An Impossible Impostor (Veronica Speedwell, #7)

by Deanna Raybourn

I use the word “infant” in its loosest interpretation. It had, in fact, been born some nine or ten months before and possessed the appropriate number of teeth and skills for a child of that age.

She related this in French, as her English was poor, and Stoker shrugged, pantomiming that he did not understand the language. This was a patent falsehood. I had discovered him on numerous occasions reading saucy French novels in the original tongue. He claimed it made them more romantique.

By the time we reached Calais, the odor of the cheese had taken on a sort of personality, a fifth traveler in our merry band, ensuring that wherever we went, porters ignored us and crowds parted.

Upstairs in the Belvedere was a sort of snuggery, fitted with a Swedish stove, Napoléon’s campaign bed, and an assortment of cushions for the various dogs we had collected—Betony (the earl’s Caucasian sheepdog), Nut (an Egyptian hound of Stoker’s), Huxley (his bulldog), and my own noble Vespertine, a deerhound of great distinction. We took luncheon with them and later tea, spending the afternoon in a haze of cozy domestic bliss as we read through our correspondence, skimmed newspapers, and crumbled scones for the dogs.

He put down his fork. “I can give you a score of reasons. I have been shot. I have been stabbed. I have been abducted. I have been very nearly drowned—” I held up a hand. “For which you can hardly blame Sir Hugo. He did not drown you, nor did he abduct you. He has never shot you, and I am the only person who has stabbed you.

He picked up his fork again and stabbed a piece of bacon. “I know what this is about. You are feeling restless again. It has been two months since we last encountered a corpse and you nurture hopes that Sir Hugo will put us on the scent of fresh adventure.” He waved his fork for emphasis. “Do not point your breakfast meats at me, sir,” I said in a tone of mild reproach.

disaster. How could I, who had traveled with Corsican bandits and known the pleasures of camping with no other roof than the stars, shrink from a sojourn anywhere in these dominions?

us. For all of his robust enjoyment of such activities, he occasionally demonstrates the fastidious prudery of

Across the bottom of the staircase hung a pair of wooden gates, to keep the dogs from the upper floors, no doubt. But there were no dogs here now, warming themselves at the feeble fire. In days long past, there would have been a pack of hunting hounds, perhaps a lady’s spaniel or two, lolling on a bright woolen hearthrug.

There are few comforts as satisfying as a warm fire, a cozy bed, and a delicious meal after one has been chilled to the bone with wind and rain.

I could well imagine him, twenty years hence, fat and bald as an egg and entirely happy with his life. An air of contentment hung about him, but also a slightly bewildered look, as if he liked where he found himself but could not quite understand how he came to be there.

the babies, stolid as lumps of lard, were borne away by the nursemaids.

“Convenient!” She sniffed. “What is convenience compared to decency? It is not at all nice to think of pipes and what may be in them. And do you know what else that means? Drains, Miss Speedwell. One cannot think of drains with equanimity.”

It was astonishing, I mused, how often people claimed to be honest when they were simply making a virtue of excessive rudeness.

“The female can be small and unremarkable and still attract a mate,” I replied. “But the male requires something special to secure her attention.”

sex. To encounter a man who looked like a ruthless brigand only to find him sublimely courteous was as intoxicating as it was unexpected.

The expanse was punctuated by boulders that rose from the earth, shrugging off the damp soil like giants rousing themselves from sleep.

Quicksand, it must be noted, is almost always ruinous to one’s hat.

The building itself was low, of native stone, and as austere as the main Hall. But the planes of it had been softened by climbing roses and gentle creepers, their leaves

just beginning to waken to the spring warmth. A little patch of rhubarb had been planted to take advantage of the sunny side of the cottage, and the front step had been swept and scrubbed to gleaming.

And yet the cottage gave an appearance of coziness and warmth. A plump calico cat slept in a basket on the hearthstone, and two armchairs had been drawn near. An elderly lady sat in one, a rug spread over her lap to hold her knitting. On the mantel, a neat row of highly polished pewter pieces had been arranged with a few bits of flowery china. A door led off this main room, tightly closed against drafts, I was certain.

From

the rafters hung an assortment of bundled herbs which...

