An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Oh, but she did,” said a voice from the doorway. The baroness stood there, a small pistol in her hand, leveled at Stoker’s heart.

  “Not again,” I muttered.

  She smiled a mirthless smile. “You are rather prone to being the victims of homicidal attacks, are you not? You do have a penchant for putting yourself into dangerous situations. You see, you are not the only one capable of scientific inquiry, Miss Speedwell. I have made it my business to discover a few things about you.”

  “Things that are supposed to be confidential,” I told her.

  She shrugged. “Intelligence matters are often shared between allies.”

  I glanced at Stoker. “I thought our activities were not a part of the official record.”

  “They are not. But there will always be those who gossip, no matter how discreetly, and your activities have given you a reputation for fecklessness,” the baroness affirmed.

  “Fecklessness! We are never feckless,” I told her coldly. “We are full to the brim with feck. Now, kindly put down your weapon and let us discuss this like rational people. It is obvious that you strangled Yelena after murdering Alice Baker-Greene. You might yet redeem yourself if you reveal what you have done with the princess.”

  “I have no idea where the princess is,” she returned. “If I did, I would be infinitely happier.” She cocked her head like a bright little bird, the light glinting on her monocle, and gave a brisk twitch of the weapon. “Now, I have the gun, which means I am in command here. Miss Speedwell, you will remove your clothing, down to your chemise. I apologize for the indelicacy, but it is the only way to be certain that you are not armed. You will be quick about it.” I glanced at the door, wondering what had become of Durand.

  “The captain,” I began, but she jerked her head to the side and I saw, just peeping out from behind one of the trunks, a pair of booted legs.

  “Have you killed him?” I asked.

  “Not yet. He is merely unconscious. He bled a lot,” she added ruefully. “I hit him in the head and it has made a mess. I will have to clean that up and I do not like a mess.”

  I opened my mouth and the gun in her hand twitched towards Stoker. “Miss Speedwell, I told you not to attempt it. I will not shoot you. I will shoot Mr. Templeton-Vane instead.”

  She had, unerringly, found my Achilles’ heel. The fact that Stoker had very recently been shot weighed on my conscience. It was the latest in a long line of such misadventures, but it had been the most serious—far too serious to permit a repeat performance. I would take chances with my life, but not his. I undressed swiftly, removing the corset with its slender blade and the knife from my boot as well as the minuten neatly embedded in my cuffs. When I had finished, I stood, shivering in my chemise and underdrawers.

  “Now you,” she told Stoker.

  “I would rather not,” he said, flushing to the tips of his ears.

  “I will not be delayed,” the baroness told him, gesturing with the revolver. “Do as you are told.”

  Still he hesitated, and suddenly I understood the reason for his reluctance. “Oh, Stoker,” I murmured. “How could you?”

  “I was in a hurry,” he muttered. “I wanted to get to my spoonbill.”

  His blush deepened as he looked to our captor. “You see, Baroness, I received a rather important trophy—a roseate spoonbill, Platalea ajaja—”

  “The baroness does not care about the Latin,” I interrupted.

  He carried on as if I had not spoken. “And in my eagerness to examine the bird, I am afraid I dressed in haste this morning and am only wearing trousers.”

  “Then you are going to be very cold,” she said. The revolver jerked again. “Disrobe.”

  He did as she said, pulling off his coat and shirt and dropping them on top of his boots. He hesitated at the buttons of his trousers, then unfastened them, stepping out of the garment and standing mother naked before her.

  “Thank you both for being so obliging,” she said. “Now, open that trunk,” she instructed, pointing with the barrel of her pistol to an enormous iron-banded affair. Stoker threw back the lid. “You will find rope inside. Tie your companion,” she instructed. He did so, knotting the ropes as loosely as he dared around my wrists. “Put your arms about his neck,” she told me. I obliged her, looping my bound arms over his head in a parody of an embrace.

