A Curious Beginning

“You are a lepidopterist,” he said repressively. “You are not supposed to discriminate against moths.”


“I am entitled to my prejudices,” I replied before returning to the subject at hand. “Still, there seems little enough point in going to Ireland when the Irish have come to us. My uncle and his henchman are all Hibernian.” I paused, considering the peculiar green spice my uncle smelled of. “Why do you suppose my uncle chews caraway? I wonder what it signifies.”

“That he has digestive issues,” Stoker supplied promptly. “Caraway seeds are a carminative. I have occasionally prescribed them to patients with an excess of wind.”

“You mean—”

“Yes,” he said, cutting me off sharply before I could finish the thought.

“How unfortunate,” I murmured. I dared not meet his eyes for fear I would dissolve into laughter at the notion of an abductor who suffered from excessive wind. I primmed my mouth. “So, we have a mother and uncle and assorted miscreants from Ireland, where I was born. We assume that my mother left me in the care of the Harbottles, and they found it expedient to leave Ireland. But why? Who would profit from menacing an infant in those circumstances?”

Our eyes met and we spoke in unison. “The father.”

“I did not like to believe it, but perhaps you were right. It does have a certain pretty symmetry,” I observed. “We can assume my father was also Irish, perhaps better bred than my mother, perhaps from a conservative family. After my birth, he marries this other woman instead of my mother. Lily Ashbourne dies, possibly by his hand. Who, then, is left to tie him to her memory? His child. A loose end he must knot. Fearing him, the Harbottles flee Ireland and move constantly throughout my childhood, eluding him and the threat he poses.” I floundered. “Then what?”

Stoker promptly picked up the thread. “He cannot find you. Perhaps he has come close throughout the years. Perhaps he has put men loyal to himself onto your trail. He may have collected a few clues. It is possible the Harbottles were less than careful when they ought to have been.”

“The baron knew their assumed name, and we know he had a connection to my father,” I added. “My father may have discovered our whereabouts through him. The baron never knew where we were living, but when Aunt Nell died, I placed a notice in the London newspaper. I did not believe they had connections anywhere, but I wanted to make quite certain any possible debts were settled. That is how the baron found us.”

We were silent a moment, both of us considering the implications.

“I have thought of something else that might have kept them apart,” Stoker put in. “It might be that your mother was born to a respectable, even a wealthy family. But in Ireland, even money isn’t enough to span one unbridgeable divide.”

“Religion,” I supplied.

He gave a short nod. “Precisely. We know from the papers that your mother was a practicing Catholic. What if your father was a Protestant? Those resentments run deep.” That much was true. I had missed some of the more sensational headlines during my travels, but a quick perusal of the newspapers in Stoker’s workroom had enlightened me. It had been only two years since Irishmen detonated dynamite at the Tower and Westminster Hall, and shortly before there had been the Phoenix Park Murders—the fatal stabbings of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his Permanent Undersecretary. The fact that the secretary had been a member of the powerful Cavendish family had not protected him. Even the royal family was not safe. An Irishman had come close to assassinating the queen’s own son in Australia not so many years before. And these were merely the most recent acts in centuries of violent conflict.

I sighed. “I suppose it is not difficult to believe that a Protestant fellow from a good family would never dare marry a Catholic actress. He would be marked down as a traitor by his side, as would she. They should both be in danger, depending how deeply their families felt about Home Rule.” I dropped my head into my hands. “God, what a filthy muddle.”

“And there might be more,” he said.

I lifted my head to look him squarely in the eye. “I have this day been abducted, nearly drowned, and stabbed a man with a hatpin. I am unsinkable, Stoker. Do your worst.”

“It did occur to me that your father might be in league with your uncle,” he said flatly. “And if that is the case, he might well be responsible for Max’s death.”

I sputtered. “Impossible.”

“You cannot say that,” he told me in a reasonable tone. “You do not know him.”

“I know that it is highly illogical to think on the one hand my father might be responsible for Lily Ashbourne’s death and on the other that he might be conspiring with her brother!”