A Perilous Undertaking

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  It seemed like the time for confidences. He had not fallen into unconsciousness again, but drifted, and I ventured a question as much to distract him as to satisfy my own curiosity. “Stoker,” I began, “during Merryweather’s visit, there was a slip of the tongue when you were talking to him. I don’t even think you realized it,” I said softly.

  He was silent so long, I wondered if he had swum into sleep again. But at length his chest rumbled with a reply. “I did. As soon as it passed my lips.”

  “‘You mustn’t gamble with a Templeton-Vane,’” I quoted. “‘They have the devil’s own luck.’ They.”

  “You saw Rupert,” he reminded me in a thick, slow voice. “And you saw Merry, and you have seen Tiberius. Peas in a pod, the Templeton-Vanes. They always breed true—auburn hair and grey eyes. My mother even had the same coloring. She was a distant cousin, one of the Vanes.”

  I looked into his eyes, blue as an equatorial sea beneath hair so black a raven would envy it. “When did you realize?”

  He shrugged. “The cuckoo in the nest never sounds quite the same as the other nestlings. Always something that marks you as different. His lordship, the old viscount—the one they call my father,” he said with a twist of his handsome mouth, “he did what they all do. He gave me his name and pretended not to notice. But he noticed. And through a thousand ways, he showed me he noticed.”

  I said nothing and he went on, talking almost as if I were not even there, purging himself of the memories. My teeth showed an alarming tendency to chatter, so I clenched my jaw tightly and listened. “He had a stormy relationship with my mother. It was an arranged marriage—aren’t they all? She had money, he had the name and the title. They got along tolerably well for a while, I’m told. There was Tiberius the heir and Rupert the spare. But then something happened. He took to drink. So did she, to hear Rip tell it. And they began to quarrel. He got a child on a housemaid and Mother found out about it. Things went from bad to worse. He decided to have her portrait painted as a sort of peace offering. He commissioned a Welshman to do it.” He broke off and smiled bitterly to himself. “Well, he did more than paint her. And the result was a black-haired infant in the nursery who looked exactly like the painter.”

  “These things are not always certain,” I began.

  He attempted to shrug and winced, thinking better of it. “This is. The viscount went abroad for a while. He was not within a thousand miles of his wife when the deed was done. Everyone knew what I was before I did,” he added simply. “I understood I was different from the first. I did not know why until Tiberius very kindly informed me of it during a childhood quarrel. The word isn’t a pretty one. When I asked Nanny what it meant, she washed my mouth out with soap and his lordship whipped me. I never told them where I heard it. Tiberius expected me to. I saw it in his face as the viscount was whipping me—oh, his lordship always made us watch when he inflicted punishments upon the others. He thought it would teach discipline. It just made us hate him more, but I was the only one honest enough to say it aloud. I got whipped for that too.”

  “But surely your mother—”

  “My mother was a very beautiful, very weak woman who would have lost everything she loved most in the world if she had ever stood up to him.” He broke off with a sudden groan. “You’re shivering. It is the shock. You killed her, didn’t you? You killed her for me, and now you are sick with it.”

  “I am not sick,” I told him, holding him more tightly.

  “Of course you are,” he said in a slurring voice. “It takes you like that, the first time. Battle is one thing, you are prepared for it. You expect it. But this is something altogether different. How were you to know?”

  “I did know,” I said in a small voice.

  “You can’t,” he insisted. “And you did it for me.”

  “You tried to leap on her to save me,” I reminded him. “Of all the woolly-witted, ham-headed, thoroughly stupid things to do—” I broke off, unable to finish.

  “But you did it instead and now you have to live with it. It changes you, that first time you take a life. And I am sorry it is because of me,” he said.

  I put my face to his neck, feeling the pulse there as I hid my eyes. “It is not the first time, Stoker. I have taken a life before. And I would take a thousand more if it meant I could save you. But I cannot talk about it. Not now. Talk to me so I don’t have to think about it,” I ordered, desperate. “Tell me about your mother, your beautiful mother with the grey eyes.”

