“You cannot write any of it,” he reminded her.
“Blast and damnation,” she began.
“But we have something better for you,” I promised her. “Come tomorrow for tea and we will tell you everything you want to know about a fiendish villainess who swindled thousands out of the cream of Brazilian nobility.”
Her eyes widened and she looked at each of us in turn. Harry gave her a miserable sigh. “Very well. Yes. Come to tea and I will tell you whatever you want to know. Print it all.”
J. J. tweaked his moustaches and sent us on our way.
As we settled into a hackney for the drive back to Bishop’s Folly, I felt oddly deflated. “I do not like it,” I said, my brow furrowing.
“What? The mystery of the ghostly light on the moor is solved, the diamond has been returned to its rightful owner—”
“And Harry Spenlove will soon be taking his leave of you,” Harry put in lightly.
“But Effie Hathaway is still at the mercy of a family who respect neither her abilities nor her ambitions,” I protested.
“She has got the last laugh,” Stoker reminded me. “She carried out a criminal enterprise under their noses.”
“Rather too well,” Harry protested. “I might have done hard labor because of that little harridan.”
“She is unhappy,” I said simply. “And she is likely to be for the rest of her life.”
Stoker and Harry and I were still gently bickering about Effie Hathaway when we returned to the Belvedere. There was a strange sense of unfinished business about the whole matter, I decided, and it seemed odd to realize how much had happened in only a few short days.
“Shall we sleep here again tonight?” Harry suggested. There was something boyishly hopeful in his tone, and when I looked at him, he blushed a little. “It’s just that, I mean to leave by tomorrow night. The longer I stay, the likelier that Isabel will find me, and I’d just as soon not have that happen. And spending the night here felt . . . matey,” he finished. “I haven’t had that in a while, you know.”
I looked at Stoker, who shrugged. “I will fetch the aguardiente,” I said. We took a bottle of the heady stuff to the snuggery, where we settled in with the dogs. It was both reward for the successful conclusion of an investigation and anaesthetic for our various injuries. Bruises and swelling had begun to set in, and we were soon nodding over our cups.
Sometime after the clocks chimed two, I felt someone tuck a blanket over me, and I drifted for a long while until I heard Stoker’s voice, a low, soft rumble in the darkness. “Do you really think of her as the Eurydice to your Orpheus?”
“Sometimes,” Harry said on a sigh. “She is a difficult woman to forget.”
“The mistake you made was in thinking she was a bit player in your story,” Stoker told him. “She is mistress of her own fate and she bends to no man.”
“Not even you?”
A laugh in the darkness that was not entirely mirthful. “Sometimes I think especially not me.”
They fell to silence then, and in a few minutes I heard Harry’s quiet snores and Stoker’s deep, even breaths. They slept, but long into the night I lay wakeful, thinking of what they said.
CHAPTER
31
I woke late the next morning, considerably subdued in health and energy—a regrettable aftereffect of aguardiente when consumed in large quantities. None of my companions was in evidence, not even Vespertine. I assumed they had all risen earlier and were enjoying a hearty breakfast without me. Stiff and moaning gently from my various aches, I washed and descended to the main floor of the Belvedere, where Stoker was staring balefully at a plate of cold eggs and taking tentative sips from a scalding cup of tea. Wisps of steam wreathed his head, giving him the look of one of the lesser satyrs.
“Where is Harry?” I asked.
“Gone,” he told me, clipping off the word sharply.
“Gone where? Did you let him take a turn in the Roman baths?” I asked with a forced smile. Stoker has a notoriously proprietary attitude towards the baths. Lord Rosemorran built them to soothe his occasional bouts of rheumatics, but Stoker is the one likeliest to be found in them at any hour of the day or night. Since Stoker and I had discussed the fact of my marriage, something unfinished had lingered between us—something I was not entirely ready to conclude. I had no notion of his feelings on the matter. The fact that I was afraid to discover them did not reflect particularly well upon my character or my courage. So, I concealed my uneasiness behind a quip and was not surprised that he did the same. When he spoke, his tone was pleasant, studiedly so.
“I have not seen Harry this morning,” he told me. Stoker handed over the scarlet leather box, stamped with the papal tiara, but I already knew what I would find when I opened it.
“Oh no,” I moaned.
I flicked open the clasp and lifted the lid. The collection of papal cameos was gone, and in its place a single scribbled word in a hand I knew only too well.
Sorry.
I flopped into my chair with another moan, folding my arms upon the desk and dropping my head onto them. “He was so nearly good.”
When I raised my head, Stoker was watching me closely. I sighed. “I shall have to make good with his lordship.”
He sighed heavily. “Would you like me to—”
“No,” I said quickly. “Harry is my responsibility.”
“Yes,” he said, his expression inscrutable. “He is after all your husband.”
There was an unmistakable note of bitterness in his voice, something dark and angry. He had behaved with considerable bonhomie towards Harry, but I understood he had done so whilst it was expedient—when we were in the midst of abduction and the potential threat of violence. And he had been courteous enough upon our return to the Belvedere, but it was only at that moment that I understood precisely what that civility had cost him.
He turned on his heel and left me then, and I added Stoker to the list of problems yet unsolved.
* * *
• • •
During a painful interview with Lord Rosemorran, I accepted responsibility for the missing cameos—I simply said they ought to have been locked up and my neglect had resulted in them being lost. He waved away the subject, uncomfortable as he always was when discussing matters of finance. But I insisted and we at length came to an understanding that I would recompense him for them at their current market value by having a certain sum deducted from my pay packet each quarter. The result was that I would be beholden to Lord Rosemorran for the next forty or so years, I reflected darkly. I had no plans to leave his lordship’s employ in the near future, but the very fact that such an option would be impossible was yet another crime to lay at Harry’s door. I cursed him soundly as I left Bishop’s Folly and made my way to the Hippolyta Club, known affectionately to its members as the Curiosity Club. The steps had been freshly washed, and the brass plaque proclaiming the club’s motto—Alis volat propriis—was gleaming with fresh polish. A pair of tall, arrow-shaped topiary flanked the doors like living sentinels, and I sniffed appreciatively as I entered the club. Inside, the odors of beeswax and rose and woodsmoke mingled with the enticing aromas of the luncheon being served in the dining room. But I was bent upon other business. I signed in and briskly took myself up to one of the smaller private meeting rooms on the first floor. I had reserved it for my own use for only half an hour, and I hoped my guest would be punctual.