chapter 2

He had spent much of his adult life bitterly watching other men, less capable and hardworking than him, be promoted ahead of him at work. He had sat in mute resignation at dinner parties while Mina's silly friends mocked and undermined him. He had thought that he would never achieve the things he desired or command the respect that he deserved. Dracula made him see that these things were true only because he believed them to be true and in believing them he made them so.

The remoteness of Count Dracula's Castle, far from the bustling streets of London that he was so accustomed to, had given him plenty of time and space for reflection on his life. His thoughts turned not only inwardly upon himself but to his marriage as well. When they had first met Mina had  seemed to him so thrillingly unconventional, her thoughts so refreshingly original. She loved him just as he was and didn't seem to care that he was just a poor clerk. And that had been enough. But as he matured and his ambitions grew, he began to see her in a different light. He couldn't help but wish she could be more like other wives. He wished she would take more care over her appearance, to make the effort to be pretty and pleasing. He wished she knew when to be quiet and how to be charming rather than always talking of obscure things and intruding into the affairs of men. He wished she was like other wives who doted on and supported their husbands but she always seemed so wrapped up in her own affairs.

Meanwhile, Mina stood in the kitchen frowning as she struggled to recall the instructions that Agnes had given her. She had sent the maid away early so that she and Jonathan could be alone together. Besides, Jonathan had not grown up with servants and he was uneasy in her presence, always accusing her of getting underfoot or listening in to their conversations at doorways.

She had asked Agnes to prepare Jonathan's favourite, beef Wellington. In theory Mina only had to put it in the oven but as she looked at the burnished gold crust cleverly decorated with leaves that the maid had cut from pastry, she wondered how one was supposed to tell if the meat inside was cooked or not. She sighed. She just wanted everything to be perfect for Jonathan's homecoming and already she felt that she had failed.

She supposed it wouldn't do any harm to cut it open and check, she was sure it would be fine to just put it back in the oven if it wasn't ready yet. As she tried to carve into the beef Wellington she was startled by the sound of floorboards creaking overhead and the knife slipped in her hand, slicing into her finger. Without thinking, she drew her finger to her mouth to stop the bleeding, the taste of her own iron rich blood on her tongue.

She should be used to blood by now but the sight of her own blood never failed to make her feel light headed. She looked down and the grizzly scene before her made her feel even more faint: the meat still so red and raw that the blood was seeping into the pastry.

"You ought to be more careful," she heard Jonathan's voice say cooly from the doorway.

She turned to him, a thick droplet of blood rolling down her finger and splashing onto her white apron.

"Jonathan... the noise - it startled me. I suppose I'm not used to there being anyone else in the house."

He took her trembling hand in his and applied pressure with a clean towel to stop the bleeding. She tried to apologise but he shushed her gently. He cupped her face in his palm and stroked her cheek.

"Look at the mess you're making of yourself," he said, kissing her tenderly on the lips.

He sat her down to clean up the cut and wrap it in a bandage. "See, everything is all better now."

When they sat down to dinner, Mina could not shake the nagging feeling that all was not right between them. She had thought that they would have so much to say to each other after six months apart but she found herself forcing conversation while his answers to her questions had a strangely stiff and cold formality, much like the letters he had sent her in his final months in Romania. Eventually she let the silence settle uneasily between them, the dining room so profoundly quiet that she could hear the snowflakes brushing against the windows, gentle as the beating of moth wings.

Jonathan barely touched the food on his plate. He looked down dully at the huge portion Mina had served him, vaguely he recalled that it was a meal that he once enjoyed but he found no savour in each bite. Everything seemed somehow colourless and flavourless, dull as a black and white rendering of real life.

Even when he looked at his smiling wife sitting across from him, he felt only the absence of the emotions he knew he should feel. He had always found it so adorable the way her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. There were many nights in Dracula's Castle when he thought of kissing her, the pads of his thumbs resting in those sweet little indentations but now all he could think of was how they emphasised how plump and well fed her cheeks looked.

It had almost been a relief to find her in the kitchen as he had. The rush of her blood, the feeling of her life pulsing in his hands, the urgency of her fear had pulled him out of this queer etherised haize for a moment. Now he felt himself sinking again, he barely noticed as Mina's smiles turned to frowns.

The only thing that brought his attention back to the room was a fly buzzing around the table. There was something reptilian or amphibious about the way his eyes darted after it and then he snatched the fly out of the air with a speed and suddenness that startled Mina. He opened his palm and looked down at the stunned creature buzzing and bumbling on his palm. His mouth twitched slightly as he plucked its thick, black body up between his thumb and forefinger and crushed it.

He looked up to find Mina staring at him. "Why do you blush and startle so when you look at me, Mina? Do you not know me? Am I not still your Jonny?"

"Of course," she said. "It's just... I suppose we need a little time to get used to each other again."

"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose we've both changed."

"I've just been here all this time," she said. "Waiting for you."

She knew well what he was insinuating. Of course he would notice how much her figure had filled out since he saw her last.
She had been naive to think that he wouldn't notice and more naive still to think that maybe it simply wouldn't matter.

"I suppose I have been spending a lot more time assisting Dr Helsing with his research," she admitted. "Perhaps I should spend more time outside the laboratory and the library and get some exercise."

It was true that she had been more absorbed in her work than ever while Jonathan had been away but, while she could busy her mind during the day, it was her body that craved him at night. She missed the weight of his body upon hers. She missed his heart beating against hers. She missed the feeling of him inside her.

She supposed that she started eating more at first out of boredom or for comfort but soon it became was for the hedonistoc of it. The taste brought her pleasure but more delicious was the sensation of a full belly. The feeling of being stretched to the limit. The soothing strokes of her fingers over her sensitive, taut flesh to relieve the pressure. She knew that her lack of restraint was having disastrous consequences for her waistline, that she had to get her weight back under control before Jonathan's return but somehow she found herself powerless to stop. Perhaps he would believe that her expanding figure was the result of long hours spent studiously hunched over heavy, scientific tomes but deep down she knew that she had been greedy, she had been indulgent and downright decadent.

"Actually, I have some good news about your work with Dr Helsing," Jonathan said. His demeanour suddenly brightened, a smile pulled his thin, pale lips taut.

"Oh...?"

"It looks like I will be promoted because of my work with Count Dracula," he said. "It will be more responsibility, of course. But more money too - a lot more money. You wouldn't have to work anymore."

"You know working with Dr Helsing isn't just about the money," she said.

Mina was fourteen when her parents passed away. It had all been so sudden, her life had changed as if in an instant and she had to accept that her life would be very different from those of her friends. There were few respectable options for an educated girl in her position. She had chosen nursing but was wholly unprepared for the reality that confronted her: the sight of blood and viscera, the putrid smell of rotting flesh, the cries of pain

"You don't hear the way they speak of him," Jonathan said grimly. "They say he performs ungodly acts on the dead. They say that he deals with murderers and grave robbers, that the bodies he dissects did not die natural deaths."

"Of course I know what people say about him, I'm not a child. All that "Dr Death" nonsense. I just didn't think you were fool enough to believe such horror stories and silly superstitions. Or to care what other people think."

"No, you are not a child, Mina. But are you really so naive to think that the opinions of others do not matter?"

"So the progress of science should stop for the foolish gossiping of idle tongues?" She demanded.

She tried to keep the emotion from her voice but she could feel the tears pricking at her eyes. She felt once more like that sad orphan girl alone and cast adrift in the world. The one who was far too sensitive, who didn't fit in with the other girls. They mocked her upper-class accent and called her Lady Murray, they made sure that she was assigned all of the most degrading and exhausting tasks.