A Curious Beginning

He shook his head as if to clear it. “I smoked opium once. It felt like listening to you, only rather more mundane.”


I tipped my head thoughtfully. “I smoked it once as well. I must say I did not much care for the aroma. It smelled of flowers and gunpowder, which was not unpleasant, but there was something else, something more animalic. Sweaty horse, I think.”

He drew me back to the subject at hand. “How, I beg you, Miss Speedwell, is a man of no fortune and fewer prospects supposed to fund such an expedition?”

I puffed out my lips with impatience. “Really, Mr. Stoker, your lack of imagination is sorely trying. You might apply to subscribers. Wealthy people are always looking to spend their money in ways they can boast of to their friends. For that matter, your patrons need not be wealthy. You could advertise and take very small subscriptions from prosperous merchants and other up-and-comers. Promise them their name on plaques or to call a species after them. People love to have things they don’t understand named for them. And your expedition needn’t be costly. Your skill at preparing and mounting your specimens is evident. Can you hunt them as well?”

He nodded his head towards a particularly vicious-looking mount of a hyena. “Through the heart at two hundred yards.”

“There you are, then! You need only a few local guides to show you the way and some bearers to bring back your trophies and specimen cases.”

For the first time, he gave me a faint but very real smile. “Miss Speedwell, expeditions are a bit more complex than that.”

I flapped a hand. “They do not have to be. Expeditions are enormously expensive because they have to cart around everyone’s self-importance. Most of the leaders of these undertakings are dilettantes, gentlemen scientists who insist upon touring in luxury, packing so much silver and linen they might imagine themselves in a London hotel. You are a resourceful man. Are you not familiar with the intrepid lady travelers? Women like Isabella Bird and Marianne North? They managed to go right round the world with little more than what they could fit into a saddlebag. I am persuaded you could travel quite easily with a single bag. I mean to.”

I pointed to my carpetbag. “Except for my net, everything I have need of in the world is contained in that bag—including a second hat and a rather sizable jar of cold cream of roses. Do not tell me you couldn’t travel with as little. I have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try.”

He shook his head. “I cannot seem to formulate a clear thought in the face of such original thinking, Miss Speedwell. You have a high opinion of your sex.”

I pursed my lips. “Not all of it. We are, as a gender, undereducated and infantilized to the point of idiocy. But those of us who have been given the benefit of learning and useful occupation, well, we are proof that the traditional notions of feminine delicacy and helplessness are the purest poppycock.”

“You have large opinions for so small a person.”

“I daresay they would be large opinions even for someone your size,” I countered.

“And where did you form these opinions? Either your school was inordinately progressive or your governess was a Radical.”

“I never went to school, nor did I have a governess. Books were my tutors, Mr. Stoker. Anything I wished to learn I taught myself.”

“There are limits to an autodidactic education,” he pointed out.

“Few that I have found. I was spared the prejudices of formal educators.”

“And neither were you inspired by them. A good teacher can change the course of a life,” he said thoughtfully.

“Perhaps. But I had complete intellectual freedom. I studied those subjects which interested me—to the point of obsession at times—and spent precious little time on things which did not.”

“Such as?”

“Music and needlework. I am astonishingly lacking in traditional feminine accomplishments.”

He cocked his head. “I am not entirely astonished.” But his tone was mild, and I accepted the statement as nothing like an insult. In fact, it felt akin to a compliment.

“And I must confess that between Jane Austen and Fordyce’s Sermons, I have developed a general antipathy for clergymen. And their wives,” I added, thinking of Mrs. Clutterthorpe.

“Well, in that we may be agreed. Tell me, do you find many people to share your views?”

“Shockingly few,” I admitted. “I presented my interpretations to a vicar in Hampshire once and he was fairly apoplectic upon the subject. I lost my position on the flower-arranging committee.”

“A tragedy indeed,” he said with his now familiar mockery.

“You’ve no idea. In a country village, one’s standing is determined by committee appointments and good works. I was relegated to a convalescent hospital, and I must say, I was glad of the change. The men there were not half so tiresome as the ladies who arrange the flowers, I can assure you. I was quite disappointed to lose my position there within a month.”