CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A
fter his pronouncement, Sir Rupert collapsed back into his chair.
We sat in bewildered silence for a long moment before he swore—something more profane than I had ever heard issue from Stoker’s lips, although at least he followed his lapse with an apology—and retrieved a bottle from his desk.
He poured a generous measure of excellent whiskey into crystal glasses and handed them to us, taking a double measure for himself.
He swallowed it down in a single go, and Stoker regarded him with something like cautious admiration.
“Careful, there.
The Templeton-Vane men have always done that a bit too easily.”
Sir Rupert wiped his mouth upon a pristine handkerchief and gave his younger brother a shake of the head.
“No.
It was Mother who liked a tipple.
She could drink Father under the table.”
Stoker bridled.
“She did not.”
“Of course she did.
Kept the best of Father’s single malt in a perfume bottle on her dressing table.
She used to bribe the butler for it.”
Stoker stared at him openmouthed, and Sir Rupert gentled his tone.
“There is a lot you have yet to learn about our family.”
“The Templeton-Vanes are the very last subject I would wish to discuss with you,” Stoker replied coldly.
Sir Rupert steepled his hands under his chin.
“One of these days, you will put aside your childish resentments, Revelstoke.
But in light of Miss Speedwell’s current predicament, I think we ought to call a truce.”
Emotions warred upon Stoker’s face, but his tone was as even as his brother’s.
“Agreed.
From the information you have given us, it should be a simple matter to determine who is best served by removing the threat she represents.”
Sir Rupert nodded.
“Indeed.
First—”
Stoker rose.
“Not you.
Us,” he said, putting a hand underneath my elbow and encouraging me to my feet.
Sir Rupert rose with automatic courtesy.
“But you cannot possibly do this alone!”
“We will and we must,” Stoker told him.
“I am grateful to you, Rupert, really.
You have been quite decent, and it is rather refreshing to take my leave of you without either one of us dripping blood upon the carpets.
But this is as far as you can come.”
He glanced meaningfully at the photograph resting on a small easel on Sir Rupert’s desk.
It depicted a woman—sternly pretty with a small mouth and exquisite hands—and three little boys.
“You have a wife,” I said, suddenly understanding Stoker’s reluctance to involve his brother further.
“And children.
You have already declared I am the most dangerous person in the Empire,” I told him with a lightness I did not feel.
“I would not have that danger touch you or yours.”
I put out my hand.
“Thank you for your assistance, Sir Rupert.
I will not forget it.
And if it is ever in my power to do you a service, you may be assured I shall.”
He clasped my hand slowly.
“In that case, Godspeed, Miss Speedwell.”
He gave me a ghost of a smile at the bit of wordplay and released my hand.
The brothers did not touch but exchanged nods, and we made as if to leave.
At the last moment, Stoker turned back, tossing the
Brief History onto his brother’s desk.
“One last thing, old man.
I stole that from Wibberley’s, the little bookshop in Oxford Street.
Oh, and there is a page gone missing.
See that it is paid for, will you?”
Sir Rupert gave a short laugh, like the bark of a fox, and we left him then, emerging into Chancery Lane just as the street began to fill with solicitors and barristers and clerks, all bound for their luncheon tables.
Stoker took my arm.
“Put down your veil.
I don’t like how crowded the street has become, and we must have a think.”
I drew the light silk veil over my features.
“I have just the spot,” I told him.
“Where no one would ever think to look for us.”
· · ·
An hour later we were in the Tower of London listening to the Yeoman Warder’s speech of welcome.
We had paid our admission by cobbling together a few coins.
Most had gone to fish and chips, fragrantly greasy and eaten straight from the newspaper, with Stoker complaining all the while that respectable ladies did not eat in the street.
“Since when do such trivialities concern you?”
I demanded.
“They do not, but they will draw attention to you,” he reminded me.
I shrugged and finished every delectable bite of my crispy cod.
“That was sublime,” I told him as we threw away the greasy newspapers and joined the queue to enter the Tower.
I listened eagerly to the Yeoman Warder’s patter, then quickly assessed our options.
With Stoker hard upon my heels, I directed my steps to the squat bulk of St. Thomas’s Tower.
We emerged at the top to find clouds gathering and a cold river mist rising.
Stoker gave me a quizzical look.
“What the devil are we doing here?”
“I have never been to the Tower of London,” I told him simply.
