A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery)

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  A fingertip reached out to touch my cheek, light as a feather. “Why, Veronica. Perhaps you do care after all.”

  I turned my head and gave a sharp snap of the teeth. “Careful, your lordship. I am no tame kitten for playing with.”

  He drew back his hand. “No indeed. You are fully a tigress.” He settled into his chair. “She resisted me because she wanted Malcolm.”

  I nodded thoughtfully and he turned an outraged face to mine. “Are you not going to protest? Will you not demand how any woman could prefer Malcolm Romilly to me?”

  I shrugged. “But I understand it perfectly. Malcolm is handsome in his own pleasant country squire fashion. There is something quite jolly olde England and roast beef about him. One could well imagine him in Tudor velvets or perhaps in plate armor, carrying a lance at the side of the Conqueror.”

  “That is the most appalling, sentimental rubbish—”

  I broke in. “And of course, he has this,” I added, sweeping an arm to indicate the castle. “I am sure your country seat is impressive, but it isn’t a castle, is it? And you only inherited it last year. You didn’t even have a title when Rosamund met you. Besides, I seem to recall that your father kept you on rather limited purse strings.”

  “I managed,” he said through clenched teeth. He rose and refilled his glass.

  “But your father was not in ill health,” I persisted. “He was the head of the family and there was no indication he would leave you to inherit for another twenty years. What woman would care to wait for her husband to step into dead man’s shoes when she could be mistress of this castle right at the beginning?”

  “You think she wanted him for his castle?” he demanded.

  “Oh, not entirely. I meant what I said about his personal attractions. Granted, he is a bit careworn at present, but I suspect he is capable of quite pleasurable wooing. And there is something gravely sweet about him, old-fashioned, as you say. Courtly.”

  “Courtly!” He fairly spat the word. “You think Rosamund preferred courtliness?”

  I shrugged. “I did not know her. But I can tell you that it is easy to see why a woman would rather throw her lot in with a pleasant and easy gentleman of wealth like Malcolm Romilly instead of gambling her happiness on you. It is the difference between walking a paddock with a pony and galloping barebacked over the Downs in a lightning storm with a stallion between your thighs.”

  I darted him a look and he broke into a smile, raising his glass. “Hoist with my own petard.”

  “Well, what did you expect?” I asked, smoothing my dressing gown. “Of course you are the obvious choice for any woman of spirit and verve. But Malcolm is safe, and for many women, there is no greater attraction than security.”

  “How dull you make it sound!” he observed.

  “It is not dull to want to know that one will always be fed and clothed and have a roof over one’s head. Only someone who has never faced the specter of the workhouse could think security to be dull. Rosamund was forced to earn her way in the world. That means the greatest luxury imaginable to her must have been Malcolm’s stability. His predictability would have consoled her, would have made her feel safe as nothing else in the world possibly could.”

  “You would never do that,” he said suddenly. “You would choose the lightning.”

  I turned to look at the fire. “We are discussing Rosamund,” I reminded him. “And she chose Malcolm. I presume you did give her a choice. You offered her marriage?”

  “I did,” he told me promptly. “Or at least I tried. She wouldn’t let me finish. We were sitting on the little shingle beach overlooking the Sisters. Her hair had come loose, masses of dark hair, tossing in the wind. She sat there, plucking the petals off a flower, offering each one up to the breezes. ‘He loves me, he loves me not,’ she teased me. And that is when I took her hard by the shoulders and told her of course I loved her. By way of response, she broke the flower in half, throwing the pieces of it to the beach. ‘Then you’re a fool,’ she said, with such maddening coolness you would have thought we were strangers. And only the previous night she had been in my bed, clawing at me like a wild thing.”

  His hand tightened again around the glass and for an instant I thought he meant to throw it. Instead, he put it with great care onto the table at his elbow. “She told me that she intended to marry Malcolm and that was the end of it. Nothing I could say would dissuade her. I am sorry to say I was ungentlemanly enough to threaten to reveal our dalliance. The previous night was not the first time we had been together. Four, five times over that month. It was like a game to her at the beginning. She was reserved and cool, as untouchable as a Renaissance Madonna during the day, when others were around. But when we could steal a few moments alone, she was unleashed, like nothing I had ever known, demanding and violent in her passions.”

  I said nothing. He went on, talking almost more to the fire than to me. “When I threatened to go to Malcolm with the truth, she laughed. She said it was my word against hers and who would believe a libertine like me? The next morning, they announced their engagement at breakfast. I shall never forget the air of triumph about her as she clung to him. He was so damnably proud of it, making everyone look at the Romilly betrothal ring on her finger. I could not bear the sight of them. I left that same day. I told Malcolm that my father required me to accompany him on a trip to Russia and that I had left it too long. He pleaded with me to stay, to stand up at his wedding as his supporter, but I told him Father insisted, and I went. I never saw her again.”

  “When did you give her the harpsichord?”

  A cruel smile touched his lips. “I found it in London, just before I left for Russia. It had already been decorated with the mythological scenes and I thought it would be a grand joke if I had my own face painted onto the image of Jupiter and the striped roses added to garland Leda’s head. It took the artist only a day to make the changes, and I had it sent on to her, a sort of secret engagement present. Only she would know what it was meant to represent. She practiced every day, you know. I loved to think of her playing and looking down at the image of us together in a way that only we would understand.”

