He signaled to Göran to hold my arms tautly behind my back whilst he locked it about my ankle. Then he reached into my pocket, slowly, teasingly.
“I know it is somewhere in here,” he said, a tiny smile playing over his lips. His hand closed over the parcel in my pocket and he drew it out. He handed it over to Isabel, standing in front of me whilst she opened it. She unknotted the string and folded back the oilcloth just enough to make certain of the contents.
“Marvelous,” she said, putting it into her own pocket.
She turned to Göran. “Are the horses ready?” He grunted something in Swedish and she smiled. “It is time for us to take our leave of you,” she said, looking from me to Stoker. Her eyes lingered on his face and the smile deepened. “It will be an absolute wrench to leave you behind, I must say. I do hope you manage to work your way free in a few days. I should hate to think of you starving to death in here. It would be the most dreadful waste.” She looked back at me. “You, I shall not miss at all.” She waited at the door whilst Harry came to where Göran still held my arms behind my back.
“Why did you bring me back here?” I asked. “You might have overpowered me at the Belvedere and taken the diamond for yourself.”
He shrugged. “You are a loose end, I am afraid. And we cannot have that.”
He clucked his tongue. “I doubt we shall meet again, so you must have something to remember me by.”
Without further ado, he placed his hands on my shoulders and bent in to kiss me. The kiss was . . . comprehensive, involving a significant length of time and effort on his part. When his lips touched mine, I reared back, resisting, but he moved one hand to cup my head, holding it firmly in place as his mouth covered mine once more, urgent. Dimly, I heard Stoker behind me, emitting a low growl, but I ignored him as my lips parted and I gave way to Harry’s deft manipulations.
My knees were trembling when he released me, and I stumbled back into Göran, who set me on my feet again with a coarse laugh.
“Good-bye, Veronica,” Harry said, grinning broadly. He inclined his head to Stoker in a formal salute and left without a backwards glance.
I kept my lips pressed tightly together while Isabel took a final look at our sad tableau. Stoker was on the floor, chained and scowling like one of Lucifer’s lesser devils. I was unsteady on my feet, covering my mouth where Harry had left my lips bruised.
“Adieu,” she said. Then she signaled to Göran, who slammed the door closed and locked it, immuring us once more in our prison. After a few minutes, I made out the faint sounds of the wheels turning on gravel and then silence, no sound at all except for Stoker’s heavy breathing and the quick-fire beating of my own heart.
“I think,” he said in a bland voice, “that my first priority upon escaping this place will be to hunt down Harry Spenlove and administer the beating he so richly deserves.”
“If I find him first, there will be nothing left for you to beat,” I assured him darkly.
He settled himself onto one of the mattresses and arranged his chains.
“What are you doing?”
“Making myself as comfortable as possible,” he said. “I suggest you do the same. We shall most likely be here for quite some time.”
“But where is your spirit of adventure?” I demanded. “What has become of your thirst for . . . oh, blast and damnation.” I threw myself down onto the mattress next to him, wincing. “I surrender. I am hungry. I am tired. I have ribs that may well be broken. And I have, once more, been duped by a man who does not deserve to wipe my boots. And we must not neglect the fact that my actions have also caused the one man I truly love to be imperiled, once again.”
“Once again,” he agreed. “It has become something of a habit. But it was my idea for you and Harry to retrieve the diamond. And as much as I complain about the rota of beatings and stabbings, I rather think I should miss it all if it went away.”
“Went away?” My voice rose on a sob. “Stoker, we are chained in a stone room with a locked door. We have no weapons. No tools. No food. No water. I cannot think when our situation has been more dire.”
“Can’t you? I can think of half a dozen worse times we have endured.”
“Your equanimity astonishes me,” I told him.
“Perhaps I have simply decided that if such misadventures are the price I must pay to have you in my life, I am content to pay them.”
I turned my head. He opened his arms and I settled against his chest, gingerly, for I could see from the bloodstains on his shirt the hatchwork pattern of cuts Mrs. MacGregor had made upon his torso. “Stoker,” I began, hardly knowing how to form the words. “There is something I have not told you about Harry Spenlove.”
“Go on,” he said softly. He began to stroke my hair, just as Harry had done. Stoker was less gentle, perhaps, but I knew whose hands I would rather have.
“You know that Harry and I had a relationship of an intimate nature.” I paused.
“Yes.”
“That was not the extent of our connection,” I said. “In fact, we were married. We are married.”
His hand stilled, but he said nothing. Then he began to stroke my hair again and I went on.
“I did not mean to deceive you,” I told him. “I believed myself to be a widow. Harry left me as Krakatoa was erupting, and I thought him killed in the blast.”
Still, he said nothing, his hand moving slowly on my hair, never faltering in its rhythm.
“Regardless of what I believed, I ought to have told you at some point in these past months. At the very least, I ought to have spoken of it when Sir Hugo involved me in this business. But I did not. I failed to take any one of the many opportunities I might have seized upon to tell you the truth. Instead, I carried on, lying by omission. And I hope that you can forgive me.”
He turned me to face him then, and I saw that he was angry, not the fiery rages which I so enjoyed provoking, but a cold fury the likes of which I had never before seen in him.
“Veronica, what sort of fool do you imagine me to be? I knew.”
“How? How could you possibly have known?” I breathed.
“Because I searched his things at Hathaway Hall,” he said. “Your husband quite touchingly carries a copy of your wedding lines.”
“Our wedding lines? Are you certain?”
“It was an official-looking document with his name and yours and the date under a very pretty scroll reading ‘In Holy Matrimony.’ I did not bother to read the rest,” he said, his mouth tight.
“And you did not tell me? You never even hinted.”