CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR #2
You are a man with demonstrably strong passions, and yet you live like a monk.
What about the solitary sensual pursuits?
Do you ever engage in—”
“Not.
Another.
Word,” he thundered.
“I cannot believe you would ask me such a thing.
And I am not discussing this further.”
I pulled a face.
“Very well.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise.
“Really?
You concede?
Just like that?”
“Heavens, Stoker.
What did you expect?
I asked for the truth and you have given as much as you feel comfortable sharing.
Furthermore, I have discovered that whether you like it or not, you are a gentleman.
And, I suspect, a romantic.”
He snorted.
“A romantic?”
“Indeed.
Otherwise you would have made frequent and athletic use of any number of London’s professional ladies of light virtue.
While as a pragmatist, I do not always understand romanticism, I respect it.”
“Well, then,” he said uncertainly.
“Indeed.
Good night, Stoker.”
Retreating behind a rather splendid coromandel screen, I availed myself of the narrow campaign bed that had once belonged to the Duke of Wellington.
Its proportions were modest, but it was comfortably furnished with a proper featherbed.
I settled in, reflecting upon the curious character of the man with whom I had thrown in my lot.
I could hear him turning the pages of the journal as he read, occasionally giving a low sigh as he arranged himself more comfortably.
At length he blew out the lamp and we lay in darkness, separated by the screen.
It was oddly companionable.
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.
Lying in the dark, I had intended to puzzle out the clues we had and assemble them in perfect order to present to Stoker the following morning as a dazzling solution in the manner of Arcadia Brown, Lady Detective.
But just as I began to arrange the clues in my mind, I heard Stoker’s voice.
“Cold water.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He gave a gusty sigh.
“Try cold water.
Bathing in it, not drinking.
A swim is the best if you can manage it.
It will put you right off of those sorts of thoughts.”
“Thank you, Stoker.
I shall make a note of that.”
He snorted by way of response.
Smiling into the darkness, I surrendered to the soothing delights of goose down and linen sheets and sank into a sleep like death.
When I woke, I could tell it was morning although the light was watery and grey.
The fine weather had broken and a dull day lay before us with the steady drum of rain upon the roof.
I rose and washed and dressed, taking a bit of cheese and a cold ham roll for my breakfast.
Stoker was still slumbering upon the sofa, and I took a moment to admire the prospect presented by a virile, attractive man caught in the vulnerability of sleep.
I would have happily played Diana to his Endymion, but in the light of our previous discussion, I kept my hands chastely to myself and began to prowl with only the mollusks and the stuffed birds and paintings for company.
I browsed the books and perused the collections, delighted to find a private translation of Maria Sibylla Merian’s
Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung.
I had just settled in happily with the first volume of
The Caterpillars’ Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food when I became increasingly aware that I was not alone.
From behind a molting egret standing upon one leg, a quizzical pair of dark eyes assessed me.
“Who are you?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” I said coolly.
A child of perhaps six years stepped out from behind the bird.
Her Sunday frock was streaked with something that looked suspiciously like golden treacle and her hair ribbon was dangling loose as if she had just been dragged through a bush backward.
“I am Rosie,” she said solemnly.
“No, she isn’t.”
Lady Cordelia’s maid, Sidonie, appeared as if out of thin air, taking the child by the hand.
“She is
Lady Rose.
Her father is Lord Rosemorran.”
The child looked at me closely.
“Who are you?”
she demanded with an imperiousness that would have done credit to an empress.
As a rule, I did not much like children, but I might learn to like this one, I decided.
“I am an adult person who is not answerable to children.”
Before she could formulate a response, Stoker appeared.
“Hello, Lady Rose,” he said, sweeping her a formal bow.
“Stoker!”
the child crowed.
She flung herself at him for an embrace, but Sidonie put a dampening hand upon her shoulder.
“Lady Rose, you have the manners of a savage.
Greet Mr. Stoker properly.”
She herself gave him a nod, darting a gaze up at him through lowered lashes.
“Mr. Stoker, it is good to see you again.
I hope that you are well.”
“Very,” he said solemnly before turning to the child.
“And how are you, little Rose?”
“Tolerable.”
Tolerable!
The child had the soul of a dowager in an infant’s body.
She indicated me with a graceful wave of her hand.
“Do you know this person?”
“I do indeed,” he said.
“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.
“A White-browed purpletuft?
I am afraid I am not familiar with that bird,” I said quietly.
“It was something I happened to notice.
Nothing more,” he replied in haste.
He flushed a little, and if his remark did not cause Sidonie to take notice, the sudden color of his complexion did.
She gave me a look of frank speculation as Stoker turned again to the child.
“Miss Speedwell is a friend of mine and of your father’s and your aunt Cordelia’s,” he added significantly.
It was the mention of Lady Cordelia’s name that did the trick.
She sketched me the briefest of curtsies.
I gave her a casual nod just as her aunt appeared.
“There you are!
Rose, you have been stealing treacle from the kitchens again, haven’t you?”
“No,” the child said, widening her eyes innocently.
Lady Cordelia bent and put a finger to the child’s cheek, then popped it into her own mouth.
“Treacle.
Sidonie, take Lady Rose to her room.
I shall be up directly.”
The pair of them left, little Rose dragging her feet until Stoker slipped her a sweet behind Lady Cordelia’s back.
Sidonie cast a lovelorn look over her shoulder at Stoker as she went.
“I do hope my niece hasn’t been disturbing you,” Lady Cordelia said to me.
