CHAPTER
1
Somewhere between Paris and London
April 1889
I do not care for infants, and even if I did, I should not care for this one. It is decidedly moist,” I protested to Stoker, thrusting the child towards him. He took it with good grace and it emitted a sort of cooing sound. “It seems to like you,” I observed.
I could not find fault with the child on that score. From his thirst for adventure to his avid intelligence, Stoker was an eminently likeable man when he was in good spirits. (The fact that he was superbly fit and partial to reciting Keats in moments of tenderness entered into my assessment of him not in the slightest. I am, after all, a woman of science.)
Stoker dandled the infant on his knee and it regarded him solemnly, eyes wide and round. I use the word “infant” in its loosest interpretation. It had, in fact, been born some nine or ten months before and possessed the appropriate number of teeth and skills for a child of that age. If we had permitted, it would have roamed the first-class compartment where we were comfortably ensconced en route from Paris to London. The fact that the journey included a Channel crossing via boat train was one of a dozen considerations in bringing along the child’s nurse, a stout matron of something more than forty years. She was a calmly capable woman who managed her charge with a combination of ruthless efficiency and dollops of real affection. I had taken the precaution of purchasing leather leads to attach to the infant to prevent it from getting loose, but Madame Laborde assured me she was entirely capable of running it to ground should it escape.
Escape seemed the last thing on its mind as it wound its chubby fist around Stoker’s index finger. As usual, the digit in question was stained with ink and smelt of honey and tobacco thanks to Stoker’s inveterate habits. We had been in the child’s company for only a few hours, but it had already ascertained that Stoker’s pockets were a veritable hoard of sweets. It put out an imperious hand and Stoker shook his head. “You have had two already and you must eat your luncheon first.”
The small person, I relate without exaggeration, narrowed its eyes and drew in a slow, deep breath. Then it opened its little maw and bellowed like a tiny bull. Hastily, Stoker thrust a hand into his pocket, rootling about until he extracted a paper twist of honey drops. He plopped one into the child’s mouth just as it prepared to roar again. Instantly, the rosebud lips clamped shut and curved into a smile. It emitted another coo and the nurse sighed.
“Monsieur,” she said evenly, “you must not spoil the child. He is headstrong enough without being indulged.” She related this in French, as her English was poor, and Stoker shrugged, pantomiming that he did not understand the language. This was a patent falsehood. I had discovered him on numerous occasions reading saucy French novels in the original tongue. He claimed it made them more romantique.
I smiled at the nurse. “Madame,” I told her in her native language, “you must excuse Monsieur. He lacks your fine Gallic common sense. He is half-Irish and they are a sentimental race.”
Stoker opened his mouth and snapped it shut again without speaking. Officially, he was the third son of the late Viscount Templeton-Vane. Unofficially, he was the result of a passionate liaison between the viscountess and the portraitist who had come from Galway to paint her in oils. Stoker did not generally enjoy discussing his parentage, but he could not now object unless he admitted to understanding French, and it was a situation I decided to exploit to the fullest.
“He is the same with his dogs,” I went on. “He lets them sleep in his bed and he feeds them from his own plate.”
She shuddered. The French, I have observed, are devoted to their pets, but even they have limits. With a great deal of concentration, the infant took the sweet from its mouth and held it up to the light in one chubby fist, like a jeweler studying the facets of a rare gem. Then it popped the treasure back onto its tongue and began to pat Stoker’s cheeks with its filthy hands. Suddenly, a noxious aroma filled the compartment. The cherub was sitting with a beatific expression on its face, as if it were not the author of the atrocity, but I knew better. I opened the window and gave the nurse a pointed look.
Madame Laborde hoisted herself to her feet and put out her hands for her charge.
“Avec moi, mon trésor, s’il vous plait,” she said briskly. She rattled off something about attending to the child’s condition and took her leave with the creature. Stoker unearthed one of his enormous scarlet pocket handkerchiefs and began to scrub at the sticky marks on his chin.
“You are a natural with children,” I said mildly. “I did not realize you had much experience with them.”
“Oh yes. In the traveling show.” Stoker had run away from his aristocratic home at the age of twelve and attached himself to a sort of circus, working his way up from amateur conjurer to knife thrower and prizefighter. “Violet, the Human Sow,” he told me with a fond smile of reminiscence. “She was a lovely woman. Gave birth every year, usually to twins or triplets. The proprietor made her wear a pink singlet and a velvet snout to cuddle a few infant pigs while the rest of us carried her actual babies about.”
“That is appalling,” I said, preparing to launch into a righteous tirade about reducing women to their breeding capabilities, but Stoker forestalled me.
“Not as appalling as that smell,” he replied, pinching his nose.
“Blame your small and unhygienic friend,” I instructed.
He shook his head. “No, that odor was blown away with the fresh air,” he said, nodding towards the open window. “The stench that remains is courtesy of your traveling companion.” He fixed an eye upon the enormous item sitting next to me. It was a wheel of cheese, just short of an hundredweight, its rind washed in the sweet wine of the Alpenwald, a Mitteleuropean country that had proven the setting for the conclusion of our last adventure. We had performed a service for the princess of that country at great peril to our own lives and limbs, and in return, the lady had invited us to her wedding.[*] It had been a bittersweet time—the princess, poor soul, had married for the security of her throne rather than the dictates of her heart—but we had enjoyed the many courtesies extended to us. We had been away more than a fortnight and had fallen woefully behind in our work for the Earl of Rosemorran. We had been engaged at his lordship’s Marylebone estate to catalog the collection amassed by his ancestors in preparation for the creation of a museum designed to educate and entertain the masses. Housed in the Belvedere, a sort of freestanding ballroom of enormous proportions on his lordship’s property, the collection was as varied as it was vast. Egyptian mummies jostled medieval suits of armor while caryatids looked down their aristocratic noses at the confusion. The bulk of the collection was devoted to natural history, animals stuffed and mounted from the furthest reaches of the globe and most in a state of moldering decay. The restoration of such mounts was Stoker’s speciality, whilst mine was the preservation of the butterflies and moths. A lepidopterist by trade, accustomed to voyaging the world in search of specimens to sell, I had taken the position with the earl on the understanding that it would entail a certain amount of travel.