  “Good,” she pronounced. “Get into the trunk.”

  It seemed a rather snug fit and was awkward to maneuver, arranged as we were with my arms around Stoker.

  “Mr. Templeton-Vane on the bottom,” she said. Stoker settled himself, drawing me down on top of him. He settled me as gently as he could, curving his body around mine with such innate sweetness, I might have wept under other circumstances.

  It was a tidy little conundrum, I reflected. And the baroness had done an admirable job of rendering it just difficult enough for us to maneuver. But she would have to put the revolver down in order to strap the trunk closed, I decided, and that was when I would strike, levering my legs up and smashing them into the lid, forcing it backwards and into her.

  But the baroness anticipated this. She gave me a thin smile as she came near, bending over us. “Good night, children.” She raised her hand, the butt of the pistol gripped tightly in her palm. She brought it down swiftly against Stoker’s temple. He gave a single sigh as he slid into unconsciousness, and I heard a roar of outrage—my own, I realized—just as her hand rose for the second blow.

  And then a black curtain descended, blotting out the light.

  CHAPTER

  27

  I struggled awake slowly, so slowly, as if I were swimming through treacle. Every bit of progress towards consciousness was a battle, and my senses returned not all together but one at a time. First was smell. Blood and salt and oil, I thought as my awareness was revived. There was a sense of cold, such perishing cold that I thought I would never be warm again, and the air in the trunk, close and damp, smelt of the sea.

  I could hear the steady beating of waves, the rhythmic slap of water against an iron hull. We were seaborne, then, I realized dazedly. Somehow the baroness had contrived to have our trunk conveyed onto a boat of some sort. But where were we bound? And what did she mean to do with us when we arrived?

  I had no sense of the passage of time, no way to judge how long we had been held in our makeshift prison. She had taken the precaution of tying a piece of fabric over my mouth, and Stoker’s as well, I had no doubt. It was an easy enough matter to scrape it loose by means of twisting my head. (In my experience, abductors never will tie gags tightly enough. It is a skill more of them ought to practice.) It hung loose around my neck, unpleasantly damp from having been in my mouth for some time.

  There was no light, no indication of day or night, so I assessed my own condition for clues. I was mildly hungry and experiencing only a faint inclination to attend to the needs of Nature, so we could not have been aboard for too long, I decided. My hands were still bound, which I did not like at all, but I found this much more tolerable than the gag had been.

  I flexed my feet and immediately rammed my toes against Stoker’s legs, causing him to groan. “Stoker, are you awake?”

  For a long, terrible moment, there was no reply save silence. Then, like a bear rousing itself from hibernation, came a series of snuffles and grunts and I realized he was freeing himself of his gag.

  “Where in the name of seven hells are we?” he demanded.

  “At sea,” I told him.

  “I deduced that,” he replied with considerable froideur. I decided to overlook his sulkiness.

  “There is no call to be in a temper,” I said. “Just because we have been abducted. Again.”

  “I think there is every call to be in a temper,” he returned. “This is precisely the sort of predicament I was trying to avoid.”

  “I certainly hope you do not
mean to suggest this is my fault,” I began.

  “Suggest? No, I am stating it outright,” he told me. “I am saying it plainly. If you like, I will have it printed on the front page of the Daily Harbinger or spelt out in electric lights in Piccadilly Circus or tattooed on my backside—which, I would like to remind you, is in fact naked at this moment.”

  “I think that is a trifle unfair,” I said, attempting to conceal my sense of injury.

  “Unfair? Veronica, what is unfair is that yet again an attempt has been made upon our lives, one that may yet succeed,” he said in real bitterness.

  “Do not be so melodramatic. This is hardly an attempt on our lives. We were merely rendered hors de combat, put into a trunk, and loaded onto a boat.”

  “A boat that is at sea and from which we will most likely be flung into the ocean,” he said. This would never do. He was distinctly in the grip of “the morbs” and I would not stand for it. We were companions in adventure, and it was my duty to buck his spirits.

