A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell, #4)

by Deanna Raybourn

“What the devil do you mean you’re leaving?” Stoker demanded.

NAURRR VERONICA don’t leave stoker

It was very easy to look down on someone with a nose that would have done a Roman emperor justice. But I could not entirely blame him.

“If this is because of what I said earlier today,” he began, “what I almost said—” I raised a hand. “Of course not.” It was a pathetic attempt at a lie. The truth was that both of us, in an unguarded moment, had very nearly given voice to sentiments we had no business declaring. I could still feel the pressure of his hand, burning like a brand at my waist, as his breath stirred the lock of hair pinned behind my ear, warm and impulsive words trembling on my lips. Had his brother, the Viscount Templeton-Vane, not interrupted us . . .

WHAT DID U ALMOST SAY NOOOO WE WERE SO CLOSE

Knowing how deeply he had been wounded by Caroline, I could have no hand in hurting him further.

“I will manage quite well alone,” he replied as he turned away, his expression carefully blank. “I always have.”

Liar

Every time, my thoughts went to him, like pigeons darting home to roost.

and there were weekly letters from Lord Templeton-Vane, Stoker’s eldest brother. He wrote in a casual, conversational style of current affairs and common interests, and as the months passed, we became better friends than we had been before. And from Stoker? Not a single word. Not one line, scribbled on a grubby postcard. Not a postscript scrawled on one of his brother’s letters. Nothing but silence, eloquent and rebuking. I was conscious of a profound and thoroughly irrational sense of injury. I had made it clear to him that I did not intend to write letters and expected none. And yet. Every post that arrived with no missive from him was a taunt, speaking his anger as eloquently as any words might have done. I had sowed the seed of this quarrel, I reminded myself sternly; I could not now complain that I did not like the fruit it bore.

Omg they are so avoidant

“What in the name of seven hells do you mean you want to ‘borrow’ Miss Speedwell? She’s not an umbrella, for God’s sake,” Stoker grumbled to his eldest brother

We were solitary creatures, Stoker and I, but we had discovered a mutual understanding beyond anything we had shared with others.

Men were a joy to sample,

“Peace, brother mine. I can feel you cursing me.” “And yet still you breathe,” Stoker said mildly. “I must not be doing it right.”

😭😭😭

When Stoker and I disagreed, a frequent occurrence if I am honest, it was a thing of beauty—volcanic and ferocious. I took it as a mark of the highest affection and respect that he fought with me as he would a man, and I gave him no quarter either.

Being treated as an equal, the bar is low but whatever ig

I returned the smile. “Do not worry on that account,” I told him. “I know well enough how to keep warm.”

crazy comeback 😭

If he meant to wound me, he could have chosen no sharper blade than indifference.

“I was looking for you. I’ve not yet welcomed you back from Madeira and here you are off again, like one of your pretty butterflies.” Her tone was light but her eyes were shrewd. “One might even think you were running away from something.”

Clocked her tea

“I have always said that it is interesting people who find others interesting.”

He parted his lips, taking my finger into his mouth as he removed the crumb. His eyes locked with mine, he gave a gentle suck, and I felt the blood beat in my veins. He released my finger and sat back with a slow, deliberate smile. “Delicious. As I suspected it would be,” he told me. And I knew he did not mean the crumb.

NOOO THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR. STOKER THIS SHOULD BE U.

Stoker fell in step behind me. “Fiancée?” he murmured in my ear. “We shall speak of this later.” “There is nothing to discuss,” I told him, still mightily put out that he had taken it upon himself to come to Cornwall. I had been anticipating a few weeks to straighten my disordered feelings and instead he was there, inches from me, causing every nerve to tingle and my thoughts to leap about in a most unsettling manner.

Then Miss Mertensia’s gaze fell properly upon Stoker for the first time. She colored heavily and I suppressed a sigh. I had seen it all before. Women, particularly those of original tastes, were invariably drawn to him. A metaphor involving moths and flames came to mind. Stoker was faultlessly kind in these situations.

“Blast the man,” I muttered as I thrust my bedclothes away. I meant Stoker, of course.

Instead, whenever I closed my eyes, I saw only him.

I did not bother to knock and he did not look surprised to see me.

“It is the nature of whatever is between us that we make no demands upon each other.” “Don’t,” I ordered, my hands curling into fists in my lap. “Don’t be understanding and accommodating. It is upsetting.” He turned his head, a small smile playing about his lips. “I haven’t been, if it consoles you. I sulked for the better part of the time you were in Madeira. No, I lie. I raged for the first few months, then I moved on to sulking.” “Is that why you did not write? To punish me?” “I did not write because you told me not to,” he reminded me gently. “Since when do you do as you’re told?” I demanded.

“We have, both of us, acknowledged that our bond is unlike any we have shared with another on this earth. This friendship, this strange alchemy that knits us together, it is too fine a thing to let it be tarnished with whatever corrosion she has left behind. I think there can be nothing more between us until and unless all ghosts from the past have been exorcised.”

