Chapter 80
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 79
He notices Gregory first, because he seems to be… pacing? Hovering around Darcy, anyway, who’s leaning against the railing of the balcony. As Arthur approaches, he can see Gregory’s scowl, and when he sees him, he makes a beeline for him and grabs him by the arm, points at Darcy. “Something’s wrong with her!”
That has Arthur hasten his steps to Darcy’s side. Gregory lets go of him when they come near, hovers behind him. Darcy, for her part, is smiling out at the gardens in a relaxed, peaceful way that Arthur can’t remember seeing her do recently, or maybe ever?
“Um, Darcy?” he asks. “Are you okay?” She does maybe seem a bit dazed? Also, kind of too happy about being at this ball they both don’t like.
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Oh, she knows that voice, of course she does, silly her. With a giggle, she turns to Arthur and smiles brightly, because why wouldn’t she? Something makes her want to dance… Has she danced with him yet at this ball? She doesn’t think so. She really should, he’s precious to her. Her Arthur-dear! So she lets her drac reach over and takes his arm, leans against him sideways, smile growing wider.
That smile makes her feel her fangs again, and that reminds her of that taste in her mouth that makes her feel all… all… warm and fuzzy and somehow brings a promise of everything is going to be fine with it. “Yes, Arthur-dear, I’m okay. We haven’t danced yet, sorry, I did all the politicking, now I really should enjoy myself a bit, shouldn’t I? Would you like to dance with me?”
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“Uh,” Arthur says, and blinks a few times, rapidly- dancing? What? Also… why are her fangs out? Is she… drunk? Or, at least tipsy? Yes, if he didn’t have any other information, he’d assume she was a bit tipsy. But can she even get tipsy as a dhampir? Also… she doesn’t like alcohol, does she, he thinks he vaguely remembers? “…You seem a bit… drunk?” he says, nevertheless. “And, um, you probably should put those fangs away before someone sees,” he adds, lower.
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“Oopsie!” She says as she licks up over her fangs and pulls them back in, but keeps smiling at him before tilting her head. “Drunk? Arthur-dear, I don’t like alcohol, you of all people should know that.” For just a moment, her eyes flick over to Gregory and she pouts, but then it’s gone again. Her drac is just too happy to let her feel anything but content and hopeful at the moment.
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“Yes, that’s what I thought,” Arthur says. “But you’re… kind of unexpectedly and suddenly happy, considering where we are… Are you sure you’re alright?” Not that he doesn’t like that she’s happy, but it doesn’t really fit for it to happen for no reason. Maybe someone gave her something? Are there drugs that work on dhampirs?
“The ball is silly! But out here is fine. Not being alone in there is fine.” She rubs her cheek slightly against his upper arm and smiles. “Thank you for being here.”
“Out here is much nicer,” he agrees. Maybe that’s all it is- Darcy is always happier when it’s night time, too. So maybe she’s just enjoying the darkness and solitude away from all the people. The gardens spread below and ahead of them in shadow, and the glass doors muffle the sounds of the ball. The night air has a damp, cold bite, but after all the combined heat of all the people inside, it’s refreshing. And Darcy, of course, doesn’t care about the temperature anyway.
“So, um, if you wanted to dance, do we have to go back inside for it?” He does kind of like dancing, but not in front of lots of people. Out here it’s just them. And even Gregory seems to have calmed down, has hopped onto the balustrade and sits with his feet dangling, just watches them- maybe a bit confused? Arthur gives him a questioning smile, and Gregory grins back, so he assumes everything is fine now.
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Looking over to the doors, Darcy wrinkles her nose, then giggles and turns so that definitely nobody inside can see it before sticking her tongue out at the ball. “I can hear the music from here, we could dance here. The gossip about me is all really mean anyway, what difference does it make?”
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Arthur frowns at hearing that. “I’m sorry you had to hear mean gossip. They’re stupid people,” he decides. Anyone who says mean things about Darcy without even knowing her isn’t at all sensible and not worth knowing. “So it doesn’t make any difference at all!” Determined not to dent her good mood any further, he offers her his hand for dancing.
