At the doorway to the salon I heard the sound of girlish laughter and I paused, my mind racing back to that disconcerting moment when I had stumbled upon Matty the evening before. I had seen her with blood running down her chin and she had begged me not to tell anybody. She couldn’t help it, she had confessed. Was it too improbable to believe that she had been bitten by a vampire and had become one of them? Darcy had been so amused by my stories of vampires that I hadn’t even mentioned Matty to him. I suppose it did sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t experienced it personally. I would have thought it ridiculous myself if it hadn’t happened to me. My nightly visitation could be explained by a case of mixed-up rooms, but then a normal room-hopper would not need to climb up walls—let’s face it, would not be able to climb up walls. And where could an outsider have come from with the pass closed and no habitation nearer than that inn, and snow too deep to walk through? I am normally a sensible person, I told myself, but the things I had witnessed defied rational explanation.

I took a deep breath, opened the door and went in. Matty rose from the sofa near the fire and came to meet me. “My dear Georgie,” she said. “Are you well? I was worried when nobody had seen you this morning.”

She looked and sounded completely normal, but she was wearing a scarf around her neck that would hide any bite marks.

“I’m quite well, thank you,” I said. “Darcy O’Mara and I went for a little walk.”

“Nicky’s groomsman? Ah, so that’s where your interests lie. Poor Siegfried, he’ll be devastated.”

That’s when I remembered that I had actually not discouraged Siegfried the night before. Oh, no, Siegfried didn’t really think I had changed my mind, did he?

“Of course, you’re lucky,” she said. “Nobody would mind whom you married. It wouldn’t make any difference to world peace.”

“My sister-in-law is keen for me to make the right match, and I think the queen expects me to cement ties with the right family,” I said.

“It’s such a bore being royal, isn’t it?” She slipped her arm through mine and led me over to the other young women at the fire. “I’m really becoming convinced that communism is a good idea. Or maybe America has it right—choose a new leader every four years, from among the people.”

“America maybe,” I said, “but look at the mess in Russia. Communism doesn’t seem to have made life for the ordinary people better there.”