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GENEVIeVE IN MOURNING

She didn&039;t kno long she should stay on in Ro sure they were dispersed according to his will As executrix, she&039;d have to go to London soon, though she didn&039;t think she would stay there either Once her duties were discharged, her best bet would be to go to a country she didn&039;t associate with him There were still a few corners of the world where she had never lived - Sao; the Pacific NorthWest; Swansea, Wales

The apartment was empty There was a silence in her head where there had been a constant whisper For the first ti lasted only a few days Then carief bit like a trap

Kate was no help The poor girl had gone completely to pieces, and ran off with a war telephone calls that eased the practicalities of interra nephew, hie Edwin Winthrop, who had made the journey across Europe with his coht Charles should have been buried in Westminster Abbey with full state honours Genevieve was unprepared to find Winthrop turned into a handsome, kindly old man who plainly hero-worshipped his just-dead friend, and was stricken by his not-unexpected passing

The funeral was a tiny cerera apparently sincere tributes from the Queen&039;s Household - which had a very long memory - and Sir Winston Churchill There was even a hand-delivered, black-edged card of conventional condolence signed with a thick-nibbed &039;D&039;

She sorted the telegrao into the last of the many packets of papers she was to turn over to Winthrop for the secret archive of the Diogenes Club Araph diaries of Dr John Seward, covering the period between 1885 and 1888 She shuddered, re the discovery of those wax cylinders, the rush through the fog to a tiny room thick with dead blood The Seward papers would be sealed for centuries The open presence of the very long-lived in the world meant that files which would once have been shut up for a scant hundred years were now sub rosa perhaps forever

Charles had beenwas in order She didn&039;t really need to go through the papers, but this was the last of hi for herself If only raphs on duty and sacrifice, the need to shuck one&039;s individual humanity in the service of huht thean account of an aerial battle, she deduced that the pages were froraphy of Manfred, Frieherr von Richthofen, vampire air ace of the First World War She wondered who&039;d written them, and how they&039;d come to be of interest to Charles Winthrop had been involved in the destruction of the so-called Bloody Red Baron, she knew Doubtless, the archivists of the Diogenes Club would knohich puzzle to put these odd pieces

There was hly sensitive ood deal of the secret history of the twentieth century She found scribbled notes, in Charles&039;s handwriting, for Edward VIII&039;s abdication speech That had been aVictor in 1922, no vampire had sat on the throne of Great Britain, but Edward&039;s fiancee, Mrs Wallis Simpson, intended that they should both turn and rule the country in perpetuity Evidently, it was Charles who&039;d inforally dead, and the rule of succession would be invoked

It was an ido vampire was equivalent to death Lord Ruthven, Prime Minister then as noas forced to renounce his title and buy it back at great cost from an impoverished collateral descendant Elders who styled themselves &039;Count&039; or &039;Baron&039; were quietly levelled to &039;Mr&039; at Dover or Heathroard and Wallis, nosferatu together, ruled over their estates in Bermuda, and a oman sat on the throne of Great Britain

She would have read on, picking through secrets, but her appetite was glutted Every note she found froe It was as if he had escaped froo, she was prepared to kill Penelope to prevent her forcing the Dark Kiss on Charles Now she wanted to dig out her own heart for failing to turn hinised that as a selfish i to want someone you loved to live forever?

Charles hadn&039;t wanted to die But he had accepted death

Had she had enough of life? When she was born, feomen lived past their twenties She had lived so far past How much future could she bear?

Since Sputnik, rew up It was likely, if Earth survived the next hundred years without nuclear self-iht be an option for her, a wonder-journey to Jupiter and beyond She had read an article by Arthur C Clarke in Tih to be stable, would be ideal for long-haul space flights, h to undertake voyages that enerations There were even ways round the probleht had started with the question of whether she should leave Ro of leaving the Solar System Hoould she look in one of those Dale Arden numbers from the funny papers, with a fishbowl helmet and a transparent leotard? Real spacesuits looked less like harem outfits