An Unexpected Peril

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Of course, Excellency.” I turned to Stoker. “You see what is at stake here. It must be done.”

  “I do not like it,” he replied.

  “I am rather afraid you have no choice,” the chancellor said, his moustaches almost concealing a triumphant smile. “Fraulein Speedwell has consented.”

  “But I have not,” Stoker returned, baring his teeth. “And I have only to alert the authorities or the newspapers to the fact that the princess is being impersonated to bring the entire house of cards down around your ears.”

  The chancellor’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “You would not dare!”

  “Wouldn’t I?” Stoker crossed one leg lazily over the other and regarded the chancellor with the icy hauteur of four hundred years’ worth of English noble blood.

  The chancellor drew a handkerchief out of his pocket and dropped it to the floor. “Then I challenge you to a duel as you are a man of honor!”

  I looked at the baroness. “Is there any way to stop this nonsense?”

  She gave me a helpless shrug. “The chancellor likes to duel. It is a very common sport in our country. Almost as popular as mountain climbing. It gives the people something to do when the peaks are too dangerous to climb.”

  “What about the women?” I asked.

  “Oh, the women duel as well,” she assured me. “We use wooden swords, but it is very exciting all the same.”

  Stoker had picked up the handkerchief and risen to his feet, a slow smile of acceptance spreading over his features. Recognizing the look, I plucked the handkerchief from his grasp and returned it to the chancellor. “Mr. Templeton-Vane will not duel you.”

  “I rather like the idea,” Stoker protested.

  “I know you do, and you really ought to examine that, but now is not the time,” I said. “Excellency, you and Mr. Templeton-Vane will not duel because if you do, I will not impersonate your princess.”

  “That sounds like a win on both counts for me,” Stoker began.

  I held up a hand. “I will take on the role of the princess on the condition that you be permitted to accompany me,” I told Stoker. He rocked back on his heels, thinking.

  “Why would I agree to that when I can put an end to the whole bloody mess?”

  “We both know you will not do that. You are too fine a gentleman to ruin a young woman’s career because of trifling matters. Mademoiselle Fribourg is depending upon this performance, and I daresay the composer is as well. Your concern is for my safety. Very well. You will come along and see to it personally. This meets with your approval, I take it, Excellency?” The chancellor gave a grudging nod as he returned his handkerchief to his pocket.

  “But do not forget, the challenge has been issued and may be accepted at any time,” he told Stoker darkly.

  “I will remember that,” Stoker promised.

  “We are in agreement,” the baroness said in obvious relief.

  “Excellent,” the chancellor said, rubbing his hands together. “There is much preparation to be done. I suggest you return here no later than teatime—”

  “I think,” Stoker broke in, “that Miss Speedwell and I may be permitted a few moments to discuss the matter. In private.”

  The chancellor looked as though he would like to protest, but the baroness gave him a long look and he nodded. “We will withdraw and you may have until the mantel clock chimes,” he told us. He pointed to the clock, a hideous affair of folksy wooden carving that could only have been crafted from some Bavarian nightmare. It was a sort of cottage or chalet, lavishly embellished with fruits and animals and great flowers picked out in garish paints. The door of the cottage was a particularly lurid shade of scarlet.

  “How very unusual,” I said, attempting a polite smile.

  “It is an example of our native Alpenwalder work,” the chancellor said with unmistakable pride. “I shall make you a present of one. But only if you are successful in this endeavor,” he added firmly.

  He nodded brusquely to the baroness as he withdrew, and she darted us an apologetic glance. “Take whatever time you need,” she urged. “We will not trouble you until you call.”

  She closed the door softly behind them and I turned to face Stoker.

  “I will not point out the peril of this undertaking,” he said slowly. “I know you too well to believe that is any sort of deterrent to you.”

  “You raised the subject with the chancellor,” I reminded him.

  “Because I rather hoped he had more sense.” The words might have stung but for the gentle mournfulness of the tone. My insistence upon this rash scheme had obviously struck a stretched nerve.

  “It is the best opportunity to discover more about Alice Baker-Greene’s death,” I told him. “We believe someone in the Alpenwald wanted her dead, and someone in the royal entourage might know something.”

  “‘Someone,’ ‘something,’” he mimicked. “I think the connection is tenuous at best.”

  “Did you not mark the name of the guard captain? Durand. It is he who witnessed Alice’s fall. And he has a rather impressive set of moustaches—as does the chancellor, who, I would like to point out, also sports a summit badge of the Teufelstreppe. We have been here a quarter of an hour and already discovered two potential suspects.”

  “Suspects! You really believe one of them pushed an Englishwoman off a mountain?”

  “Not necessarily,” I countered smoothly. “But at the very least, Captain Durand has knowledge of Alice’s final climb—knowledge we will have the opportunity to extract if we spend time amongst these Alpenwalders. We might even be able to persuade them to reconsider opening a proper investigation, for I believe in my bones one of them is guilty of her murder.”

  “I highly doubt that,” he said.

  “Would you care to wager upon the fact?” I challenged. “We used to do so. I believe the stakes were a pound.”