  “That is a decidedly pessimistic way to view the current situation,” I said a trifle more cheerfully than I felt. “I prefer to believe we will prevail. But I am the rara avis, a true optimist.”

  “You are not an optimist. You are a fantasist. You cannot really believe that just because we have eluded a fatal conclusion to every previous unexpected peril that we must do so again. Sooner or later, our luck will run out, Veronica. And that day may very well be today. How can you accept this with such blind and reckless equanimity?”

  This was no mere momentary gloom, I realized. He was, for perhaps the first time in our acquaintance, well and truly in despair. I was silent a long moment. He had been angry with me before. When his dark moods were upon him, anger was his frequent companion. I bore the vagaries of his temper with composure. His flashes of irritation were no source of bother to me; in fact, if I am honest—as I have sworn within these pages to be—I will admit that when his ire rose, it more often than not roused some rather different emotion in me. Because I knew his rage, even in a burst of white-hot passion, would never cause him to inflict harm, I could view it from a position of detachment, appreciation even. It would have been a rare woman not to enjoy the sight of his muscles taut with emotion, his eyes flashing sapphirine fury, his hair tumbled as he thrust his hands through it. I had even, upon occasion, deliberately prodded his patience to the snapping point in order to turn that hectic emotion to some more personally enjoyable activity.

  But this reaction was calculated in its coldness. This was no sound and fury that signified nothing. This was a withdrawal, a pulling back within himself like a wounded thing, guarding and protecting himself. From me.

  I rested my head on his shoulder. There was nowhere for him to move, but I felt his muscle flinch in protest. He would offer me no willing succor.

  “I am sorry,” I said softly. “You are quite right. I did fling myself headlong into this endeavor without ever believing the consequences would come to this. And I did so knowing that you would follow. As you always do.”

  “More fool me,” he said into the darkness.

  “I only wanted—”

  “I know what you wanted.”

  “To find justice for Alice Baker-Greene. And then to help the Alpenwalders,” I finished. “It seemed a noble pursuit.”

  “To find justice? To help the Alpenwalders?” His voice was frankly incredulous. “Just now, when we are facing death yet again, I would very much appreciate it if you could be bothered, just this once, to tell the truth.”

  I reared back in shock, slamming my head into the side of the trunk. “I beg your pardon? Are you calling me a liar?”

  He took a deep breath, as deep as the confines of the trunk would permit, and exhaled slowly, ruffling my hair. “Not intentionally,” he said. “You are as dishonest with yourself as you are with me.”

  “Dishonest! If we were not locked in a trunk and possibly destined for a watery grave, I would demand satisfaction.”

  “Demand all you like. What you will get is the truth. You are in the grip of a very strong delusion if you think you did all of this in order to help Alice Baker-Greene or the Alpenwalders.”

  “To what other motive would you impute my actions?” I asked icily. “I could hardly be driven by remuneration considering we will not be paid for our efforts. It is not public adulation since our actions must remain private. So, fame and fortune are not my aims. What drives me then?”

  “Ennui.”

  “Ennui?” I laughed aloud. “You think I am bored?”

  “I think you are afraid of becoming so,” he corrected. “You have your work, which you enjoy but which offers no real sport now that you have curtailed your field expeditions. You no longer travel the globe in search of specimens, meeting new acquaintances and testing yourself against the most demanding of circumstances. Those are confining conditions to one who has been accustomed to the most liberal of freedoms.”

  Confusion settled over me, and I could not reply as he went on.

  “But most of all, I think you are afraid of becoming bored with me.”

  “With you?” My laugh emerged on a sob. “How, I implore you, could any woman be bored with you? You are changeable as the weather, Revelstoke Templeton-Vane. I could no more predict your moods than I could those of a volcano. I wake each day never knowing if I will find you wreathed in smiles or taking out your grievances on a stuffed walrus. You are the least boring man ever fashioned by Nature.”

