A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick Read Free Book Online

weren’t you?’
    ‘Everything about you is surprising,’ I said. ‘A single girl, all the way from America, studying for a PhD at the Sorbonne.’
    ‘Who said I was single?’
    That threw me but I tried not to let it show.
    ‘Is Anton your . . . ?’
    She smiled.
    ‘No, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my patron .’
    She used the French pronunciation.
    Now I did look surprised.
    ‘Your patron?’
    ‘Yes, how do you think I look after myself here?’
    ‘I didn’t think about it,’ I said, truthfully. ‘Rich parents, perhaps?’
    ‘Yes, I have rich parents. Rich parents who wanted me to marry the first officer they could set me up with, and who did not permit me to come to Europe to study what I wanted to study.’
    ‘So you came anyway?’ I asked. ‘I’m impressed.’
    ‘The folks weren’t. I’m the first Fisher not to behave herself. They cut me off.’
    She looked me right in the eye, daring me to pity her. I didn’t know how to respond, so changed the subject slightly.
    ‘And Anton? How did you meet him? You don’t just look up patrons in the phone book.’
    Her wide mouth spread even wider with her smile and I decided I liked it. The noise and bustle of the café couldn’t compete with Marian’s presence, which had captivated me.
    ‘No,’ she said, nodding. ‘I had some money of my own. Rich parents . . . And so I had about a year. I worked as well, in the evenings. In bars, like this one. My French was OK. It got better quickly. And then about six months ago, just when things were looking bad and I was thinking I might have to go back home cap in hand, I met Anton.’
    I tried to sound as relaxed as I could.
    ‘Who is he?’
    Could she hear my heart thumping hard in my chest? I thought the whole bar should be able to hear. She didn’t notice.
    ‘Anton? He’s a very rich man, who likes to support the arts, so he says. We met in a bar I was working in, not far from here, in the fall. He’s a count, sort of . . .’
    ‘A count,’ I said. ‘Sort of?’
    ‘A margrave, actually. That’s a kind of count, isn’t it? I’m not sure.’
    I shook my head.
    ‘I don’t know. I think so.’
    ‘The Margrave Verovkin!’ she declared, like a little girl, suddenly. ‘My Estonian count!’
    I wanted to ignore the possessive pronoun and picked up on something else.
    ‘Estonian?’
    ‘Yes. I had to look that up. It’s part of the Soviet Union, or it is now, anyway, on the Baltic Sea. He said he lived in exile as a boy with his family, in Austria, I think, and then in Switzerland when the war broke out. After the war he moved to Saint-Germain and took over a ruined palace. A small one, on the edge of the park.’
    ‘So . . . he didn’t fight?’
    The man I had seen had been in uniform, some kind of uniform anyway. Maybe he’d been an officer. For a moment I was distracted, but Marian was still answering me.
    ‘He’s a count!’ she said. ‘Counts don’t fight. Do they?’
    She looked puzzled and very comical, and I laughed.
    ‘No, I suppose not. And he’s paying for you to finish your studies?’
    ‘Yes, he is, and don’t think I’m some charity case. I’m teaching him English in return. He’s not bad but he gets simple things wrong still. That’s where I’ve been today.’
    ‘And what does he do? In that office?’
    ‘My, you really were spying on him, weren’t you?’
    She looked at me fiercely and I was about to defend myself when she smiled, and I knew she was playing with me again.
    ‘He’s a doctor. Of an amazing kind. He’s studied oriental philosophy and medicine for many years, and is a great thinker. He’s adapting some of his findings and applying them to a new medical science he’s creating.’
    I said nothing. I had put this together with the words I’d seen on the brass plaque. Verovkin, Sciences de l’Orient ancien .
    ‘You’re a doctor, too?’
    ‘Of sorts. A haematologist.’
    ‘Yes, you said. So you won’t buy any of this I’m telling you. But