An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell, #6)

by Deanna Raybourn

It was at this point that I stopped listening, letting the gentle tirade flow over me like a burbling river. Stoker was never happier than when imparting information, whether one asked for it or not. This, I had observed frequently upon my travels, is common in the male of the species.

There is nothing in natural history that is not new again every time we encounter it, no greater mystery than things that exist apart from man and with no interest in us.”

She was, to put it plainly, a force of nature, and I could well imagine most men bending before her. But then, any person who pitted themselves against mountains must be fashioned of something indomitable.

There will always be men who rally to the cause of another man in his moment of disgrace simply because they fear their own so deeply.”

“And yet here we are,” I said as I finished recounting the meeting to Stoker. “A little more than a year later, preparing an exhibition to commemorate her death. Such a short time for her to know happiness!” His expression was thoughtful. “If she had had a Scottish nanny, she would have known that sort of happiness would never last.” “What on earth are you talking about?” I demanded. He shrugged. “It sounds as if that last night here, she was fey.” My expression must have betrayed my bemusement for he went on. “It is an old Scots word, it means a sort of hectic happiness that cannot last. It usually presages a disaster.”

“Good ropes are quite dense,” he explained, his eyes gleaming with interest. I ought to have known better than to mention the ropes. In his previous exploits as a circus performer and naval surgeon, he had had better cause to appreciate a good stout rope than anyone, and he often amused himself with the tying of various knots—excellent practice, he pointed out, for the times we were bound hand and foot by the occasional villain.

A sympathetic reader will understand that I regarded Stoker’s subsequent explanation as so much background noise as I examined the rope.

“Stoker, as you well know, murders happen,” I told him. “But why must they happen to us?”

It was a gift, of that there could be little doubt, to bring these creatures back to life, resurrecting them so perfectly that one could easily imagine they had been alive only a moment before—indeed might still be alive, only arrested in mid-breath.

Huxley had belonged to Stoker when I met him, but Nut—like Vespertine—was the souvenir of an investigation, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that Stoker and I were going to have to be a little more judicious in our acquisitions of animals unless we meant to start a dog circus.

She was the first to climb without male porters or guides on the grounds that her accomplishments would never be recognized if there was the slightest possibility that a man might be credited with the work.

Rebelling against the cult of True Womanhood with its insistence upon domestic virtue and bodily delicacy, Alice Baker-Greene had been a vehement advocate of fresh air and robust exercise, putting forth the notion not only that were women strong enough physically to endure the arduous requirements of mountaineering, but that they were better suited to the challenges of solitude or cooperation that different expeditions required. She claimed women were, by nature and nurture, more adaptable and easygoing than men, better able to govern their tempers and work in harmony with circumstances rather than against them. She detailed the numerous examples of men who had perished on mountaintops from their stubborn refusal to accept that conditions had turned murderous. She did not have to cite her father and grandfather as examples. It was well-known that on her grandfather’s fatal climb, her grandmother had protested against the prevailing wind, pointing out that the damp warmth of it was likely to spawn avalanches. The men had pushed on, and only Alice’s grandmother, with the wisdom born of long experience, had turned back, and she alone survived.

“Something is amiss,” I told him as he thrust his arms into his greatcoat, the tails flapping behind him as we strode along Marylebone Street. “Lady C. has the tidiest penmanship I have ever seen, but this looks as if it were written by an inebriated moose.”

I went to stand next to him, extending my finger where a bright bead of ruddy blood stood. He peered at it, then took a slender knife from his pocket. Stoker’s pockets were invariably a repository for all manner of oddments—coins, vestas, paper twists of sweets, great crimson handkerchiefs, assorted glass eyeballs, lockpicks. One never knew what lurked in there, but Stoker always managed to produce the proper tool for any occasion. He bent his head to the task, plying the knifepoint so quickly and deftly that I never felt the splinter move. He dropped it into the dustpan with a delicate clink and the blood welled afresh. I expected him to wrap it in one of his enormous scarlet handkerchiefs. Instead, he took the fingertip in his mouth, giving it a gentle suck. A jolt of a most arresting sensation coursed through me, so much so that I was entirely incapable of speech.

The vast majority of the dainty green eggs that had been laid amidst the shrubs were the product of his bridal flights, and in the end, he was the only one left, moving like a sad shadow through the limbs of the little jungle I had created, as if searching for the friends and wives he had lost. I was not entirely surprised to find that his time had come at last. He lay on the floor of the vivarium in the shadow of a bush, his wings still trembling with the effort of flight. I lifted him onto my palm, bringing my hand up to my face so that I might see him clearly. He raised one forewing in what a fanciful person might have called a salute. “Good-bye, my dear little friend,” I murmured. “Rest now.” He flapped again a time or two but remained nestled in my palm. I sat in the fragrant steamy air of the vivarium, perspiration pearling my temples, and marveled at this exquisite creature with his viridian wings, so delicate they seemed hardly capable of holding his weight aloft. And yet they had, bearing him throughout his adventures until at long last his voyaging was finished. They were miracles of architecture, the lepidoptera, and I felt, along with a pang of loss, a fervent gratitude that I had discovered them as my life’s work. There was nothing so fragile as a butterfly wing, nor anything as lovely. When at last he lay still, I rose to my feet and carried him out of the shocking warmth of the only home he had known, through the bone-snapping cold of the gardens and into th...

