Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [10]
Glasses were distributed. Penelope managed to accept hers without for a moment leaving go of his hand. She had her prize and would not let it escape.
The toast fell, of course, to Godalming. He raised his glass, bubbles catching the light, and said, ‘for me this is a sad moment, as I experience a loss. I’ve been beaten out again, by my good friend Charles Beauregard. I shall never recover, but I acknowledge Charles as the better man. I trust he will serve my dearest Penny as a good husband should.’
Beauregard, cynosure of all eyes, experienced discomfort. He did not like to be looked at. In his profession, it was unwise to attract notice of any kind.
‘To the beautiful Penelope,’ Godalming toasted, ‘and the admirable Charles...’
‘Penelope and Charles,’ came the echo.
Penelope giggled like a cat as the bubbles tickled her nose, and Beauregard took an unexpectedly healthy swig. Everyone drank except Godalming, who set his glass down untouched on the tray.
‘I am so sorry,’ Florence said, ‘I was forgetting myself.’
The hostess summoned Bessie again.
‘Lord Godalming does not drink champagne,’ she explained to the girl. Bessie understood and unbuttoned her blouse at the wrist.
‘Thank you, Bessie,’ Godalming said. He took her hand as if to kiss it, then turned it over as if to read her palm.
Beauregard could not help but feel slightly sickened, but no one else even made mention of the matter. He wondered how many were assuming a pose of indifference, and how many were genuinely accustomed to the habits of the thing Arthur Holmwood had become.
‘Penelope, Charles,’ Godalming said, ‘I drink to you...’
Opening his mouth wide on jaw-hinges like a cobra’s, Godalming fastened on to Bessie’s wrist, lightly puncturing the skin with his pointed incisors. Godalming licked away a trickle of blood. The company were fascinated. Penelope shrank closer to Beauregard’s side. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder but did not look away from Godalming and the maid. Either she was affecting cool or the vampire’s feeding did not bother her. As Godalming lapped, Bessie swayed unsteadily on her ankles. Her eyes fluttered with something between pain and pleasure. Finally, the maid quietly fainted and Godalming, letting her wrist go, caught her deftly like a devoted Don Juan, holding her upright.
‘I have this effect on women,’ he said, teeth blood-rimmed, ‘it is most inconvenient.’
He found a divan and deposited the unconscious Bessie on it. The girl’s wound did not bleed. Godalming did not appear to have taken much from her. Beauregard thought she must have been bled before to take it so calmly. Florence, who had so easily offered Godalming the hospitality of her maid, sat beside Bessie and bound a handkerchief around her wrist. She performed the operation as if tying a ribbon to a horse, with kindness but no especial concern.
For a moment, Beauregard was dizzy.
‘What is it, dear-heart,’ Penelope asked, arm sliding around him.
‘The champagne,’ he lied.
‘Will we always have champagne?’
‘As long as it is what you wish to drink.’
‘You’re so good to me, Charles.’
‘Perhaps.’
Florence, her nursing done, was swarming around them again.
‘Now, now,’ she said, ‘there’ll be plenty of time for that after the wedding. In the meantime, you must be unselfish and share yourselves with the rest of us.’
‘Indeed,’ said Godalming. ‘For a start, I must claim my right as the vanquished sir knight.’
Beauregard was puzzled. Godalming had blotted the blood from his lips with a handkerchief, but his mouth still shone, and there was a pinkish tinge to his upper teeth.
‘A kiss,’ Godalming explained, taking Penelope’s hands in his own, ‘I claim a kiss from the bride.’
Beauregard’s hand, fortunately out of Godalming’s view, made a fist, as if grasping the handle of his sword-stick. He sensed danger, as surely as in the Natal when a black mamba, the deadliest reptile on earth, was close by his unprotected