  For a long moment I did not know how he would react to my confession. Any other man would have shoved me away, would have repudiated me for carrying the mark of Cain upon my brow. But Revelstoke Templeton-Vane was not any other man. With infinite care, he raised his arm and put it about me, drawing me closer as he began to speak.

  “She didn’t love the painter, you know. You mustn’t think I was conceived in some grand passion or deathless love affair. It was a sordid little interlude between a fellow on the make and a woman who was in need of some kindness. As it happens, the painter was a bounder whose silence upon the matter was bought and paid for.”

  I felt a little of the chill ebb from my body as I realized he was not going to make me speak of things I could not. Instead he was offering up his own tragedies to spare mine. It was an act of true generosity. He put his palm to my cheek, catching my tears and letting them run through his fingers. “Your family paid him hush money?”

  “Every month until I left home. After that, the viscount washed his hands of me. Said he didn’t much care if my paternity was exposed. I was a troublesome child who had caused him nothing but grief when I ought to have been grateful.” He fairly spat the last word. “I ran away. Frequently. The first time, my mother was still alive, and she is the one who forced him to set a detective upon me.”

  “That was when you met Sir Hugo Montgomerie,” I put in.

  “Yes. I eluded them for six months, and those were the happiest days of my life. I think his lordship would have been willing enough to let me go, but Mother forced the issue. They had made up, you see. After my birth, they realized how close they had come to wrecking everything. The possibility of divorce and public scandal was too horrifying to contemplate. So they put a happy face upon things. Merryweather was the result of that, the embodiment of their determination to make a go of things.” His expression was thoughtful. “I’ve often wondered if it makes a difference, you know, the circumstances of conception in the character of a child. He has always been a sunny little fellow, happy as a lark. And I have always been . . . other. Does that mark a child forever?”

  “I am perhaps not the person to ask,” I reminded him.

  “Damn me,” he muttered. “I forgot.” I had not yet come to terms with the circumstances of my own conception. I wondered sometimes if I ever would.

  “Never mind,” I said. “It does not matter.”

  “Of course it does. It matters more than anything. It shapes us. Don’t you see that?” I drew back to look at him. The pain in his eyes was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I had seen his undraped body, but this was true nakedness. I looked away, studying my fingernails instead. His blood was caked beneath them, thin scarlet moons.

  “We are both of us children of the wilderness,” I said lightly. “All the more reason to send their opinions to the devil. What care we for the judgments of others?”

  “Very convincing. I might almost have believed you,” he said, brushing his fingertips over my damp cheek to collect my tears. “But for these.”

  “I am not weeping about your silly brother,” I told him, drying my eyes on my sleeve. “It is that wretched story of your childhood. The whippings and the coldness, being shut out of the rest of the family. At least I had Aunt Lucy. She was warm and real.”

  “But she wasn’t yours,” he said softly. “She lied to you as much as they lied to me. And now we’ve broken free of
the lot of them. Let them keep their shame and their secrets. We shall take life on its own terms.”

  I gave him a watery smile. “There is an old Spanish proverb: ‘Take what you want. Take it, said God. And pay.’”

  “We have paid every minute of our lives. Let someone else pay,” he said with a rough edge to his voice. “Presuming we get out of here,” he added.

  “We will,” I promised. I did not doubt Emma’s resourcefulness. But it could take many hours to find the authorities at this time of night, persuade them of the urgency. And I wondered how long he could last on a cold stone floor without proper treatment.

  The hardest lesson I had learnt upon my travels was patience. There are times when every muscle, every nerve, screams for movement, when every instinct urges escape. But the instinct to fly is not always a sound one. There are occasions when only stillness can save you. I wanted to do nothing more than lift Stoker’s recumbent form onto my back and stagger out of that place. It was a futile thought; with the difference in our sizes, I could not have managed more than a few hundred yards before putting him down. And in the meantime, I could do incalculable damage by disturbing whatever fragile clots had formed to protect him. It was a measure of my regard for him that I smothered every inclination to action and simply put my arms about him and held him close, giving him my warmth and letting my own worst imaginings devour me.

