Verse of the Vampyre Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself. It appeared that she and Lady Vee were enjoying one of their periodic truces.
    “Sorry I’m late,” she apologized to the group, most of whom she already knew. “The road through the woods is starting to flood.” She shrugged out of her raincoat, draping it with the others over a stage prop coffin.
    “You’re not the problem,” Lord Ruthven muttered, glancing at his watch again. “Derrick is the problem. Where the devil is he?”
    Someone volunteered having seen Derrick at the pub, and the director’s face grew grimmer.
    A rummage sale’s worth of chairs in a variety of shapes and styles was spread around the brightly lit stage. Grace pulled a peeling captain’s chair next to Roy Blade, who said out of the side of his mouth, “You haven’t missed much,” in his disconcertingly cultured voice.
    With his long dark hair, eye patch and collection of ornate tattoos, Roy Blade looked like a biker, which he was. He did not look like a librarian, but he was that, too, as well as another expert on poets of the Romantic age. Given the presence of two equally opinionated scholars, Grace wondered if she hadn’t been brought in as tiebreaker.
    Lady Vee, perched on a claw-footed monstrosity that looked vaguely like a throne, articulated around her foot-long ivory cigarette holder. “Grace, I have suggested to the group that Byron’s Manfred would be a more suitable project than Polidori’s The Vampyre .”
    The sighs, mutters and rustlings from the rest of the group spoke volumes, though no one said anything. Roy’s big hands, the backs embellished in the black scrollwork of tattoos, kneaded his thigh muscles as though he were restraining himself from strangling somebody.
    No wonder there was tension in the air, Grace thought. “Uh…” she began. Uh-oh was more like it.
    “It’s too bloody late,” Catriona exclaimed, rising to her feet. With a dark look at Grace, she whirled and strode down the stage.
    “Catriona!” Lord Ruthven’s tone cut across the startled silence.
    What’s that look for? Grace wondered. How is this my fault? Lady Vee was a law unto herself. Grace wasn’t encouraging her.
    “Well, we did vote on this,” she tried to point out reasonably.
    “Thank you, Susan B. Anthony,” Catriona commented from downstage.
    “What’s her problem?” Lady Ives murmured.
    Wife of the local baronet and MFH, Theresa Ives was the county equivalent of the traditional CEO trophy wife: blond, blue-eyed and—years Sir Gerald’s junior—built to last. As befitted the queen of the horsey set, her laugh was high and whinnying like a pony’s.
    “Vote?” Lady Vee repeated as though the word were foreign to her. “How many here are qualified to vote on this subject?”
    More rumblings. Grace had a feeling the Innisdale Players were a hairsbreadth from turning into the Innisdale Lynch Mob.
    The side door to the theater banged open again, and Derek Derrick struggled to shut it against the rain. A blast of storm-scented air wafted up the aisle. Grace shivered.
    “Christ! It’s a hurricane out there!” Derrick made his way through the rows of chairs and vaulted onto the stage. “Were you waiting for me? You didn’t have to do that!” He offered his white and practiced grin, unfazed by Lord Ruthven’s glower.
    “We’re not rehearsing,” Theresa informed him. “Lady Venetia has found another problem. This time it’s the entire play.” Derrick dropped beside her and squeezed her shoulder sympathetically. Grace tried not to notice that familiar gesture.
    “It is not as though rehearsals had really progressed,” the devil in the blue dress said defensively.
    “How can they progress when you’re raising an objection every step of the way?” Catriona stalked back across the stage in their direction.
    For the first time, and probably because of her chance encounter with the moving-van man, Grace noticed that Catriona’s voice had the faintest trace of a Scottish burr.
    Grace replayed the voice