To hurl one’s few possessions into a carpetbag and embark for a new adventure was the only solace. To leave behind one’s woes in a damp and fogbound land, awaking in brilliant sunshine, the air heavy with spices and the promise of fresh endeavors, this was true happiness. A train bound for anywhere, a ship unfurling its sails for some new shore. Steam whistle and snapping canvas, those were the lullabies that soothed a savage soul.

I could pretend to myself for just a little while that they were not plain London flames, kindled on a hearth of simple stone. They were the flames of a bonfire scented with herbs on a Corsican hillside, of a funeral

pyre lavish with incense on a riverbank in India, of a cook fire in South America, smelling of roasting meats. I smiled to myself, thinking of my adventures, and in due course, warmed by my memories and my dog, I slept.

“Veronica,” he said in a dangerously low voice, “you promised.” “A promise made under duress is not binding,” I said with cool detachment. “Duress! What duress?” he demanded. “I did not exactly hold you at swordpoint.” “No, but our relationship is one of an intimate nature. Such things can be coercive upon the weaker sex,” I said demurely. “Weaker?” He choked and only recovered himself when he had drunk half a cup of tea. “My dear Veronica, any person who would consider you an exemplar of any variety of weakness wants his head examined.” “That is very kind of you to say, I am sure,” I replied, “but the fact remains that I am not entirely comfortable with the promise I made to leave this investigation alone.” “There is no investigation,” he reminded me.

Striving for patience, I attempted a different tack. “It is not for my own sake or even the sake of justice that I suggest such a thing,” I said, adopting a wistful tone. “It is only for that poor old granny.” He furrowed his brow. “What granny?” “Mrs. Baker-Greene, of course. Alice’s grandmother. She has lost so many people dear to her,” I said sadly. “Her husband. Her son. Now her granddaughter. All taken from her by the mountains she loves so desperately. I cannot imagine bearing up under that kind of loss.” “All the more reason to leave her in peace,” he said sternly. “She is very old, you know. Nearly seventy-five. And confined to a Bath chair,” I added. “Poor old dear. All those decades of hauling herself up mountains in the coldest and most unforgiving of climates have left her victim to the most devilish rheumatism. I can imagine her now,” I went on, painting a picture of maudlin isolation, “sitting by the hearthside, praying just a little of the warmth of the fire will sink into her bones and ease her aching joints. And the long lonely hours with nothing but the wind for company as it blows in the lonely casement.” Stoker looked baffled. “For all you know she lives in a modern building with steam heat and gaslights.” “Of course she doesn’t,” I retorted. “She is a woman of advanced years. Women of advanced years always live in cottages. Usually with cats of malodorous appearance.”

The note directed us to come with all haste to the Sudbury Hotel, a luxurious establishment located in the heart of London. It was new and furnished in the height of discreet good taste. Here were no gilded embellishments such as may be found in the more opulent hotels of New York, none of the silken debaucheries of Parisian enclaves. There was only a quiet richness of décor that whispered of excellent service and perfect comfort. I sighed as we crossed into the lobby, trading the sooty, befogged streets of the city for the glowing warmth of the hotel’s interior. Our journey had been lengthy and cold, traversing the frost-slicked streets in an imperfectly heated hackney with a driver who swore the air blue with his imprecations against the weather and the congested traffic.

But I would not be discouraged by a little Teutonic forcefulness.

“The princess cannot run away,” the chancellor bellowed. “Wherever she is, that is where she is supposed to be. The sun does not run away.”

The chancellor’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “You would not dare!” “Wouldn’t I?” Stoker crossed one leg lazily over the other and regarded the chancellor with the icy hauteur of four hundred years’ worth of English noble blood.

Stoker bridled so hard I thought he might do a modest violence upon the chancellor. “We do not require payment of any sort,” he said through gritted teeth. The very notion of money changing hands was anathema to the British nobility, and Stoker still retained enough of his upbringing to have an uneasy relationship with wages of any variety.

me. The confections had been tinted the palest shade of pink, the outside glossy and ever so slightly crisp. It dissolved almost instantly to a mouthful of rose-scented sweetness, not soapy, as one might expect, but tasting of sunshine and summer and a garden bursting into bloom.

She shrugged. “A member of the guard doesn’t earn much—not even the commander. And Yelena works for pennies. The Alpenwalders do not pay well on the grounds that it is an honor to serve them which is a heaping pile of rot. I mean, they dirty their sheets and fill their wastepaper baskets same as the rest of us.” “Careful, now. You begin to sound like a revolutionary,” Stoker teased. “If it could eliminate all the arrogant ne’er-do-wells I have seen in my time, I would build the guillotine with my bare hands,” she said darkly.

