Chapter 26

Part 1

Giuseppe Salvatore had waited for the thirty minutes my transformation had required. When I descended the spiral staircase, I could see his eyes gape at my appearance. If Katherine was sporting a similar gown, he must not have seen her before she left for the ball.

"You look absolutely stunning tonight, Miss Pierce. It will be my honor to escort you to the ball," he concluded with a small smile while extending his elbow. Perhaps my non-reaction to the vervain-laced drink was having an impact on his attitude.

"Thank you, Mister Salvatore," I responded with a small smile of my own before lightly resting my left hand on his arm.

He quickly led me out to the waiting carriage. Two servants sat up front on the driver's platform and two more were standing on a small platform extending across the back behind the enclosed passenger compartment. All four men were armed; obviously Giuseppe was taking my story of trouble seriously.

As I climbed the two short steps, I couldn't help but glance over to where I knew Caroline, Harry, and Lester were hidden. I didn't see anything, but gave a small nod. Things were moving forward as best as we could hope under the circumstances. Of course, the others didn't yet know this was the night of the Founders' Party where everything involving the vampires would come to a head, unless Caroline guessed from my current attire. But connecting with Stefan at the party was my responsibility; their number one priority was simply not to get caught.

As the carriage began to move and I looked at Stefan's father as he carefully avoided looking at me more than etiquette allowed, I knew my charade as Katherine wasn't over, but barely beginning.

Part 2

It was a short, ten minute ride to reach the Lockwood estate, where the party was being held.

I climbed down from the carriage with extreme care; wearing a broad hoop skirt without it either flipping up or becoming permanently deformed must take a lot of practice. The only time I had worn a dress remotely like this before had been while on the float during the Founders' Day parade. But that dress hadn't required a corset like this one to get into. The stays were digging so deeply into my sides it felt difficult to breathe. Maybe only an undead vampire had the strength to resist the crushing force of the corset and had the ability to not breathe it seemed to demand.

Okay, the dress did have one benefit. It had deep hidden pockets that extended down within the surrounding hoops. The EMD gun, the vampire compass, and my phone all were concealed without any unsightly bulges a more contemporary, formfitting gown would display. But I'm not sure it was a fair trade. Given a choice between this dress and being more comfortable even if it meant forgoing the devices, I think I would have taken my chances without them. But if I was to travel among the people at the Ball unnoticed, this dress was my only choice.

Giuseppe handed me out of the carriage and into the hands of the liveried butler waiting outside the Lockwood mansion.

As I reached the ground, I paused a moment to look around. Except for torches and lanterns replacing the electric lights, the Lockwood house looked remarkably the same as it had on the similar night, eighteen months earlier from my perspective, when Caroline and I had been part of that year's Mystic Falls Founders' Day Pageant.

I looked up into the stoic eyes of the Lockwood head butler. If he had seen another version of me arrive earlier in a blue gown rather than this green one, he made no comment.

"Miss Pierce, Mister Salvatore, the orchestra is set up in the ballroom. Refreshments are being served in the garden behind the house," stated the butler.

"Very good, George," responded Giuseppe. "Would you happen to know where my sons are?"

George's eyes briefly flicked in my direction before answering, "I believe Master Damon is in the ballroom. I haven't seen Master Stefan recently."

I wondered if he was tempted to say Stefan was already somewhere with me, but had the good graces not to mention the impossibility of my being in two places at one time.

"Thank you, George. Miss Pierce, may I escort you in?" said Giuseppe while once again offering his elbow.

"Thank you, sir," I said while wondering how I could ditch him before we ran straight into Katherine.

We climbed the six broad steps and then proceeded into the entry hall. A pair of maids took Giuseppe's top hat and overcoat and my wrap. I couldn't help but notice how Stefan's father's eyes were drawn to my exposed cleavage before he forced himself to look away. I suddenly began to understand part of Katherine's power in this age where she probably dressed like this a lot. These dresses would certainly attract a lot more attention than my usual casual attire of jeans and a tee shirt, or at least when my tee wasn't so damp as to be effectively transparent.

We had barely turned in the direction from which I could hear the music, when another elegantly dressed middle-aged man stepped forward.

"Giuseppe, I'm glad you have finally arrived. Before you join the festivities, I was wondering if you could join me, Jonathan, William, and a few others in the drawing room? We have several matters we need to discuss."

"Of course, Benjamin," Giuseppe replied before turning to me. "Miss Pierce, is it okay if I leave you here? Or I can escort you into the ballroom first."

"No, it's fine. I'm sure you men have important things to discuss. I can find my way alone." I was certain they were about to hold a final coordination meeting before striking against the vampires. I wondered how my drinking the vervain without any problem would impact their plan. And if my ancestor, Jonathan Gilbert were to hold his hundred fifty year younger version of the device in my pocket near me, it also would give the impression Katherine wasn't a vampire. But since Katherine never ended up trapped in the tomb under the church, it probably wouldn't make a difference anyway.

