A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery)

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “As does her brother.”

  “Yes,” Stoker agreed, his voice suddenly chill. “A castle tends to improve a man’s attractiveness exponentially.”

  “It isn’t his castle I find attractive,” I returned with a feral smile.

  Stoker thrust himself up from the shingle. “We should go back. It’s suddenly grown quite cold.”

  Without waiting, he collected his boots and made his way across the shingle. Very cold indeed, I reflected.

  CHAPTER

  9

  The rest of the day passed slowly. Every time I glanced at the clock it seemed to have stopped, the minutes ticking by like cold treacle as I tried to settle to something, anything. I had no wish to see Stoker. The tepid companionship he offered—the companionship upon which I insisted, I reminded myself coldly—seemed a small and wretched thing in the light of day. Over the months in Madeira I had persuaded myself that I must take a rational and sober course. But now, in proximity to him with a puzzle to solve, old emotions, once firmly banked, had burst once more into flame and the veritable inferno threatened to consume me. And Stoker’s easy camaraderie and casual nudity did nothing to help. I thought of how nonchalantly he had stripped himself bare in front of me, as if I were no more than one of his sailor chums. He had taken me at my word, agreeing to be the best of what we had always been, partners with no regard to our respective genders.

  And yet. In spite of my declarations and good intentions, that was simply not good enough. It was as if I had taken a blade to a fine painting, slicing the canvas to shreds, and now I complained I could no longer see the picture. I sat and loathed myself in silence for a little while before taking myself firmly in hand.

  I wrote again to Lady Wellie as well as to Lady Cordelia before writing up my plan for the glasswing exhibit in the vivarium. Then I rewarded myself with a few chapters of Arcadia Brown’s latest exploits with her faithful sidekick, Garvin. She was involved in solving the theft of priceless cameos from the pope’s private collection in the Vatican, and I had just come to the particularly gruesome murder of a member of the Swiss Guard when a sudden clap of thunder nearly startled me out of my skin. The storm that had risen and quelled had revived itself, bringing with it lashing rain and gusty winds. I was surprised to find that I had filled the afternoon and it was teatime, and I went in search of the others, finding them in the drawing room, with Mertensia looking miserable over the tea things.

  “I’ve been forced to play Mother,” she told me through gritted teeth. “What will you have? China or India?”

  “China, please.” She poured a cup of steaming amber liquid and thrust it into my hands, letting some of the tea slop into the saucer. “God, I’m a fright at this. Why must we do it . . .” She trailed off, clearly irritated at the responsibilities of hospitality. She was a prickly creature, and I was determined to make cordial conversation with her even if it were against our collective will.

  I sipped. “You mightn’t enjoy playing the hostess, but no one can gainsay your expertise in the garden.”

  “I wish I were there now,” she told me. “I understand plants. People are a different matter entirely.”

  She hesitated, then nodded with obvious reluctance towards the empty space on the sofa beside her. I sat and sipped at my tea, refusing cake and sandwiches and bread and butter.

  “It’s all so pointless,” she said at length and with some bitterness. “Why must we sit around so stupidly, having precisely the same conversations with exactly the same people, day after day? I would far rather have a quick cup of tea in the garden and then get back to my work.”

  “Surely not on a day like today,” I teased with a glance to the window. Ribbons of rain silvered the glass.

  “Especially on a day like today,” she countered. “Plants behave differently when they are wet. I learn something new every time I am near them. You must feel the same about butterflies,” she challenged.

  “Butterflies do not fly in the rain,” I reminded her.

  She tipped her head as though the thought had never occurred to her before. “What do they do in the rain?”

  “Cling to a handy bush or shrub, shelter under a leaf. Their wings are made of overlapping scales, so tiny they are almost imperceptible to the naked eye. If the scales collect too much moisture, the wings will be too heavy to lift the butterfly from its perch. Part of the charm of hunting them is the knowledge that they thrive in good weather in temperate climates.”

  “But I know I have seen our glasswings flutter about in the rain,” she said.

  “That is what makes them special,” I told her. “The distinction of the glasswing is that it lacks the scales of other varieties. It is the scales that lend color to a butterfly’s wing. A creature without those scales is colorless but magnificent in its own way and able to fly in the rain. Perhaps it is an example of Mr. Darwin’s theories on adaptive evolution,” I suggested.

  “You mean the weather here is so changeable that in order for a butterfly to thrive, it would adapt to the conditions in which it lives?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You are a follower of Mr. Darwin’s theories?” she asked.

  “I am interested,” I corrected. “I tend towards Mr. Huxley’s more reserved approach. I am an empiricist and believe what I observe. Stoker tends to give greater credence to Darwin,” I added, and at the mention of his name, Mertensia flushed.

  She covered her blushes by munching at a prawn sandwich, and I took the opportunity to change the subject.

  “I am sorry if I distressed you yesterday with my question about Rosamund. Impertinence is rather a bad habit of mine.”

  She brushed the crumbs from her fingers. “Not so impertinent after all,” she said. “It seems Malcolm had a purpose to this gathering the whole time.”

