A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell, #1)

by Deanna Raybourn

It is not your fault that you are entirely devoid of imagination. I blame your education.”

OMG

I did kick him then, but I missed, for my foot swung at empty air and he merely clamped a large warm hand to my thigh. “Mr. Stoker, that is most inappropriate,” I said, more for form’s sake than out of any real objection. I had found the experience thoroughly stimulating.

It was as if the entire world conspired to create an atmosphere so romantic only a poet might have done justice to it.

I could scarce speak for the emotion that rose within me—a tremendous longing for some unnameable thing I had never known and was terrified I should never find.

I should never understand men, I reflected, even if I devoted myself to the study of them as I had lepidoptery.

everyone has a capacity for cruelty. Not everyone gets the chance to exercise it.”

“I was just imagining poor Lady Cordelia’s face if she were to see us now. We do seem to be very frequently thrown together in various states of undress.”

😭😭😭😭

That particular remark was so blatantly unfair, it did not even merit a response, so I let it pass.

“Her real name was Mary Katherine de Clare.” “De Clare?”

Because everything in that packet shows that it is entirely possible my father murdered my mother.”

“I wish you and I had met as children,” I told him suddenly. “I don’t. You would have dragged me behind the nearest hedgerow and had your way with me before I sprouted hairs on my chin.” I smiled at him and he almost, very nearly, smiled back.

“You would try the patience of one of the most forbearing of saints,”

“I must congratulate you. I didn’t think you had the power to surprise me any longer, Stoker, but I am continually astonished at your ability to consume sweets. It is a wonder you have a tooth left in your head.”

Old sins are never forgot, but they may be packed away.”

“Her eyes are peculiar. I have never seen eyes that color. What color is that?” “It is the precise color of the wing frills on a White-browed purpletuft, Iodopleura isabellae, from South America,”

It is men who have kept women downtrodden and poorly educated, so burdened by domesticity and babies they can scarcely raise their heads. You put us on pedestals and wrap us in cotton wool, cluck over us as being too precious and too fragile for any real labor of the mind, yet where is the concern for the Yorkshire woman working herself into an early grave in a coal mine? The factory girl who chokes herself to an untimely death on bad air? The wife so worn by repeated childbearing that she is dead at thirty? No, my dear Stoker, your sex has held the reins of power for too long. And I daresay you will not turn them loose without a fight.”

There are no masculine virtues, Veronica. And none sacred to women either. We are all of us just people, and most badly flawed ones at that.”

“But I know whatever it is, whatever ugly truths are resting in that bank, you will face them squarely. You have an odd sort of courage, Veronica. It will see you through.” “Whatever happens tomorrow, I am glad you will be there.” “You may rely upon it,” he said, but

“Who the devil is Chester?” Stoker demanded.

“‘Father, His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Edward, The Prince of Wales.’”

You are the only legitimate child of the Prince of Wales.”

“In that case, Godspeed, Miss Speedwell.”

I put out my hand. “There is no one I would rather have at my back. To the end, then.” He grasped my hand and shook it. “To the end.”

Of course, as had become our habit, we quarreled over what the end should be—or at least Stoker quarreled and I carried on doing precisely as I wished.

But it is a difficult thing to heft one’s burden alone when there is someone willing to share it.

“I could sooner influence the sun to set in the east, Sir Hugo. She is entirely her own woman.” The rush of gratitude I felt for Stoker’s understanding nearly made me dizzy. Never before had I encountered a man so willing to abandon his allegedly God-given right to dominion over the fairer sex.

But above all this was the knowledge that my time with Stoker was finished too, and that realization burned the rest to ash.

We were free, but this liberty felt like the bitterest imprisonment. The thought of living the rest of my life without his irascible temper to challenge me, his idle verses to cheer me, his pockets full of sweets and his mind full of secrets and sorrows . . .

“I think you are braver than any man I have ever known.”

I held my breath as he considered, and in that moment of stillness it seemed all of eternity slipped past. Empires rose and fell and wars were fought and children were born and lived and grew old and died before he answered, and the worst of it was that I could not show him by word or gesture how very much his reply would mean to me. We were stalwart companions at arms, partners in adventure. I asked nothing more of him than that.