Unveiled (Part 1 of 2) Phèdre having run its course, it was refreshing to Marguerite to have the silly humor of that satire, The Mikado. Gifted with a fine voice as well as acting abilities, she had been cast as Yum-Yum, the female lead. Every evening she would don the uncomfortable black wig and the rice powder. She wondered if Japanese women actually dressed like this, if they wore this much paint, if their kimonos were so burdensome as this. When she viewed herself in the mirror, she was much changed. Beneath the paint and wig she barely knew herself. She wondered if her audience would recognize her.
But recognize her they inevitably did. She was fast becoming a favorite in the theatres, heading toward the title of prima donna. And yet she had still not chosen a patron. Tonight this perturbed her as she sang her silly lines, becoming a comedienne when last she was a tragic figure. She had been receiving offers, gifts, and she accepted them, but she never gave a definite answer. She found herself relieved when she returned to the solitude of her dressing room, shutting out the sickening multitudes.
She sat down at her great vanity, leaving her maid to take care of her admirers. She liked to look at herself, though not, as one might think, for vanity's sake. She liked to see how the makeup changed her, how the costuming made her someone else. She stared at her reflection, wondering what it would be like were she one of those famed geishas, serving tea and sake in small glasses and entertaining dignitaries. She flipped open the fan prop she had. It was screened with a dragon. She peered out over it, fluttering her eyelashes in a coy, silly way. Like a girl, she made faces at herself for an unspeakable amount of time.
The performance was marvelous, or so John thought. The costuming, the song and dance, the music... All of it was bright and exotic, invoking images of the Orient, though the satire poked fun at the British Empire. On the first occasion, he purchased a ticket on a lark, wanting to see Marguerite on stage. He, unlike so many admirers, had been unfamiliar with her reputation prior to meeting the courtesan, so he was curious as to her talents outside the bed chamber.
With his dark jacket and black hair, he blended into the audience, knuckle pressing to his mouth as he took in the show. She was quite accomplished. All of the madness that Marguerite kept on a short leash, she somehow reigned in during performances. He laughed at the funny parts, applauded when the moment called for it. Afterwards, he hung back in the theatre and watched, bemused, as suitors lingered in the slight hope of capturing her attention.
That was that. Or so, that should've been that. But John found himself attending a second night, and a third. Soon, he knew Marguerite's lines, and found that entire acts passed before he noticed the performers with whom she shared the stage. Resigned to his long-standing trait of cultivating modest obsessions with women, he gave in to the impulse to see her.
Waiting until the maid was preoccupied, he slipped past the throng and walked down the corridor to her dressing room. John tried the door. It was unlocked. Without so much as a knock, he slipped inside. "Either you are expecting someone or you're careless. If the former, allow me to interrupt. If the latter... it is to my good fortune." He held the knob behind him.
Marguerite positively jumped, unsettling the stool upon which she was sitting. She blinked a few times at the figure before her. She had almost forgotten him. She had, after all, been very busy of late, what with rehearsals, performances, singing lessons and the like. Her wig was askew on her head from the jarring motion, but she stood erect, proud as a queen.
"You go too far, monsieur," she said quietly, her voice somewhat chilly. And yet she could not help but remember their first and last meeting and all that it had entailed. She turned away, arranging one of the many bouquets which she had received. "You are well, I hope? I did not expect to see you so...soon." And yet it had been, if she calculated correctly, over a month since she had seen him last. It was quite eerie that he should appear to her again in this way. "I suspect you watched the performance. Was it to your taste?"
The vase before her consisted of black roses, known to be her favorite. She idly scanned the card, carelessly tossed it aside, then took her time inhaling the fragrance. Then she set to arranging the flowers to her satisfaction, though in truth she paid little heed to the action, just needed something to do.
Ooof! That was not the welcome a man wanted upon entering a lady's dressing room. "Such a lukewarm reception!" Pretending to be wounded, John put a hand to his chest, but he kept a pleasant look on his face. At least she hadn't slapped his cheek and ordered him into the hallway. He reminded himself that Marguerite had not liked him on first sight at the art gallery, either, and that she prickled at what she considered to be liberties taken. The ice in her greeting might thaw with a bit of conversation.
"Do not worry, Madame. I only wanted offer my congratulations in person, and what were the chances your maid would have given me a proper introduction?" He approached, but kept a respectful distance, looking at the roses instead of Marguerite as he drew alongside her. "These are lovely." He touched a black flower. One got the feeling that when he looked at the petals, he saw something else.