  “Did he share it with you?”

  “He did not.” Her dark eyes were wary. “It seems he has been keeping secrets from me,” she added with an attempt at lightness.

  “You didn’t know about the traveling bag?”

  She shook her head and took up a piece of cake but did not eat it.

  “It must have come as a shock,” I supposed. “To have so much uncertainty about her fate and then to learn that your brother believes she never left the island alive—it is ghastly.”

  Her eyes flashed to mine. “I never believed Rosamund left the island,” she said with brutal finality.

  “What makes you think she never left?” I pressed.

  “Because she would never have walked away from her life’s ambition at the moment she achieved it,” Mertensia told me.

  “Then what do you think became of her if she did not leave the island?” I pressed.

  Her lips parted and she looked down at her hands, almost in surprise, it seemed. The piece of cake had been crumbled to bits. She wiped her fingers and put her tea things aside, her movements deliberate. “You must excuse me now. I have spent the morning cutting hydrangeas and must put them into glycerin if I am to preserve them for the winter.”

  She left me then and almost immediately Helen Romilly slipped into her place. “May I pour you another cup, Miss Speedwell?”

  I assented and she played Mother. Her hand was steady, I noticed, and she passed me the cup with a small smile.

  “I must thank you, both for your kindness and your discretion,” she began.

  “Think nothing of it,” I instructed.

  She held up a hand. “Please. You were very understanding and I have no excuse for my behavior, only that it is difficult being here again.”

  “You were here for the wedding, were you not?”

  She nodded, her dark hair gleaming in the lamplight. At her throat was pinned a mourning brooch, a lock of hair woven into a crosshatched pattern forming the center.

  “Lucian’s,” she said, putting a finger to the brooc
h. “I do not like coming here, but I feel closer to him, knowing this place was so dear to him.”

  “You must miss him terribly.” I sipped at my tea and watched a tiny wrinkle etch itself between her brows.

  “Not as much in London. Here he is always present because this was his home, but in London we were always changing lodgings, forever buffeted by the winds of chance,” she said. Her voice was light, but there was a strain in her manner and I wondered exactly how happy her marriage had been.

  She went on. “My husband was an optimist, almost childlike in his belief that the next great thing was about to happen. He had great power to make others believe it too, or at least he made me believe it,” she added with a gentle smile. She turned and beckoned to the cat, Hecate, who leapt lightly onto her lap and settled herself, regarding me with lamplike eyes. Helen’s hands, beautiful and slim, fell to stroking the animal as it purred.

  “There is an otherworldliness to folk from these parts,” she told me in a low voice. “They believe in piskies and faeries and all sorts of things we grow past when we are adults. It is almost as if they never quite leave childhood behind.”

  “They are more remote,” I reminded her. “They live on the edge of the world, it must seem to them.”

  “Indeed. It worries me sometimes to think that Caspian might have inherited some of that out-of-touch quality. There is a morbidity to the Romillys, a refusal to face the world as it is. It is frightening,” she told me, her hands never pausing in the slow petting of the cat.

  “I think all mothers worry for their children.”

  She smiled. “No doubt you think me silly. But Caspian is all I have left in the world. I want him to do well and I want him happy.”

  “Those things are not mutually exclusive,” I suggested.

  “No, but the Romillys seldom make happy marriages.”

  “It sounds as if yours was,” I reminded her.

  “It was,” she told me firmly. “But mine was the exception, because we did not live here, I think. It was good for Lucian to get away from here. But now I have brought his son back and I wonder if it were a very great mistake.”

  “Surely it is good for him to know his family.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, but there was a note of hesitation in her voice.

  I thought back to the scene between uncle and nephew I had overheard the previous day. “Do you worry about Malcolm’s influence on your son?”

  Her eyes widened and her hand stopped, earning her a rebuke from the cat. She resumed petting as she shook her head. “Certainly not. Malcolm is a gentleman. He and Mertensia might be prone to melancholia, but that is the worst one can say about them.”

  I hastened to repair the damage. “Forgive me. I heard that Malcolm was intemperate once at school and laid violent hands upon another boy.”

  “Oh, that,” she said with a short laugh. “The boy he choked was a nasty little brute. He was playing the bully to one of the younger boys and Malcolm wouldn’t stand for it. He threw himself at the larger fellow and wouldn’t be shaken off. The headmaster insisted upon his expulsion for it, but he came home a hero.”

  “You’re quite certain of the circumstances?”

  “Of course! Lucian saw it all. They had been sent to school together and the headmaster expelled them both at the same time. He used to tell that story whenever Malcolm’s name was mentioned, he was so proud of his elder brother for holding his own with a boy twice his size.”

  I fell silent, wondering why Tiberius had not seen fit to share the mitigating details of the story. Did he know them? Or had Helen invented them?

  She went on. “No, my fears with regard to Malcolm have nothing to do with his temper. They are rather to do with his judgment. I fear this house party will be a calamity.”

  “What do you think he means to achieve?”

