A Curious Beginning

He said nothing for a long moment, and when he spoke, it was with a seriousness of purpose that would not be gainsaid. “I have my reasons,” he told me. “And I must beg you to respect them.” He hesitated and went on in a rough voice. “I have not always conducted myself as a gentleman; that much is true. But I am set upon a different path now. I no longer believe that degrading myself with slatterns and tavern wenches is appropriate.”


I very nearly laughed, but his expression was so earnest, I could not. Instead I sat up. “Slatterns and tavern wenches? That’s a curious sort of company to keep.”

“Brazil is a curious place.”

“Brazil? You have not lain with a woman since Brazil? Stoker, that was years ago.”

“And?” he demanded.

“You must engage in horizontal refreshment. It isn’t healthy to congest oneself like that.”

“I am not congested,” he retorted.

“Really? That brings me back to my question. You are a man with demonstrably strong passions, and yet you live like a monk. What about the solitary sensual pursuits? Do you ever engage in—”

“Not. Another. Word,” he thundered. “I cannot believe you would ask me such a thing. And I am not discussing this further.”

I pulled a face. “Very well.”

It was his turn to blink in surprise. “Really? You concede? Just like that?”

“Heavens, Stoker. What did you expect? I asked for the truth and you have given as much as you feel comfortable sharing. Furthermore, I have discovered that whether you like it or not, you are a gentleman. And, I suspect, a romantic.”

He snorted. “A romantic?”

“Indeed. Otherwise you would have made frequent and athletic use of any number of London’s professional ladies of light virtue. While as a pragmatist, I do not always understand romanticism, I respect it.”

“Well, then,” he said uncertainly.

“Indeed. Good night, Stoker.”

Retreating behind a rather splendid coromandel screen, I availed myself of the narrow campaign bed that had once belonged to the Duke of Wellington. Its proportions were modest, but it was comfortably furnished with a proper featherbed. I settled in, reflecting upon the curious character of the man with whom I had thrown in my lot. I could hear him turning the pages of the journal as he read, occasionally giving a low sigh as he arranged himself more comfortably. At length he blew out the lamp and we lay in darkness, separated by the screen. It was oddly companionable.

Something about his quickness of mind, his determination to live by his own lights, had called to me. I recognized his nature as my own. It was as if we were two castaways from a far-off land, adrift among strangers whose ways we could not entirely understand. But something within us spoke the same language, for all our clashes of words. He did not trust me entirely; that much was certain. And I frequently frustrated him to the point of madness. But I knew that whatever bedeviled him, he had need of me—and it seemed a betrayal to turn my back upon one of my own kind. I had seldom met another such as we, and I had learned that to be a child of the wilderness was a lonely thing.

Lying in the dark, I had intended to puzzle out the clues we had and assemble them in perfect order to present to Stoker the following morning as a dazzling solution in the manner of Arcadia Brown, Lady Detective. But just as I began to arrange the clues in my mind, I heard Stoker’s voice.

“Cold water.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He gave a gusty sigh. “Try cold water. Bathing in it, not drinking. A swim is the best if you can manage it. It will put you right off of those sorts of thoughts.”

“Thank you, Stoker. I shall make a note of that.”

He snorted by way of response. Smiling into the darkness, I surrendered to the soothing delights of goose down and linen sheets and sank into a sleep like death.

When I woke, I could tell it was morning although the light was watery and grey. The fine weather had broken and a dull day lay before us with the steady drum of rain upon the roof. I rose and washed and dressed, taking a bit of cheese and a cold ham roll for my breakfast. Stoker was still slumbering upon the sofa, and I took a moment to admire the prospect presented by a virile, attractive man caught in the vulnerability of sleep. I would have happily played Diana to his Endymion, but in the light of our previous discussion, I kept my hands chastely to myself and began to prowl with only the mollusks and the stuffed birds and paintings for company. I browsed the books and perused the collections, delighted to find a private translation of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung. I had just settled in happily with the first volume of The Caterpillars’ Marvelous Transformation and Strange Floral Food when I became increasingly aware that I was not alone. From behind a molting egret standing upon one leg, a quizzical pair of dark eyes assessed me.

“Who are you?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” I said coolly.

A child of perhaps six years stepped out from behind the bird. Her Sunday frock was streaked with something that looked suspiciously like golden treacle and her hair ribbon was dangling loose as if she had just been dragged through a bush backward.