A Curious Beginning

Stoker was as good as his word. All through the long night of walking, he supported me, weakened as I still was by my recent bout of malaria. He permitted me to lean upon his arm when I grew tired and guided me across streams and over gates. Slipping away from the traveling show was a simple matter. We avoided the horse lines and the late-night carousers, following the edge of the river as it wound downstream towards the town of Clackton. We might have easily caught the train in Butterleigh, but as I pointed out to Stoker, anyone bent on finding us would presume we had taken the most direct route. Stoker had purloined a few shabby coats from inattentive traveling folk, and with these buttoned over our own clothes, we boarded the third-class carriage at Greycott and rode as far as Old Ashton before disembarking. Stoker had kept his eye patch firmly in his pocket, and I had, with a little difficulty, managed to stuff my orchidaceous rose hat into my carpetbag. In our attempts to blend in with other travelers, we could afford as few distinctions as possible. We washed our faces and hands carefully and left the decrepit garments in the public lavatories, each of us emerging with a far more respectable appearance than we had previously presented. We breakfasted heartily at the local inn, finishing just in time to catch the next train. Stoker dipped into his slender funds to purchase a packet of boiled sweets and tickets—first-class this time, as much to muddle any would-be pursuers as to afford us a bit of privacy.

Alone at last, I fixed Stoker with a curious look. “You are the most complex and contradictory man I have ever known,” I told him.

He unwrapped a boiled sweet and stuffed it into his mouth. “Shall I take that as a compliment or condemnation?”

“Neither. It is merely a statement of fact. You survived a brutal jaguar attack and spent what I can only imagine was a long and demanding period in the Royal Navy. You have willingly submitted to the extremely painful process of tattooing—not once, but upon multiple occasions. And you entered a rebenque fight with a man so fearsome, he ought to have picked his teeth with your femurs. All of this with perfect resignation and fortitude. And yet when a dressmaker’s pin stuck you in the shoulder, you roared like a wounded lion.”

He considered that a moment, rolling the sweet over his tongue. “There are times when it is entirely safe to show one’s vulnerability, to roll over and reveal the soft underbelly beneath. But there are other times when pain must be borne without a murmur, when the pain is so consuming that if you give in to it, even in the slightest, you have lost everything.”

“I suppose one might say the same of mental and emotional pain as well as physical,” I mused. “One simply gets on with what must be done because if one paused and looked at it full in the face—”

“Then one would never find the strength to go on,” he finished, cracking the sweet between his strong white teeth.

“As Arcadia Brown would say, ‘Excelsior!’ Ever upward, ever forward.”

I expected him to disparage my taste in popular literature again, but he merely inclined his head. “Excelsior,” he agreed quietly.

“Your cheek is bleeding again,” I told him. He rummaged for a handkerchief, and I realized how handy it was of him to carry scarlet ones. He always seemed to be mopping up blood with them.

“Pity if it scars,” he said lightly. “The bastard would wound me on my good side.”

“I don’t know about that,” I replied deliberately. “Both sides look entirely appealing to me.”

His hand stilled, his expression inscrutable. “Veronica,” he began. But I put up a hand.

“You needn’t fear any predation on my part, Stoker. That was not a prelude to seduction. I was merely making an observation. You think those scars are off-putting, and to a woman with a feeble imagination, they might be. But for any woman who appreciates valor and courage, they are more attractive than any perfect profile or unblemished cheek.”

For once he was speechless, and I took the opportunity to make myself more comfortable. “I mean to sleep now, Stoker. I advise you to do the same.”

I closed my eyes then, as he rested his thoughtful gaze upon me. And in time, I slept.

? ? ?

I roused myself as we drew near to London and woke refreshed, if somewhat stiff. I poked Stoker from his snores.

“Bloody hell, what?” he demanded with all the grace of a bear roused from hibernation.