and that was written in the latter years of Vespasian’s reign. My own analysis places his reference as being during the Year of Four Emperors, after the death of Nero. You see how we slowly but surely draw a net around the vampires’ precise historical origin? But the crucial point in this is Seneca.’ There was a riffling of papers. ‘Here! In his letter to Cassius Dio – this was before the Pisonian conspiracy, of course . . .’

Eleanor pinched herself, trying to keep her focus. It was difficult to follow the conversation with any sort of understanding when she didn’t know a single one of the names being mentioned. Perhaps the best course of action, now she’d confirmed Charles was here and safe, would be to slip back out of the house and wait for him to finish. Then they could make their way back to Lady Marguerite together – and perhaps Eleanor wouldn’t mention how she’d flouted her instructions, either. Although it seemed nothing short of an attack by cannons and muskets would disturb the flow of this scholar’s enthusiasm.

‘Tacitus discounts the matter, but then Tacitus is notorious for his lack of credence in anything resembling the supernatural. Though he does suggest that the downfall of Seneca was to some extent due to the loans forced on the British population which caused Boadicea’s rebellion, and that there were, as he puts it, those certain ones who held a grudge . . .’

She began to edge backwards, being careful to keep her exit as silent as her arrival, but then froze mid-step as she heard a noise from downstairs. Someone had entered the house through the kitchen, just as she had done, but not as quietly. Ignoring the professor’s droning, she strained every sinew to hear what was going on down there.

A rustle of skirts. Lady Marguerite? Could she have come here herself to join them? No, there were other footsteps following too – heavier ones. At least two people, possibly three. And Eleanor was caught in the middle.

She scuttled over to the nearest open doorway and ducked into it, narrowly avoiding toppling a pile of books which stood waiting to ambush any unwary arrivals. Dust sifted to the floor around her as she edged behind the door, out of any convenient line of sight from the corridor. The door itself was ill-hung enough that she could peer through the crack between door and wall and see who was approaching.

It was the full skirts of an elegant silk dress that came into view first, the embroidery on them glittering in the candlelight. Eleanor knew those skirts, she knew that embroidery – her fingers ached with the memory of each careful stitch. Her heart sank as she realized who this was.

Lady Sophie walked past the doorway where Eleanor was hiding, her steps as calm and measured as if she was walking down the corridor of her own house. Behind her came the two vampires Eleanor had seen following her orders before – the dark French de Courcis and the pale English Castleton, with only the faint creaks and groans of the old floorboards betraying their passing. On better flooring they would have been as inaudible as ghosts.

Panic made Eleanor’s pulse hammer so loudly in her ears that she feared it might somehow be heard by the vampires in the corridor beyond, only a few yards away from her. Oh, she could protect herself – she had the ability to call a light which would repel them long enough for her to flee – but now they were between her and Charles.

For a moment she allowed herself to entertain the hope that Professor Johnson might send them away. A man who spent his time investigating the history of vampires was unlikely to be popular among those same vampires. If Charles had a chance to hide . . .

Professor Johnson’s lecturing voice broke off suddenly, leaving abrupt silence in its wake. Then he spoke again. ‘My lady Baroness. You took your time, madam. I was afraid the bird would fly the coop before you arrived.’

The words made sense, far too much sense, but Eleanor couldn’t allow herself to think about their full implications now, or to despair over the fact they were trapped like rats. Just as Lady Marguerite had feared! She had to get Charles and herself out of here before it was too late. But what else did she have to threaten them with? No guns. No League to back her up. Every move to drive them away from her would simply turn them loose on Charles. The weight of books and paper around her seemed to mock her, ignorant maidservant that she was, unworthy of the spires of Oxford.

Books and paper . . .