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cur.” Ravensclaw stretched out his long legs until one muscular calf rested against her skirts. “Loathe as I am to disappoint you, I’m not what you think. But I am something of an expert on supermundane matters, due to my extensive reading — I especially enjoyed On the Masticating Dead in their Tomb (1728), which puts forth the notion that having a virgin boy ride naked bareback on a virgin stallion will point the way to an inanimate’s resting place — and consider it most unlikely that any being can crawl headfirst down a castle wall, or turn himself into a wisp of fog.”
    Maybe not, but he could turn her into a pudding. Emily found it difficult to gaze on the man — the aberration! — and retain possession of her wits. Proof, her papa would have pointed out, had he been privileged to be present, that the female constitution was unsuited to explorations of the extramundane.
    She would prove him wrong. She must prove him wrong. “Tell me, why are you accompanying me to Edinburgh when you refuse to take me seriously, my lord?”
    Ravensclaw reached over and plucked Machka from her lap. “Because you are a very reckless young woman, Miss Dinwiddie. And I possess a more chivalrous nature than I had previously understood.”

 
Chapter Four
     
    An arrow shot upright falls on the shooter’s head. (Romanian proverb)
     
    Edinburgh perched perilously atop an extinct volcano. Stacked up like a great haphazard pile of rocks, the medieval Old Town’s dark tenements glowered down at the New Town’s neoclassical terraces and squares. Separating the two areas was a deep, broad bridge-spanned ravine planted with trees and shrubbery, once a lake where accused witches met their deaths, thereby being exonerated from all charges, for only the innocent drowned.
    In the heyday of the Old Town, several prominent Elizabethans had chosen to live in the then less congested area of the Canongate, commuting to and from Edinburgh Castle along the Royal Mile. Count Revay-Czobar lived in the Old Town now, not far from the Castle, in a tall, five-story townhouse capped by two pointed gables of unequal size. The round-headed arches of the ground floor frontage were stained from centuries of billowing black smoke, fog, and rain. Curving forestairs jutted out onto the pavement. A lentil stone dated 1622 bore the words, FEARE THE LORD AND DEPART FROM EVILL.
    The interior of the townhouse was furnished to suit its owner’s taste, including tiled chimneypieces and fine tempera work. The master bedroom’s beam and board ceilings were brightly painted with flowers and fruit. A deep arcaded frieze surmounted the tall, shuttered windows and adorned the stone wall above the fireplace and the curved wall that marked the turnpike stair.
    Upholstered armchairs were scattered around the chamber. A coffer inlaid with holly and bog oak sat against one wall. Ravensclaw lay on another great carved bed — satyrs and satyresses, centaurs and centaurides, assorted gods and fauns and nymphs — his hands folded on  his chest, as still as the mythological beings that guarded his rest. Or perhaps not precisely as still. One eyebrow twitched.
    Abruptly, the Count wakened. If it could be called that. He lay motionless for a moment, orienting himself. Slumber now was not slumber as he had once known it, but a descent into a nothingness so absolute it might have been deeply disturbing if one dwelt on the matter, which he seldom did. Valentin Lupescu spent no more time regretting his inclusion in the Dinwiddie Society’s annals of abnormalities than he did lamenting his own past. Truth be told, all in all, he thought himself damned fortunate.
    Fortunate, if alone in his bed at the moment. He opened one eye. Isidore was hovering just inside the door. Val said, “Where are Zizi, Bela, Lilian?”
    Isidore wrinkled his nose. “They say it isn’t proper for them to be visiting your bedchamber with a young lady in the house.”
    Propriety, Val mused. What a novel