Chapter Two: The Corinthian
"How did you persuade Klaus to bring you here?" Kol whipped up his horses and set off smartly in the direction of Hyde Park. Rebekah rolled her eyes. She knew he wouldn't have offered her a place without an ulterior motive, but she'd hoped he had learned at least a little subtlety.
"If you're asking what he's up to, I have no idea, beyond the usual find the Petrova Double, try and get his curse lifted et cetera, et cetera. I am glad he will have Elijah to boss around, I for one am sick of the name Katherine Pierce. Everywhere I go, 'oh I am so desperate to find my deeeear friend Katherine Pierce'." Her voice had taken on an affectedly girlish tone and Kol looked at her in some distress.
"Never do that voice again," he told her. "You sound like a trollop!"
"At least I do not smell like a groom!" She retorted at once. "You stink, Kol, how can you bear it?"
"I've not been to bed yet," he admitted, a bland smile remaining on his features. "And I came straight from Cribb's parlour!"
"Who is Cribb and why have you been in his parlour?" She edged to the farthest point on the seat from him, her scent too acute to cope with the smell of his sweat, dirt and blood too. Well, knowing her brother it was unlikely to be his blood!
"Welcome to London, little sister! Cribb is an old boxer, he runs a gin parlour. Where all the pugilists gather before we go on to Jackson's, a boxing club."
"Finn's Saffron would be delighted!" She said with a shadow of sarcasm.
"Oh no women allowed!" Kol grinned. "Women are for stitching, music, drawing and dancing. You picked the wrong century to come to London. If you'd been here a hundred years ago you could have slutted your way-"
"Shut up, Kol!"
The houses and shops flashed by. He drove with a skill and speed that would have been unnerving to an easily frightened young woman, but to his sister, his immortal sister, the speed was just her brother's way of showing off.
"Anyway," she added, "if anyone's the slut in our family, it's you!"
"I prefer 'philanderer'."
"And I prefer Nick!"
"Why's he here now, Rebekah?"
"I don't know!" She snapped, twisting her head round so quickly she had to hold up a hand to make sure the pins keeping her elegant hat on her head hadn't slipped even the tiniest bit. "Mikael's gone to India. We set him a false trail, he sailed two weeks ago from Marseilles. It's safe for the months it takes him to get there and get back. He wanted us to all be together for a while, that's all I know, and frankly, now that I've spent a few minutes back in your company, brother, I'm at a loss to know why he came too."
"Oh don't pout!" He wheeled them into the road that encircled the park and slowed his horses to a trot. "Let's hope Father sinks! It'll take him twice as long to walk back!"
Kol drove her decorously enough around the park, introducing her here and there to those hostesses for whom his handsome face was enough to gain him interest despite his rough, notorious ways. A few expressed surprise at Beau Michaels having a sister, and Kol hid the annoyance he always felt when his brothers' were praised or judged above himself. He always hid it, but as ever, Rebekah spotted the wound and was quick to rub vervain in it, metaphorically speaking.
"Poor Kol! Trying to make a cut in society and all they want is Elijah!"
"You'll get sick of it soon enough when girls are pretending to be your friends just to get close to him!" He retorted.
"You say that as though it's something new! Don't you remember how the Petrova cow used to make time to sit and talk to me and show an interest? Or She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?"
"Rose?"
"Exactly! She was always there being friendly right before Elijah showed up! And then the surprise as if she hadn't know he was about to come into the room or get back from a hunt! How do we feed here? All these tender family memories are making me hungry!"
"Not in Hyde Park," he admitted. "You're probably going to have to do a lot of compelling. You'd be amazed what chorus girls and ballerinas will let you do just for money!"
"Don't be vulgar, Kol!"
"Don't be a prude, Rebekah!"
Walking back from the museum, Klaus and Elijah talked of London fashions, of the people Klaus would have to know and approach with conciliation and those he could afford to pull off his tricks with as Elijah knew he would not go long without them. They had almost reached St James' street, where the clubs were and where they had met that morning, before Klaus brought up what they were pointedly not talking about.
"So, no sign of Katarina? Or our little traitors?"
"None," Elijah admitted. "I was sure she would not stay away from London with the fashion here so strong and so many impressionable, rich young men to influence." The bitterness tasted ill on his tongue, but he had long given up trying to reason with Niklaus about Katarina's good points. And the bitterness was not all against himself, he had never quite forgiven her for showing him how selfish Klaus had become, or how blindly loyal Elijah had allowed himself to be. His heart still twitched though, a splinter of regret and remorse for the beautiful, light creature they had between them destroyed.
"That's all right, brother, I forgive you," Niklaus replied, digging his hands into deep pockets. "Listen, I'm on the trail of a witch who might be able to help me. I need your help getting close to her. Dorothea de Lieven told me about her."
"The Countess?"
"How many Dorothea de Lievens do you know who run fashionable London, Elijah? You're fretting. I can tell, brother, you've got that thoughtful crease between your eyebrows and you're not saying anything."