The fact that he occasionally used those skills to alter or mend my clothes was a particular pleasure to me.

THE MAN

He was the softest of touches.

I smiled. “I would never give up lepidoptery, not for any man,” I told him truthfully. “What if he insisted?” he pressed. “I should insist harder,” I assured him.

I turned my head and studied his profile, the proud thrust of the nose, the long, elegant line of the jaw as his head tipped back. A lock of black hair fell across his brow, curling just above his eye. His collar was undone and the pulse beat slow and steady in the hollow at the base of his throat. His hands rested lightly on the arms of the chair, strong, capable hands that had held my life within them more than once. They were the hands of an aristocrat, beautifully shaped with long, tapering fingers, but also the hands of a workingman, broad of palm and heavy with calluses. They were hands that had never failed me. I looked again to the pulse beating at the base of his throat and heard its echo in my own ears. I swallowed hard, my lips parted. Now, I realized. This very moment, when everything slowed and time itself seemed to hold its breath. This was the moment to mend whatever I had torn. I had only to say the word and declare myself. Three short syllables stood between this present wretchedness and the terrifying bliss of baring my soul to him. I had pushed him away for his own sake, I had convinced myself. I had taken my own cowardice and framed it as an act of generosity. I had told him he needed to exorcise Caroline, but I was the one she haunted, that monstrous beauty with a soul as dark as sin. I was the one who trembled at the thought of being compared to her, of being found lacking somehow.

Suddenly, he turned his head to meet my gaze. “You were quite right, Veronica,” he said in a casual tone.

NO SHUT UP RN STOKER

“Like a dog,” I said dispiritedly. So I was to be little more than Huxley to him, a dutiful companion at arms, waiting to join in his endeavors, earning a pat on the head and a marrowbone for my troubles.

Lmfao

I had perched on the edge of the precipice, ready to leap, only to find I had no wings at all.

Stoker eased himself down onto the beach, pulling on his shirt but leaving it open and affording me a tantalizing glimpse of the hardened muscles that moved easily under his skin. I reminded myself forcibly that we were only to be friends, as established by the conversation of the previous night. No alluring display of masculine charms should distract me from that.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, keeping his gaze averted from me as a tiny smile played about his lips. “Mertensia has her own charms.” This observation did not trouble me in the slightest as I am not prone to such petty emotions as jealousy. A trifling irritation I could not place made my voice sharper than usual. “As does her brother.” “Yes,” Stoker agreed, his voice suddenly chill. “A castle tends to improve a man’s attractiveness exponentially.”

yeah keep maming each other jealous LOL

“Butterflies do not fly in the rain,”

Although I think your inclinations lie elsewhere,” she added with a flick of her gaze towards where Stoker stood at the fireplace,

LOL clocked her tea

“There is no truth so terrible as the unknown,”

They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I am no cringing feline.

It was just as well that I should not speak. The unexpected proximity of him had set off a most interesting and violent reaction within me. I felt warm—very warm indeed—where his body made contact with mine,

My back was pressed against the stone and my front was pressed against Stoker,

Omg

The warmth of his flesh was almost unbearable and I wondered for a brief and irrational moment if he were deliberately provoking a physical reaction in order to annoy me. To show him I would not be goaded, I perched upon his thigh, making a point of wriggling just a little before turning my attention back to Mrs. Trengrouse.

Tiberius assured me in a whisper as he levered himself off the bed and made his way to my side, his lips grazing my ear as he took my hand. “I will be as quiet or as loud as you like. I am yours to command,” he told me. And then his mouth settled on mine.

WHAT NO.

experiencing them only made me deeply aware of Stoker and the thwarted embraces we had shared. Stoker. The thought of him propelled me to instinctive action.

The smile deepened. “Since making your acquaintance, I have been more than once forcefully reminded of Rosamund. It has been both a joy and a torment.”

I was introduced to her and it was like finding part of myself that had been somehow walking the earth without me. She was my other half when I had not realized I was incomplete.”

There was not a moment of our marriage that I did not make her feel the weight of my disappointment that she wasn’t someone else.”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Dear God, no wonder Stoker—” He broke off. “I have never, until this moment, known true loyalty, Veronica.” He seized my hand and kissed it. “Whatever you ask of me, from now until I draw my last breath, I am your sworn cavalier.”

no wonder stoker whattttt

I opened the door and nearly fell over Stoker, his hand raised as if to knock. His expression of shock was one I shall remember all of my life, and it was compounded as he studied me from tumbled hair to disarranged robe and bare feet peeping out from my hem. He looked past me to his brother, who lounged lazily in the armchair by the fire, and it was painfully obvious what conclusions he was drawing. “Stoker—” I began.

HAHHAHHA

No matter how much they brawled, the Templeton-Vane boys were the proverbial peas in a pod.

To be engaged in an investigation once more, sparring with Stoker, was to be more myself than at any other time. I felt a rise of excitement and a sudden ferocious joy as heated as that of any butterfly hunt.

Stoker was not nearly handsome; he was utterly delectable, not in spite of his flaws but because of them.