A Taste Of A Vampire

She noticed that Sally was waiting, so she began to serve herself as she spoke. “Sally, how long have you been working here?”

Sally shifted back and forth on her feet. “Well, I’ve been here for about twenty years, milady.”

Claire’s brows went up in surprise. “That’s quite a while.” She realized that being the cook at the estate was Sally’s career, as much of a career as it was, just as her career in New York was what she would do for decades. “Do you enjoy it? Is there anything else that you might like to do?”

It was Sally’s turn then to look a little surprised. “Well, I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it before. I’ve just always done this, and this is what I thought I would always do, at least until I retire, but I’m a long way from that. Probably another twenty or thirty years I’d guess.” She seemed uncertain, and Claire saw her twisting her fingers a little as she held her hands together in front of her waist.

Claire poured herself a cup of coffee and tilted her head slightly. “What about Granger and Fran? How long have they been here?”

“Well, Fran’s been here about ten years, and Granger has been here longer than me. He was here when I got here, though he wasn’t her much longer than me. About three or four years, I think,” Sally answered with a nervous smile.

“Do you know if he is planning on working here until he retires?” Claire asked, beginning to get a much clearer picture of what it was that she had found herself in the middle of.

Sally nodded. “Yes, milady, I believe he was… is… planning on working here until he retires.” She shifted again from one foot to the next, as if there was more that she wanted to ask or say, but instead she glanced at the meal on Claire’s plate.

“Well, I’d best let you get to your breakfast. I’ll have lunch ready for you at noon if you like.” She waited, her hands still clasped tightly together before her.

“Yes, that sounds good. Thank you, Sally. I appreciate it. This is probably going to be the best breakfast I’ve had in ages.” Claire gave her a smile, and the older woman smiled back and then disappeared toward the kitchen.

It was completely strange to Claire to have someone there cooking for her and waiting on her, but she could see that there was an element of pride in it for Sally and for Granger. She hadn’t seen Fran since the day before, but she had noted that same sort of feeling when she’d met her and told her that she could turn down her own bed. It seemed that a life of honorable service in a manor such as Grayson was, was a source of pride for them.

When she had eaten as much as she could while forcing herself not to consider calories or cholesterol, she left the dining room and decided to explore the house and the grounds. She began with the hallway that she knew from the day before. She took more time gazing at the portraits and wondered who each of the people in her family had really been.

In her exploration of the house, she began on the main floor in the grand foyer where she had come into the house the day before. She found a cloak room, a gallery, a music room, a drawing room, a study, a large library with shelves lined with volumes of books that aged further back than she could imagine, a conservatory, a parlor, a billiard room, and the kitchen. Off the kitchen and the hall at one end of the kitchen were the formal dining room, the breakfast nook where she had eaten that morning, a silver polishing room, a larder, a pantry, a butler’s pantry, and a storage room.

From the hallway behind the kitchen she found a door that led downstairs to a fair sized root cellar and an enormous wine cellar lined with rows upon rows of old dusty bottles of wines that reached from the floor to about six feet upward. There were two more storage rooms off of the wine cellar.

She went back up to the main level of the house and headed to the garage. There were three cars in it. One was a vintage car that looked to her as if it might have been from the twenties. There was a Rolls Royce and a Jaguar. She was stunned at the elegance of the cars, and at the pristine garage in which they were all housed. It was an immaculate room, and it was the first garage she had ever been in that didn’t smell like a garage.

Heading up the big winding oak staircase from the grand foyer she began to look around the second floor. She knew that her bedroom was at the far end of one hall, but the second floor held as much mystery for her as the sizable first floor. There were several bedrooms, bathrooms, a few dressing rooms, two sitting rooms, a reading room that was a much smaller library than the big one downstairs, and a few closets.

There was also a door that led upstairs to the attic. It was much less ornate than the house, but there were several rooms that filled almost two thirds of it, and she could see that they must have been servants’ quarters at one time. They were either empty or in use for storage as Claire looked at them. At the end of the hall was a great open space with no walls, and there were several old boxes and trunks and various things stored in the area.

She realized that she had wandered into the long-gone lives of the family members who had come before her. She took her time walking among the various things and storage boxes. She smiled at the old steamer trunks and wondered what might be in them, but didn’t open them as they were mostly stacked on top of each other. She walked the full area of the room before she reached the back corner of it, where light shone in through one window, illuminating the dust and the places where time had passed over and around it all.

There was an ancient looking wooden box there, and on it was engraved the name Elizabeth Grayson. Fascination flooded her and she knelt beside the box and ran her fingers lightly over it. It was as wide as the outward reach of her arms, and it was made of oak. It was as solid as it had been the day that it had been built. There was a simple latch on the front of it and she slipped it open and held her breath as she lifted the cover of the box.

It was on a wooden hinge, and it swung open and back, revealing the interior to her. There was a wedding dress made of old lace, folded carefully and laid to one corner, and there was a small bouquet of dried and crumbled flowers atop it. She knew that if she touched them, they’d probably disintegrate.

There was a small wooden box set atop a leather-bound journal, and she picked up the box and examined it. It was intricately carved with strange designs. They were nothing she had ever seen before, and she examined them with her eyes and her fingertips. The box was smooth and worn, and she could tell that it had been held by someone often, as the oils from skin had softened and darkened it in places. Carefully, she lifted the lid of the box and inside she found a delicate handkerchief with lace edging, and the initials N.R. embroidered onto it. Inside the folded handkerchief, there was a golden ring. It was wide and nearly flat, and was embedded on the top with a dark red ruby that seemed to glow in the warm light that shone through the window near her. The ring looked as if it was older than everything around her, including the house, and as she ran her finger over it, she felt an almost electric shiver go up her spine.