Excerpt of Lady Sybil's Vampire by Ann Lethbridge

June 19, 1811, Carlton House

Royalty, nobility, and England’s most powerful politicians dined cheek by jowl. King in all but name, the Regent gleefully presided over all, smiling and nodding with benevolent majesty at surrounding lesser mortals. Lady Sybil Lofstrom, seated with Lord Orrick and his daughter Caro at the far end of the immense table, scarcely warranted a glance.

And Sybil was content to have it so. The less she was noticed the better. She didn’t even use her title anymore.

The conservatory had been turned into a dining room for the event. Its glass roof and walls reflected light from a myriad of chandeliers and candelabra as did the jewels worn by the attendant ladies and gentlemen. The forty- foot dinner table with its replica of a stream meandering down the middle, amid banks of flowers, sparkled with gold and silver cutlery and epergnes bearing exotic fruit. In short the whole thing was blindingly brilliant and uncomfortably hot.

“Poor old chap is completely mad,” Lord Orrick, her charge’s father, said to his neighbour at the dinner table.

Sybil repressed a shiver. Mad. The word struck at her heart like a knife. Accusations of lunacy, fear of incarceration, were her constant companion. But Lord Orrick was not talking about her, he was talking about poor King George.

“Locked up tight,” Orrick said, nodding. He was a handsome man, an earl and a member of the Prince’s Carleton House set. He employed Sybil as a chaperon for his daughter. If he knew what Sybil saw, he’d be horrified. Likely he’d want her locked up tight too.

She closed her eyes briefly. Better not to think of it.

Say nothing. See nothing. It was her only option. Sybil pushed at the food on her golden plate with her golden fork. What would they say, if they knew what she saw, these lords and ladies up and down the long table? They would shun her, as they had shunned her mother. Shut her away.

“Oh, no, Sybby, do you see it?” Lady Caroline Orrick said over the babble around them.

Sybil’s heart lurched. Her stomach shifted queasily. “Do I see what, Caro?” she murmured quietly. A chaperon never drew attention to herself if she wanted to retain her position.

“Fish. Swimming.” Brown eyes wide, luxurious chestnut curls framing a pretty, heart-shaped face she leaned forward to peer into the water. “Ew. There’s a dead one.” Her charge made the sort of face only a schoolgirl would show to the world.

Fish. Sybil closed her eyes briefly, thankfully. Fish were normal everyday creatures. All she had ever wanted was to be ordinary. Unremarkable. “Keep your voice down,” Sybil whispered in her charge’s ear. Any breach of the young woman’s manners and Sybil would be blamed. Lord Orrick was a good and kind man, but he wanted a good marriage for his daughter and Sybil wanted to prove her worth in that regard. It would stand her in good stead when a new position was required.

Caroline blinked. “Sorry,” she whispered, so low Sybil could scarcely hear her.

Dash it, she’d spoken more sharply than she’d intended. Nerves. “Apology accepted. Remember a lady never squeals or shouts. Normal tones are quite acceptable.”

“It is disgusting to have dead fish in the middle of the table,” Caro said, at a sensible volume.

“Don’t let the Prince Regent hear you.” Lord Orrick muttered from the other side of his daughter. “He is a sensitive sort of chap. Might take a pet.”

Sybil flushed at the implied criticism of her charge’s manners, but Caro didn’t notice. She was too busy trying to catch the eye of the young man on the opposite side of the table. A handsome young fellow in naval uniform. He winked.

Sybil sighed and pretended not to see. A little flirtation for a debutante was harmless enough. As long as it stayed within reasonable bounds.

“Who is the man sitting beside King Louis,” Sybil asked Lord Orrick thinking to improve the tone of their conversation and perhaps distract Caro from the sailor. “The dark, handsome one with the blue sash covered in orders.”

Orrick’s lip curled in disapproval. “Another displaced royal we are supporting to keep safe from Bonaparte. Vlad, King of Mondavia. On his right is Prince David, a cousin or some such, and on his left, Viscompte Dryden, his Ambassador to the Court of King George.”

“Oh my!” Caro said staring. “Kings and Princes. Are we likely to meet them at parties, do you think?”

Orrick gave her a hard look. “Let us hope not. None of them have a feather to fly between them, and Dryden is an absolute disgrace. Not once have I seen him less than half seas over. Not even at the palace. If he is an example of Mondavian manhood, you will do well to avoid them all.”

The information about King Vlad had been in all the newspapers some years before. His father, the King of a small country in the Alps had been brutally murdered in a coup supported by Napoleon Bonaparte. Like the Bourbons from France, the son was exiled in Britain. His dark eyes were full of shadows, but his square jaw showed a determination beyond his youth. But it was not the King and his seated companions at table upon on whom Sybil’s gaze lingered, it was the man standing behind them who held her attention.

A member of the King’s personal guard, she assumed. A darkly handsome bleak-eyed man who seemed of an age with the King. He stood so still in the shadows, so unmoving, he could have been a statue, if it wasn’t for the flash of a diamond when he breathed. While his form seemed solid enough, tall and broad shouldered, the shadows around him shimmered strangely whenever her gaze drifted off him. A horribly familiar sort of shimmer. Surely he was not one of them? An Other.