A Treacherous Curse (Veronica Speedwell, #3)

by Deanna Raybourn

“I cannot imagine why you are so bashful on the subject of the male genitalia of Homo sapiens when you are the only one of us who can boast of owning it,” I

“Stop scrutinizing me as if I were one of your damned butterflies,” he said in a conversational tone. I sighed. “It has been a year since my last indulgence in physical congress,” I reminded him in a wistful tone. “Admiring your physique is my only consolation.”

“We are not invited. We are instructed. He wishes to see us, but he is ill at home, and he summons us to his sickbed. Gird yourself, Stoker. We are about to meet Sir Hugo in his nightshirt.”

“Heaven forbid we stand between a man and his wife’s blancmange,” Stoker murmured. Sir Hugo reached for a pillow to heave at him, but I lifted a hand. “Do not distress yourself, Sir Hugo. Stoker is merely teasing. I will drop something into his tea later to revenge you.”

did not summon you to harangue you now,” he corrected. “In fact, I mean to offer you help.” Stoker and I turned to each other, blinking. “Stoker, is there anything in those herbs that might cause Sir Hugo to suffer hallucinations? It is the only explanation.”

“Perhaps I let the lads go a bit too far,” he admitted. I turned to Stoker. “They disrobed you?” “They stripped me mother-naked,” he affirmed. “Well, that must have intimidated them,”

“He left you there when you were about to die.” Stoker’s smile was a thin and mirthless thing. “He did more than that. He married my wife.”

What is it about the pair of you that you must be so contrary?” “What is it about the rest of the world that it cannot take us as we are?” I asked.

“Save me any muffins, Figgy?” he asked her cheerfully as he seated himself. “Only one. Choke on it and die,”

He broke off midsentence. “You are not listening.” “Of course I’m not,” I agreed.

“Egypt,” Stoker pointed out acidly, “is not filthy. It was once the cradle of civilization. I would suggest you read a book, but I am not entirely certain of your ability to do so.”

“Come on, then. Shirts off, both of you. Shall you fight to first blood or unconsciousness? I always think first blood is a little lacking. Let’s go until one of you is entirely senseless, shall we?”

Still he did not look at me, but he reached out and brushed a fingertip over my hand. It was a tiny thing, that gesture, but the whole world was contained within it—gratitude, partnership, understanding.

She regarded him and counted only the damage; I saw only the places where he had stitched himself back together. What repelled her was to me the greatest part of him. Every mark that his suffering had left upon him was a mute monument to his strength, the inhuman courage that had caused him to reject death and degradation and every evil with which he had consoled himself on the long journey back from his destruction. He had walked through hellfire and back again and she saw only the scorch marks whilst I saw the phoenix.

“I thought she would run out of air by now, but she has rather impressive lung capacity for such an elderly person. Do you think she will come to the point anytime soon? Not that this isn’t entertaining, but I really ought to get back to work. I have a delectable little Bassaris gonerilla that needs fixing. It is so difficult to get specimens from New Zealand, I should hate to lose this one,” I remarked.

“Respectability is as overrated as virginity, madam, and I have precious little use for either.

I was nothing more than the product of some frantic tumbling by people who ought never to have given in to their lusts. You of all people understand that, don’t you, Veronica?”

“Self-pity is a gutter from which you will never arise. Do you know how hard I have worked to keep your head above the mud? But I was not the one who rescued you, you impossible fool. You were half-alive when I met you, a ruin of the man you could

ALIS VOLAT PROPRIIS. She flies with her own wings. How much easier to do that! If I refused, I should carry on as I had, keeping myself as solitary as I chose. I should be comfortable, I reflected.

But I am tired of the games, Stoker. And I am tired of your little monstrosities when I have atrocities of my own to account for.”

How, you may wonder, did I—a woman of diminutive inches and slender build—manage to rescue a man of Stoker’s prodigious size from a burning building? Reader, I carried him.

“Shall I demand that you make an honest man of my brother?” “There is no call for that,” I promised him. “He was a perfect gentleman in every regard.”

“Pardon me for pointing it out, but I thought you were here to castigate us. If you mean to rant, do it and get out. I have things to do.”

“Veronica, have some decency. You very nearly exposed my . . . erm . . .” “Yes, I have seen your erm before, if you will recall. And you’ve nothing to be shy about. It’s quite impressive.”

During our previous investigation we had received a clue in the form of a body part that had been carelessly left in the Belvedere until one of the dogs ate it.

“Most people are incapable of understanding a woman like you,” he said simply. “You defy comprehension.”

“Can you not even bring yourself to offer the barest courtesies?” she demanded. “Tea?” Stoker asked sweetly. “Coffee? Hemlock?”

I loved only the illusion, the mirror face you chose to show me. I wonder which of us I pity more.”

“And who are you to stop me?” “I am the woman who knows twenty ways to kill you and all of them with pain,”

I married a base metal when the gods had promised me gold.”

We did not speak; we did not even lock eyes. But I forced him to notice me. It was enough for the moment.

“I should very much like a drink,” I told Stoker. “But if I spend another second in proximity to you, I believe I shall asphyxiate.”

Tell me, Mrs. de Morgan, when you were in Egypt, did you ever look at a woman laboring in the fields and understand that it was the merest accident of a kind Providence that you were not born to toil your life away? Have you ever looked a starving beggar in the eye and thought that the privileges you enjoy are nothing more than a whim of the cosmos?

You merely exist because you appreciate nothing. Waken, Mrs. de Morgan, or else you will slumber your life away.”

How can you stand to be near him now that you know he has taken a life?” she demanded, her eyes cruel in her triumph. I moved closer to her, giving her a slow smile, a tiger’s smile. “Because, Mrs. de Morgan, I have taken two.”