Enraptured

1801

Amesbury, England

Local folk in the unruly English countryside sealed themselves inside at night for good reason. The sharp, odd winds carried past the ancient henges a phantom with them, a greater threat than highwaymen and wild beasts.

Those twilight hours cast over the nearby Salisbury Cathedral an unease for which heavy slumber was meant, yet there was a rare few that seldom managed it. Sister Augustine was one of them. Someone, she always said, had to keep the vigil candles lit.

Then, after the stretch of one long night, her faith amended the saying to include that it had been God’s will all along.

The other nuns lacked this conviction regarding the muslin cloth-wrapped infant left in front of the abbey’s door; thankfully, the abbess agreed with Sister Augustine that they couldn’t leave a child to the wolves. Even if –

The baby was christened Cadia, after the Greek word for peace. By grace would the child need it.

She was not a pretty girl, at least at first. But she became most devout under Augustine’s tutelage, and just short of her sixteenth year, was noted to have developed an ethereal comeliness.

The girl’s visage, naturally beset with luscious black curls, an olive-sheened complexion, and eyes as grey as the mist that enveloped the henges, however, meant that it was time for society’s chance to claim her.

“Could I return?” Cadia asked, a nervous quaver in her throat.

Sister Augustine’s smiling face tightened. “Listen to the Lord’s will, child, and not your own.”

Cadia nodded, her grey eyes wide. Distractedly, she fingered the tips of her long white gloves.

“And keep those on,” the nun instructed.

Cadia had been informed of her curious condition on her fifth feast day, when she first began demonstrating a willful streak and a strong disliking for the soft prisons around her hands and arms.

So young Cadia was dispatched by carriage to Suffolk. No possessions in hand, not even her Bible, was allowed. She didn’t understand it, not even when she finally arrived to Roslyn Grove. A pale man in a suit emerged from the shadows of a cherry tree. “You are Cadia?”

She stared. The corners of his mouth were pinned back by teeth with sharp points. She handed him a set of documents.

“Lovely,” smiled the man. Then he read the papers. A scowl descended upon his face, making him look monstrous. “Is this some sort of joke?” he demanded.

Cadia knew immediately what he meant.

“T’is no joke, sir,” she said softly. “I am cursed and cannot be touched.”

The man seemed aghast. “Well, then how do -.”

“You mustn’t,” a new voice emerged from a woman stepping out of the manor.

“Cadia, how lovely to meet you. I am the Lady Clara.” She had an arresting countenance, a form dressed in as much shining silk as it took to cover the vulnerable parts of her translucent flesh. Cadia forced herself to meet Lady Clara’s glassy blue eyes. “Yes, I can see why the nuns sent you this way. No use keeping such a fair face locked in a convent,” she smiled, her teeth pointed, albeit more subtly than Lady Clara’s servant. She broke away her gaze to say to the man, “Cadia is to be trained as my new lady’s maid, Albert.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the servant replied, still looking as though he’d been force-fed a toad.

Lady Clara returned her attention to Cadia. “Now, I need to know something before you step into this house: The letter sent to me does not specify what will happen if someone comes into any physical contact with you?”

Cadia felt like the air had been taken out of her lungs. She’d never had to explain this before, at least not on her own. Sister Augustine had explained to her the note that was pinned to her swaddling clothes all those years ago.

This child is a changeling. She is cursed, and must be purified by fire.

“Well?” prompted Lady Clara impatiently.

Cadia swallowed. “Anyone who touches me shall die.”

She wasn’t certain why she’d immediately expected to be returned to the nuns with this revelation. But it was one she now realized she’d been hoping for. Instead, Lady Clara stared at her appraisingly. When she was done, she smiled again, the sight turning the girl’s face cold. “Well, then, Cadia. Welcome to our coven.”

***

7 years later

Balls at Roslyn Grove were not for the faint of heart. Mortal attendees were bound legally to not relay the happenings there, and in return received benefits from the Roslyn family that included their weight in gold, a generous selection of livestock, and one special favor granted. This seemed excessive to the unassuming villagers, yet the Roslyns were aware of the risks in hosting such events. The coven’s most elite vampires kept the regulations enforced, which in turn prevented bloodbaths from occurring.

At the age of two-and-twenty, Cadia’s initial fear of these galas had subsided into a wistful energy, as it meant much work to be done for a world she still had no place in. Lord Fredric often joked good-naturedly about an eventuality of turning her into one of them once she’d passed a test to prove her worthiness. One thing of which Cadia was certain was that the test was not mopping several years’ worth of blood off the dance floor.

Of course, she would have made the perfect subjugate at the very least. Her ebony tresses and faint golden skin paired together with her grey eyes to create an enchanting countenance that every vampire wanted to consume. They were always disgusted to learn that she couldn’t be touched. Her old-fashioned, skin-veiling attire and elbow length gloves laid open invitation for mockery.

It wouldn’t do to dwell on such matters. Cadia swept and mopped, polished and shined. Every surface in the manor twinkled and sparkled before she moved on to the diamond chandelier.

She was choking on the dust shaken loose from the ceiling when she heard a familiar voice at the foot of her ladder say brightly, “The house is impeccable, Cadia. Go and take your supper.”

She turned her head and looked down, a silly grin on her mouth and a giddiness rising in her heart. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Fredric shrugged. “You can’t do everything by yourself.”

“Can too.”

“True,” he amended quickly. “But you shouldn’t have to.”

With a grimace, Cadia made her way down the ladder. “Your mother would kill me.”

Fredric grinned in return. “Let her try.”

Of course, Fredric would dine in a few hours, when the doors to Roslyn Grove opened and people eager to trade their blood for wealth came ambling in. For now, he kept Cadia company in the servants' quarters, appearing discomfited while she ate the scraps of seared steak in front of him.

