A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(65)

“Still, he seems to interfere little with you here,” I said, sitting on a modest stone bench. I don’t know if it was my tone—casually inviting—or my posture—relaxed and unhurried—that persuaded her I was not to be got rid of easily. She gave a sigh, then picked up her secateurs, clipping sharply as she spoke.

“Malcolm lets me do as I please,” she admitted. “For now.”

“You expect that to change?”

“It nearly did. But that’s in the past.” The words were spoken with no real desire to confide in me; that much was obvious. But I suspected it had been a very long time since Mertensia had enjoyed intimate conversation with a woman near her own age. I might have maneuvered her into further confidences, but it occurred to me a direct approach was the most likely to bear fruit.

“Mertensia, you were cordial enough when I first arrived, but now you seem to have taken against me. If I have offered you some offense, I should like to know what so that I may apologize or at the very least stay out of your way. Otherwise, I shall sit here and wait for your apology for being frightfully rude to a guest in your home.”

I settled my hands on my lap as she dropped her secateurs. She retrieved them, giving me a baleful look. “I was cordial because I thought I could like you.”

“And you have decided otherwise?”

“Obviously,” she said, snipping viciously at a bit of the Cestrum.

“Now we are making progress,” I said.

She was silent a long moment, the only sound the snap of her shears. Suddenly, she turned to me, bursting out with it. “Helen saw you. On the beach yesterday with Stoker.”

“Yes, I know. We had a lively discussion of it over tea yesterday.”

She gaped. “Aren’t you embarrassed? Ashamed? I said she saw you.”

“Yes, I heard you, my dear. And I have nothing with which to reproach myself. Stoker and I are very good friends.”

“I can imagine,” she said, her mouth thinning with real bitterness.

“Not that good,” I amended. “But we have known one another for some time and we work together.”

“You work?” Her eyes were narrow and suspicious.

“Certainly. You didn’t imagine I wanted the glasswings for my amusement, did you? I am developing a vivarium in central London to be associated with the museum that Stoker and I are establishing. It will be the work of a decade or more, but we are confident.”

There was a reluctant interest in my work, I could see, but she smothered it swiftly as she turned back to her Cestrum. “That doesn’t account for you seeing him. Like that.”

“Naked? My dear Mertensia, how very Puritanical of you. I thought Catholics were supposed to be more broad-minded about such things. There is no shame in the human form, particularly Stoker’s. His is especially well sculpted.”

Her hand jerked and a lush blossom fell to the grass. “Damn,” she muttered. She turned to me again. “I meant because of your engagement to his brother.”

“Oh, that. Well, I suppose it will do no harm to confess that my betrothal to Tiberius is a fiction. He thought it unseemly for us to travel together otherwise. He said it was because Malcolm was rather conventional about such matters, but I suspect it was more to annoy Stoker than for any other purpose.”

“You really aren’t engaged to Tiberius?”

“Shall I vow on something? I haven’t a Bible at hand, but perhaps my word would do.”

“I believe you,” she said finally. “And I think I know why Tiberius would have made up such a story. It isn’t because of Stoker or religion. It is because of Malcolm. They have always been competitive with one another, ridiculously so. Malcolm’s bride disappeared, so Tiberius appears with a beautiful fiancée. It is a way of keeping score,” she explained.

“How very childlike men can be,” I observed.

“Frequently,” she agreed. She put aside her secateurs and rummaged in her pocket, withdrawing a slender dark brown cigarette. She lit it, scraping a lucifer on the stone bench. She drew in a deep breath of sharp smoke and handed the cigarette over to me. I took it, pulling in enough smoke to blow an elegant ring.

“Oh! Will you teach me how to do that?”

“Certainly.” I spent the next quarter of an hour explaining the mechanics of the smoke ring and guiding her. Her first few efforts were lopsided, but the last was even prettier than mine.

“You are a natural,” I told her. She ground out the cigarette on the sole of her boot.

“I miss this,” she said. “It has been a long time since . . .” She trailed off and I knew she was thinking of Rosamund.

“You were school friends with Rosamund, weren’t you?” I asked. “It must have been a dreadful shock when she disappeared.”

She shook her head. “The shock came earlier.” She looked at me, her dark gaze resting a long moment on my face, assessing. In the end, she decided to trust me, at least a little. “I thought we were friends, truly. I was so happy when it was arranged that she should spend the summer with us. I had had so little company here. I loved Malcolm’s friends, but to have a companion of my own . . .” She let the rest of the sentence hang unfinished in the air. “But she was different. I saw it as soon as she arrived. There was something hard about her. The posts she had taken were difficult. She was worn and tired and a little more.”