"I don't know what you mean, Niklaus," Elijah stopped, and turned a bland, smooth face towards him, one eyebrow beginning to rise as Klaus smirked, his lips pursing in amusement.
"You know, I liked your hair longer, brother! Such a shame how fashions change!" He took a few steps onward before Elijah followed, knowing now to carefully school his features, that his brother would not miss anything, that despite his apparent unconcern, Niklaus was watching him closely.
"What is the name of your witch?" Elijah asked simply, nodding and smiling to a friend who had doffed a beaver hat on the other side of the street.
"Brummell," Klaus answered, his voice gaining the distant edge it always accented when his curse seemed to be closer to being lifted. "George Brummell."
"Well," Elijah's eyes flared ever so slightly, for him a huge shift and reaction, "that is a name I did not expect."
Elijah was not alone again until he was dressing in his appartments, preparing to go out to dinner and then on to Lady Sefton's ball. He had not seen Vera since that morning, had only been able to send her a note of warning. He stood in shirt and waistcoat, pantaloons and shining shoes, and stared at his own reflection. He remembered a time before mirrors of this quality, the blurred, mottled face that would stare back at you. The trouble with these mirrors, excellent as they were for dressing, was that they revealed far too much.
Staring at his own reflection, he began to tie his heavily starched neckcloth and ignored his own dark, forboding eyes. He had intended to go to the ball, talk to his friends, dance with Vera, deign to dance with one or two other fashionable beauties, play some cards and then go to the club for a few hours before heading to Vera's home and spending another few hours touching her perfect, supple skin, watching the blood blush beneath his fingertips, and the soft sound of her breathing grow harsher.
Now he would probably spend the early hours listening to Niklaus reminisce.
Klaus had dressed quickly, with less precision or eye to neatness but with perfect propriety, and then he had gone to Brook Street, where he arrived in time for Vera to feel compelled to join her. She was beautiful, he knew his brother had taste, and her long, dark hair, curling and waving when not tied into intricate curls as it was now, was enough like Tatia and Katarina's to explain why Elijah liked her.
"I thought we might hunt together, Vera," Klaus said, his voice charmingly low-pitched and with the quiet roaring quality of a candle flame in a breeze.
"Hunt? In a society in which women invariably wear white to balls?" Vera stepped away from him. He was by no means a tall man but he topped her by a head, and she knew he was strong, could compel her, and could have no innocent reason in coming to her. She rang the bell-pulley, and when her maidservant entered, eyes wide with anticipation, she brought the girl forwards and began to unbutton her sleeves and roll them up.
"This is Beau Michael's brother, Abigail," Vera told her. She looked directly at Klaus. "You need not fear him. Please, you are my guest."
Klaus smiled as if amused by something more than her generosity, and came forward, taking the girl's arm and breathing hot against her skin, eyes teasing as the veins beneath them throbbed into relief, lips grazing as his teeth sank deep. Vera sighed inwardly, knowing that Elijah would want her to play her role and be a good hostess and not stir up trouble with his brother, knowing too that he would never take her side over that of Klaus, but wishing he had not come into her home.
Frowning, she stepped forward and put a hand on Klaus' shoulder.
"That's enough," she insisted.
"Now, now, Vera," he looked up at her, teeth dark with blood as he grinned. "No need to be greedy!"
"Release her!" Vera pushed on the shoulder. Klaus straightened and once more she was looking up at him. "Abigail, you may go. I will heal you later."
"He bit the artery, miss," the girl said, her voice weak. Vera turned to her as she stumbled down onto one knee, blood staining her apron and wetting her black maid's dress. "I...I might faint-"
"Leave her," Klaus grabbed Vera's arm as she moved to the girl. "You offered her to me, now you can see what comes of not setting conditions."
"Have you no honour?" She responded, her italian voice rising in strength, twisting to try and get free from his grip.
"Wrong brother," he mocked. "Stop wriggling."
"Let go of me!" She wrenched backwards, and then he twisted, and a loud crack sounded as her arm broke, the bone puncturing the skin. Crying out, Vera too fell to her knees, just as the maid Abigail slumped sideways.
"Now, I know you think you and Elijah are going to settle down and raise a brood of very serious, no doubt boring vampire minions together," he twisted, and tears started from her eyes. "But I'm here now." He smiled, tilting his head, and as she looked up through tears his smile deepened, drawing the dimples in his cheeks that gave him a cherubic look. "Friendly warning, Vera. Back off my brother. If you kiss him one more time, Vera, with your hot," he paused, lingering over the word, "italian passion..." he knelt next to her, and she felt her heart thud into her stomach as she felt the power of his compulsion take root in her soul.
"Then the next time you are at the theatre or the opera, you will wait until the interval, and then throw yourself from your box, and break your neck. In front of all society, for all the Polite World to see. Do you understand?"
"If I kiss him," the heat of her tears was equal to the heat of the blood that seeped from her arm, "I throw myself from my box."
"Good girl. And one other thing," he drew a crisp white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, and she heard Abigail stop breathing, "don't tell Elijah I've talked to you, or warn him directly about this compulsion. You'll just have to persuade him the hard way."