Beneath the harsh makeup, a somewhat reluctant smile softened her face. It was a moment before her eyes finally met his. "I pray you will forgive me," she said softly, returning her gaze to the flowers. "I have found myself rather melancholy of late, though I do not know why. It eats at the heart sometimes. I am flattered that you took the liberty of seeing me tonight." She knew nothing of his other ventures into the theatre. She pulled one of the roses from the vase, using her own fingers to prune it to her liking. Though she had pricked herself to bleeding, she carefully slid the flower into the buttonhole of the gentleman's jacket.
The blood welled up from her finger into a little bubble. She watched with fascination for a second, then pressed it to his lips, slowly painting them with it. "Do you remember?" she whispered, letting the stem of the rose fall to the floor. She felt her fangs elongate behind her lips, the sight of her artistry bringing to the surface the hunger which was always ever present.
"Of course." With seemingly no cause for it -- at least, none that John could glean -- a light came on within Marguerite. He was fascinated by the swift changes in her demeanor; she was two women at once, perhaps three or four, and she slipped from character with all the ease of removing a costume. He took a loose hold of her wrist and held her thumb to the light. "You have injured yourself." He brought her thumb into his mouth and enveloped the tip, sucking on the small cut. Tonight, she tasted different, and he supposed it was a matter of her last meal taken.
Afterwards, his tongue ran along his lips, wiping away the blood. Moving off to inspect the accoutrement of her dressing room, he offered, "Surely a courtesan is not compelled to make apologies."
"Oh," Marguerite replied, finally removing the burdensome wig. "I am never compelled to anything. Not since I was twelve. And that was years before you were born." She carefully placed the wig into a box designed for it. The thing was far heavier than it looked. And so was the kimono she was wearing.
At this point, the maid, Harriet, entered the room. When her gaze met the figure of the gentleman, well, she knew what was what and curtsied, her apologies profuse. Marguerite laughed indulgently. She was always kind to her servants--it made things easier that way, she found. Bestowing on the young woman a box of chocolates given her by some suitor or another, she dismissed her for the evening. When the door closed, she began unpinning her hair, the bright curls falling in waves past her shoulders. She turned back toward her guest.
"Forgive me," she said with feigned modesty. "Circumstance bids me make you useful. Now that Harriet is gone, I am afraid I am quite helpless." She gestured to her garments, quite complicated to remove on her own. "Please. We can talk while we finish this dreadful task." She came to him then, standing before him then turning, that he might untie that tremendous bow at her back.
"You have kept yourself busy these past few weeks, I expect?" She kicked off her sandals, allowing them to fly across the floor, one after the other.
John hesitated. His fingers toyed with the russet fabric of the bow. It matched her hair. With women like Madame Larousse, there was always a game afoot, its rules as constant as the weather. "There have been several opportunities for amusement." The silk trailed over his forearm as he untied it. "Do you know, a hypnotist was able to persuade me that I fancied my friend? I should not have given in so easily to the dare of a bar maid. I think I only expected to hop on one foot and bark like a dog." John unwound the wrapper from her waist and cast it on a chair. "I also saw a werewolf rip a girl limb from limb on Whites Row."
"How unfortunate," Marguerite said, unwrapping the kimono. Beneath it, she wore a sort of collared shift. It was thick and unflattering. She hung the kimono in a smallish wardrobe which sat in a corner of the room. She then took a sponge to a basin of water and began scrubbing her face. Little by little, her own unnatural pallor replaced the artificial one of the rice powder. As she scrubbed at her face, making her cheeks pink, she continued her idle chatter.
"I am not sure which is worse, wanting to sodomize one's comrade or watching a painful and rather disgusting death." The paint was coming off more easily since she had grown accustomed to removing it. In a few more scrubs she was herself again. She patted her face with a towel and lounged on her chaise, inviting him to sit on the space upon which she had not sprawled out. "You do seem to get into interesting adventures, do you not? This maid, I assume she was pretty? I daresay you would not have been so easily swayed were she not." She was looking at the ceiling with a dreamy expression on her face, idly plucking at the cotton of the shift.
John imagined sitting beside her on the little chaise, pivoting so that his knees might touch hers, staring in rapt adoration at her profile like an ordinary suitor. He promptly decided that was not in his best interests. Instead, he drew her vanity stool closer and perched opposite the courtesan. He laced his fingers on his lap. His knees were akimbo. "For the record, sodomy did not enter my mind. It was more of an insatiable urge to nuzzle." He smiled. "And Mary is her name. She is an attractive woman, but I'm sure you know I value her other amiable qualities."
The vampire's thumbs circled one another, keeping a lazy rhythm that mirrored the pattern of his thoughts. "And what of you? Have you had the pleasure of exploring the rest of the city? I imagine rehearsals occupy most of your time."
