Stoker spent the journey enthralled in the latest Arcadia Brown detective story—“to set the proper frame of mind,” he explained—but the quarterly journal of The Aurelian Sisterhood remained unread upon my lap. I had thought to take the opportunity to catch up on my professional reading, but the vistas beyond my window were too distracting. The redbrick chimneys of the city, once unthinkably foul to me, now added a certain charm to the landscape for all their black-smoke belches, and I watched with a little pang as the narrow back gardens of the suburbs gave way to the wider stretches of open country. I was becoming a Londoner at last, I realized in some alarm. It had once been the greatest source of pleasure to put the vast metropolis behind me as I set out again upon adventures in uncharted climes. Now it seemed I hesitated to set foot outside its confines, trembling like a virgin sacrifice on the precipice of disaster. How could I, who had traveled with Corsican bandits and known the pleasures of camping with no other roof than the stars, shrink from a sojourn anywhere in these dominions? It was unthinkable. Had I, I wondered in horror, lost my nerve?
“I most certainly have not,” I said aloud.
Stoker blinked at me over the top of his book. His cheeks were flushed pink, a sure sign that something saucy was happening on the page. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I assured him. “I am merely wrestling with a question of spirit. I fear I have become tame.”
He snorted, marking his place in the book with a thumb. “You? Tame? My dearest Veronica, it would take a better man than I to accomplish such a feat.”
I flapped a hand. “I did not mean that,” I said. “I mean the yearning for open country and the freedom of a net in my hand and untilled ground beneath my feet. Apart from uneventful trips to Madeira and the Alpenwald, my escapades these past two years have all taken place within the confines of this island. And yes, I have encountered peril, but it is not the same as adventure.”
He carefully laid the book aside. “Well, if it is adventure you seek . . .” He reached for me with a singularly determined look. He settled me across his lap, his lips brushing the pulsebeat just below my ear. “‘Sweeter by far than Hybla’s honey’d roses / When steep’d in dew rich to intoxication. / Ah! I will taste that dew . . . ’”
Stoker frequently resorted to Keats in intimate moments, usually fitting his caresses to the appropriate lines, delivered in his rumbling baritone. I was powerless against the elegance of the poetry coupled with delicate debaucheries, and I did not refuse him. It was not at all the sort of adventure I meant, but it would do, I decided. Oh, it would do very nicely indeed.
* * *
• • •
The soft and lovely weather of London had subsided by the time we reached the other side of Salisbury Plain, growing progressively nastier until a proper gale was blowing as our train drew into the tiny station Shepton Parva. The Hathaways, expecting us, had kindly sent a conveyance, but it was obvious from the moment we settled ourselves inside that Charles Hathaway’s lavish improvements at the Hall had not yet extended to the stables. It was an elderly vehicle, at least sixty years past its prime, with leaking roof and cracked windows, and a broken-down nag to pull it along at a snail’s pace. Outside, the tempest roared, lightning occasionally illuminating a landscape of bleak moorland punctuated by lonely tors.
We journeyed into this no-man’s-land for what seemed hours, and I thought of the man they called Jonathan Hathaway, making such an effort whilst in the grip of injury and illness. Did some primal knowledge in the blood draw him back to the land where his people had lived for centuries? Or had he merely stumbled into a fortuitous household where the lady of the house was prepared to do her Christian duty and entertain strangers unaware?
As we drew closer to the Hall, I became aware of a growing unease, a feeling not mitigated by the wildness of the landscape. The further we went, the more torturous the scenery, what little of it we could discern from the begrimed windows of the coach. The driver had been a dour sort, communicating only in monosyllables before taking his place on the box, and he seemed content to travel at the horse’s painfully slow pace, although only an oilskin cape shielded him from the vagaries of weather. At last, he thumped once on the roof of the coach, calling in a harsh voice, “The Hall,” as we paused—either for some dramatic effect or to rest the horse. The miserable creature stood a moment, and just then a sudden flash of lightning showed us our destination, a great monstrosity of a house, crouching against the landscape like a beast ready to spring itself upon unsuspecting prey . . .
(Stoker, who has been reading this account over my shoulder as I write, has just interjected. “For God’s sake, Veronica, it was a house. Large and rather ugly with a few more gargoyles than strictly necessary, but it was a house.” I have informed him that editorial criticism is not welcome within these pages, and I expect to hear no further commentary upon the veracity of my accounts. I should point out that I have long since ceased sharing my writing with him prior to submitting my accounts to the archive of the Hippolyta Club. He takes umbrage at my descriptions of his physique as well as any mention of physical intimacy between us. For all of his robust enjoyment of such activities, he occasionally demonstrates the fastidious prudery of a spinster aunt. It is a flaw I am attempting to remedy. In any event, I have banished him to work upon his newest acquisition and expect now to return to my account uninterrupted.)
. . . a great monstrosity of a house, crouching against the landscape like a beast ready to spring itself upon unsuspecting prey. A faint glimmer shone against three of the windows, but no blaze of light greeted us, no promise of warmth and welcome. In fact, we stood upon the step, barely sheltered from the worst of the driving rain, as Stoker applied himself manfully to a bellpull that resisted his efforts, clearly broken. He resorted to the knocker, an enormous affair of iron wrought in the shape of a ram’s head—the Hathaway badge, as we later learned. Stoker grabbed it by the snout and dropped it heavily against the strike plate. The sound of it was barely discernible over the storm, and he was just about to raise it again when the door swung back on creaking hinges. The inside of the Hall was scarcely brighter than the tempestuous night, but it was enough to reveal a housekeeper, I presumed, with steel grey hair coiled above each ear in a style that had last been popular when Empress Eugénie was a bride. A chatelaine, heavy with keys, jangled at her waist as she moved.
“Oh, I am sorry! ’Tis such a filthy night, we expected you would have stayed the night at the village inn rather than make such a journey. Fair five miles it is in that rattletrap of Tom Carter’s,” she fussed, ushering us inside and towards a hearth where a single log smoldered.
“It is not the Hathaway carriage?” Stoker asked.
“Lord love you, sir,” she said, “the family have a smart new carriage, but it cannot stand to our rough roads. The axle has been broken twice and one of the wheels came clear off yesterday. Now, stand you there, by the fireside,” she instructed. She hurried back to the door, where the aptly named Mr. Carter was depositing our bags. Stoker proffered him a generous coin in gratuity and he took it, slouching out again and leaving the bags in a heap inside the door.