  She shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Exactly what he says. To discover once and for all what happened to Rosamund. I only hope he can live with whatever he finds.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  Helen shook her head. “I do not know. I cannot believe Rosamund would have run away. It would have been so out of character.”

  “Did you like her?” I asked on impulse.

  She gave me a level look. “You are forthright, Miss Speedwell. One is not supposed to ask such things.”

  “That means ‘no,’” I replied.

  Her mouth curved into a smile. “Very well. I did not. She was very pretty, arrestingly so. But there was something hard about her, I thought. Watchful. It was as though she were always assessing, calculating, waiting to discover what part she should put on to play a role.”

  “What role?”

  She spread her ringed hands. “Mistress of this castle. She was a governess, Miss Speedwell. She had been trained to serve, to fit in, to be unobtrusive. But something drove her, some determination to better her station. I did not fault her for it, mind you. Women in this world have to compete and there is only so much to go around. If she managed to stake her claim here and made good, I was prepared to accept her as Malcolm’s wife.”

  “Your attitude is a very modern one,” I told her.

  “I am, unlike the Romillys, a realist. I know too well what the world is like,” she reminded me. “Hence my advice to you yesterday about securing the viscount while you have him. Although I think your inclinations lie elsewhere,” she added with a flick of her gaze towards where Stoker stood at the fireplace, quietly making his way through a plate of cream buns.

  I murmured something indistinct into my teacup and she laughed, leaning forward to tap my knee. “Do not worry, my dear. Your secret is safe with me. Betrothed to one brother and cavorting with the other on a beach while he is disrobed! Another woman might be shocked, but I take my hat off to you,” she said.

  I thought back to the flicker of movement I had detected out of the corner of my eye while we were on the western beach. “You saw us.”

  “I did.”

  “Would it help if I confessed that I am not, in fact, actually betrothed to Tiberius? It was a stratagem because he worried that our traveling together would offend Malcolm’s Catholic sensibilities.”

  “Are you his mistress?” she inquired bluntly.

  “Certainly not,” I returned. “Tiberius is a friend, nothing more. He has arranged for me to add several specimens of the Romilly Glasswing butterfly to my collection.”

  “And his brother?” she asked, her eyes straying once more to Stoker.

  “We work together. We are employed by the Earl of Rosemorran to establish a museum.”

  “How disappointing!” she said with a smile.

  I bristled. “Because I am in trade?”

  She rapped my knee with her knuckles. “No, my dear. I, too, am in trade, after a fashion. No, I meant your chaste connection with the younger Templeton-Vane. I saw well enough what is under those clothes, Miss Speedwell. Permit me to observe that you are wasting an opportunity there.”

  I could not help but agree. She made a compelling point.

  * * *

  • • •

  At dinner that night we dutifully made our way through several courses of excellent and largely untouched food, our conversation stilted. Helen did not appear.

  “Mama never likes to be in company before a visitation,” Caspian explained.

  “A ‘visitation’?” I asked.

  “That is what she prefers to call these encounters,” he told me. He was pale and darted several tight-lipped looks towards his uncle, but otherwise his mood was gravely courteous.

  “How did your mother discover her abilities?” Tiberius queried.

  Caspian shrugged. “She has always been sensitive to atmospheres. After my father died, she was inconsolable. She called upon a medium in order to speak with him but we never heard from him.”
>
  Mertensia snorted. “You make it sound as if it were a social call.”

  “In many respects, that is precisely what it is,” he insisted. “She establishes a connection with the world beyond, and if the spirit she wishes to speak with is inclined to communicate, he or she will respond. If not, Mama is given her congé.”

  “Not at home to visitors,” I quipped.

  His smile was warm. “Just so.”

  “How fascinating,” Tiberius said, his gaze inscrutable as it rested upon the young man. “I must make a point of speaking with her on the subject.”

  “I am certain she would be amenable to that,” Caspian returned.

  I looked to where Malcolm sat, toying with a dish of fruited custard. I leant closer to him, pitching my voice low. “Are you quite all right? I know it is not my place to remark upon it, but you have hardly touched your food.” I did not add that his wineglass had been filled four or five times by my count.

  He looked at me a long moment, seeming to focus only after an effort. “How kind of you to ask. I confess, I find this all more difficult than I had expected.”

  “I can only imagine. But you needn’t carry through with it,” I pointed out. “You have only to say the word and it is finished.”

  “How can it be finished until I know?” The question was anguished, and I felt a rush of pity for him. He seemed to recover himself then, for he touched my hand lightly. “You are very gracious, Veronica. Tiberius is a lucky man.”

  Tiberius! I was grateful that our host had not yet discovered our deception, particularly as I had been indiscreet enough to disport myself on a beach with a wet and naked Stoker. The memory of him, striding from the waves, seawater rolling off of his body like a son of Poseidon . . .

  “Veronica?” Malcolm’s voice recalled me to the present.

  I smiled. “Sometimes I quite forget I am an engaged woman.”

  “I am not surprised,” he said, touching my bare finger. “You wear no betrothal ring.”