He resumed his task and I stared at him, slack-jawed. I had expected an argument. I had depended upon it. There were few things I enjoyed more, and a set-to with Stoker was just the thing to cap my ebullient mood. The fact that the past few days had seen us somewhat at odds with one another made me all the keener to resume our usual banter. After six months with no word from him, I had anticipated a row to shake the rafters upon my return. Instead he had been blandly cordial, unreachable even, and his apathy goaded me far more effectively than any display of temper might have done.
“Is that it?” I demanded. “No dire warnings about your brother’s wandering hands? No glowering silences or raging tantrums?”
He backed out of the buffalo again, his expression inscrutable. “My dear Veronica, you must make up your mind. Do you want silence or savagery? You cannot have both.”
Ordinarily such a remark would be heavily larded with sarcasm, his rage barely held in check. But this time there was only that maddening calm, a newfound self-possession I could not prick. If he meant to wound me, he could have chosen no sharper blade than indifference.
“You are quite right,” I remarked acidly. “Do forgive the interruption. I’ll let you get on with your buffalo. I expect to be back in a fortnight. If I am not, it’s because I eloped with your brother to Gretna Green.”
His sangfroid never slipped. He merely smiled and returned to his specimen, calling over his shoulder, “Mind you ask for separate lodgings. He snores like a fiend.”
Silence dropped between us with all the finality of a stage curtain. That was it, then. I turned on my heel and left him without a backwards look. Carpetbag firmly in hand, I strode to the front of Bishop’s Folly, admiring the unholy muddle of architectural styles that had been assembled courtesy of several generations of Rosemorran earls. The Folly was well-named, for there was not a builder’s fancy that had been omitted—buttresses, vaults, towers, crenelations, the Folly boasted them all.
Just as I rounded the corner, the great front door swung back and Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk, the present earl’s great-aunt, emerged, calling a greeting. I paused to give her a smile.
“I am so glad you happened to come out,” I told her. “I had no chance to say good-bye.”
“It was not happenstance,” she said as she came down the short flight of stone steps to the drive of loose chipping. “I was looking for you. I’ve not yet welcomed you back from Madeira and here you are off again, like one of your pretty butterflies.” Her tone was light but her eyes were shrewd. “One might even think you were running away from something.”
I gave an involuntary glance back at the Belvedere, where Stoker still labored. “Don’t be absurd, Lady Wellie.”
“Are you certain there is nothing you would like to share with an old woman?” she prodded, lifting her walking stick to gesture vaguely in the direction of my person.
“Absolutely not,” I returned.
She did not bridle at the sharpness of my tone. She was obviously preoccupied as she brandished a newspaper at me. I could not quite read the headlines, but the text was enormous and the story clearly lurid.
“Have you seen the newspapers? This Whitechapel murderer business is whipping up hysteria.”
“I’m afraid I have heard nothing.”
Her brows raised. “Lucky you. Prostitutes in the East End, child. Someone has been ripping them up and all of Scotland Yard has been thrown into tumult.”
I thought of our previous involvement with the Yard* and the head of Special Branch in particular. “Poor Sir Hugo,” I said lightly. “He must be keeping busy.”
She gave me a narrow look. “It is not just on Hugo to solve these atrocities,” she replied with a firmness that belied her eighty-plus years. “It is a national disgrace to have this monster stalking our streets and our police force unable to apprehend him. England ought to be better than this.”
In Lady Wellie’s estimation, the Empire was the center of the universe and England the center of the Empire. Nothing else mattered but this blessed isle. The whole of her father’s life and hers had been devoted to its service, secretly, as each had fulfilled the function of an éminence grise, the power behind the royal family, always guiding, protecting, shielding, not for love of the family themselves but for love of the land and people they governed. Her blood was red as St. George’s Cross. She was, without doubt, the most patriotic individual I had ever known, and she was not above using anyone or anything in order to serve her goals. She was ruthless and hard-edged, and when she smiled, it was a crocodile’s smile, full of guile. I quite liked her, if I am honest, but that morning I was eager to be on my way.
Her shrewd dark eyes missed nothing. “I know you want to be off. I’ll not keep you. But tell me where you mean to be in case I should like to write to you.”
I rattled off the castle’s address, watching as she pursed her lips. “Malcolm Romilly’s place. I knew his grandfather. Waltzed with him at Victoria’s coronation ball. He trod on my toes, but he was a very good kisser. Quite a skillful tongue,” she said with a dreamy look.
I smiled in spite of myself and pressed her hand. “Good day, Lady Wellie.”
She lifted a withered hand. “Godspeed, child.”
• • •
His lordship and I had arranged to meet at Waterloo Station, and I very nearly missed him in the teeming throng of travelers that balmy late September morning. The platforms were heaving with people of every description, starched nannies with their screaming charges, turbaned gentlemen making their way with courtly elegance past nut sellers, and pale, thin girls selling the last of the summer flowers, bawling out their wares in harsh cries
