A Treacherous Curse (Veronica Speedwell, #3)

by Deanna Raybourn

“I know you do not wish to discuss it,” I began. “Then why are you introducing the subject?” he countered through a mouthful of crumbs. “Because we must develop a strategy. No good general goes into battle without a plan,” I said stoutly. “Caesar wouldn’t have done so.” “Caesar was murdered by his friends,” he reminded me. “Because he didn’t listen to the woman in his life,” I countered. “Touché.”

“Boys!” I said sharply. “There will be no brawling with your shirts on. Kindly remove your upper garments and give them into my keeping.”

Julien bent over my hand. “Ah, this sweet blossom of a hand! How I hate to relinquish it,” he said, stroking it gently. “Relinquish it or swallow your own teeth,” Stoker told him in a pleasant tone laced with steel.

Caroline de Morgan raised her head and fixed me with a defiant stare. “If that is your idea of a cordial greeting, I will take my leave now.” I bared my teeth in a smile. “Do close the door firmly behind you. There’s such a draft otherwise.”

I thought at some point in my life, I would have a great love like that, a woman fashioned by the gods just for me, as I had been made just for her, that we would find each other. I always believed she was waiting for me. But I did not wait for her. I married a base metal when the gods had promised me gold.”

“It is no more than cracked, you virago. Good God, a man could die and you would scold him for making a mess on the carpet. Never change, Veronica.”

“Because there is no power on earth that could make me abandon our friendship. There is no deed you could confess so dark that it would make me forsake you. You said of us once that we were quicksilver and the rest of the world mud. We are alike, shaped by Nature in the same mold, and whatever that signifies, it means that to spurn each other would be to spit in the face of whatever deity has seen fit to bring us together. We are the same, and to leave you would be to leave myself. Make of that what you will.”

“Oh, is my brother with you?” the viscount asked, pushing his way through the foliage. “Yes,” Stoker told him, coming to stand behind me, his hand grazing my waist. “I am.”