“We have a saying in the Alpenwald, Fraulein. Plans are jokes written by men for God’s amusement.”

Stoker gave me an appraising glance, from extravagant jewels to exuberant décolletage. “I do not think I will be the one they are looking at.” He nodded to the impossible slimness of my waist. “How can you eat in that?” “I cannot eat,” I told him coldly. “I cannot bend. I cannot breathe. In short, I cannot do anything for which the human body is fashioned. I am an automaton for the evening, a doll, dressed and polished for your amusement.”

Her smile was indulgent. “I spoilt you as a child, I fear.” “Impossible!” he cried. “For I am perfect, just as I am.” The baroness’s distress had fled and I wondered how strange it must be to rule the nursery—no doubt with an iron fist—only to have one’s charge grow into manhood, poised to take the reins of power.

After a moment, he shook himself a little and gave me a faint smile. “You are a very knowledgeable woman, my dear.” “I know very little, but I am curious about a good deal,” I corrected.

she moved mechanically through the lengthy process of disrobing and dismantling the royal creation she had made of me. Jewels were replaced in their boxes, hairpieces were combed out, garments were folded away.

“This is a tea made of St. Otthild’s wort,” she explained. “We drink it in the mountains for all things—to ease us when we are wakeful, to soothe us when we are sad. It is even good for women’s troubles,” she confided. “I thought it might calm your nerves after that dreadful incident at the opera. And perhaps give you a little energy as well.” I sipped it and felt myself beginning to relax at once. As a cream for the skin, it had smelt of roses, but the aroma of the tea was similar to our own elderflower, subtle and elusive. It was a gentle concoction, and I thanked her. “There is no need to drink it if you do not like the flavor,” she told me. “It is an acquired taste to some.” “I do like it,” I assured her. “Do you require anything else? Biscuits? Honey?” she asked. But I could see the signs of worry and fatigue stamped upon her features. “Nothing at all. I am quite revived, Baroness,” I said.

Whilst Stoker’s preference was for a lengthy and languorous coupling accompanied by comfortable beds and extensive recitations of poetry, he could always be relied upon for applying himself with diligence and dexterity to a more vigorous interlude.

It was as though they never really lived. That house was merely a stage set and their lives were theatrical parts played upon it. The angry aristocrat, the long-suffering wife. The servants looking on. And every day the same thing—tea with scones and silences. Hatred for dinner, resentment at luncheon. I wanted nothing more than to breathe, to feel something other than that oppression.”

“You are not among the good that has happened to me. You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me to you.”

You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me to you.”

“I understand you, Veronica, because I am you.

Do you think a day does not pass that I do not long to be aboard a ship, salt spray in my face and sails snapping in the wind, bound for the other side of the world?

“There is a throne in the equation. You cannot discount the lengths to which a man will go for a crown.”

I took up my paper knife, a dagger I had liberated from the Rosemorran Collection. It had once stabbed a Venetian nobleman, but I employed it for a far more quotidian purpose.

so if you are expecting an apology, I’m afraid you will be sitting in the anteroom of hell before you hear one out of me.”

“Something political,” Stoker guessed. “Full marks to Templeton-Vane,” she said. “You are a demon in a petticoat,” I told her. “How can we be certain you will keep your bargain?”

“Well, they did break into the Curiosity Club together,” he pointed out. “Clearly there is some trust if they are committing casual crimes with one another in a foreign country.”

He turned to Stoker. “Does she always speak so plainly?” Stoker shrugged. “No. In fact, she is being rather polite just now. You are quite fortunate she has not told you what she really thinks.”

He listened in rapt attention, then burst out laughing until he wiped his eyes. “Oh, Fraulein. Whatever becomes of us all, I do hope you will take to writing stories. You have a prodigious imagination.”

Stoker bent to peer at the duke. “I think he is weeping.” “Well, that is awkward,” I murmured. I knelt next to the duke and patted his back. “There, there,” I said in my best soothing voice. “We do not really think you want Gisela dead.” Stoker mouthed over the duke’s head at me. “Yes, we do.”

braid. The garments suited him, but when compared to Stoker, he seemed a penciled copy of an oil painting, and I did not begrudge him his sulkiness. He was accustomed to being accounted one of the handsomest men in the Alpenwald, and now he had competition.

“It will hardly be legal if it is signed by Veronica Speedwell, spinster, of the Marylebone parish,” he muttered. “It is not like you to be rude,” I told him in a soothing tone. “I fear you are hungry and it is making you dyspeptic.” “I am not hungry. I am having an apoplexy,” he said, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing at his brow. I peered at his face.

Most men loved nothing better than holding forth on their opinions, and the general was no exception. He detailed his thoughts on the weather (appalling), the landscape (passably pretty), the politics (incomprehensible to outsiders), and the handsomeness of the women (lacking).