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With a delighted giggle, she takes his hand and hums along to the music so he can hear it, too, before just enjoying herself. She ought to enjoy herself with at least one dance at this silly ball and Gregory didn’t even ask. He’s her husband and he didn’t ask or even get close while she was on the dance floor and somehow… Something to do with her drac, with that lingering taste in her mouth, makes her decide it’s alright, she doesn’t need Gregory to dance with her.
She’d dance with John if he was here, dance through the night, but he isn’t, and Arthur is here and he’s dear to her and if the rumours about her sleeping with all the men in her household get worse, well, let them! Daddy said he’s scandalous, her mother is a great femme fatale, so she’s just keeping up the family tradition!
But… but there is something… Dancing so close, her nose is swirling with Arthur’s scent, and she likes that but… smell memories are always so contextual and it’s him being close, his warm body against hers and there’s a scent on the air, and it’s not him, and then it clicks: the vision!
She does not smell Arthur, well, yes, she is, but smelling him made the other scent more distinct in her mind, and she hates to stop dancing, and also, that would be suspicious, so she keeps dancing with Arthur, but leans up to whisper. “Arthur-dear, I need you to get off the balcony. Please, I’ll protect you, so don’t worry, but I recognized a smell on the air, now that you reminded me.”
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Arthur was just relaxing into the dancing, but that makes him tense up again. Protect him? “Why? What’s wrong?” he murmurs back, and resists the urge to look around. “What smell?”
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“Your father. I’ll go warn Prince James, but I want you safely away from out here. I didn’t smell it inside, so it must come from the gardens. Can you smell any magic? Is it the Shiver?” She strokes her fingers gently over his to soothe him, she knows how scared he is of his father. And she remembers her vision, but all that does is make her more eager to murder the man.
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Arthur shudders- what’s his father doing here?! Nothing good, that’s for sure. Maybe he’s here to assassinate someone! But he keeps dancing, now makes extra-sure not to give away that they might’ve noticed anything. As they turn into the wind coming from the garden, he takes a few deep, slow breaths. He frowns, then smooths his expression out again. “There’s… something,” he says quietly. “But I… can’t place it. It’s faint, I’m not even sure where it’s coming from. And it doesn’t smell like any magic I’ve smelled before.”
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Making sure to dance the song out, Darcy changes to be on his arm, nudges him slightly to escort her back inside, and tells Gregory to please come along. He likes parties, doesn’t he? But he’s giving the garden far too much of an interested look, so, with a frown, Darcy extricates herself from Arthur’s arm after all to take Gregory’s instead. She feels more like she’s dragging him along. It won’t look proper to anybody, but what else is she supposed to do? She can’t have him go play hero in Prince James’ gardens if the Shiver is down there!
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“Yes, let’s go back inside, it is a bit chilly out here,” Arthur says- not extra loud, but so his voice could carry if someone was listening. Nothing to see here, just them taking a break on the balcony and then being driven back inside by the temperature… And he makes sure to walk a little behind Gregory to subtly usher him in, too, because please let him not get ideas now!
Finding Prince James is not terribly difficult, but it does involve asking some people if they’ve seen him, and while none of those people are rude to their faces, and smile, Arthur can still sense how they have their noses practically in the stratosphere about having to talk to them- yes, even Darcy. Once again, Arthur wonders why they got invited- they are as far out of place, out of their class, here as he would have been straight off the street at the duchess’ ball. Which, fancy as it was at the time, clearly was a lot more of a… local and country affair.
They finally track Prince James down in one of the side rooms, where he’s drinking and smoking and playing cards with some other men. And they all look like they’re utterly comfortable and belong there, lounged in fancy chairs in their fancy clothes. He thinks Darcy handles talking to him well- she curtsies and gets all the forms of address right and everything.
Since it would be really, really weird to ask to speak to the Prince in private, she just tells him right there about how they were out on the balcony for some fresh air and noticed someone sneaking around in the garden, and how they think it might be the Shiver.