  He drew his watch chain from his pocket. From it dangled a single sovereign coin, pierced to make a sort of charm of it. That coin had passed between us and back again as we had exchanged winnings on the wagers of our investigations. As a joke, Stoker had had the thing adapted to hang from his watch chain, a gesture of arrogance, I decided, as it meant he never intended I should win again. It was only in a moment of tender intimacy that he had admitted to wearing it because it was the one possession he had that I had also owned, and in the darkest days, when he dared not hope I would return his love, it was his consolation.

  Now he gently removed it from the chain and pressed it into my palm. “Take it. You believe you are correct and I have lost the will to argue the point.”

  The metal was warm still from where it had nestled in his pocket, near his body. My fingers reached nearly closed around it, but I pushed it back into his hand. I would win it fairly or not at all. After a moment, he returned it to the chain.

  “It is not like you to be so acquiescent,” I said mildly. “Are you ill?”

  “Not ill, but neither am I naïve. I understand why you are driven to do this thing and I will not fight you.”

  “I am driven by the need to see justice done for Alice Baker-Greene,” I began, my blood warming with indignation.

  He put out his hand to touch mine, but seemed to think better of it. “If that is what you believe, then who am I to argue?”

  “Stoker, if you have something to say, then be plain about it,” I told him in a sharp tone. “I have no wish to play games with you.”

  “I am not the one you are attempting to deceive,” he said.

  “Deceive!” I squared my shoulders, preparing to defend myself with vigor, but just then the clock on the mantel began to chime. The little scarlet door opened and instead of the expected cuckoo, a small mountain goat toddled out. Whilst we watched, both horrified and entranced, it opened its mouth and noisily bleated the hour, sticking out its ruddy tongue for
good measure.

  “That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen,” Stoker said at last.

  “And possibly the loudest,” I agreed. We exchanged a look of understanding, a sort of conspiratorial comprehension that had marked our relationship almost from the start, even when we were at our most adversarial.

  “Stoker,” I began, reaching for his hand.

  But as quickly as the moment had come, it fled again. Stoker slipped just out of reach and moved towards the door where the baroness and chancellor had disappeared. He knocked on it and the chancellor opened it at once. Clearly the Alpenwalder had been waiting, possibly with his ear to the door.

  “Yes?” he asked eagerly.

  “You have your princess,” Stoker told him. “For tonight.”

  The chancellor did not bother to conceal his delight. “I am pleased to hear it. Naturally, there shall be a generous remuneration—”

  Stoker bridled so hard I thought he might do a modest violence upon the chancellor.

  “We do not require payment of any sort,” he said through gritted teeth. The very notion of money changing hands was anathema to the British nobility, and Stoker still retained enough of his upbringing to have an uneasy relationship with wages of any variety. His accounts, I need not mention, swung wildly between lavish overdraft and equally impressive prosperity. As an aristocrat himself, the chancellor would have realized that offering payment was tantamount to insulting Stoker.

  “That is very generous of you, Chancellor,” I put in smoothly. “You should put any funds in the hands of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on his behalf. Now, if you will excuse us, we have a few matters to attend to before returning this afternoon. I believe you said teatime?”

  We took our leave of the Alpenwalders, and as Captain Durand closed and bolted the door of the suite behind us, I turned to Stoker.

  “Is it absolutely necessary to let him put your back up like a feral cat?” I asked mildly as he rang for the lift.

  “I do not like that man,” he told me, his jaw set in a stern line. “I hope he ends up being the murderer. I can well imagine him pushing someone off a mountain.”

  “Perhaps he did,” I soothed. “And we will be the ones to bring him to justice. In the meantime, I know precisely how to restore your good humor.”

  The doors of the lift opened and the operator gave us an inquisitive look. “Lobby,” Stoker ordered.

  “Not yet,” I said, pressing a small coin into the operator’s hand. “The kitchens, please. We have a call to make.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  One floor below the street level lay the true heart of the Sudbury, the various kitchens and workrooms and offices where the magic of the hotel’s luxurious majesty was conjured.

  The door dividing the public areas from the private was thickly lined with green baize to muffle the noises and odors from belowstairs, and it was heavy. Stoker put his shoulder to it and heaved it open, leading us immediately into a service corridor painted a sober workaday grey, a far cry from the lavish velvets of the levels above. We had been here before, guests of the pastry chef, Julien d’Orlande, and it was to his particular workroom that we made our way. Julien was hard at work, dressed in his usual elegant white coat, his head covered by a velvet cap of deep crimson. He held a bowl of gleaming silken chocolate in his hands, spooning it delicately over tiny choux buns, and his precision never wavered, not even when we burst in upon him.

  “My friends!” His smile was, as ever, broad and genial. “This is a pleasure.”

  Yet something in the twitch of his lips told me this might be a pleasure but it was no surprise. “You knew we were here,” I accused.

  He dipped his spoon into the chocolate and dripped it slowly over another bun. “I know everything that happens in the Sudbury Hotel,” he informed us.

  “Useful if true,” Stoker told him.

  Julien looked affronted. “You doubt me? Everyone finds their way to my workroom sooner or later.”