"I am, alas, a prisoner of the theatre," she said, covering her face with her arm dramatically. "I have had little time for more pleasant endeavors. These days I spend most of my time looking for nourishment or for a patron--or both. Though I am courted often, I find I have little luck. Some German Baron sent me a necklace of diamonds and rubies, proclaiming it did little justice to my, ah, how did he put it? Yes, my 'pyromantic locks.'" She threw back her head and laughed at the absurdity of it all. Men and their pathetic attempts at poetry. But she suddenly sat erect, her emerald eyes focusing intently on her visitor.
"They all want what you have already so easily obtained." She changed her position on the chaise, now reclining, her limbs relaxed in a state of languor. As she turned her head, waves of her hair fell over her cheek, obscuring half of her face. "A night with the courtesan. Fleshly favors, wanton caresses, and other, more perverse things, I know. How came I to be had by you? Surely I must have been inebriated with something that night." Her smile was slow, seductive, even.
John palmed his knees and leaned forward. "Are you suggesting I muddied your sensibilities?" He cocked his head, and a tangle of black curls fell on his eye, which looked more hooded than usual in the dim dressing room. "Yes, I think you are." One of his fingers tapped at his knee cap while he reflected on the conclusion. "Astonishing! Do you suffer from a poor memory, or do you really think so little of my charms?"
What did Marguerite hope for? A demonstration that she could either encourage or rebuff, depending upon her mood? Even more likely, encourage and then rebuff, when she was satisfied that he wanted her? Of course he did, as many men did. Often, he wore his heart (or at least his libido) on his sleeve for a woman, for however long his affections lasted. Ah, but for this one...
John exhaled and looked at her from another angle.
He had sent a poem. He had lurked at repeat performances of the same opera, simply to watch her perform, and he had sneaked into her dressing room. But would he stand before her and list his better qualities when she already knew them? Try to convince her that she had not been inebriated when she invited him into her bed? And for what, the hope of capturing her admittedly casual favor? John knew it earned nothing beyond the moment.
"Oh, it is a great pity," Marguerite murmured, suddenly solemn. She rose from her place on the chaise and opened a drawer in the wardrobe. From there she obtained a medium-sized box, not too heavy or lugubrious. Nor was it ornate. It was merely made of copper and engraved with some simplistic designs. She set it on her dressing table and pulled a chain from her neck, beneath her shift. Wordlessly, she used the key on the chain to unlock the little chest, but she did not open it. She set the key aside then lifted the box, bringing it over to him. She carefully placed it on his lap, returning to her place on the chaise, though she sat erect this time, a look almost of torment.
The contents of the box, she knew well. She had gone over them during the past few weeks, and it had become something of a nightmare to her that they even existed. Five letters, no more, no less, each written with a different voice, a varying degree of sentiment. One read like a courtly romance, with the writer as the knight addressing the unattainable object of her affections. Another spoke of mundane things, merely hinting at affection. And yet another was written as though in a fit of madness, the sentences scarcely discernible in the short, scribbled handwriting. The fourth was tearful, admitting to the writer's distress in the knowledge that she and the beloved could not be together because of her dark profession. The final was irate, barbed, poisonous, spouting bitter words at having been made another's rather than being her own, as she was used to. All were addressed to him.
"Open it," she whispered, her eyes widening like a small child awaiting a harsh punishment.
Given that introduction, John half-expected to find a human head or a heart or some poor chap's testicles. He held the box and looked at the papers. Each was politely folded, unsealed and untied, inviting him to read, which he did in sequence. The papers were feather-light, but seemed to weigh a pound a piece, as if the ink had been burdened with the author's chaotic thoughts. Adding to that was the knowledge of her eyes boring into him, like a student of literature awaiting a professor's praise or criticism. When he finished the letters, John had come to a conclusion about Marguerite Larousse.
The woman was mad as a Lorrie.
He took up the indiscernible one and set the rest on the floor. He read it again, its thought fragments, partial sentences, and frustrated questions. It was the poetry of an addled and obsessive mind. Of all the letters, this was the one to which John related. He held it between middle and forefinger. "I think this is my favorite. It is the most honest." He folded the paper and tucked it inside his coat pocket. I will sit and follow her lead, he thought. She is dangerous when I take control from her. Indeed, if he went by her angry letter, any gesture on John's behalf and Marguerite might pull a stake from a cushion.
He sat forward. "I have lost sleep remembering your teeth in my thigh."
