#strange practice

"Yes, sir, I will walk, I will talk, I will walk and talk with you.”

I love them, your honour

He handed her a large pottery mug. She recognized it as one of the set he generally used for blood, and had to smile a little, looking down at the contents—and then abruptly had to clamp down on a wave of thoroughly inconvenient emotion. There was no reason that Ruthven doing goddamn latte art for her at half-past four in the morning should make her want to cry.

He was good at it, too, which was a little infuriating.

—

"Really," Ruthven had said when the question of his nature had first (awkwardly) arisen, early in their acquaintance, "the easiest thing is to think of me as a large well-dressed mosquito, only with more developed social graces and without the disease-vector aspect."

—

Slightly cheered up, Greta went to check on her latest patient and found Ruthven sitting by the burned monk's bed reading, yesterday's tie loosened, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Some of his hair had even escaped its usual aerodynamic styling process and drooped over his forehead. Absurdly and suddenly she wished she could draw, wanting to catch the scene on paper: Casual Dracula.

—

Not only the fact of his unholy nature, but the terrible deeds he had done, cried out for retribution. Any one of them would damn him to the fiery pits, but one in particular cried out for vengeance: the episode in his existence he could hardly call it life he most regretted; the turning of Clara Crofton. Of all the foul, indefensible, destructive, unforgivable acts he had perpetrated on the world during his various sojourns in it, none could be worse than the sin of changing a human being into a damned, parasitic horror such as himself. To doom her to an eternity of pain and loathing, to take away the last sweet gift any human could receive, the gift of absolution – no, Varney could not forgive himself for that, and would not try. Redemption was beyond him.

I kept waiting for their meeting but alas! This reads like SUCH a build up for confrontation.

i'm so glad there's an author out there who Gets varney. (while also purposefully throwing out everything about ruthven, which polidori honestly deserves.)