A Curious Beginning

“Do carry on,” I urged.

“In any event, I stayed with them for some time, almost half a year before my father’s pet detective managed to track me. It was Montgomerie. He was not with the Yard at the time, and he bloody well wasn’t Sir Hugo. But it explains how quickly Scotland Yard got onto me as a suspect in Max’s death. Montgomerie was a meticulous sort of fellow. I’ve little doubt he kept his case notes from my disappearance—and when Max was murdered it would have been short work to discover that I had been one of his associates.”

“And easy to confirm that you were still in contact as soon as they waded through the baron’s business papers and realized you were his tenant.”

I glanced around the workshop. “You said he intended to leave his fortune to one of his favorite institutions? What will they do with it?”

Stoker shrugged. “I am sure they will sell it off to someone or other for use as a warehouse again. The river is badly silted up at the dock, but that can always be dredged.”

“And you will lose your home.”

“This is not home, Veronica,” he said in a hollow voice. “It is merely a place where I live.”

He returned to his elephant then, hammering ferociously at one of the supports, and I thought of the first time I had goaded him out of his silence by pricking his temper. But it was not his rage I wanted then. For the first time in a very long time, I wanted something quite different from another human being—and as I explored that want I recognized it as a longing for reassurance.

“Stoker.”

Something in my tone must have conveyed itself, for he put down his hammer and turned. “Yes?”

“Do you ever think about death?” They were not the words I intended to speak, but they would do to begin. Huxley climbed into my lap and I petted him, running my fingers through his coarse hair.

He spread his hands, encompassing the whole of his workshop. “Every day. I am surrounded by it.”

“I mean your own.”

“I have. I’ve come closer than most,” he reminded me.

“In Brazil?” Huxley gave a damp snuffle and settled onto my lap.

“And other places,” he told me. “Have you thought about it?”

“Never. Not in Corsica or Mexico or Sarawak. Not even in Sumatra when that bloody volcano was erupting. I always thought everything would be all right. I always believed when I closed my eyes at night that I would wake again in the morning. I knew the sun was just over the horizon, and I believed I would live to see it rise again. I suppose you think I’m very stupid,” I finished, trailing off.

“On the contrary, Veronica. I think that is the only way to live.”

If only his voice had not been quite so gentle; if only he had comprehended me just a little less. I would never have voiced my doubts. It is easy to stiffen one’s upper lip and carry on when you dare not share your cowardice for fear of being misunderstood. But it is a difficult thing to heft one’s burden alone when there is someone willing to share it.

“Stoker, what if I’ve blundered?” I asked suddenly, the words bursting out in a torrent. “What if I’ve miscalculated and it all goes awry? They might—” I did not say the words. I could not.

“Yes,” he agreed. “They might.”

“And that doesn’t frighten you?” I demanded. My voice rose and Huxley shifted, grumbling a little as only an annoyed bulldog can.

“It scares the bloody hell out of me, if I’m honest,” he replied. “But you cannot think like that. You’ve made your gamble. You’ve thrown the dice and now we wait to see if you’ve won.”

“But if I’ve lost—” I broke off and tried again, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “I accused you of being rash when you fled London after the baron’s death, but I am no better. I have risked both our lives in this and I had no right to bring you any further into this fight.”

“I have been in it,” he reminded me. “From the first. And I will be there at the last. Whatever happens.”

He dug in his pocket for one of his scarlet handkerchiefs. “Here, use this before you give Huxley pneumonia from wetting him with your tears.”

His tone was mocking, but his gaze was unperturbed. A calmness had settled over him, a serenity that I had never seen.

“Is this what it’s like? Before a battle, I mean. You must have seen a few in the navy.”

“A few,” he admitted. “There’s always a moment, after the frantic preparation and before the firing, when everything goes quiet. You can feel the men around you praying. I never could. For me there was only the silence.”

“What did you do with your silence?”

He gave me a small smile. “What do you think? I recited a few lines of Keats to myself. I thought of the life I might never live, the life I wanted to live. And I thought of my commander, the man into whose hands I had entrusted my life.”