A Perilous Undertaking

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “How lovely,” I breathed, fluttering it a little.

  “I am glad you like it, my dear. I have always fancied playing fairy godmother.” She reached into another pocket. “Look what else I have conjured. Stoker said you mean to get last-minute tickets to the stalls, but a gown that fine ought not to be wasted amongst solicitors and merchants and their dreary wives. I have a box which I cannot use. His lordship is feeling well enough to come downstairs and he has promised to play German whist with me. He thinks we are going to play for money, but if I win, I mean to make him set those wretched lovebirds loose and finally give me some peace.”

  She fluttered the tickets at me and I took them with a smile. “That is very generous of you, my lady. Thank you.”

  “As I said, child, I have always liked the notion of granting wishes. Now, off to the ball with you, Cinderella. I have ordered the town carriage for your use tonight, but I am afraid we haven’t any mice for footmen. You will simply have to make do with the ordinary kind.”

  She took her leave then, Minnie in tow, and I waited a moment, enjoying the feeling of being beautifully costumed and ready to make my entrance. At the last second, I opened a little pasteboard box and retrieved a small grey velvet mouse. Chester had been with me as long as I could remember, my companion through all of my adventures. “Perhaps Cinderella will have a mouse after all,” I murmured, dropping him into my reticule.

  • • •

  Imet with Stoker as he emerged from his little Chinese pagoda, dressed in the rigorous black-and-white evening formality required for gentlemen. His hair was glossy and neatly brushed into some semblance of order in spite of its length, and his chin was freshly barbered with no hint of the blue shadow that usually darkened it. He had put on an eye patch, not his usual affair of leather, but a slim scrap of black silk that matched his hair. His nails were trimmed and the knuckles had been scrubbed until they were as clean as the day he was born. Not a wrinkle or speck of dust marred the perfection of his attire, and it was a long minute before I realized I was staring.

  “What?” he demanded, his expression wary.

  “I have never seen you clean.”

  “You bloody well have,” he contradicted. “If memory serves, you have seen me in a bath sheet.”

  I smiled at the memory of our time together in a traveling show. “That was different. You’d been doused with a bucket of tepid water. Now you look positively gleaming. And very expensive,” I added, noting that this costume completely covered his tattoos. Only the glint of gold at his lobes and the length of his hair marked him as anything other than a perfectly turned out gentleman of the first order.

  “And what about you?” he said, darting a glance from my piled hair to my slipper tips.

  “What about me? I am always clean,” I protested.

  “Yes, but you usually aren’t . . .” He trailed off, his gaze resting upon the exposed flesh of my décolletage.

  “Well, I have to keep them covered or else you lose the power of speech,” I said blandly.

  He gave a start and dragged his gaze upwards, his mouth working furiously. “I do apologize,” he said in a hoarse voice. “But the soul is lost in pleasant smotherings.”

  I smiled at the nod to Keats and tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow as we made our way to the drive where the carriage waited. “Stoker, do you remember our conversation upon the subject of physical congress?”

  “With painful clarity,” he said, not meeting my eyes.

  Whilst I was perfectly forthright about such matters, Stoker possessed a charming reticence to discuss his baser urges. I had finally pried from him the admission that it had been some years since his last indulgence—dating to a period of debauchery in Brazil over which he firmly drew a veil. Since then he had been chaste as a monk, a state which I maintained was both unhealthful and unnatural. But as I restricted my dalliances to my travels outside of England, I too felt the insistent pressures of a treacherous body imploring me to find release. Stoker had recommended a course of cold-water baths, but from the tortured expression on his face, I surmised they worked as poorly for him as they did for me.

  “I think you ought to find yourself a nice biddable maid to attend to your needs,” I told him. He must have tripped in a rabbit hole, for he stumbled, and when he righted himself and took my arm again, his fingers were tight.

  “You think I ought to tumble a housemaid?” he said tightly.