  “And so you went to Russia?”

  “I did. My father had been increasingly insistent that I travel with him on an extended tour of Russia, where he was bound by his diplomatic interests. He was noticeably pleased when I finally agreed. I could tell he was delighted because he unbent enough to smile at me. Whilst we were abroad, I consented to another of his schemes. I permitted him to arrange a marriage with the daughter of an English duke who had taken a diplomatic posting at the court of the tsar.” He paused, then pushed on, unburdening himself of the last. “I loved Rosamund with every atom of my existence, and still I married another woman, a plain and unlovely woman I loathed and whom I punished with silence and unloving attempts to get an heir until she died from sheer disillusionment. There was not a moment of our marriage that I did not make her feel the weight of my disappointment that she wasn’t someone else.” He went on, cataloguing his sins for me in a quiet voice limned with self-loathing. “I thought to make a decent husband, at least I meant to try. I went along with Father’s arrangements for my marriage. I played the dutiful husband, whatever the cost. I gritted my teeth and made love to my wife. Until the telegram arrived.”

  “What telegram?”

  “The one Rosamund sent on the eve of her wedding to Malcolm,” he said. “I didn’t receive it, you see, not for a month. My wife and I took a wedding trip.” His lips twisted as he said the word “wife.” “Her family had a villa on the Black Sea and we went there for some weeks. Our communications with the outside world were spotty. Few letters and no telegrams were forwarded. We collected all of it when we returned to St. Petersburg, a pile of correspondence that had been accumulating for four weeks. Four weeks during which Rosamund believed I received her wire and did not care enough to respond.”
/>   “What did the wire say?” I asked gently.

  He shrugged. “She had bridal nerves. Thought of calling the whole thing off and coming to me. I had only to say the word and she would be mine. I suppose it finally got to her, the notion of spending the rest of her life with a fellow so profoundly unexciting that his notion of hedonism is to take two baths a week instead of one.”

  “Would you have responded?” I asked. “Would you have told her to call off her wedding to Malcolm and come to you?”

  “I would have torn down the Caucasus with my bare hands to get to her,” he said simply.

  “Even though she had already broken your heart by refusing you?”

  “Nothing would have mattered to me,” he insisted. “Only that we were together. But by the time I received it, she had married Malcolm and vanished. I learnt of it from the English newspapers the same time I received the telegram.”

  “What a cruel irony,” I said. “I wonder what became of her?”

  “That is the question which torments me. It tortured me then, it tortures me still. The idea that I had been so very close to my dearest wish annihilated me. I am afraid I became rather unhinged. I lashed out, principally at my wife. The night I learnt of Rosamund’s disappearance, I made my wife sit up until dawn, pointing out her every shortcoming. I told her about Rosamund, in detail, lurid, disgusting detail. She was a gentle creature and I flayed her with my scorn, choosing each word with care so it would wound the deepest. I never struck her, but by God, I opened her to the bone with every word. I broke something within her that never recovered. She had conceived a child, and heaven only knows what sort of little monster it might have been, gotten in such circumstances. She suffered in childbed, and when they told her she had to rally, to fight for herself, she simply turned her face to the wall. She had no will to live because I took it from her. And all because I could not forgive her for being someone I did not want.”

  His eyes were veiled with tears, and I slid to the floor in front of him, holding out my arms. He collapsed into them with a suddenness I could not have anticipated. He clung to me as a drowning sailor will grasp a spar, too desperate even for hope. He did not weep, at least he made no sound. But his shoulders heaved once or twice, and when he drew back, I kept my face averted until I was certain he was once more in command of himself.

  “So now you know the worst of me,” he said in a ragged voice. He cleared his throat hard, smoothing his hair with one elegant hand, trying to regain something of his dignity.

  “You must have been in such terrible pain,” I told him.

  He gaped. “I just told you—”

  “I know what you said. And I know from my own observations that you are difficult and capricious and sexually rapacious. But I hope you will credit my experience where men are concerned. You might have been monstrous to your wife, but you are not truly beyond redemption, no matter how diabolical you care to think yourself. You could not be such a blackguard and still regret your treatment of her, Tiberius. You are warm and generous and you are a man of honor, at least by your own lights. You must have suffered acutely at Rosamund’s hands to have paid back your pain upon your innocent wife.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “Dear God, no wonder Stoker—” He broke off. “I have never, until this moment, known true loyalty, Veronica.” He seized my hand and kissed it. “Whatever you ask of me, from now until I draw my last breath, I am your sworn cavalier.”

  I retrieved my hand. Tiberius had, as was his custom, taken refuge in gentle mockery, but I knew he was sincere.

  “What happened after your wife died?”

  He passed a weary hand over his eyes. “We were still in Russia at the time, so I consoled myself with every imaginable sort of Slavic debauchery. I marinated myself in vodka and slept with half the court, including the tsar’s brother. A few months of that should have been the end of it.”

  “But it wasn’t,” I reminded him.

