An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6)(70)

“What next?”

“They walked around the corner and hailed a cab. I heard the address, so I followed in one of my own. I had the cabman drop me a street away and I kept to the shadows so they would not see me. They told the cabman to wait, and a short time later they got back in and went directly to St. Pancras station. The duke walked her in and when he came out, he was alone and I was waiting for him. I invited him to share my cab, and he got in.”

“No doubt thinking you were offering him something rather different than a mere ride in a cab,” I mused.

She smoothed her apron. “Well, he might have misunderstood me at first, but I corrected his thinking quite quickly. I simply told him what I had witnessed and that I thought we could help one another.”

“And on the strength of that, Maximilian gave you an interview?” I asked.

She shrugged again. Stoker looked at me. “Well, at least we know that Gisela did leave of her own accord. Whatever happened that night, it does not appear that Maximilian harmed her.”

“Max would never harm her,” J. J. said succinctly. “He adores her.”

“He has flirted outrageously with me and was prepared to avail himself of your services when he thought you were a prostitute,” I told her.

“That is because he has very old-fashioned ideas about women, bless him,” she said with some fondness. “He thinks all women are either saints or whores. He does not know what to make of the rest of us.”

“That is positively archaic,” I muttered.

“He is an Alpenwalder aristocrat,” she pointed out. “They are not precisely known for their progressive thinking. The whole bloody country is mired in the Dark Ages.”

“And you still wrote this,” I said, brandishing the newspaper, “to help him secure the post of consort?”

“He is no worse than the rest of them,” she said in a weary voice. “I am most heartily tired of men.”

Stoker looked a little wounded. “Not you,” I soothed.

“Especially him,” she corrected darkly. “He ruined my story.”

He bristled. “What on earth did I do?”

“You threw yourself between the ‘princess’”—she jabbed a finger in my direction—“and the explosive. And after I had written a beautiful piece detailing Maximilian playing the hero. Anyone standing on that pavement knows what really happened.”

“It was chaos,” I told her. “But your account was detailed—to a suspicious degree. In order for you to know how things were meant to play out, you must have had advance knowledge.”

To her credit, she flushed again. “I am sorry. I ought to have told you, but Maximilian swore me to secrecy and said there was no danger whatsoever.”

“Maximilian.” This time I did not bother to conceal my triumph. “He knew.”

“He arranged it,” she said dully. “It was only a large firework. It was meant to make a good deal of noise and smoke and nothing more.”

“Then what was the point of it?” Stoker asked.

“To let Max play the hero with Gisela,” J. J. explained. “She has been dragging her feet over accepting his proposal and he is growing desperate. It was put to him that if she felt vulnerable, it might nudge her towards marriage. A situation where she was threatened—even if only for a moment—and he acted decisively and courageously might be just enough to tip her into his arms.”

“Suggested?” Stoker pounced upon the word. “By whom?”

“By an unlovely gentleman to whom he owes money. Maximilian is a bit of a gambler. He likes betting on horse races, dog races, turtle races.”

“Turtle races?” Stoker asked. “How the bloody hell does one race a turtle?”

“Slowly,” she said with a ghost of her old smile. “He went to Deauville after a quarrel with Gisela and found himself overextended. The fellow to whom he owes the money has rather nasty schemes for getting his debts repaid. The French lads in his employ are not above using a few persuasions—a club applied to a kneecap, an explosive tossed through a window. Whatever the situation requires. One of them threw the squib last night at a signal from Max. He blended into the crowd and was back in France on the first Channel steamer. You can despise him all you like, but I can assure you, the alternative would have been worse. The duke has fallen in with a particularly nasty crowd who will not take it well if he fails to pay his debts of honor.” She paused, drawing in a breath. “See here, I know what I did was very wrong, but no harm was actually done. I have spent my entire life taking risks like that—I haven’t had any other way to get ahead. And I have my first front-page byline out of it, so if you are expecting an apology, I’m afraid you will be sitting in the anteroom of hell before you hear one out of me.”

She lifted her chin, and in spite of her defiance, I was rather glad to see something of her old spirit in evidence. I did not like a defeated J. J.

“What about the chocolate box?” Stoker asked. “There was a threat left inside a box of rose and violet creams on the princess’s dressing table.”

“Another suggestion from Max’s unsavory companion from Deauville. He wanted to put Gisela on edge a bit so the ‘bomb’ would feel even more frightening when it went off, make her feel like she was surrounded by enemies, that sort of thing.”