“I do not want a dog,” I said, forming the words slowly and distinctly. My tongue still felt not entirely under my command.
“Well, you have one,” she said firmly. “Deerhounds are a frightfully loyal breed, and he has already lost one mistress this week.”
I lifted one hand and put it onto Vespertine’s head. He gave a deep sigh and settled further, closing his eyes as I did mine. Perhaps owning a dog was not such an unthinkable proposition after all.
After a moment, I opened my eyes again and inspected my surroundings. I lay on a narrow bed, tucked firmly beneath a coverlet printed with elephants. I blinked hard and then closed my eyes again.
“Do you see elephants or am I having an hallucination?” I demanded in a hoarse croak.
“They are on the walls as well,” she informed me. “You have been put to bed in the night nursery at the top of the house.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because with three beds already in one room, it was almost a makeshift ward. Far better for looking after the lot of you,” she told me.
I opened my eyes again and looked to my left. Mornaday occupied a narrow bed identical to mine, save that his coverlet was printed with dancing bears. A nightcap was perched at a quizzical angle on his head, and his mouth was open as he delivered lusty snores. With great care for my aching head, I turned to the right. Stoker.
I thrust myself up onto my elbow and paused as the room spun like a carousel. My other arm was bound to my side by a sling. I pushed gently at Vespertine and he leapt gracefully from the bed, landing noiselessly on his feet.
J. J. swore but came to me, helping me up. “Go slowly,” she admonished. “You’ve had nothing to eat and you were under the ether for rather a long time. Your arm will be fine, by the way. Pennybaker probed the wound thoroughly and found a piece or two of bullet that must have chipped off, but the rest passed through. He stitched you up and it looks rather like the constellation Orion now.”
“I don’t care if he cut the bloody thing off,” I muttered as I tottered across the few yards of carpet to Stoker’s bed. He lay just as I had seen him last, pale and still. The only change was a darkening of the beard at his jaw.
“You said he was awake,” I told her, my tone more than a little accusatory.
“Was,” she emphasized. “And I said he was out again. He needs the rest. As do you,” she added. I looked down at him for a long time before I allowed her to coax me back to my bed. I tumbled down onto it and into sleep. Just as I drifted off, I mumbled my thanks.
“You are welcome, Princess,” she said with a note of amusement.
* * *
• • •
It was not until the next time I woke that the little barb stuck. I awoke and immediately realized what she had meant.
“Bloody bollocking hell,” I said, opening my eyes.
“Well, that is one patient clearly feeling better,” Mr. Pennybaker said in his mild voice. He applied a finger to my pulse as I struggled to rise.
“A moment, if you please, Miss Speedwell.”
“How are the others?”
“Mr. Mornaday is in the grip of a fever. Nothing serious, but he did quite overexert himself and I should like to keep an eye on him for a day or so more. You are free to get up and move about as you like, my dear. I have examined the wound. There is no sign of infection, but I am afraid it will leave a series of small scars. You will have a story to tell when you wear an evening gown.”
I pushed Pennybaker aside. Stoker sat up in bed, his beard frankly disreputable now, but he was smiling. That beautiful, inimitable smile. His torso was lavishly bandaged and bruised every color imaginable, but his coloring was good.
I flew at him, landing on his bed with a thump and heedless of Pennybaker’s admonitions. I cupped his face in my hands, my voice tender and deceptively sweet. “Stoker, I hope that you will mark me well when I say, if you ever do such a thing again, I will shoot you myself and save the villains the trouble.”
* * *
• • •
Several days later, Mornaday and J. J. Butterworth joined us for a sort of postmortem, bringing word of the doings abroad. J. J. was illuminated like a faery light as she bore her latest endeavors in the Daily Harbinger in triumph.
“The Ripper has struck again,” she pronounced. “And they let me have the front page,” she added, pointing to the byline.
But my gaze had fallen to the name of his latest victim. “Mary Jane Kelly,” I said slowly, remembering the pert girl with the pretty blond hair and the cheap dress I had not returned.
I forced myself to read the piece as J. J. went on. “This one was killed in her room in Miller’s Court,” she told Stoker, whose face was ashen against his pillow. I remembered the man who had passed us in the street the night we wandered in the fog in search of Whitechapel High Street, the sense of foreboding that had leeched from him.
I thrust the newspaper back at J. J. “It is very well written,” I told her truthfully. “It is as if I were there.” The details of the crime turned my stomach.
“I hope that this will finally prove to those toffee-nosed prigs in Parliament that something must be done for the poor and indigent,” she said, her color high.
Mornaday was watching her with a gleam of emotion in his eyes, and I wondered if he knew his feelings would never be reciprocated. J. J. Butterworth would make no man a wife. She was wedded to her career, her calling to expose the truth to the harsh light of day. She was a crusader, and crusaders were always touched with a bit of the fanatical. There was also the matter of the waltz we had shared and the tiny kiss she had bestowed upon me at the end of it. I looked at her and saw she was watching me, a small, inscrutable smile playing about her mouth. I knew that some women had Sapphic inclinations, and of course it was possible J. J. was one of their number. But I suspected she was more enchanted with the fact of her own outrageousness, calculated little stratagems designed to keep everyone she met slightly off-balance. She had faced many trials in her quest to become a journalist of renown, and I did not doubt she would use any weapon at her disposal in the pursuit.
Stoker put out his hand for the newspaper. He read in silence, and when he had finished, his jaw was set. “Would you be interested in interviewing a woman who knew her? Someone who could tell you what it is like to live on the streets? To sleep rough and to earn your bread on your back?”
She leant forwards eagerly. “Would I indeed!”
Mornaday looked affronted. “It is far too dangerous,” he began.
J. J. rounded on him. “What I do is not your concern,” she told him, her tone biting. I had little doubt this was a conversation they had had on more than one occasion. “Besides,” she went on, “you had no objections when I wanted to work for Madame Aurore to write an exposé on the doings at her club.”