Part 50 (2/2)

”Very well,” I said. I supposed there was no hurry. Lady Caroline was not going to get any more dead than she was already.

We went to a bagnio toward which he felt a particular fondness, and soon he had his arms around a pair of scantily dressed beauties. The proprietress of the establishment appeared astonished to see him alive and healed in his face, but my father dismissed her questions. Rumors of his death were false, and his face was recovered. He then disappeared to a room with his two girls, and left me alone at a table with a bottle of wine and a healthy dose of regret.

I had no interest in the beauties employed within those walls, for my heart and my mind were absorbed with Lady Caroline, lying cold and dead somewhere, waiting for me to come to her. A foolish romp with a stranger had no charms to offer me. But as I continued to drink the very indifferent wine, and as I grew increasingly inebriated, it became difficult to fend off the advances of the charmers who sought my attention.

At last I determined I could hardly be blamed for seeking comfort and release, and so I followed a fair-haired creature called Julia to a private room.There, in the near-darkness, broken only a single flickering candle, she began to kiss me, and for a moment I forgot my troubles and, to a lesser extent, the fact that Julia smelled most distressingly of other men.

This lovely oblivion lasted but a moment, for soon the door burst open with a terrifying crash, and I jumped back, prepared to explain the misunderstanding. Of course, there was none.This was not some middling man's wife or daughter, but a wh.o.r.e, and I had no need to explain my actions.

However, it was no angered spouse come into the room, but my father. He was drunk and staggering, and held a bottle of wine loosely by its neck. He gestured at me with it, and its contents sloshed out upon the floor.

”You like this one, do you?” ”Well enough,” I said. ”A bit rank, but I'm not inclined to fuss.”

”Then I'll have her,” he said.

I opened my mouth to object but thought better of it. My conflict was not with my father. He was, again, alive, and no doubt that conflict would be coming, but until Sir Albert was dealt with, I was best served by staying out of my father's way.

”Very well,” I said. I moved toward the door.

”No.” With his free hand, he shoved me hard. I staggered backward but did not fall. ”You watch.You watch me do what you cannot.”

”I could,” I said. ”I simply choose not to. I also choose not to witness your intimate moments.”

”You've spent so much time among these mincing danglers, you've come to speak like one. Now you watch how a real man takes a woman, and you sit there like the eunuch you are. You do what I say, or I leave you to your problems. Maybe I'll even stick a knife in your back, like you never had the guts to do to me. A hammer to the face, indeed. A real man takes his weapon and thrusts it in, as I'm about to demonstrate.”

There was no point in objecting. There was no point in refusing. I would indulge my father for the few hours it was necessary to indulge him, and then I would consider my next moves. And so I stayed. I shall spare the reader any more details of this scene. I am forever scarred by it. There is no reason you should be, too.

When he had taken his fill of drink and women and humiliating his only child, my father and I sat in a private room of the bagnio to discuss my situation. He leaned back in his chair, fire behind him, a mug of beer in his hand, and closed his eyes at the pleasure of it all.

”Swiving wh.o.r.es beats the p.i.s.s out of being dead,” he told me. ”So tell me. How exactly did you, of all people, learn to raise the dead?”

”There was a book. I found it among your possessions, in fact.”

He narrowed his eyes. ”I think I know the one. I always wanted to keep it, and I never could tell why. Figures though, don't it? The only worthwhile thing you've ever done, and you got it from me.”

I sighed. ”You had the power to do worthwhile things, and you never knew it. I hardly think that is something worth bragging about.”

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