A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery)

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  Happy field or mossy cavern,

  Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

  Have ye tippled drink more fine

  Than mine host’s Canary wine?

  Or are fruits of Paradise

  Sweeter than those dainty pies

  Of venison? O generous food!

  Drest as though bold Robin Hood

  Would, with his maid Marian,

  Sup and bowse from horn and can.

  “Is there any occasion for which you cannot find a poem from Keats?” I asked as we neared the Mermaid Inn.

  “Of course not,” he replied happily. “It was one of the greatest discoveries of my life when I learnt that Keats was a man for all seasons and all situations. There is not a person, a feeling, a moment, that Keats did not address.”

  I stopped to face him. “He has no poem to fit me,” I challenged.

  He grinned, a devilish expression that nearly robbed me of breath. “Of course he has. ‘I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.’ ”

  “‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’?” I demanded. “That is how you see me? A beautiful woman without mercy who kills her lovers?”

  He tipped his head with a thoughtful look. “’Tisn’t so much that she kills them. I think it’s more that she isn’t terribly fussed when they die.”

  “Of all the—” I broke off when I saw the unholy glint in his eye. “You are in an unaccountably buoyant mood.”

  “I am near the sea,” he said simply. I remembered then how many years of his life had been spent aboard ships, first of Her Majesty’s Navy, and then of his own expedition as he traveled to Amazonia in search of undiscovered species and perhaps a little glory as well.

  I glanced to the sign above the door, the lascivious mermaid with her hands cupping her breasts and beckoning the weary traveler. “I wonder if you ought to go alone,” I suggested. “Mother Nance might be susceptible to your masculine charms. You could ask her about Rosamund and perhaps unearth a little local gossip.”

  He laughed. “For all your knowledge of men, you still haven’t discovered that we are by far more prone to gossip, only we call it telling tales. I will put on my manliest demeanor and speak to the fishermen in the taproom. You can convene a coven meeting with the old woman and discover what she knows.”

  He turned to open the door and I put out my tongue behind his back. He would enjoy a few pints of the delicious and potent local cider and some decidedly manly talk while I was forced to sit by the hearth and engage in ladies’ prattle. I longed to be amongst the men, but I understood his point. He was one of them, work roughened and stalwart for all his elegant vowels and good breeding. They would talk to him where they would not to a woman, no matter how engaging she might be.

  Mother Nance welcomed me into her parlor with no sign of surprise. “I’ve just put the cider on to warm. The lads drink it cold, but I think a bit of warmth is just the thing on a day like today. Put a little heat in your bones, it will,” she promised. I looked to the hearth, where two copper tankards were standing expectantly.

  “You anticipated company?” I asked as I took the seat she indicated.

  She slanted me a look that might have been chiding under other circumstances. “I anticipated your company, my dear.”

  I made no reply to that—there seemed no possible reply to make—so I sat in silence until she had warmed the cider. She snapped a cinnamon stick in two, dropping a piece of the bark into each of the tankards, followed by a pair of cloves she cracked upon her teeth. When the cider was sufficiently hot, she poured it carefully over the spices and added a slender thread of dark golden honey.

  “From our own St. Maddern’s Isle bees,” she told me as she handed me one of the tankards.

  I took a sip and nearly choked. “This is not cider,” I protested as I wheezed.

  “Of course it is,” she told me, taking a great swallow of the stuff and smacking her lips appreciatively. “With a bit of rum in it.”

  “How much rum, Mother Nance?”

  “No more’n half a teacup in each,” she promised.

  Half a teacup. At this rate I would be drunk as a lord by the time I finished our little chat. I made a note to myself to drink slowly.

  “Did you hear there was a bit of excitement up at the castle?” I ventured. “Some say Rosamund’s ghost has appeared, just as you said.”

  She shook her head, her expression inscrutable. “I did indeed say it.”

  “You are a canny woman, Mother Nance. What do you think happened to her?”

  She shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps the merfolk have come at last to take one of their own home.”