Prince James tilts his head and gives her a very discerning look, even though the colour in his cheeks and the empty glass on the table say he’s had a good bit to drink. But he doesn’t just dismiss them, as Arthur had feared, or ask Darcy for more details on how they would’ve noticed that. No, he gets up and tells his friends that he’ll better have that looked into, and thanks Darcy for bringing her suspicion to his attention (Arthur thinks that’s actually him being nice and saying that if it turns out they’re wrong and there’s no one there, he’s not going to be mad), and asks them to stay in the ball room for now.
So that’s where they head back to while Prince James strides off to talk to his people. Gregory pouts that he could totally go help, but Darcy shushes him and tells him it’s not their territory here, which makes him subside, thankfully. They seat themselves on that couch by the wall that Arthur was occupying earlier. There’s no sign of the man he was talking to anywhere. While they wait, Arthur tells Darcy and Gregory about him, and Darcy confirms that she didn’t see anyone like that on the guest list.
As they sit, they can watch the rumours make their way around the room: People talking in low voices, heads tipped together, glances coming their way and going towards the balcony, a certain amount of tension settling in. But only about twenty minutes later, Prince James comes into the room, smiles broadly, walks up to one group of people that has some of the biggest names of the evening in it (and which he and Darcy have assiduously avoided- Arthur has no intention of getting mixed up with earls and dukes). There’s a chat, and Prince James clapping one man on the shoulder, and he laughs with them, and the tension already starts to relax even while he walks over their way and other people come up to talk with that group.
As he reaches them, of course they stand (well, Darcy tugs Gregory to his feet, who’s looking increasingly bored). Prince James inclines his head, and thanks them again- yes, there was some sort of ritual being prepared, the royal mages are on their way to look at it. The perpetrators got away, unfortunately. His eyes flick to Arthur, but Arthur can’t tell whether it’s because of Prince James knowing who he is and his relation to those perpetrators, or whether he was just politely looking around their group to address everyone.
But that’s that. Apparently, that’s all he came to say, because he takes his leave and heads off to talk to other, more important people. Arthur is feeling very dismissed, and he glances at Darcy to see what she thinks.
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Darcy takes a very noticeable, long inhale, then composes a smile at Arthur and asks Gregory to please escort her out, this was too much excitement for her poor feminine constitution. She feels quite ready to retire. It’s true enough, but much more because she feels strangely wistful. Throughout the wait, Gregory might have gotten bored but she felt… as if somehow her drac was looking around for somebody and didn’t find them. She’s not sure why, but now she really just wants to curl up with a good book, a romance if she’s lucky enough for her daddy to have one in the house. She’s very done with this ball.
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Arthur tries not to look too eager to leave, but he really is- if they can just get out of this ball without any major catastrophes now in the last few minutes… That’s half a miracle he didn’t expect to happen. But then, maybe Darcy intercepted the catastrophe that was on course for them. He does feel a bit exposed as they make their way out the front door and to Art’s carriage- what if his father is still lurking out here? But he has Darcy and Gregory with him, and a whole lot of nobles and their drivers and what not, so… He still breathes a sigh of relief when he can curl up in one corner of the carriage for the drive back to Art’s townhouse. “Whew! We made it!”
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“Hopefully we were boring enough to not be invited again as the party entertainment to be gawked at like I’m a wolf in a cage to be paraded around.” Darcy pouts for all of a second, her drac is still pacing around, sniffing every which way for she doesn’t know who, but then she settles back down and smiles at Arthur. “Let’s just relax for the rest of the evening.”
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Arthur nods in vigorous agreement- both with the not being invited again and with the relaxing. “I could do with a nice book and nothing else happening this evening!”
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To her surprise (because really, since when do they have the luxury of peace and quiet?,) Darcy really manages to relax with a book, across from Arthur on a sofa. Strangely, rather than vanishing as he normally does, Gregory is there, too. At first, he tries to pester them into interacting more with him, but even he settles down eventually, directly on her lap, as her cat… and she thinks she missed having her cat.
This is oddly nice, even though she also notices that he is watching her all night long again, and through breakfast, and through getting ready.