“I had no idea,” he said quietly at last. “I should inform my mother of your meager rations. It’s the least we can do.”

“Please don’t. Your mother thinks I’m already more trouble than I’m worth.” Lady Clara’s regrets in hiring an inedible lady’s maid had become apparent over the years. Cadia had begun to suspect she was only there so that the lady of the house could impress the High Coven with her hospitality and the considerable restraint on her household.

Then Fredric said, in a contemplative tone, “I don’t know. You’re worth a great deal.”

“Fredric,” she whispered, forgetting his title.

If only she could touch him, she’d kiss him there, in the kitchen, with the taste of burnt meat in her mouth and smudges of dirt on her face…

“Cady…” he began, and sighed. “I am to marry Miss Helena Fortescue.”

“Of course,” she breathed, then in full horror comprehended his words. “Your mother’s choice?” she choked.

He gave a slow nod. “I have none of my own.” And he withdrew from the table, from the kitchen. Before she could utter any further response, he was gone.

Cadia never harbored illusions of herself and Fredric being together. Yet, it was ironic that she herself kept all the family’s secrets, and had never received gold, nor horses, nor even a simple favor in return. She was a maid, and her best possible situation was that she always would be a maid.

***

As someone who kept inside all that was silent and closed at Roslyn Grove, Cadia often forgot herself during the witching hours. Lady Clara, not wanting to risk endangering her guests before it was time to feast on them, always dismissed Cadia on the evening before a ball. Surrounded in the fragments of shadows and moonlight, the young woman lay in her bedroom, lost somewhere deep in between prayer and sleep. She awoke to the sounds of stifled shrieks and something hitting the wall.

Making a face, Cadia fumbled with cold fingers for a match in the dark. It was one thing for the guests to be cavorting about in the manor, but this was her room. When the match was struck against the candle wick, the golden glow immersing the bedroom illuminated two heaving figures pinned to the wall. The woman had loose, dark red hair, with long bare limbs wrapped tightly around a man’s hips. He thrusted into her with his trousers partially dropped to his knees, bouncing her noisily, wildly. The screams of pleasure she emitted left Cadia frozen in mortification. Then she saw the woman’s shining eyes, her gleaming fangs. Her blood-covered face face. “Oh, please sir,” Miss Fortescue cried, while his movements quickened his lovemaking with urgency. “Oh Fredric yes, more, more!”

A shell-shocked Cadia’s only thought was a silent no. It stayed in her mind like a pest taking more space than it needed, and it was there as she fled through the ballroom, stunning onlookers including vampires and subjugates alike.

She heard Lady Clara shriek her name in fury, but it didn’t matter. What mattered is that a line had been crossed. Their world had broken into her one place of refuge. She couldn’t go back.

Roslyn Park wasn’t very big. It had the typical hedges, a marble fountain…a trail…

It led into the road. If she could find someone willing to take her away, let her find work as somebody else’s maid, then she’d be rid of this entrapment. These monsters…

But instead, her knight in shining armor riding up to her on horseback was another vampire.

“You can’t escape whilst drawing attention like that,” Mr. Rhys Winter said, despite sounding indifferent.

“Stay away,” she snapped, continuing to trudge forward.

“His lordship will be concerned about you.”

“Oh, that he is! Of course, he is too busy fornicating with his fiancée in my bedroom to chase after me himself!”

Rhys looked bemused. “Lady Helena Fortescue? Yes, I imagine he must have mixed copious amounts of wine into his cups. We all have our ways of celebrating arranged marriages.”

Cadia shot him a withering glare. “You were banned from this property. For, what was it again? Inappropriate attachment towards a person of higher station?” 

Mr. Winter scowled, sweeping his limbs off his horse’s saddle and landing quietly on the grass. “So they say.”

Cadia offered a glance, downcast in sudden guilt. Rhys may have been a distant cousin of Fredric’s, but for some reason Lady Clara had deemed him worthy of ostracization. “Rhys, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is, Miss Cadia. Perhaps you could do me a good turn someday.”

No. He’d asked for a kiss once before. He knew she couldn’t. He still had a chance for his own happiness, didn’t he? He wasn’t like her. There was no reason for him to die.

She’d known him ever since she first came to Roslyn Park. Fredric, Rhys, and herself…for a short, blissful time they had been inseparable.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Stop,” he whispered. “If I have already lost you...I don’t…”

“Lost me?”

“Can’t you see? I am yours. To do with as you will.”

Words that had never been said to her before now sung to her heart.

And before she could stop him, Rhys’s lips pressed against hers, turning fear and horror into a rush of heat and desire. She withdrew at once, petrified she’d killed him.

He stood there unharmed, the only thing dying was the hope in his eyes.

She stepped back in awe. “How…?” she said softly.

Then Rhys kissed her again, accidentally knocking her down onto the grass. He lay on the ground, facing her. “I love you,” he whispered.

She placed a finger on his lips, then paused. Startled, she gently lifted his lip to bare his fangs. They instead ran smooth and flat, like an ordinary man’s.

“I have a theory,” he told her, voice ever so gentle.

“What?” she murmured back, noticing for the first time the color in his skin gaining a healthy tint.

“I saw it once, the letter provided by my aunt. The nuns who raised you said that they’d been ordered to burn you. Instead they baptized you. In the waters of a well blessed by a Catholic saint. Then to hide the consequences, they covered you up, should you ever learn what you could do.”

“What I can do?”

He bit his lip, curious. “If you were infused with holy water, you would be able to heal the sick. Perhaps even raise the dead.”

“Cure a vampire,” realized Cadia, feeling cold again. Rhys held her close, offering his warmth. As she lay in his arms, she pinched off her gloves and turned to hold his face with her palms.

“I shall never hide again,” she breathed.

THE END