  I suppressed a sigh and took another drink. “A faery tale,” I told her. “You do not really believe that merfolk came ashore and dragged Malcolm Romilly’s bride to her death.”

  Her look was pitying. “’Twouldn’t be death, lovey. Not to go to the merfolk. Going home, more like.”

  This line of questioning was clearly unproductive, so I tried a different tack. “The whole business has been terribly upsetting for the master of the island. Surely the rest of you would like an answer for his sake.”

  She said nothing but merely sipped at her cider, and it occurred to me that an unsolved mystery with ghosts and a missing bride and perhaps a few merfolk thrown in for good measure was bound to be good for business. Travelers and curiosity seekers and other ghouls would be lured from miles around.

  “I suppose he shall simply have to reconcile himself to being a tragic bridegroom,” I said.

  “Like your Templeton-Vane,” she said, darting me a sly glance over the top of her tankard. I lifted a brow at her and she laughed. “Of course, the question is, which one?” she added.

  “They are neither of them mine,” I told her.

  She peered at me suddenly, her curious gaze searching my face. “I’d not have thought you blind, my dear. But there’re none so blind as they that will not see.”

  I gave her a thin smile. “Perhaps we might get back to the subject of Rosamund,” I suggested.

  She flapped a hand. “You’re a thruster, you are.”

  “A thruster?”

  “Pushing in where there is no place for you and making one,” she explained. I opened my mouth to object, but she held up a hand. “I don’t say it’s a bad thing, so settle your feathers, my dear. You’ve had to do it, haven’t you? All your life. Ever since you were born under a shadow.”

  “Born under a shadow?”

  “’Tis the sight,” she explained. “I know when a person has been born in sunlight and when they’ve been born in shadow. You are a child of the moon, poppet. That darkness never leaves you. It is your constant companion, and it always will be. And you know it, don’t you?”

  “Mother Nance,” I began patiently.

  “Ah, you don’t want to talk about it, do you, love? Mother Nance understands. ’Tis a hard thing for a child to know she isn’t wanted. It gets into her blood and bones until she knows that she must always find her own way, for none will smooth her path. But that sort of thing makes a woman strong, you know. Have you ever broken a bone?” she asked me suddenly.

  “Yes,” I told her, my mind whipping back to the summer I was eight and I fell from an apple tree. “My arm. When I was a little girl.”

  She put out her hand and I stretched my arm towards her. She cradled the wrist a moment, closing her eyes. Then her hands, cupping gently, moved up the limb, pausing halfway between wrist and elbow.

  “’Twas here,” she said, more to herself than to me. “This is where the bone broke and was mended.” She patted my arm. “And it is stronger now. Did you know that? When broken places mend, they are stronger than before.”

  I said nothing, but as she held my arm, I felt a curious warmth be
ginning to flow from her palms through my sleeve and into my flesh. A witch’s blessing, I thought wryly. After a long moment, she smiled and released me.

  “Hearts are the same as bones, you know,” she said as she picked up her tankard again.

  “Are they?”

  “Aye. One may be broken into a thousand pieces, but when they are bound together again and a heart is made whole, the love it gives will be all the fiercer.”

  I thought of Stoker, so desperately in love with his first wife, and the betrayal that had nearly destroyed him.

  She narrowed her gaze. “I could give you a charm for that,” she said, watching me carefully. “It wouldn’t take much, you know. Just a suggestion of a glamour, the merest whisper of a spell . . .”

  She let her words trail off suggestively, and for an instant, I was tempted. How easy it would be! To tip a bit of potion into a cup of tea or a glass of whisky . . .

  I shook my head, banishing the rum-laced thoughts that were clouding my judgment. “No, thank you, Mother Nance.”

  Her mouth twisted into an indulgent smile, very like the one she gave her grandson, I thought. To her I was a child, and a stubborn one, refusing the help that she offered.

  “Mother Nance, do you know anything about Rosamund Romilly? Anything that might explain her disappearance or what became of her?” I burst out.

