A Curious Beginning (Veronica Speedwell, #1)

by Deanna Raybourn

turned to look behind and saw a figure at the lych-gate, tall and beautifully erect, with the sort of posture a gentleman acquires through either generations of aristocratic breeding or enthusiastic beatings at excellent schools.

I took a sip of the tea, pleased to find it scalding hot and properly strong. I abhorred weakness of any kind but most particularly in my tea.

I think she would have found it far more just if I had suffered from a crooked back or spotty complexion to mark me as the product of sin.

“Mrs. Clutterthorpe, I can hardly think of any fate worse than becoming the mother of six. Unless perhaps it were plague, and even then I am persuaded a few disfiguring buboes and possible death would be preferable to motherhood.”

Once back in England, I made a thorough study of my own biology, and—armed with the proper knowledge and precautions and a copy of Ovid’s highly instructive The Art of Love—I enjoyed my second foray into formal lepidoptery and illicit pleasures even more.

The most cautious course of action would of course have been to let him go, but caution held little charm for me.

“Surely it cannot be so bad as all that. I expect you are merely hungry. Things always look darkest when one is hungry or tired, I find.”

One cannot innovate new improvements without understanding old failures.”

He stared at me in stupefaction until I blew out a perfect smoke ring, then gave a grudging laugh.

I know it word for word by now. If you like, I could probably set it to music, perhaps something moody and sad for a duet of oboe and bassoon.”

“Oh, Christ preserve us, all of you butterfly chasers are the same—appalling optimists, always looking for the best, determined to find it.”

“Miss Speedwell, I have hiked the length of the Amazon River. I have been accosted by native tribes and shot twice. I have nearly met my death by quicksand, snakebite, poisoned arrows, and one particularly fiendish jaguar. And I have never, until this moment, been quite so surprised by anything as I am by you.”

I launched into an explanation—although less charitable types might have been inclined to call it a lecture.

“I smoked opium once. It felt like listening to you, only rather more mundane.”

I have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try.”

“You have large opinions for so small a person.” “I daresay they would be large opinions even for someone your size,” I countered.

“Because I amputated a toe without permission.”

“I don’t suppose the convalescent hospital had someone more suited to the job of amputation—say, an actual physician?” “Of course,” I explained patiently, “but he was at luncheon.” “And you could not wait an hour for the fellow to come back?” “One cannot play games with septicemia, Mr. Stoker.

ran a finger over one of the cases and it came away black. I shuddered. It was unthinkable to sit idly by when I was surrounded by so much filth. As a scientist I rebelled against the disorder, and I had long since discovered that nothing thwarted the mental processes like clutter.

“If you think I will not bind you hand and foot like a pig on a spit, I beg you—I beg you—to try me.”

Besides, he clearly had very little experience in menacing women. He had not even thought to confiscate my hatpin.

I did not bother to explain that it could hardly be considered a proper abduction when I was clearly there of my own volition. I might have escaped him a dozen times, but it seemed unkind to raise the point when he thought he was doing such a masterful job of keeping me in tow.

I would not, could not believe that Mr. Stoker would be my doom. It was only much later that I decided my Corsican friend had much to answer for.

“Sweethearts? Plural? You are a dark horse, aren’t you?”

“Pay him no attention, my dear. He is a singularly annoying fellow. He is a selective mute and communicates only through his music. You will learn to interpret it in time.”

“I am a scientist. You are a dilettante,” he returned with as much hauteur as a man in a bath sheet could manage.

I had not realized what a toll those cold, dreary months had taken. I was not meant for sickrooms and poultices; I was fashioned of the stern stuff of adventurers. I had not the temperament for nurturing, and the tedium of Little Byfield had leached me of my natural vitality.

If I had known it was to be my last truly peaceful moment for some time to come, I should have made a point of enjoying it more.

We quarreled loudly about leaving the windows of the caravan open, a fight that seemed far more about him taking advantage of the opportunity to shout than any real opinion on the state of the windows. I shouted back because I enjoyed the exercise, and in the end I threw my flask of aguardiente at him and told him to marinate in the stuff if it would sweeten his temper.

“You are the most impossible woman I have ever known,” he said, his voice muffled. “Am I? I cannot think why. I am entirely reasonable and thoroughly logical.” “That is what makes you impossible.”

“And it never occurred to you that you might begin by treating me as an equal? Veronica, you cannot expect confidences if you will not give them.”

“That is really what you think of me,” he said, his tone one of mystification. “You have just described a seven-year-old boy.”

“I like you in spite of those qualities,” I assured him. “I do not like people who are easy to get along with. I would far rather keep company with the hedgehog than the squirrel.”

in my experience, it is far better to tell a man what he wants to hear and then do as you please than attempt to reason with him.

But there are other times when pain must be borne without a murmur, when the pain is so consuming that if you give in to it, even in the slightest, you have lost everything.”

“One simply gets on with what must be done because if one paused and looked at it full in the face—” “Then one would never find the strength to go on,”

“The police are only as good as the men they send. They are a motley crew, composed of respectable tradesmen’s sons and vagabonds, liars, and clerks. Some are no better than the filth they arrest.”

“I was merely thinking that it may have been a very grave mistake to introduce you to Lady C. If the pair of you ever put your minds to it, you could probably topple governments together.”

“Now, do shut up and stop interrupting whilst I’m being interesting.

“If there is one thing I can smell, it is the stink of my own kind trying to cover their hypocrisy.

“Sometimes the deeper a man’s feelings, the less able he is to act upon them,”

You are Lord Rosemorran?” He blinked several times, as if trying to recall something. “Rosemorran? Oh yes. That’s me. I say, have we met?” “I am afraid not. My name is Veronica Speedwell, and I am trespassing.” “Trespassing? How very original. We do get the odd vagrant creeping about the place from time to time, but never a woman, at least not a clean woman with good vowels who could spot a lord at five paces. Any particular reason for trespassing here?”

It took an exceedingly long time before something did. I amused myself by reciting poetry under my breath—not Keats; I found Byron to be much more appropriate for an abduction.

The other three were indistinguishable, dressed in serviceable plain clothes with unremarkable features. I doubted if their wives even bothered to tell them apart.

“All of my sweets, at the bottom of the Thames,” he grumbled. I rummaged among the tins of provisions and found a bit of honeycomb candy. The pieces were stuck together, but he occupied himself happily in breaking them apart and when he put the first piece into his mouth, he closed his eyes and sighed in unadulterated pleasure.

I regarded him with the same disdain with which I had beheld my first Turkish toilet.

“It is gloomy. Butterflies like the sun. Ireland is for the moth people.” “You are a lepidopterist,” he said repressively. “You are not supposed to discriminate against moths.” “I am entitled to my prejudices,”

“I am not encouraging,” she said calmly. “I am abetting.”

Something about his quickness of mind, his determination to live by his own lights, had called to me. I recognized his nature as my own. It was as if we were two castaways from a far-off land, adrift among strangers whose ways we could not entirely understand. But something within us spoke the same language, for all our clashes of words. He did not trust me entirely; that much was certain. And I frequently frustrated him to the point of madness. But I knew that whatever bedeviled him, he had need of me—and it seemed a betrayal to turn my back upon one of my own kind. I had seldom met another such as we, and I had learned that to be a child of the wilderness was a lonely thing.

“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,” he replied with such unthinking swiftness that I gave him a searching look.