The Kindred of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

and saw considerable traffic during the day, but Lydia thought she’d discerned the prints of a four-wheeled brougham that had waited there during the night. It didn’t tell her much, and Grippen would almost certainly learn of it if she went rushing around Oxford asking if anyone had rented such a vehicle the previous day. But her conviction grew that he had used the living for accomplices, not the Undead. In the six years since Horace Blaydon had wreaked slaughter upon the London nest, the Master of London must have made new fledglings …
    I suppose I’d better learn who those are
, she thought as she took her key from the hotel desk, where she had rented a room under another name. Names and initials were the tracks she followed, in tracing vampire property.
He may hold property in their names rather than his own.
With a certain amount of difficulty, owing to the absence of a chambermaid, she changed out of Mrs Grimes’ borrowed frock into a stylish celery-green Patou ensemble, rearranged her hair, applied rice powder, the tiniest whisper of rouge, the faintest traces of mascaro and kohl (not enough to elicit comment from Aunt Isobel) and tried to imagine how she was going to get through the next twenty-four hours.
    It would be that long before she could reasonably expect to receive any information from her operatives. Two or three times that long before James would be home, if he’d been in Venice when her telegraph reached his hotel. To return to Oxford now would only result in being driven frantic by the anxieties and unsolicited suggestions of her servants. But a claim to be ill would at best spread the saga of her indisposition throughout the family (with speculation that the illness was faked to avoid social responsibilities), and at worst bring Aunt Isobel hot-foot to Oxford – sciatica or no sciatica – to bully her into wellness. Isobel’s conviction that Lydia was ‘soft’ on her servants might easily lead to inquiries that could end with the police being called in.
    It would also be useful
, Lydia reflected as she adjusted her hat,
to know if Grippen’s fledglings even know that he’s enlisted me to find this Zahorec, and if they approve, or disapprove, of the participation of the living in their affairs
.
    And if
– she locked the door behind her, started down the dingy stairway –
Grippen has sufficient command over them to keep them from killing me before I locate Miranda and get her to safety.

FOUR
    L uckily, Aunt Isobel was far too self-involved to notice her niece’s pallor or the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. When Lydia came through the door of Halfdene House at noon, the stout, dark-haired little woman whom her uncle had married – enthroned now in a wickerwork bath chair of marvelous design and attended by a footman, her maid, and a harassed-looking Irish nurse – swept down upon her with a list of accessories Emily’s wardrobe would need for her presentation and regaled her, over a luncheon that she didn’t seem to notice Lydia did not touch, with a catalogue of the eligible gentlemen expected to be present at Lady Binney’s masquerade on Saturday night and the net worth of their parents.
    â€˜I’m told Freddy Farnsworth – Lord Varvel’s heir – has two thousand a year settled on him but the family’s worth a good ten thousand … Lawrence Rockland’s a trifle old but the Rocklands have at least a quarter million in the Funds. Your Aunt Lavinnia tells me not to be deceived by the Clifford boy; he’s obliged to hang out for an heiress … What a pity young Colwich got snapped up by that American girl! She has the most frightful accent – if you ask me, nothing can take the place of a good Swiss finishing school …’
    Lydia recalled her own days in a good Swiss finishing school and shuddered. Cousin Emily said nothing, well aware that this commotion had far more