He shrugged. “It has been a long day and we are all of us tired. A good night’s sleep and we shall convene a council of war. Amongst the three of us, we should be able to devise a plan that will see Harry cleared of this obligation and set upon his way again.”
My mind raced, but I could see from the pugnacious set of his jaw that there was no point in arguing. “Very well,” I said with an obliging nod. “If you are so persuaded that this is the proper course of action, we will offer him our assistance.”
“I am glad you see it my way,” he said cordially.
“However,” I added as if he had not spoken, “you must believe me when I say that he is capable of any mischief. The Belvedere is a treasure house of sorts, and none of it belongs to us. We are custodians of Lord Rosemorran’s possessions and, as such, responsible for them. If Harry decided to help himself to something small and valuable to fund his escape, we should be obligated to his lordship.”
“Agreed,” he said, running a hand over the whisker shadow at his jaw. Suddenly, he broke into a mirthless smile. “I have it. We will sleep here. With him.”
“We will do what?”
“We will make ourselves comfortable here in the Belvedere. If Harry decides to get up to some mischief, we will certainly hear him and be in a position to stop him. I would offer to mind him on my own, but you know how deeply I sleep, and two pairs of ears are better than one,” he added.
“An admirable solution,” I said, and my voice sounded hollow to my ears. “Although I suspect neither of us will enjoy comfortable slumbers. We have only campaign beds to avail ourselves of.”
“No matter,” he said, dropping to his feet noiselessly. “After all, we can always think of it as an adventure.”
* * *
• • •
Any hope I had of sleeping well was thwarted by the oddness of the situation in which I found myself. Stoker put the matter to Harry with as much tact as possible under the circumstances. It is, after all, no easy thing to insinuate that you intend to sleep near a man because you do not trust him with so much as a hatpin.
But Harry, being so often the object of vituperation, was remarkably inured to insult.
“My good fellow, think no more of it,” he assured Stoker. “I should do exactly the same in your position. In fact, I will move myself here, to the furthest reaches of this delightful snug, so that in order to reach the stairs, I should have to pass both of you.” To demonstrate his resolve, he tucked a narrow mattress under the eaves, as far from any egress as possible.
“If you do not murder us in our sleep,” I muttered as I arranged a coverlet and pillow on the campaign bed. If either of the men heard me, they gave no sign. I settled into my couch with Vespertine whilst the other dogs collected themselves around Stoker. Apart from Nut, that is. Once more the little pharaoh hound attached herself to Harry. She had begun life as the pet of a criminal, and I was not entirely surprised at her preference for Harry. She must have had an affection for duplicity.
Stoker doused the lamps and in a short while I found myself the audience for a veritable symphony of snores, snuffles, snorts, and susurrations. Two men and a pack of dogs do not a restful night’s sleep make, I reflected as I lay wakeful long into the night. At length I was forced to my usual remedy of counting in Persian. I must have drifted off at last, for I found myself dreaming that I was once more in Sumatra, hunting butterflies on the slope of a volcano. They were enormous things, those butterflies, purest white and with a wingspan wider than my reach. I chased them, but my net was broken and the volcano was rumbling ominously. I had just followed one to the rim of the crater when a plume of lava jetted skywards with a roar that ended on a thud.
Curiously, the thud was realistic enough to jolt me to wakefulness. Beside me, Vespertine lay, head up, ears pricked. I glanced about the snug—deeply shadowed but not entirely black thanks to the efforts of the moon peering through the skylight above. The other dogs were alert as well, although both men slumbered on.
Like any freestanding structure in the midst of a lavish garden, the Belvedere was afflicted with mice, and Stoker and I waged a constant war against their depredations. They cavorted and capered with abandon, and I was well accustomed to their various scribblings and scrabblings. But were they capable of making a proper thud, loud enough to rouse one from sleep? Entirely unlikely.
I peered hard into the gloom, straining eyes and ears for some further disturbance when at last it came—the faint yellow glimmer of a light on the main floor below. An intruder!
I eased myself out from beneath the coverlet. I had retired fully dressed thanks to Harry’s presence, but I had left off my boots for the sake of comfort and dared not resume them now. Stocking feet would serve my purpose better, I decided as I slipped off the narrow bed. Vespertine stirred, but I motioned her back and she subsided with a reproachful look. She had, in the months since we had come to live together, taken a protective interest in me. But she was a well-trained creature, and although she did not care for being left behind, she obeyed, emitting only the softest of whines in protest.
The other dogs, tucked comfortably around Stoker and Harry, merely watched as I picked my way to the staircase, a winding affair of elaborately decorated iron. With no wooden stairs to creak beneath my weight, I stood a good chance of descending without attracting the attention of our visitor so long as I was cautious. I edged onto the top step, casting an eye over the expanse of the Belvedere’s main floor. It was, as ever, a jumble of statuary, Wardian cases, taxidermy mounts, scientific instruments, books, paintings, coin collections, and other assorted items, all made orders of magnitude less orderly by Lord Rosemorran’s latest acquisitions—the theatrical props and costumes. Their packing cases had been piled higgledy-piggledy, obstructing my view. But near my desk, I could just espy the nimbus of a single flame, moving erratically. Our intruder was there then, doubtless rifling my drawers, I reflected in some irritation.
I crept down the stairs, edging around the packing cases until I came to a gap. Keeping to the shadow, I studied the figure bent over my desk. It was a man, slender of build and moving with the suppleness of youth. He was dressed, as all good burglars ought to be, in black, a muffling scarf wound about his neck. A cap had been discarded on the desk and he held a candle high as he shifted a stack of correspondence—the late post that I had merely dropped atop the wooden box I had carried from Hathaway Hall. Putting this aside, he picked up the box, not an easy feat whilst juggling the candle, and I heard a gentle swearword escape his lips.
He turned, and the candle illuminated his face for a moment. I had been correct about his youth; he could not have been more than twenty. His features were pleasant, or might have been were they not twisted in a mask of concentration. A drop of candle grease fell to his hand, and he gave a quick gasp of pain, dropping the candle and plunging us into darkness. With the realization that I suddenly had the advantage, I raised my head and gave a short, sharp whistle.