  “Or a kitchen maid. Or a dairymaid. Yes, a dairymaid! They have sturdy arms, you know. Muscular, strapping girls. Just the sort to give you a proper seeing to.”

  He was silent a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was strangled. “My affairs are my own, Veronica. I will see to them without your interference.”

  The carriage drew up just as we reached the drive, as elegant as it was punctual.

  “I was only trying to help,” I told him.

  “I do not require your help,” was the curt reply. “Particularly in that.”

  He glanced once more at my lavish display of décolletage and edged as far from me as he could upon the velvet seat. He turned to look out the window, his mouth set in a rigid line, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs. I would have given a king’s ransom to know his thoughts just then. But he betrayed no hint of them. And I did not ask.

  CHAPTER

  17

  In spite of Stoker’s odd mood, I was determined to enjoy myself. We arrived at the Haymarket in good time, and I alighted with his help, whisking my skirts out of the way of a fresh pile of arisings from an indelicate horse. There was a great crush of people and a tremendous buzz of excitement in the air, like a broken hive of bees.

  We settled ourselves into the plush box Lady Wellie had provided, and I raised the tiny opera glasses I had carried in my reticule. “What do you think of the refurbishments?” I asked Stoker. “Did you notice the abundance of electric lights? I am not entirely certain I approve of them.”

  What followed was a lengthy discussion upon the merits of electric versus gas lighting and the inherent dangers and advantages of both. I cared less than nothing about the subject, but Stoker, like most people, enjoyed having opinions and enjoyed sharing them even more. He seemed to be much more himself by the time the house lights were dimmed and the curtain rang up on The Ballad-Monger. It was a French piece adapted for English theater, and Mr. Beerbohm Tree, acting as both the leading player and manager of the Haymarket, was clearly determined to make a success of the thing. He was very affecting in the title role, sporting green tights and a silly cap and delivering “The Ballade of King Rope” in a voice that rang with emotion.

  “How splendid,” I said to Stoker when the curtain fell upon the first play.

  He gave a vague nod. “I saw M. Coquelin play Gringoire at the Théâtre-Français, and I think he is Beerbohm Tree’s superior. But the ballade was effective,” he added, pitching his voice low as he recited.

  High in the branches, stretching wide,

  Where erst the thrushes piped between,

  The dead men dangle side by side,

  While ravens croak amid the green.

  Pardi! it is a lovely scene,

  Such fruit, such dainty chaplets cling;

  Fairer I think were never seen!

  It is the Orchard of the King.

  I gave a little shudder. “It is a chilling thought, is it not? Dead men hanging like so much fruit upon the trees?”

  “I have seen such things,” he said, his expression suddenly and inexpressibly remote.

  “Stoker?”

  With a visible effort, he collected himself. “Never mind. We are meant to be looking for Tiberius.”

  I held my hand just over his, almost but not quite touching it. I knew that he had seen things, had done things, in Brazil that haunted him still. We did not speak of them, but Stoker, more than anyone I had ever known, wa
lked with ghosts.

  “Will you talk about it?”

  “Someday,” he told me. “I have never spoken of it. But someday I might, and if I do, you may be certain it will be with you.”

  He covered my hand, squeezing it sharply before he dropped it. He flicked a glance across the theater to one of the boxes opposite and rose suddenly. “There,” he told me with a jerk of the chin. I rose and saw the box he indicated. A solitary figure sat in the shadows of the box.

  “He is alone?”

  “Unlike most people, Tiberius doesn’t come to the theater to be seen. He also goes to the opera for the music. He hates conversation during a performance.”

  “Perhaps we should wait then. The second play is about to start,” I demurred.

  Stoker gave me a thin smile that was limned with malice. “If we are going to ruin his evening, let’s ruin all of it.”

  He exited the box, seeming to care not in the slightest that I followed. He strode through the crowded foyer as if it were empty, expecting others to make way for him, and it was a testament to the forcefulness of his personality and the impressiveness of his appearance that they did. A slender usher stood at the door of the Templeton-Vane box, but one look from Stoker—and a sizable coin from me—persuaded him to step aside.