  “No. Rosamund haunted me, I dreamt of her,” he said, shutting his eyes. “I used to drink enough to stupefy me into sleep because then I would be certain of seeing her.”

  “Did Malcolm ever know of your attachment to one another?”

  He paused. “I don’t know. We had to be very careful because of Rosamund’s reputation. She had a living to get, and the merest hint of a dalliance would have ruined that. Anything short of an engagement would have spelt doom for her prospects of employment.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  He shrugged. “Anything is possible. She might have told him. Someone else may have discovered it. She may have been observed in the act of sending that telegram. It is not significant in any case.” He spread his hand in a gesture of magnanimity. “You know why I have come, my dear. I am here because Malcolm requires my friendship and support and I mean to give it.”

  “Liar,” I said pleasantly.

  His gaze narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Oh, don’t come over lofty now, Tiberius. I have no doubt you’ve been called worse by a much better class of woman. You had an ulterior motive in coming here. You want to know what became of Rosamund and you suspect Malcolm had something to do with her disappearance.”

  “If I did, I was a fool,” he told me in a silken voice. “Perhaps there is nothing to be gained by raking up the past.”

  I knew that tone. He was playing games as only Tiberius knew how. But I knew a game or two of my own, and I answered him in the same cool voice. “Your ulterior purposes have purposes, my lord. And I mean to find them out.”

  “Is that a threat, my dear Miss Speedwell?”

  “It is a warning,” I told him. I rose to take my leave. I opened the door and nearly fell over Stoker, his hand raised as if to knock.

  His expression of shock was one I shall remember all of my life, and it was compounded as he studied me from tumbled hair to disarranged robe and bare feet peeping out from my hem. He looked past me to his brother, who lounged lazily in the armchair by the fire, and it was painfully obvious what conclusions he was drawing.

  “Stoker—” I began.

  He gave me a smile that was icily polite as he held up a hand. “Silence, if you please, Veronica. This is between Tiberius and myself.”

  He stepped sharply around me, gave me a gentle push onto the stairs, and closed the door behind me. If his preternatural calm had not alarmed me, the sound of the bolt shooting home would have done it.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I dared not knock; such noise might rouse the household. But neither could I retire to my room without knowing precisely what sort of damage the Templeton-Vanes were inflicting upon one another. Stoker had the advantage of inches and weight, but the viscount was older and frequently armed. I wrapped my nightdress about my legs and seated myself on the stone step, awaiting the outcome. I harbored no illusion they were fighting over me. I might have provided the spark, but the tinder was old and dry. This battle had been brewing from the cradle, and—truth be told—I was rather glad they were finally getting on with it.

  Few sounds penetrated the stout oak door. I heard breaking glass and a long groan—whose I could not have guessed. This was followed by the sound of splintering wood and an odd gurgling noise, as if someone were being strangled with the belt of his dressing gown, I decided.

  At long last, silence reigned, and I rose, shaking out the folds of my nightdress. I knocked softly upon the door, and after an impossibly long time, it was answered. Stoker sat upon the hearth, covered in ashes and broken glass with a small knife stuck into his arm, while Tiberius attempted to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. One of his eyes was swollen nearly shut, and his left arm dangled at his side.

  “I believe you have suffered a dislocation,” I pointed out helpfully.

  “Nothing he hasn’t done to me before,” Tiberius returned with a lowering glare at his br
other.

  “I told you I would remedy it,” Stoker rasped. He rolled onto all fours and levered himself up after a moment, staggering only a little. Without preamble, he grasped his brother by the neck and waist and slammed his lordship’s shoulder into the bedpost, setting the joint neatly back into its socket with a growl from the viscount.

  “Now, what about this?” Stoker demanded, gesturing towards the knife still quivering in his arm.

  “The merest scratch,” the viscount assured him. “That knife is hardly more than a child’s toy.”

  Stoker curled his lip as he tightened his fist, but before he could lay hands on his brother again, I grasped the knife by the handle and jerked it free. Stoker smothered a howl of pain, and I saw Tiberius’ eyes light with pleasure.

  “Do it again. I like it when he screams.”

  “Mind your manners or I will use it on both of you,” I warned them.

  “How you do tempt me,” Tiberius murmured.

  “Is there no end to your flirtations?” I demanded.

  “Where you are concerned, never,” he assured me.

  I wiped the knife blade clean upon Tiberius’ dressing gown. “I am keeping this,” I told him as I slipped it into my pocket. “I cannot trust that you won’t hit something vital the next time.”

  “My dear Veronica, if I meant to wound him properly, I would have.”

  “You did not have to stab him,” I pointed out.

  “Of course I did,” Tiberius returned patiently. “It is a widely known fact that the mentally defective are impervious to all but the sharpest pain.”

  “Oh, for the love of Christ and all his pretty angels,” Stoker began, but I put up a hand.

  “Enough! I am glad the two of you have indulged in your little brawl. There is nothing like a healthy bout of coitus or fisticuffs to drain the tension out of a man. But the time to quarrel is finished. We ought to talk about the results of the séance tonight.”

  Tiberius made a gesture of dismissal. “A bit of mischief, nothing more.”