  I must have drifted off to sleep, for the next thing I knew, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the grotto. I can only blame the disorienting effects of deep sleep when surrounded by corpses—as well as the suddenness of my coming awake—for what happened next. My wits were clouded with slumber and not entirely recovered from Ottilie Ramsforth’s homicidal attack; I was conscious only of the need to protect my injured and vulnerable partner. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, raising my weapon just as a figure emerged from the shadows of the narrow corridor. With a fair imitation of the Maori battle scream I had been practicing for some years, I leapt forward, bringing my weapon down hard upon the head of the man who entered.

  “What the bloody hell was that?” Mornaday roared, clutching his head as he fell to his knees.

  Sir Hugo Montgomerie stepped into the grotto and took in the scene with a glance. “I believe,” he said acidly, “Miss Speedwell has just knocked you about with a very large lobcock.”

  I looked to my weapon and realized then that I had snatched up one of Miles Ramsforth’s prized phalluses and used it to assault a member of Special Branch. I held it out for Sir Hugo. He reared back and gestured for one of his assorted underlings to take possession of it. They surged into the room, a crowd of the plainly clothed Special Branch investigators, asking no questions but carrying out their superior’s orders with alarming efficiency.

  “Miss Speedwell will come with us,” Sir Hugo told them.

  “Miss Speedwell will do nothing of the sort,” I countered. “Not until Mr. Templeton-Vane has had medical treatment.”

  Sir Hugo looked at Stoker’s recumbent form. In spite of the chaos and noise, he had not moved, not even stirred in his sleep. “What the devil is ailing him?”

  “He was shot in the head by Ottilie Ramsforth,” I informed him. “And he needs proper treatment. Surely Emma Talbot informed you.”

  “Miss Talbot gave a somewhat garbled story to which I was not privy,” he told me. Sir Hugo waved a beckoning hand to one of his subordinates, a police surgeon as it happened.

  The fellow made a swift but thorough assessment of Stoker’s condition. “Pulse is strong but slow. Given the look of him, I would wager he has lost a fair bit of blood, but he should be right enough with rest and time. The shot grazed the bone,” he informed Sir Hugo.

  I sagged in relief, and Mornaday, who ought to have held a grudge, kindly offered his arm in support.

  “Aren’t you angry?” I asked.

  “My head hurts like the very devil,” he told me. “But you look like seven hells.”

  I could well imagine. My hair was half undone, snarling nearly to my waist, whilst my face and hands were streaked with Stoker’s blood. Soot from the guttering lamp had no doubt left black ash on my skin, and I was certain that sleeplessness had marked dark shadows under my eyes.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, tucking my hair up and straightening my shoulders. “I am perfectly well. What has become of Emma Talbot?”

  Sir Hugo spoke up. “Miss Talbot’s appearance at the nearest police station occasioned a bit of alarm. The superior officer there decided her story was untenable and held her on suspicion of being an escaped lunatic. She has only just now been released.”

  “Then how on earth did you know to come here?” I demanded.

  “I am afraid that is down to me,” said Lady Wellingtonia from the doorway.

  CHAPTER

  28

  It was some days before Stoker was recovered enough for us to assemble in Lord Rosemorran’s drawing room for a proper discussion of the curious conclusion of the Ramsforth case. He suffered from the occasional headache and his hair, shaven at his temple to permit suturing—by his own hand at his insistence—was just beginning to grow in, pure white against his black locks. He wore his eye patch to help with the ache in his head, and he looked every inch the dangerous malefactor as her ladyship organized the seating arrangements. Sir Hugo appeared, as did Emma Talbot and Sir Frederick Havelock, accompanied by the maid, Cherry. She pushed his Bath chair with an officious air and wore the starched uniform of a private nurse with great pride. Whatever had caused him to elevate her status in his household, she was clearly determined to make the most of it.