  We slipped in just as the curtain was rising upon the second play. Lord Templeton-Vane looked around at the interruption, raising an imperious brow. He was younger in appearance than I would have anticipated—still on the right side of forty, I guessed. Like the rest of the Templeton-Vanes, this one had chestnut hair and grey eyes, although his bones bore the same graceful stamp as Stoker’s, their mother’s influence. But where Sir Rupert was clever, this one was commanding. He rose slowly to his feet. Stoker might have topped him by an inch or so, but their physiques were similarly muscular and their expressions equally forbidding.

  “Revelstoke,” he said quietly. “This is a surprise.”

  “If you didn’t want to see me, you oughtn’t to have sent Rupert and Merryweather,” Stoker countered.

  The brow rose again. “Sent them? I did not realize they had bestirred themselves to trouble you. They needn’t have bothered. I have my own methods, as well they should know by now.”

  His gaze shifted to me. “And this must be Miss Speedwell.”

  To my surprise, he lifted my hand, brushing a suggestion of a kiss to the fingers. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “How do you do?” I asked, inclining my head slightly.

  Onstage, the second play was just beginning. Lord Templeton-Vane indicated the chairs in the box. “I would be delighted if you would join me for the remainder of the performance,” he said to me, ignoring his brother. I seated myself next to him, leaving Stoker his choice of the seats behind us.

  As we settled ourselves, his lordship leaned over to me, his breath ruffling the curl at my ear. “I suspect my brother is seething with impatience over this delay in his plans. I hope you are not likewise frustrated.”

  “On the contrary,” I replied coolly. “Whether we speak now or later, it does not matter, my lord. I am a hunter by trade, you know. I have a great deal of practice in waiting patiently for my kill.”

  I gave him a dazzling smile, and to my surprise, he smiled back, his teeth gleaming white in the darkened theater.

  • • •

  The rest of the evening passed swiftly in a blur of electric lights and applause. The play—The Red Lamp—was not particularly good, but Mr. Beerbohm Tree and company excelled, and the viscount put himself out to be as gracious a host as possible. When the final curtain had rung down and the adulation had died away, his lordship rose, straightening his cuffs. He needn’t have bothered. He was as fresh and uncreased as he must have been when he left his home.

  “Miss Speedwell, Revelstoke, shall we adjourn to supper?” He might have been speaking to polite acquaintances, so dispassionate was his voice.

  “I haven’t come for food, Tiberius,” Stoker replied. I trod lightly on his foot, urging him to silence. I knew he had little inclination for his brother’s company, but the intimacy of a supper might prove conducive to confidences.

  He slid his foot out from under mine, shooting me a dark look.

  “We would be delighted,” I told the viscount. He took my arm and guided me from the box without looking behind. He was clearly certain Stoker would follow and he did, rather like a resentful lapdog.

  The lobby was still thronged with people, and amidst the press, I spied a familiar face. There was a start of recognition, and a quick turn of the head as if to elude me. I would not be put off.

  “Mornaday!” I called, heedless of the disapproving stares of those around us.

  He came to us, affecting a broad smile. “Miss Speedwell, this is a most unexpected pleasure.”

  “For me as well. And how is my favorite detective from Scotland Yard?”

  He gave me a waggish look as he bent over my hand. “Your favorite? I say, Sir Hugo will be mightily put out when I tell him.”

  “No, he won’t,” I replied. He brushed his fingers over my hand, sending a delightful shudder up my arm.

  “Well, perhaps not,” he admitted.

  “Lord Templeton-Vane, this is Inspector Mornaday of Scotland Yard, Special Branch. Mornaday, the Viscount Templeton-Vane.”

  They exchanged cool greetings. Ordinarily a viscount would never have been pressed into making the acquaintance of a police inspector, and the incongruity of the situation amused me.

