Stoker spoke quietly. “He needn’t have come back for us, Veronica.”
“Of course he did—he did not know where the real diamond was!”
Harry shook his head ruefully. “She will not credit me with any nobler purpose, and I cannot blame her. I have been, as you know, the great tragedy of her life.”
“Tragedy!” I cried. “You were a youthful mistake.”
“Mistake? You wound me,” he said, putting a hand to his breast. “I have oft thought of us as Pyramus and Thisbe, Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Daphne . . .” He trailed off with a dreamy look.
“Stabbed, cursed to the underworld for all eternity, turned into a tree,” I said, ticking off the endings on my fingers. “I do not much care for the fates of your heroines,” I told him.
Stoker clapped his hands abruptly. “Do you think we might return to the matter at hand?” He turned to Harry. “Does Mrs. MacGregor know where we live?”
Harry shook his head. “I never spoke of any connection with Lord Rosemorran. She knows Veronica and I were meant to go into London to fetch the stone, but I was deliberately vague as to exactly where we were going.”
“How did she know where to find us in the first place?” I challenged. “Is it an accident that she was lying in wait for us outside the Sudbury?”
Harry colored. “Well, as it happens—”
“I knew it! You reprehensible, custard-spined, maladroit—”
Stoker held up his hand. “Harry, I presume that you sent a message of some sort to Mrs. MacGregor at the villa indicating when we would be in the vicinity of the Sudbury? And provided her with a handy description?”
Harry’s color deepened. “I had a lapse, a moment of weakness, all right? I lay awake a good long time last night, thinking of everything Isabel might do to me if she didn’t get her hands on that diamond, and I panicked. It is not worthy of the man I wish to be, but it is the truth. I thought she might spirit you off to the villa and persuade you to give up the location of the diamond. And then it would be finished—I could start my life anew without the threat of her hanging over my head like a veritable sword of Damocles.”
“What changed your mind?” I asked with narrowed eyes. “You were willing to betray us and play the coward ten hours ago—why have you now decided to dance to a different tune?”
“That is my business,” he said, folding his hands over his chest. It was an imitation—albeit not on purpose, I suspected—of Stoker’s posture. It was the pose of a man who was stalwart, determined. And I saw a resolve in Harry’s expression I had never seen before, a firmness to his chin. Could it be possible that the feckless creature I had married had finally decided to grow up at last?
“When did you realize the diamond we were taking to Mrs. MacGregor was false?” I asked.
“At once,” he said. “I handled the real one, remember. I made note of the weight of it, and I have considerable experience with precious gems. You found an excellent substitute,” he told Stoker, “but anyone who had seen the real thing would have known the difference.”
“I didn’t!” I was indignant.
Harry canted his head with a thoughtful look. “You saw it briefly at Hathaway Hall and did not hold it. I felt the heft of it when it rested in my palm. Real gems are usually far heavier than paste imitations. And I suspect when we collected it earlier, your mind was on other things.” He flicked a glance towards Stoker.
“I suppose I was rather preoccupied with what punishments your inamorata might be inflicting upon him,” I admitted. “How is it that she did not discover the substitution at once?”
“I was careful to unwrap the thing in poor lighting and she was in a hurry. Like most people I have deceived, Veronica, she saw what she wanted,” he finished with an inscrutable expression that I might have interpreted as sadness. “If she examines it closely, she might well notice its relative lightness and wonder, but she will not know for certain until she decides to sell it.”
“What reputable jeweler would touch such a stone?” Stoker asked.
Harry shrugged. “Most, I should think. Isabel could present herself as a grieving widow or bereaved daughter fallen upon hard times, trying to sell a bit of her inheritance for a fraction of its value simply to have money in hand. Or she will go to a receiver of stolen goods, the sort of fellow who has little interest in provenance because he already knows the jewel has been pilfered. It will be discovered for a fraud immediately, but she will have no means of finding us.”
“She has tracked you before,” I pointed out.
“I underestimated both her skills and her commitment,” he said dryly. “I have taken precautions now that I did not when I was in America. London is an excellent place to lose oneself, although I do not mean to remain here for long.”
“What are your intentions?” I asked.
He looked at the diamond still glittering on Stoker’s palm, and a light flickered in his eyes, something unholy and avaricious. I knew then that he was tempted, and badly so, to reach out and snatch it.
Stoker must have intuited the same, for he gave me a long look. If Harry made any intemperate move to seize the jewel, we were both prepared to defend it.
Instead, Harry closed his eyes and, after a moment, opened them. He smiled, a small melancholy smile. “Do you know, that is the single most valuable item I have ever had in my possession, and what I want most is to see it restored to its rightful owner.”
“The rightful owner is not Lady Hathaway,” Stoker pointed out.
“I did not mean Lady Hathaway,” Harry said with new resolve. “I mean the maharani. Let us right an old wrong.”
CHAPTER
30
And so our peculiar little band of adventurers made our way to the Sudbury Hotel. We had taken a few moments to wash and make ourselves presentable, but there was only so much one could do about the bruises and visible wounds. Stoker’s chest was so thickly wrapped, he seemed to be wearing a breastplate of bandages, and one eye was blooming into a spectacular bruise of violet and mauve. He had donned his eye patch, a sure sign that his sight was fatigued, and I saw fresh lines at the corners of his mouth.
As for me, the cut on my cheek was still vivid scarlet and inclined to drip onto my clothes. I dressed in a two-piece ensemble of heavy black silk. It fastened smartly up the front with a row of tiny buttons that led to a narrow, fitted collar, neatly concealing the wound Mrs. MacGregor had inflicted upon my throat. The ensemble was appropriately sober for the occasion, and I had instructed the dressmaker to include wide, hidden pockets inside the seams of the skirt. Into these I slipped a few of my favorite weapons and one or two new finds, including the cheese wire. Stoker stared as I patted it into place.