“She and her brother arrived late last night rather unexpectedly, and we are between governesses at present.”
“Not at all,” I said, very nearly meaning it.
Lady Rose had the potential to be an interesting young acquaintance.
“She was just discovering that Miss Speedwell lacks the maternal instincts,” Stoker said blandly.
Lady Cordelia gave me an appraising look.
“Miss Speedwell is not the only one.”
I would dearly have loved to pursue that line of discussion further, but Lady Cordelia was clearly harried.
“Forgive me, but I must attend to the children.
According to Cook, Rose has drunk an entire tin of treacle and will no doubt be sick very shortly, and little Arthur keeps trying to ride Betony.”
“Doesn’t his lordship spend time with his children?”
I asked.
“It is Sunday, after all.”
Her voice was carefully neutral.
“Sunday is Ambrose’s day of contemplation.
He withdraws from all company and spends the day in his rooms, reading.”
“How fortunate,” I remarked.
“For him.”
She inclined her head and left us then, and I turned on Stoker with scorn.
“O, the perfidy of men.”
“What have I done?”
he protested.
“Nothing at present, but you are the only representative of your sex I have at hand to abuse.
Take your lumps for your brothers.”
He settled himself into the armchair opposite.
“Ah, I understand.
You think his lordship should play nursemaid to his own children.”
“I think he ought to take a greater interest in the formation of their intellect and character as well as their discipline.
Why must it be left to poor Lady Cordelia to herd them about like so many recalcitrant sheep?
Lady Rose is a pretty child and precocious as well, but it ought not to fall solely to her aunt to guide her.”
“You are seeing the Beauclerks at their worst,” he told me.
“It is always difficult on Lady C. when a governess gives notice.”
“And who is responsible for engaging the governess?
No doubt Lady Cordelia.
Who runs the household?
Manages the servants?
Supervises the children’s education?
Settles the accounts?
Lady Cordelia.
I think his lordship takes wretched advantage of her generosity.”
Stoker threw his head back and laughed.
“If you believe that, you don’t know Lady Cordelia.
Believe me, if she wanted things to be different, they would be.
Yes, she is responsible for everything of significance that happens here at the Folly as well as at their Cornish estate.
As you say, she supervises the children, the households, the accounts, and I daresay even Lord Rosemorran himself.
But it suits her.”
I gave a snort of derision.
“Believe it if it consoles you.
I still say she is thwarted in her true ambitions.”
“And what are they?”
“I don’t know yet.
I only know she doesn’t bore me as much as other ladies of my acquaintance.”
He gave me a thoughtful look.
“You are making a friend there.”
“Perhaps.
It is something of a relief to find another woman of intelligence and sound common sense.
I have not met many, I can assure you.”
“For which you blame my gender,” he finished.
“Who else?
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.”
He raised his hands.
“Not from me.
I say liberate the women and let them go out and earn wages and write laws and have the vote.
They cannot do worse than their lords and masters.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You are not joking.”
“No, I am not.
I have known enough of women to understand they are as duplicitous and vicious as men.
If they are capable of being our equals in malice, why not in our better qualities as well?
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.”
“Yes, some of us are suspiciously lacking in virtue,” I said with a significant look.
“For example, I believe the maid, Sidonie, would like very much to misbehave with you.”
He mumbled a reply to the effect that I was daft, and I raised a brow at him.
“Surely you are not so unaware of your effect upon the girl.
She stares like a moonstruck calf whenever you are near.
Even Lady Cordelia made mention of it.”
“I might have noticed,” he said grudgingly.
It occurred to me then that Stoker’s raffish appearance—the pierced lobe, the unruly locks, the glowering expressions—were not merely expressions of his own tastes and values; they might well be a sort of protective coloration, taken on to shield himself from the predation of voracious ladies.
Of course, they would also serve to attract an entirely different sort of woman, the kind not easily put off by a little handsome savagery.
For those of us who liked our men well roughened, his appearance was the fulfillment of a lifetime’s dreaming of pirates and ne’er-do- well rogues.
I might have enlightened him on the devastating effect of going about looking like a highwayman, but the risk he might scrub himself up to look like a parson was too horrifying to contemplate.
“Lucky for you that Lady Cordelia seems to have the girl firmly in hand.
She is a good friend to you.
I am rather surprised she doesn’t harbor a tendresse for you herself.”
“Our relationship is not like that,” he said firmly.
“Lady Cordelia is only, has ever only been, a friend.”
“She is very attractive,” I mused.
“And you have your own charms.
I am surprised the two of you have never even had a passing dalliance, a moment of .
.
.
something.”
He hesitated, then sat forward, glancing about again to make certain we were not overheard.
“Lady Cordelia is everything I admire in a lady.
She is kind and patient and endlessly selfless.
But while I admire her virtues, I cannot help that they leave me cold.
Give me a flawed woman with warm blood in her veins instead of ice water any day.”
For a moment his gaze lingered upon me, intense and full of unspoken meaning.
But he turned quickly away to examine a bit of Egyptian enamelware someone had left lying around.
“But why has she never pursued
you?
I mean, you are entirely disreputable in appearance, but you are from a good family.
You are an Honourable.
That is not too far down for an earl’s daughter to lower herself if she has a mind.”
“We are friends, and that is all we shall ever be,” he repeated firmly.
He fell silent again, and I might have returned to my book, but I did not.
“Stoker, what do you think we are going to find tomorrow?”
“I do not know,” he said slowly.
“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 his familiar, mocking smile was not in evidence for once, and I believed he meant it.