She had planned to visit her Uncle Jekyll and, well, Gregory normally never cared, so she hadn’t told him, but now he insists he has to come along. Maybe she should feel happy that her husband is suddenly showing an interest in her but… this is her childhood guardian and Papa’s friend and he’s a very shy man, she honestly doesn’t want to unsettle him with Gregory around.
When did she start thinking of Gregory as being unsettling? But there he is, hovering over her, those hungry eyes on her, those crystalline, deep eyes that she can feel on her skin, prickling and cold. And no, no she doesn’t want him there, and she remembers, vaguely, it was months ago by now, but in the beginning, in the beginning, he told her she needs to be emancipated. And she didn’t much like it. It didn’t really fit with how he behaved or how she saw herself. Not human emancipated at the very least, but now, no, she’s done so much on her own, she’s not going to just go back to being a damsel.
This is her gothic fairy tale. She gets to be, at least, the cursed princess!
And she tells him as much, only for him to… is he getting angry? He’s forbidding her to go anywhere without him? What?! Her drac is up and snarling, but she feels… she’s not sure, there’s that cold anger in her stomach again and the feeling of being helpless, too. At the same time, and she hates it and she doesn’t know what to do. He’s not lifting his hands against her, but he’s lifting his voice, and, no… she doesn’t want to be one of those failed wives! No, not like this!
So she does the only thing she can think of that won’t be utterly inhuman and make her even more failed: She dashes out of the room and runs as hard as she can, doesn’t even knock when she barges into Arthur’s room and seeks support with him.
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Arthur looks up, startled, from the western book of Art’s he was reading, cross-legged on his borrowed bed, when the door bursts open, and then there’s Darcy, hurrying up to him. “What’s wrong?” Because something is definitely wrong when she bursts in like that.
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“Gregory forbade me to go out without him and he started shouting at me. Please, help me!” She scrambles up onto the bed and… doesn’t really hide behind him, she doesn’t want to, it’s too important to her to protect him, but she’s putting her shoulder against his because that feels a bit better, as if they are in this together instead of her having to do it alone.
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“He what?” Why the hell would Gregory do a thing like that? Which is exactly what he asks Gregory when he comes running up after Darcy only a moment later.
And apparently, it’s because he wants to protect her, because something weird happened last night, with her on the balcony, and he, Artie, should really look into that!
Arthur gives Darcy a confused look. Okay, she did act a bit strange there, but… she said she was fine? And she looked happy? But he wouldn’t want them to overlook anything bad happening to her, so he asks: “Um… did anything strange happen?” He hadn’t really asked, he realizes, just whether she was alright. “Or have there been any… odd side-effects or something?”
She shakes her head and still doesn’t move away from him. “I don’t think so. I just went out on the balcony because that silly ball was too much and then… then I felt better.”
Arthur tilts his head. “Um… just like that? Like… did you do anything? Did some animals come visit or something?” That usually happens when she doesn’t feel great and it makes her feel better, doesn’t it?
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Now she’s trying to remember, and her drac immediately starts wagging its tail, so she tells Arthur about that. She was tired from all the being social, so she might just not remember, but she feels good about it, not worried at all.
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“Alright, you not remembering is a bit weird, but as you say, you were tired and all…” He considers, looks at Gregory, who’s hovering just past the doorway, restless. “But okay, I’ll… uh, look into it? I mean, the Shiver was there at that time, maybe… maybe they tried something? I’m not sure how to find out what they were up to, though, it’s not like I can just walk into Prince James’ garden and have a look- plus, he said the royal mages were going to check it out. I can look through my father’s books when we’re back to see if anything in there might do something like that? Though making someone happy is really not what his rituals are usually about…”
He looks between Darcy and Gregory to see what they think of his suggestion. And while Darcy nods, Gregory protests: He still doesn’t want Darcy going places without him if they don’t know what happened!