  She settled back in her chair, her gaze going soft and unfocused. “She does not rest,” she told me at last, her voice small and dreamy. “She walks and she grieves. She must be buried properly for her spirit to quieten.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  She gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of the head.

  I put my tankard aside and prepared to rise.

  She glanced at it, the fire in the hearth reflected in the polished copper. “Beware the sister,” she said suddenly, clutching my hand, her eyes round, the pupils dilating wide and black.

  “Mother Nance?” Her hand was tight upon mine, the bones grinding a little as she grasped it harder.

  “Beware the sister,” she insisted.

  “Mertensia,” I murmured.

  Just as suddenly as the little fit seemed to come upon her, it eased. She dropped my hand and sat back in her chair, giving her head a shake as if to clear it.

  “Don’t mind it, child,” she said, her voice returning to normal. “The sight takes me that way sometimes, a force passing through me like the wind rushing through the trees. I do not even know what it means, only the words that I must say.”

  She gave me a crafty look. “Would you like to buy a charm of protection?”

  I tamped down a rush of annoyance. No doubt the old woman had playacted in order to sell a trinket.

  “Are you certain?” she pressed. “I sold one just this morn to the one who speaks to the dead.”

  “Helen Romilly?”

  She nodded, a smile playing about her lips. “She’s a silly woman, thinking she can talk to ghosts. The ghosts choose you,” she told me decisively. “Come here at dawn, she did, to buy a charm; she were that affrighted. And now she knows better than to meddle with things she cannot control.”

  “What sort of charm did you sell her?”

  She waved a hand. “A trinket meant to keep the dead at bay.” She poured another measure of cider for herself, adding a hefty measure of rum. “Will you not have another?”

  “No, thank you. I must be getting back to the castle.”

  She nodded sagely. “Aye, there are things to be done. Mind you come back if you change your mind about that love charm.”

  “I do not think I could bring myself to win a man by slipping him a love potion,” I told her frankly, smiling to take the sting from the words.

  Her expression was sorrowful. “Nay, child. The potion is for you. There is no heart as pitiable as one that cannot love.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  I left Mother Nance in a state of considerable irritation. Her vague meanderings had been a pointless waste of time, and her instruction to “beware the sister” was absurd. Judging from the considerable noise of masculine conversation from the rest of the tavern, Stoker had not yet emerged from the taproom, so I made my way back to the castle alone, walking quickly, as the wind had risen, tossing the tops of the trees about with an unearthly sound. I reached the castle just as the rain started, driving and cold.

  “Heavens, miss,” Mrs. Trengrouse said as I appeared in the main corridor. “You’ll catch your death in weather like this!”

  I gave her a wan smile. “Fear not, I have the constitution of a donkey, Mrs. Trengrouse. You’ll not be landed with an invalid.”

  She nodded towards the drawing room. “Everyone is gathered for luncheon. I have ordered it laid in the drawing room as the fire draws better there and the weather has turned. There will be hot soup as well. The trays have only just now gone in, so you haven’t missed it. I’ll send Daisy to help you change.”

  “No need,” I told her with the flap of a hand. “I can manage more quickly on my own.”

  I hurried to my room and flung off my butterfly-hunting costume, donning instead my day gown—a plain dark blue dress frogged with black silk braid. It was severely cut as a Hussar’s coat and offered the advantage of buttoning up the front so I had no need of a maid to help me into it. I changed my boots for thin slippers, and I smoothed my hair as I pulled my door closed behind me.

  To my surprise, Stoker was just mounting the stairs, his black hair sleek with mist, his coat spotted with raindrops.

  “Did you learn anything of note?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing save that the local cider is very, very potent. Were your inquiries more fruitful?”

  I shrugged. “Mother Nance was amusing herself at my expense. But she did mention that Helen Romilly had purchased a charm from her.”

  His dark brows rose. “Helen is dealing in love potions? I suspect she harbors a tendresse for Tiberius, but she’s wasted her coin if she thinks to lure him into matrimony.”