  “Templeton-Vane?” Mornaday asked. “You must be Stoker’s brother. Where is your tame wolf, Miss Speedwell?”

  “Behind you,” Stoker put in coolly. Mornaday nearly leapt from his skin but managed to recover his sangfroid enough to greet him casually.

  “Hello, old man. I didn’t see you there.”

  “Obviously,” Stoker replied with a bland smile. To their credit, they shook hands like gentlemen, both of them clearly disliking the gesture. It was a pity really, for they had much in common. As a policeman and a scientist respectively, they were bent upon serious occupations, both of them in possession of twisty minds, a thirst for justice, a keen intellect, and significant attractions for the fairer sex.

  But that was where the similarities ended. Whilst Stoker was splendid in a rather saturnine way with a palpable air of danger, Mornaday was merry as a grig. He had brown eyes that snapped and danced, and I found him utterly charming. Stoker was somewhat less impressed. The pair had very nearly come to blows during our previous investigation, but Mornaday had done us a good turn more than once, and I believed it was knowledge of this debt more than anything that irritated Stoker. He did not care to be beholden to anyone for anything.

  I turned to Mornaday. “Pay him no mind. What a delightful surprise to find you at the theater,” I said, fanning myself gently. “One might even think it too coincidental.”

  “I am a devotee of the theater,” he returned, sounding slightly ruffled.

  “And you are not following Miss Speedwell and me upon Sir Hugo’s orders?” Stoker demanded.

  “Certainly not!”

  I turned to Stoker. “You see, he is telling the truth. Look at how he waggles his eyebrows for emphasis.”

  “Sir Hugo?” put in the viscount. “Do you mean Sir Hugo Montgomerie?”

  “The same,” I acknowledged. “He is rather too interested in our activities, and from time to time he sets the good inspector to follow us about.”

  Lord Templeton-Vane gave a bland smile. “How tiresome for you. If you will excuse me, I will see if I can find my carriage in the crush outside. I will wait there.” He inclined his head with perfectly calibrated hauteur towards Mornaday. “Inspector.”

  “My lord.”

  I watched his beautifully tailored back as he moved through the crowd, never pushing, but somehow clearing a path ju
st the same. “Rather like Moses and the Red Sea,” I murmured. I turned back to the inspector. “I wish I had known you were following us, Mornaday. We would have done something far more scandalous than just attend the theater with his lordship.”

  Mornaday’s handsome mouth curled. “Ah, a happy family occasion, is it? No ulterior motives in spending the evening with his lordship?”

  I spread my borrowed fan wide, peeping over the tips of the feathers in a coquettish gesture. “But, Mornaday, what possible motive could there be? Sir Hugo has ordered us off the investigation. Of course, if you were to tell me a secret, I should be honor-bound to reciprocate.” I leaned closer, eager to glean a little crumb of gossip. Mornaday had let slip once before that Sir Hugo’s strings were very clearly pulled by a shadowy and powerful figure—a female shadowy and powerful figure, which intrigued me all the more.

  “What sort of secret?” he demanded.

  “Sir Hugo’s puppet master. It is quite naughty of you not to tell me who she is,” I remonstrated.

  “I do not recall saying anything of the sort,” Mornaday retorted, his voice sharp. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Fustian,” I pressed. “You told us it was a woman. What sort of woman?”

  It was a sign of Mornaday’s desperation that he turned an appealing gaze upon Stoker, but he was met with an indifferent shrug. “You know how she is when she wants to know something,” was Stoker’s only comment.

  Mornaday pursed his lips. “Curious as the proverbial cat. Very well, yes. It is a woman, and from what I have been able to gather, she is highly connected. Very highly,” he added.

  I turned to Stoker. “He is waggling his eyebrows again.”

  Mornaday pinked, a delightful rosy shade that made me long to pinch his cheeks. There was a boyish charm about him, but he had also been blessed with substantial shoulders and a rather nice pair of thighs, I had had occasion to notice.