“Comfortable!” She snorted. “Children do not require comfortable nurseries. They need plenty of fresh air and wholesome food and exercise. And when they are sad, they need a bit of a cuddle,” she added with a fond look at Effie.

We did not require one another, for neither of us was deficient. But we enhanced one another, we bettered one another.

It had been raining in Sumatra and butterfly hunters do not give chase in the rain.

Colonials had used the mutiny as an excuse to seize property owned by the native royals, and more than one upstanding English family had found itself the richer for it, albeit no one ever admitted publicly to behaving like privateers. If priceless gems and expensive bric-a-brac suddenly found their way from palace strongrooms to the necks and drawing rooms of the British in India, who would complain?

Thus determined, I went to dinner in a mood of dangerous optimism.

If there is one thing against which an Englishman is powerless, it is being thought unsporting.

off. Lady Hathaway and Anjali stood at her ladyship’s window, waving, while Mary brought her children to lisp an interminable farewell poem.

Two men and a pack of dogs do not a restful night’s sleep make,

Harry shook his head. “This is the most astonishing and maddening place I think I have ever been.” “And you have only been here a day,” I reminded him.

A priceless diamond! A thief in the night! A man returned from the dead! A mortal enemy determined to ensure his destruction! It was all thoroughly satisfactory, I reflected.

They say she is buried under a tamarind tree and that her spirit inspires those who would cast off their oppressors.”

“What the devil—” Stoker began. He broke off mid-sentence as soon as he caught sight of the revolver. “Yes,” I said with a sigh of annoyance. “We are being abducted. Again.”

“Try to rest. I will take care of you.” I gave a derisive laugh, but it broke, ending in a cracked little sigh. He put a hand to my hair and rested his chin on the top of my head. “At least let me try,” he said.

“Here, madam, be a little kind, I beg you,” he said to an exuberant Vespertine, who stood on her hind legs, front paws braced on either of his shoulders. She was sniffing his face with a wary intensity. “Harry, stop playing with the dog,” I ordered. “I am hardly playing,” he protested. “I think she has designs upon me.” He pushed her gently away, and she dropped to all fours with a low grumble.

above. The gallery, with its alcoves and vantage points, had served as a suitable place for seducers and chaperones alike, I suspected. A gentleman might whisk a partner behind a bit of drapery for an illicit embrace even as a cluster of spinster aunts perched on gilt chairs to survey the dancers below.

If you were destroyed by losing me, then I am the greatest monster imaginable. And if you were not, then I am the unworthiest.”

“What does it look like, this dream of normality?” I asked gently. “A house, not a large one. Just a house, solid and plain. But facing the sea.” “Which sea?” “It does not matter. The sea is the sea wherever you go. I want only to sit and watch the wind on the waves and feel

small for a while. I want to feel my own insignificance.”

“It says that you have been unlucky, not unworthy,” he said sternly.

Harry sighed. “For a civilized country, England is absolute death to a nice wardrobe.”

He rolled his eyes heavenwards. “I have already told you. I am rescuing you. I am being heroic, Veronica. It has been my ambition ever since I read of the ancient Greeks. Theseus, Perseus—all capital lads with all sorts of daring. Although, I must say, I always imagined the ladies being rescued demonstrated a good deal more gratitude. You are not exactly being appreciative, Veronica.”

Harry shrugged. “We shall tell him we were engaging in some country fisticuffs and I beat you.”

We were jolted and jostled, and yet there was something magical about that moment, that liminal time between our liberation and our arrival back in London. We could do nothing but be carried along like so many leaves upon the surface of a churning river. The leaf so moved does not think, and neither did I, content to feel the whip of the wind against my cheeks as we dashed through the night.

Harry shook his head ruefully. “She will not credit me with any nobler purpose, and I cannot blame her. I have been, as you know, the great tragedy of her life.”

“Do you really plan on garroting someone in the Sudbury?” he asked pleasantly. “One can never anticipate when one will be forced to garrote,” I informed him as I pinned my hat into place.

She gave a sniff. “I am not a chambermaid. I am a journalist,” she corrected loftily. “And who are you?” “Henry Trismegistus Spenlove,” he said, sweeping her a bow. “Your second name is not Trismegistus,” I hissed. “No, but I don’t much care for Walter. I thought I might try something new,” he replied.

“There is nothing more political than the ability to take care of one’s own people.”