Arthur frowns at him in confusion. “It’s the middle of the day. And it’s not like she’s going to walk. You’ll take the carriage, right?” he asks Darcy. “Or, um, maybe a cab if you don’t want our hosts to know…? I guess being out on town would be considered a bit inappropriate by some people… But they’re, like, old-fashioned people, I thought we weren’t those kinds of people?” He directs that at Gregory again, who opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but closes it again when he can’t seem to think of a good argument to make.
“Anyway, it’s not like Darcy’s going to get kidnapped in the middle of the day in the middle of the city- the good part of the city, too!” Really, this is silly- usually he’s the one who’s concerned about dangers and eventualities, while Darcy and Gregory are the ones who just charge in. “…And even if someone did, you could just turn bat and fly away. Er, preferably when they’re not looking.”
Which… makes him think of something, and he cocks his head. “How well do you see as a bat? Like… could you fly over Prince James’ garden and see what the ritual looked like and what they’re doing? The royal mages, I mean?” Then he bites his lip. “But maybe they’ll have wards now… I wouldn’t want you to get caught. Do you think it’s worth the risk?” he asks Darcy.
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Not that Darcy really cares, the only reason she doesn’t totally dismiss the Shiver is because Arthur’s meanie father is with them… And now she caught herself licking her lips at the memory of his blood, the last drop of his blood, the feeling of his heart stopping under her lips… No, um, back to the question.
She’s happy to inform Arthur that it’s a common misconception that bats don’t see very well! She can even quote some of the parts of her beloved Fauna of the British Isles on that (not that she could find herself in there, she’s a weird bat). But in any case, if Arthur thinks it’s important she’ll go and fly over it… or maybe rather run over it as a rat, she thinks she’s pretty big even as a bat, she’d stand out.
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If she can do that without any mages trying to catch her or something, that would be really helpful! Arthur agrees. If they can find out what the ritual was about, they can probably figure out if it had anything to do with anything. Also, that info about bats is really interesting!
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Darcy nearly runs off on a lecture about bats. She always loved all animals she could possibly spot from her room’s window, but since she learned about herself, she obviously developed even more of a love of her night friends and read everything about them. But that reminds her of her old room, and why she even is here huddled up next to Arthur, so she pouts at Gregory. If she lets him come along for that, will he let her go to her Uncle alone? “I won’t even be in London. I will be in a high security prison. I couldn’t be safer.”
“Also, you went there alone the last time we were in London, and it was fine, right? Like you say- you’re going to get in a cab and get out at the prison and get back in a cab and, er, I guess take a detour past Prince James’ place, which is in the fanciest and safest part of town anyway, and then get back in a cab and come back?” Arthur asks her.
Nodding with her arms folded in front of her chest, Darcy glares at Gregory and yes, there’s that cold anger deep in her belly, but her drac is also growling and it feels… strangely good. As if she hasn’t really ever done that before, as if something… maybe that something that her drac was looking for yesterday, is still with her drac and it dares when before it felt too powerless. “You can wait in the cab in front of the prison if you want. I’ll be just right inside, which was totally fine last time.”
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To Arthur’s relief, Gregory agrees to that compromise, apparently appeased. How long that’s going to last, Arthur’s not sure- Gregory isn’t exactly the best at sitting still and waiting, but, well.
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Arthur got that right when he looked sceptical, Darcy notices. Not that she, or rather her drac, cares very much about that at the moment. After having thanked Arthur for the help (kiss to the cheek included,) she resigned herself to Gregory hovering over her while she finished getting ready, and in the cab, and the looks following her when she vanished into the prison, but by the time she came back, the cab was empty and the driver had no idea where Gregory vanished to (but she’s the suspicious one!).
Scoffing internally, her drac lifts its snout up high as she asks the driver to please bring her to the closest park she knows to Prince James’ place. It’s not as if she can just ask to go directly there and she doesn’t wanna, yes, that was her drac. It’s so very close now and she likes it! It’s been a while since she felt so free. She guesses she must be hungry. Maybe she donated a bit much blood to Uncle Jekyll’s science, but why wouldn’t she?
And even more so, why would she mind running on paws through these human streets that showed her so much that she doesn’t belong yesterday? No, she’s only in this silly part of town because Arthur wants her to.