She could not believe herself. This could not be happening. Indeed, she could not remember in her life the last time it happened, but so it was. She was blushing, the blood rushing through her face and warming the cold veins. Like some affected schoolgirl, she was blushing! She bowed her head, hoping her hair would cover and obscure it, and knelt on the floor, picking up the letters and replacing them in the box. She rose and locked the box again, slipping the key chain over her neck again. She returned the box to the wardrobe as though nothing had happened. It was only then that she returned to her seat and that she began to speak again.
"Lost sleep?" she asked, as though waking from a daze. She felt uncomfortably vulnerable now that she had exposed her terrible secret. "Surely such things do not frighten you to keep you up at night. I would imagine you would be well used to them by now. And worse, perhaps." She carefully bit her lip, making sure not to puncture it with her elongated canines. She wondered if indeed she had somehow frightened him, though he had seemed to be enjoying it dreadfully at the time. For some reason this thought did not entice her as it would have done otherwise. She found herself so often trapped in her mind that it was rare that she could escape to see situations from all angles.
"Frightened?" John laughed. He coughed in an attempt to cover it, putting a fist to his mouth. He shook his head. "I'm afraid you mistake my meaning, Marguerite. My reaction was quite the opposite." The memory of her pointed, white teeth cutting into his thigh evoked such physical responses that the ache kept him awake at night. Well, the ache and the knowledge of the courtesan's home address. Of course, it would have been terrible to arrive there and be refused entry, or worse... Find that another man was in her bed, because then John would have to picture that man on the receiving end of those perfect fangs.
He scratched the dark stubble on his cheek. A thought occurred to him. "Did you not receive my letter?"
"Your letter?" she asked, confused. She had not recalled any such thing. She rose again and rifled through some papers which she had taken with her from home. She scarcely had time to read anything over the past few weeks, and so she kept her mail in her dressing room, hoping to find some small moment to read it. Most had been the usual fodder: declarations of admiration, bills for dressmakers and the like, invitations to boring soirees. And there, somehow in the middle of it all, she found his own rather neat handwriting. She glanced up at him, then scanned the note. She then carefully folded it and pulled a book off a small shelf. It was a volume of Keats. She opened it and slid the letter inside, then replaced it on the shelf. Then she did something peculiar--for her. She slipped to her knees and settled her head on his lap.
"I am afraid you are mistaken about Keats," she said lowly. She was looking into space, her mind quite elsewhere for a moment. Then it sharpened again. "Though," she joked, "I saw Lord Byron once. If ever a peacock became man, it was he!"
John tilted his head. He touched her, one hand burying in her hair, the other trailing up and down Marguerite's arm. "And thou art dead, as young and fair as aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare..." His voice was lazy and gentle in the quiet of the room. He slipped a finger into her sleeveless shift. It tickled at the flesh between her shoulder and breast. "Too soon returned to Earth." Lord Byron may have been a peacock, but his talents at description warranted ego. John saw the words of the great poets come to life in Marguerite, when words failed him. He lifted a lock of her hair to his face. The ends fanned his nose and mouth. He closed his eyes. His teeth strained against his gums.
She was settled thus, her head in his lap, quite relaxed. It conjured the image of a mythical beast miraculously tamed. She was still, her eyes closing for a moment, and silent. For a few minutes it almost seemed as though she had fallen asleep, lulled by his gentle caresses. But then she shifted, rising up on her knees and sliding between his own parted legs. She looked up at him, her eyes odd and glistening. Her hands slid beneath his jacket, feeling the planes of his body through the thin fabric of his shirt, her hands alighting on the thicker material of his waistcoat as well. Her eyes met his and she grasped his hand, simultaneously tilting her head, the hair sliding back, baring her neck.
"'Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,'" she quoted softly, "'Most gracious singer of high poems!...And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor; For hand of thine? And canst thou think or bear; To let thy music drop here unaware; In folds of golden fullness at my door? Look up and see the casement broken in; The bats and owlets builders in the roof!'" She remembered reading Barrett-Browning years ago, and her Sonnets had never seemed so relevant as now.
John leaned forward on the stool. His palm cupped the courtesan's face, and he watched her from close. As unfettered as her mind, Marguerite was soft and sweet-smelling and fine. And oh, what talents had she, on stage and in the privacy of a dressing room. Even with his learning and upbringing, and the respectability of his former profession, John felt coarse by comparison. His messy thatch of black hair, an un-stylish length. His clothes, often wrinkled from the night before. His jaw, dark and rough with a new beard. His eyes, unfocused at the best of times.
"My cricket chirps against thy mandolin," he mused. He lowered his mouth to her neck and kissed a bluish vein. "Still, you should not taunt me with what I'm not permitted to have. Even boorish men such as myself deserve pity."