  But Lady Wellingtonia was more discreet than I had given her credit for being. She inclined her head when Cherry had settled Sir Frederick near the fire. “Thank you, my dear. Mrs. Bascombe will be very pleased to entertain you in her parlor,” she said in a tone that brooked no contrariness. Cherry withdrew with a single backwards glance, pregnant with longing. I could not blame her. It seemed hard that she should know so much of the affair and not the conclusion. I only hoped Sir Frederick would take pity upon her and relate the story in time.

  After tea had been served and a quantity of excellent sandwiches and cakes eaten, Lady Wellingtonia took the lead.

  “It behooves me to begin with an explanation, which I believe is perhaps long overdue,” she said.

  “Too right,” I said with deliberate firmness. Whatever explanations she had been about to offer the night of Stoker’s shooting had been pushed aside in favor of prompt medical attention. Since then, we had been left to our own imaginings. I had not wanted to leave Stoker long enough even to go up to the main house, but instead played nursemaid, an endeavor that required minding his dermestid beetles and reading out the journals of the various zoological societies of which he was member. (A brisk argument on an article about the relative merits of the Batavian method of preserving specimens had marked a turning point in his recovery, I am happy to report.)

  Lady Wellingtonia’s mouth curved into a smile. “I am the reason you were brought into this affair, Miss Speedwell—and by extension, you, Stoker. Although even I could not have anticipated the dangers.” Her tone was almost apologetic, but her entire manner seemed to have changed. The aging grande dame had assumed a new authority, and it was with mingled admiration and shock that I discovered Sir Hugo deferred to her.

  “I have, in the course of my long life, been fortunate enough to be on intimate terms with the royal family,” she said. “I do not like to make much of it, because there are those who will seek to play upon such connections, but I have always been deeply concerned with their well-being, and even, upon occasion, privy to their secrets,” she said with a meaningful glance at me.

  Quick heat rose in my face, and I bent over my teacup. I understood her perfectly, and I also understood the reason for her oblique explanations. Whatever the sins of my father, she would no
t want them exposed in front of others.

  She went on smoothly. “When this terrible business happened, I was abroad. I knew little of what had occurred, but when I returned a few weeks ago, Princess Louise came at once to see me. She was distraught. She said a terrible injustice was about to occur—that a man, a very good friend of hers, was about to be hanged for a murder he did not commit.”

  She gave a little cough. “Now, from time to time, the little problems of the royal family have caused me to rely upon the diligence of Sir Hugo,” she said with a nod to him. “But in this matter, his hands were tied. He could not subvert the course of British justice, and British justice had condemned Miles Ramsforth.”

  Emma Talbot gave a little shudder and took a hasty sip from her teacup. Lady Wellingtonia looked at her thoughtfully. “There is a rather good single malt in the decanter upon the sideboard,” she instructed. “Pour a measure into everyone’s tea, child. I think we could all use a stiffener.”

  Emma rose and moved about the room, pouring a considerable bit of amber consolation into each cup. When she had taken a sip of her own and the color had come back to her cheeks, Lady Wellie resumed her narrative.

  “With Sir Hugo unable to help and Louise unable to explain exactly why she was convinced of Miles’ innocence, it occurred to me that the princess might do something desperate. She might engage a private inquiry agent, someone indiscreet and unreliable. And that I could not condone. My thoughts, therefore, turned to Miss Speedwell,” she said, inclining her head to me. “And naturally to Mr. Templeton-Vane, with whom I was already well acquainted. I knew him to be a resourceful and intelligent man of action, and I had heard Miss Speedwell was nothing if not damnably curious. If there was some means of overturning the conviction, surely they could find it, I reasoned.” I bridled a little at the description of myself as “damnably curious,” but Stoker was grinning into his cup. Lady Wellie went on. “And so I suggested to Louise that she confide in Miss Speedwell and set her to investigating. In the meantime, I arranged to take up residence in my nephew’s house so I could keep an eye upon things at close quarters and perhaps provide a little support should it be required.”