An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(54)

“Of all the cheek,” I muttered. “Did you hear the fellow?”

But Stoker was in no mood for my imprecations against the coachman. He sulked and stormed until I settled him at my little Gothic folly, building a fire and handing over my best velvet cushion for his head before passing him a bottle of my favorite aguardiente. I left him to clean his wound himself on the grounds that I thought he was making rather a tremendous mountain of this particularly small molehill, but once I saw the depth and detail of the bite, I was assailed by guilt. His left index finger was marked by the perfect imprint of my teeth, the flesh scored nearly to the bone and still bleeding freely.

“I am sorry,” I told him in true contrition as I bound the finger in a clean handkerchief. “I do not know what came over me.”

“I do,” he said, sipping thoughtfully at the liqueur. “You are bored.”

“With you!” I cried. “You cannot think so. You must not.”

“I don’t, as it happens,” he said dryly. “Your enthusiasm for my person is both comprehensive and much appreciated. But there is something in this fog-shrouded island that dulls the senses.”

“You feel it also?”

He gave me a searching look. “Why do you think I rejected everything about the life to which I was bred? I ran away from my father’s home when I was little more than a child in search of—I do not know what. Adventure, I suppose. That part of myself that I chased but could never seem to find. I was suffocated in that house, listening to my parents’ quarrels and wondering if the whole of my life was meant to be nothing but a repetition of theirs. It was as though they never really lived. That house was merely a stage set and their lives were theatrical parts played upon it. The angry aristocrat, the long-suffering wife. The servants looking on. And every day the same thing—tea with scones and silences. Hatred for dinner, resentment at luncheon. I wanted nothing more than to breathe, to feel something other than that oppression.”

I said nothing and he went on, his voice a little dreamy from the aftereffects of our vigorous activities and the aguardiente.

“And so I left, searching out experiences, both good and bad. And God knows I have found them. The bad were the bombardment in Alexandria, the Amazonian expedition. Marrying Caroline. And the good were the friends I found, the kindred spirits I have met along my travels and who have known me as one of them.”

A sudden dart of fear lanced my heart. It thudded awkwardly in my chest. “I would hope that I am counted among the good that has happened to you,” I said, summoning a smile.

He did not return it. He leant forward a little and cupped my chin in the breadth of his palm. “You are not.”

The thud in my chest became a hammering, slow and painful on the ribs. “Oh.”

He went on. “You are not among the good that has happened to me. You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me to you.”

I was silent a long moment, but the tears upon my cheeks said everything I could not.

“Well,” I said finally, wiping my cheeks upon my sleeve, “it was not Keats, but I suppose as declarations go, it is sufficient.”

He smiled, a smile of such infinite tenderness that my throat tightened to speechlessness.

“I understand you, Veronica, because I am you. I know that England is too small and too safe to contain you because it confines me as well. Do you think a day does not pass that I do not long to be aboard a ship, salt spray in my face and sails snapping in the wind, bound for the other side of the world? We have known such liberty, such wideness of experience that most can only imagine. And we will know such things again,” he promised. “But I should reconcile myself to the fact that whilst we are here, we must take our adventures where we can.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

His hand still gripped my chin and he bent his head to press his brow to my own.

“I mean that you ought to change out of your skirts and into a pair of trousers. Because we are going to break into the Curiosity Club. Tonight.”

I blinked in astonishment. “You cannot be serious.”

“Serious as a parson in a pulpit.” He kissed me soundly upon the mouth and sat back, draining the last of his aguardiente. “Go on, then. It grows late and we have work to do.”

I hurried to the corner where a chest of drawers and series of pegs had been arranged to hold my wardrobe. A modest screen shielded the corner and, although I had few secrets from Stoker, I stepped behind it, stripping off garments in haste.

“Explain,” I ordered as I shook out the suit of clothes I had ordered for butterflying. At first glance, it seemed much like an ordinary town suit—a narrow skirt and fitted jacket of becoming and serviceable cut. But upon closer inspection, it was easy to see the fabric was costly and durable thin tweed and the skirt was layered over a pair of very slim matching trousers which tucked into flat boots that laced to the knee. I buttoned and laced and tucked whilst Stoker talked.

“Amongst Alice Baker-Greene’s possessions is a notebook, her climbing journal,” he said. “I think we need to steal it.”