Marguerite lowered her translucent lashes, her heart racing in spite of herself. She gently turned over his hand, baring the wrist. Her lips barely brushed it, feathering sweetly over it. It took her a moment to gather herself together and speak again. "You are the only one I will permit to have this." She pressed herself closer to him still, her belly flush against his now taut muscles. She craned her neck a little more, insistent. She wanted to feel the light-headedness of being drained. She returned her lips to his wrist, her tongue flicking out in delicate laps, much in the fashion of a bathing kitten.
Perhaps she wanted to feel as she had when she was first taken by that stranger, when first she was slowly drained of blood. Or perhaps it was the only love token she thought worthy of him. She really couldn't say at the moment. Either way, she was doing something she thought she'd never do--she was humbling herself before him, proud courtesan as she was. She felt the pulse of him beneath her lips. She nuzzled it against her cheek. It was so tempting to take his wrist to her mouth now and draw from it. But she took a great effort of the will and refrained.
Wanting to suspend the moment, John placed his rough chin on her neck. He stroked it against her, liking the gritty sound and the smell of her hair surrounding his nose. He wondered, why him? The courtesan was fickle, a consummate actress. Might she take back the pronouncement in an hour's time? Laugh at it? But he was impulsive, too, and as long as she pressed herself onto his mouth in such a way, it mattered little whether she'd do so again. He was interested in gratification.
He cradled her lower back. Soon, the gentle touch evaporated and his teeth punctured, his mouth and tongue worked at her vein. As he drank more, he grew restless. John's legs tightened around her ribs. His short fingernails scratched through her shift. He hooked a thumb into Marguerite's mouth and cut it on her teeth.
She gasped as his teeth sank into her pliant flesh, her eyes rolling back as though she were experiencing the numinous, the spiritual, the metaphysical. It was natural for her to suckle on the digit with which he so generously supplied her. It was primal, this exchange of blood, so basic and almost feral. Yet at the same time, it transcended other, baser acts. It was to her something of the highest order.
She was taken back to her two births: In suckling from him she felt the comfort and safety at being at her mother's breast--something which she could not remember, but yet could feel. Simultaneously she was transported to the night when he took her life, drinking deeply of her before making the change. It was a new birth. Was this, then, a third birth for her?
She drank deeply of him for what seemed like hours, though it had probably been no more than a few moments. She drew away from his hand, unable at the moment to release herself from his grasp, and unwilling. She let him finish. She would not worry about losing too much blood. She could easily procure some from a more than willing participant. She closed her eyes for a while before finally speaking, her voice a low murmur. "Will you come to my bed tonight? I want..." She trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished, but the meaning was quite clear.
John withdrew his fangs. He kissed the dipping flesh at her temple. "Do you think I could deny you anything?" At the moment, he couldn't imagine declining such an offer, not with his stomach full and his head swimming. The small of her back fascinated him, how it subtly arched under his palm. He rubbed it in circles. "No," he shook his head, "I could not."
He questioned himself. If not a traditional romance, what was this? Not a simple attraction or thirst. He knew vampires enthralled humans with their blood, and that a siring bond was powerful. Could two vampires feel such a connection by sharing blood between them? Or was it infatuation, the sort that burned itself out in a month?
"How much time do you require?" He ran his fingers into her hair, twisting it up and away from the courtesan's neck. His knuckle traced his swollen bite mark. Let her say within the hour, thought John, No more than two. I cannot stand the wait. Already, he pictured himself pacing beneath her window. His shoes would wear a path in the stones.
She rose slowly from her place on the floor, slinking up his body as she did so, in an enticing fashion. But she soon managed to slither out of his grasp, a clever serpent. She pulled a (relatively) simple dress off of a chair and took it with her behind the dressing screen which was installed at the opposite side of the room. She pulled her shift over her head and set to work. It would be of no use to corset herself or do anything too complicated, as she would be removing the clothes within the hour. So she merely slipped on the bare minimum, ignoring even the bustle cage. It was interesting to her how the dress felt at the same time too tight and too loose, since she had discarded the necessities. But the ride would be short. She popped out from behind the screen in quick time. She didn't like spending too much time on wardrobe unless the situation called for it.
"Will you kindly give me an hour and a half at the most? There are certain things which must be attended to." Her eyes were gleaming with mischief, and she picked up her hat as well as the bag of necessities which she carried with her to and from the theatre, heading toward the door. She turned one final time. "I assume you know where I live." With that, she slipped out of the door and hurried to find a cab. Her queues of admirers had dwindled dramatically, but she still had to wave off one or two heartsick gentlemen who were seated, stricken with love, in various parts of the hall. But after this it was no difficult task to launch herself into a cab and then out, toward her home.