  “It isn’t a love potion. It is a charm of protection. Whatever Helen fears, her feelings are sincere.”

  We joined the others in the drawing room, where a sort of truce had been established. The casual meal gave a picnic air to the atmosphere with platters of cold meats and tiny casseroles of macaroni cheese jostling fruit compotes and a vast salad of greens from the castle gardens. Mertensia was freshening up the moss of one of her bowls of flowers while Helen presided over the soup tureen standing upon a sideboard and Tiberius stared out at the rising weather. Caspian was sunk low in a chair, sipping his tea and nibbling a leg of cold fowl. It was a peaceful, homely sort of scene, and anyone peering in from the storm-tossed gardens would have thought us the very picture of domestic serenity.

  Or so we thought. Helen had just ladled a small bowl of soup for me when Mrs. Trengrouse entered, her eyes round with horror.

  Mertensia paused in the action of rearranging the flowers. “Trenny, whatever is the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost,” she said with a smile that did not reach her eyes.

  Trenny clutched at Tiberius’ sleeve and looked at us in turn, her eyes wild. “It’s the master. He’s nowhere to be found.”

  “What do you mean?” Tiberius demanded.

  “I mean that Mr. Malcolm has gone missing. God help us, the ghost has taken him!” And with that, she crumpled into a heap on the floor.

  A quiet pandemonium erupted and it took several minutes before order was achieved out of the chaos. I moved at once to Mrs. Trengrouse whilst Caspian and Mertensia exchanged sharp words upon the matter of who should take charge.

  “I am the man of the house in my uncle’s absence,” Caspian pronounced loftily.

  Mertensia had to be forcibly restrained by Stoker from applying a sound slap to his cheek. I was busy burning a feather un
der Mrs. Trengrouse’s nose to revive her, when, to my astonishment, Tiberius stepped into the breach.

  “That will do!” he said, clipping off the words with icy precision. If he had shouted—as Stoker no doubt would have done—the effect would have been arresting enough. But Tiberius’ chilly authority was sufficient to stop everyone in their tracks. “There is considerable turmoil at present without the two of you quarreling like children, and if you cannot behave, go to the nursery,” he ordered.

  Mertensia and Caspian regarded him with mingled resentment and awe, but they lapsed into silence. Stoker dropped Mertensia’s arm, and she let it fall to her side, contenting herself with only a sullen look towards her nephew. Helen remained silent, sitting up very straight, Hecate the cat looking on with interest.

  Tiberius went on. “Now, Caspian, I suggest you summon Daisy to help Mrs. Trengrouse to her room. Stoker, will she require further medical attention?” Stoker moved to the pale and distressed Mrs. Trengrouse, gently coaxing her to her feet and putting a steadying arm under hers. He gave her a quick, assessing look and shook his head at Tiberius.

  “I think she will be right as rain with a strong cup of tea, perhaps with a measure of brandy thrown in, don’t you agree, Mrs. Trengrouse?”

  The housekeeper spoke, her voice steadier than I would have imagined. “Bless you, sir. Yes. I apologize. I don’t know what came over me.”

  She stepped away from Stoker’s arm, brushing out her skirts and squaring her shoulders.

  “You’re upset, Trenny darling,” Mertensia said. She took the housekeeper’s hand in her own, patting it awkwardly.

  Tiberius turned his penetrating gaze to the housekeeper.

  “Mrs. Trengrouse,” Tiberius said. “When was the last time your master was seen?”

  She paused to think. “Last night. He was restless and could not sleep and I heard him walking the corridors.”

  “What time was that?”

  Her brow furrowed as she worked out the hours. “Midnight, my lord? Half past? I am afraid I was not paying attention.”

  I held my tongue. I could give Tiberius the time based upon my own sighting of Mrs. Trengrouse during my investigations of the music room, but that conversation was best held in private. “Does he have a valet or other manservant I don’t know about?”