After a quick bow in my direction, the two men headed down the main hallway at a brisk pace. They entered the third door on the left while all the music seemed to be coming from a pair of open doors on the right side of the hallway.

I followed in their wake at a more sedate pace. Once the door closed behind them, I discreetly pulled out my vampire compass. Pulling the stem once to activate it, the needle quickly settled in the direction straight ahead where I could see a pair of doors leading into the back garden. As I approached the entrance to the ballroom, the needle started jittering between two locations, straight ahead towards the back garden and a second location off to one side, but still further back in the house than the ballroom. I wondered about it for a moment, but then I remembered Pearl and Anna should be here for the pageant. Since it didn't give a single flick towards the ballroom and since I wasn't ready to run into any of these vampires – particularly Katherine, I turned and passed through the double doors to my right. Perhaps if I was lucky Stefan might be here rather than with Katherine out back, not that I had seemed to have had much luck since passing through the first anomaly. Then I couldn't suppress a quick grin as I imagined telling Stefan about the loss of his beloved Porsche and then having to explain what a Porsche was thirty years before cars were even invented.

The ballroom was filled with more light than any room I had seen since arriving here in 1864. Two large chandeliers blazed with nearly fifty candles each. A dozen wall sconces sported another six candles each. Six large mirrors lined the two longest walls adding their own reflected light. The room was utterly enchanting, assuming you could ignore the resultant cloud of smoke gathering up near the ceiling. And that wasn't the only kind of smoke. Men were smoking cigars and pipes. The haze made my eyes begin to water almost as soon as I stepped into the room. I found myself wishing for the anti-public smoking laws from back home.

As I walked into the room a dance was in progress. Having been brought up as a member of one of the founding families, I had been required to take classical waltz classes the whole time I was growing up. I knew the Virginia Reel, the Lancer's Quadrille, and a few others, but I suddenly realized I barely recognized half the dance steps these people were doing. What if I had to dance? Was I going to make a complete fool of myself? And I simply knew Katherine would be an excellent dancer. Would I be tripped up in my attempt to impersonate her by a simple thing like a dance move?

I quickly skirted along the wall heading in the direction of a large group of women congregated at the room's far end. Hopefully, I could blend in with these others until I spotted Stefan or Damon. Now, as I focused my attention more on the people than the décor, it quickly began to sink in that there weren't just a predominance of women in the knot I had spotted at the far end of the room, but a predominance of women everywhere. I saw perhaps a dozen boys in the fourteen to sixteen range, a dozen men in the forty-plus category, but only five men in between and three of them were in uniform. That's when I remembered the war. Obviously, almost all the upper class young men of Mystic Falls were off fighting for the Confederate Army.

At least it made Damon easier to spot. Like all the twenty-something men and most of the younger boys and older men, he was out on the dance floor. The current dance had them swapping partners to left and right so that it was impossible to tell which one was his. All I knew for certain was that of the twenty-four women on the dance floor, none of them were Katherine.

I reached the far end of the room, where most of the women were standing, but still found myself alone. All the women moved away leaving me standing on the edge of the dance floor with an almost eight foot gap like I was contagious or something. Had Katherine managed to alienate all the other women in town? Or did her vampire aura intimidate them? Either way, it left me fully exposed, and I couldn't have been in the room for over two minutes when I knew Damon had spotted me. He gave a distinct nod of his head and I knew he would be over as soon as this dance ended.

As I let my gaze wander the room, I spotted a group of four young women and what had to be their mothers entering through a different door than the one I had used from the main corridor. The girls were all wearing white gowns and I realized they had to be the ones participating in the pageant. It took me a moment to spot the vampire Anna; she looked so much younger than the version who would date Jeremy one hundred fifty years into the future. I knew Anna had been turned at the age of fourteen, and she certainly looked it at the moment. But then this one had been living with her mother her whole life while the one I had known had been on her own for a century and a half – that certainly would change little things like attitude and body language even if the vampire's physical appearance didn't alter.

For a moment I considered moving over to talk with her, as she was the only one in the room I knew besides Damon. But then I remembered talking to her would risk revealing I wasn't Katherine. And who knew how she would respond. Just because she had a tiny, almost waif-like appearance, didn't mean she wasn't a powerful, dangerous vampire.

I was studying her from across the room so intently; it took me a moment to realize the current dance had ended. Before I could react or figure out what to say, Damon came striding up to me looking extremely dashing in his old fashioned tuxedo.

End of Chapter 26

Author's Note:

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Have a great day!

Duane