  “Perhaps you will not become bored with me,” he amended. “But you could well become bored of who you are when you are with me.”

  “Who am I when I am with you?” I whispered into his shoulder.

  “A domesticated creature,” he replied. “One who fears her wings have been clipped. You’ve no liking for cages, Veronica. And I think you fear that in allowing yourself to love freely, you will find one of your own making.”

  “That is ludicrous—” I began.

  “You needn’t persuade me,” he cut in. “It is yourself you have to convince. Do you really mean to tell me you have never lain awake at night, worrying at what you have become? That a settled, domestic life has become your destiny? That we will trudge on from year to year with the only variation being whether Cook sends up treacle tart or Eton mess on a Sunday for pudding?”

  “Only you would think to bring up the subject of food at a time like this,” I chided. “I can hear your stomach growling from here.”

  “And I can see you, fleeing the scene of a conversation we ought to have had weeks ago,” he said, refusing to rise to the bait.

  I remained silent, stubbornly so. It was my only defense. I could not remove myself, but I could remove my response, I decided as he went on.

  “Veronica, I know you said you would never marry, but—”

  “Do not dare,” I hissed, thrusting a pointed finger between his ribs. “Do not even think of proposing marriage to me under these circumstances.”

  “Then under which?” he asked, his voice lit with sudden hopefulness.

  “None! I thought you understood me,” I blazed back at him. “Did you think I spoke in jest when I said I would never marry you?”

  “No, but I thought—”

  “You thought I would change my mind,” I jibed, thoroughly enraged. “You thought I was a woman, inconstant as the moon, and I would be persuaded by pretty speeches or spirited lovemaking or some other romantic nonsense. But I will not be swayed,” I warned him, poking again hard. “I will not be swayed.”

  “Very well,” he said. “But it does not always have to be settled domesticity or murderous pursuits. We might travel a little, you know. Find a meeting place in between dull routine and homicidal peril.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Then when we emerge from this—if we do emerge—we might plan a voyage,” he suggested.

 
The lid of the trunk was flung back at that moment. A lantern bobbed above us, the sudden gleam blinding us after the impenetrable blackness of the trunk. I moved to shield my eyes against it, but my wrists were grasped firmly and I was hauled to my feet, disentangled from my awkward embrace with Stoker, and set unceremoniously on the deck. Stoker followed, ungently handled by a few roughly clad sailors who grinned at his state of dishabille.

  The baroness held the lantern aloft, bracing herself on the shifting deck. “So, you are awake. That complicates matters, but nothing we cannot manage.”

  She signaled to the sailor holding my arms, who shoved me towards the railing. Just beyond, the icy grey water rolled and heaved, peaking in foaming white ridges. It looked absolutely frigid, and I had little doubt Stoker and I would perish within a very few minutes of being flung overboard. The idea that he had been correct about our imminent demise would be of little consolation, I reflected. And I had spent our last conversation quarreling with him. It was not a memory to treasure. The least I could do was give us a chance at survival, and the first step towards that end was the purchase of time.

  I dug in my heels and faced the baroness. “I want to know why,” I said, counting on the imperiousness of my tone to bring her to heel. She might be an aristocrat, but she had lived her life at the beck and call of her royal mistress, and my resemblance to that august lady seemed to play in my favor as she responded automatically. A wiser woman would have simply hurled us overboard without delay, but few people can be quite so cold-blooded, I had observed. Most folk, even those experienced in murder, required a moment to steel themselves against taking a life.

  “I had no choice,” she said.

  “Of course you did. One always has a choice.” My words were chosen deliberately. It has been my experience that few people care to be directly contradicted and will almost always rise to the bait when it is dangled. Give them a chance to justify their actions and you might as well settle in for a nice long chat. No one ever likes to think of themselves as the villain, so any opportunity to cast themselves as hero will be seized like a greedy child after a chocolate.