“It might be my last chance.”
“Veronica—” he began, but I waved him off.
“I am not prey to martyrdom, Stoker.
I have no intention of letting these ruffians abscond with me.
But I would be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity for new experiences, you must agree.”
He gave a gusty sigh.
“Very well.
But why
here?
It is bloody cold.”
“You have answered your own question.
We are not likely to be followed or overheard, and I always find a brisk breeze clears my head.
So we shall stand up here and let the wind buffet us while we work it out.”
He peered over the edge of the tower to the swirling green waters of the Thames.
“Traitors’ Gate,” I observed.
“Just think of all the Tudors who came this way to meet their fates—Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, the Countess of Salisbury, poor little Lady Jane Grey.
Not a comforting thought.”
“Yes, well, royalty has a history of going to bloodthirsty lengths to retain its hold on power,” he commented dryly.
He dropped his head.
“Damn me for a fool.
I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.
You are not wrong.
The history of our country is quite forthcoming on the fate of traitors and pretenders.
Even unwilling ones,” I said, thinking of the sad little puppet Jane Grey.
“But that was a different time.
We live in a modern age, Stoker.
And in a world with steamships and telegraphs and suspension bridges, I find it difficult to believe anyone would be put to death for the misfortune of having the wrong blood.”
“Are you willing to take that chance?”
he asked.
“No.”
I took one last shuddering glance at the padlocked gate and turned to Stoker.
“So let us begin.
Who would have motive to wish me harm?”
“The royal family,” he said promptly.
I considered, then shook my head.
“I think not.”
“They have the most to lose if you make your claim,” he pointed out.
“But look at them—
really look at them.
What are they?
They may be royal, but they have the values of middle-class Germans.
They believe in God and duty and respectability.
Granted, my father may have erred against that in his liaison with my mother, but consider what he did.
When he believed himself in love for the first time, he did not simply seduce the girl.
He married her.
No one in the whole of the Empire could have known better than he what he was risking in doing so.
But he did it.
He may have regretted it afterward when he realized the enormity of it all, but he did not simply sin with her and damn the consequences.
The Prince of Wales is a romantic.”
Stoker snorted.
“Have you paid attention to the newspapers?
Your princely father has seduced the wives of half the court.
He has been named in divorce proceedings, Veronica.
That is hardly the sort of thing one would expect from a romantic.”
“It is precisely the sort of thing I would expect,” I countered.
“He thinks with his heart.
He is in love with women and the idea of love.
He believes himself chivalrous.
He married Lily because it was wildly improbable, like something out of myth—or his own family history.
Have you forgot Edward IV?
He married a widowed nobody and made her Queen of England.
No doubt the Prince of Wales thought he could do the same, and somehow, between marrying Lily and announcing his betrothal to Princess Alexandra, he changed his mind.
But what?”
Stoker retrieved the page he had torn from the
Brief History and scrutinized it for a long moment.
“He changed his mind—or something changed it for him,” Stoker said slowly.
“And I’ve just realized what it was.
The date your parents married—it was the autumn of 1861.
By the following year, he became engaged to Princess Alexandra.
Do you remember what happened in December of 1861?”
he asked, brandishing the page.
“Hardly,” I replied.
“I was, you will recall, in utero at the time.”
“In December of 1861, Prince Albert died.”
I stared at him, comprehension turning to certainty as Stoker elaborated.
“The Prince Consort fell ill after he visited the Prince of Wales at university.
The royal court never addressed the rumors, but they walked together for hours in a chilling rain.
What would drive a man of not terribly robust health to take his son for a private walk where no one could overhear them in killing weather?”
“A scandal about to break,” I finished breathlessly.
“He had learned of the marriage.”
“Or at least heard something of their liaison.
Enough to send him straight down to school to upbraid his son, even though they would have been together in just a few weeks for Christmas.”
“And what a burden that would be for an impressionable, romantic youth,” I went on.
“Married in haste to an unsuitable woman, waiting for an opportunity to introduce her to his family and win their blessing, and then his beloved father, the bulwark of the entire family, is dead—because of him, because the shock of the news
killed him.”
“That impressionable, romantic youth would be devastated,” Stoker said.
“He would carry that guilt to the end of his days.
And it would poison everything and everyone to do with that marriage.”
“Of course.
He wouldn’t have been able to bear to look at her after that.”
I stopped and did a quick bit of arithmetic.