A Curious Beginning

“Stay and fight them, of course,” I replied.

He did not answer for a long moment, but when he did his voice was chilly with the coldest rage I had ever heard. “In spite of what society believes me capable of, I do not strike women,” he said, each word clipped and hard. “But I can tell you if anything drove me to it, it would be precisely that sort of insult to my honor.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he went on, each word as pointed as a sword. “I am many things, Veronica Speedwell, and most of them I take no pride in, but I am still—and will ever be—a gentleman and a former sailor of Her Majesty’s Navy. And the one thing a sailor does not do is desert his comrades under fire. If we stay, we go down together, and we go down fighting.”

I put out my hand. “There is no one I would rather have at my back. To the end, then.”

He grasped my hand and shook it. “To the end.”

? ? ?

Of course, as had become our habit, we quarreled over what the end should be—or at least Stoker quarreled and I carried on doing precisely as I wished.

“We must return to your workshop to set our plans in motion,” I informed him.

“What plans?”

“To flush them out,” I declared. “All of them. I am going to bring them to us, the Irish, Mornaday and his superiors, all of them.”

His voice was strangled. “Do you mean to get us killed?”

I spoke with grim finality. “No. But I mean to be free of this once and for all. And to do that, I must bring them all together at one time.”

“And how precisely do you propose to do that?”

“Why, by sending them invitations, of course. Steel yourself, Stoker. Veronica Speedwell is about to introduce herself properly.”

Stoker was every bit as tiresome about the plan as I expected. He raised objections on the grounds of my safety, his safety, common sense, and half a dozen other topics that I dispatched with a coolness that would have been a credit to any battlefield commander. If my knees trembled a little, I dared not show it to Stoker. I had little doubt he possessed a predator’s sense for weakness. If he smelled it upon me, he would not stop until he had forced me to give up my plan, and that was something I could not afford. I must bring an end to this matter, once and for all, no matter the cost.

It was not until I calmly informed him that I would go without him that he capitulated with very bad grace. He brooded for the rest of the day, and it occurred to me that a man as large as Stoker in a foul mood was a formidable creature indeed. But if we were to have any sort of working partnership moving forward, he would have to learn that I could not be cowed by any display of masculine posturing. Nor could I be moved by appeals to logic, emotion, or femininity, all of which he tried, and all of which I rejected. I had discovered that, in light of his stubbornness, the most expedient way of dealing with him was simply to do as I pleased and trust he would follow. His own innate sense of chivalry as well as his natural curiosity would make certain of that.

Against Stoker’s better judgment we repaired to his workshop. I had argued successfully that it was far closer to the Tower than Bishop’s Folly and had the added benefit of leaving the Beauclerks entirely out of it. Our things had been left at the Folly, but at least we retained possession of the most important—the packets of information that proved my true identity. I rewrapped them together carefully, using a piece of plain brown paper from Stoker’s supply to bundle them all. I tied them with a bit of butcher’s twine as Stoker coaxed up the fire in his stove. Absently, I crumbled a bit of the broken sealing wax in my fingers.

“Don’t,” he ordered. “It is getting on the floor and Huxley oughtn’t eat it.”

I was not surprised he had turned pernickety. The specter of impending death will do that to some people. In my case, it made me rather fidgety, and I paced the room, picking up specimens and putting them down again.

“This plover is molting,” I told him.

He removed it from my grasp and brushed the feathers from my fingers. “A plover is a nonpasserine. This is a cuckooshrike. And you could have seen it is a passerine from its toes if you had cared to look.”

I pulled a face at him but left him to his wretched cuckooshrike. I never much cared for birds anyway. Instead I plucked one of his ancient newspapers at random and began to read.

We had been there only a short while when Badger arrived to look in on Huxley. “Mr. S.! I didn’t look to see you back already.”

Stoker gave the boy a smile. “Neither did I. Miss Speedwell has a pair of notes she would like for you to deliver. And a shilling for your trouble. Any questions?”

The boy’s eyes shone. “Nay.”