  He put the bowl aside and reached for one of the buns he had enrobed earlier, the chocolate just set. “Try this,” he urged. “It is a new confection, a choux bun stuffed with a crème pâtissière flavored with myrtille to make them a royal purple. I mean to top them with a little sugar crown as a cadeau for the Princess of the Alpenwald,” he added, gesturing towards a tray of dainty golden crowns fashioned from spun sugar.

  “Cadeau?” Stoker asked, rolling the word in an imperfect imitation. “Why not just say ‘gift’?”

  Julien shrugged. “Because French is so much more elegant on the tongue, and it reminds Veronica that I am, unlike you, a cultured and sophisticated man. Now, do you want one or not?” he asked, pointing to the tray of crowns.

  Stoker required no further invitation. He popped one of the buns into his mouth, his eyes rolling heavenwards as he chewed. Julien smiled again. “You like, my friend?”

  The question was very nearly rhetorical. It was impossible to sample any of Julien’s confections and not be enchanted. But like all geniuses, he lapped up praise as a kitten laps cream.

  “Heavenly,” Stoker assured him.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Julien stuffed one of the little buns in. “Taste,” he commanded.

  I did as he ordered, savoring for just a moment the lush extravagance of the berry-flavored cream, the crisp pastry, the darkly seductive chocolate. “Divine,” I managed through a mouthful of choux.

  Julien gave a nod of satisfaction, an emperor receiving his due.

  Stoker began to speak but Julien raised a hand in mock horror. “My friend, we do not talk of unsavory things before the stomach has been prepared. It is almost time for luncheon, and you will eat with me. We will have good food and some excellent wine I have liberated from the hotel cellars as part of my wages, and then we will talk of other matters.”

  Stoker did not have the fortitude to resist Julien’s offer. In a trice, one of Julien’s minions had whisked away the trays of pastries and bowls of chocolate and cream, laying the worktable with a fine linen cloth and bringing chairs. An array of delectable dishes appeared—a simple soup, a game pie flavored with herbs, juicy cutlets, delicately roasted vegetables, a savory custard of leeks and cream. All was piping hot and served with a quiet deference that demonstrated the respect Julien commanded in the kitchens. With the food came the promised wine, soft as velvet on the palate, and I watched Stoker visibly relax, as contented as a jungle cat after bringing down a tender gazelle.

  When the last bit of custard had been scraped up and the last crumb consumed, Julien spread his arms expansively.

  “Now, why do you burst into my workroom without notice? You might have caused my masterpiece to collapse,” he said with a gesture towards the marble table behind him. It was covered with tray after tray of dainties, each lovelier than the last—rosewater puffs, fruits-of-the-forest tartlets, violet and blackberry gâteaux—but in the center sat an enormous meringue mountain, carefully sculpted to resemble the Teufelstreppe. Rivers of glacier-pale blue sugar flowed down the sides, and the top was heavily dusted with icing sugar. A soft drift of white sugary threads had been fashioned into a cloud and was, through some confectionary sorcery, attached to the peak, as if captured just at the moment it had drifted past the summit. Halfway down the mountain, an edible escarpment had been crafted, an outcropping to support a castle fashioned of golden pastry. It was very like the castle I had seen in the engravings at the Curiosity Club, complete with turrets and machicolations and a tiny silken banner attached to the flagpole.

  “It is the most spectacular thing I have ever seen,” I told Julien.

  A lesser genius would have preened a little, but Julien merely accepted it as his due. “Of course it is because it is the best thing I have ever done.”

  “What is it for?” Stoker asked, putting out a tentative finger.

  Juli
en slapped his hand away. “Do not touch it! Have another choux, have twenty, but do not even breathe upon my darling.”

  He stood protectively between his pastry sculpture and Stoker, who happily picked up the tray of choux buns and set to work. Mollified, Julien explained.

  “It is to be displayed in the grand foyer of the hotel and then taken to the Curiosity Club for the opening of the exhibition. It was commissioned by the princess herself,” he said proudly. I did not begrudge him his pleasure in his accomplishment. Julien had been born in the Caribbean to enslaved parents. His journey to France and to culinary excellence had required talent and sacrifice as well as an ironclad belief in his own abilities. His friendship with Stoker had been born in an instant when they recognized in one another the same character of bone-deep determination to do what they believed right, no matter the cost. My own relationship with Julien was grounded in flirtation and a keen appreciation for the talent behind his work as well as the sheer pleasure in looking at a handsome face.

  “Wait here.”

  He disappeared into another room and returned bearing a tray which he presented to me with a flourish. “Pâte de guimauve,” he said. “In honor of the cat of the princess which is called by that name.” The tray was laden with tiny delicacies molded in the shape of dainty cats.

  “How charming! What are they?” I asked as I selected one.

  “Rosewater meringues. They will melt upon the tongue. Try one,” he urged. I did as he bade me. The confections had been tinted the palest shade of pink, the outside glossy and ever so slightly crisp. It dissolved almost instantly to a mouthful of rose-scented sweetness, not soapy, as one might expect, but tasting of sunshine and summer and a garden bursting into bloom.