A Treacherous Curse

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  The tightness in my chest eased a little. I had successfully directed her venom to me instead of Stoker, and I hoped a few moments’ respite were enough to enable him to gather his dignity and his temper once more.

  “You might imagine the insult to be original,” I told her, baring my teeth in a smile. “You would be wrong. Now, the police seem to favor the theory that your husband stole the diadem and made away with it in order to leave his marriage and make a new start, perhaps in America. Do you have any proof that he did not?”

  She gave me a look of purest loathing before her mouth curved into a mirthless smile. “Do I have proof? Yes, Miss Speedwell. I have proof that my husband loved me, proof that he would never abandon me.” She put aside her needlework and rose slowly to her feet, letting the knitted shawl drop to the ground. Her figure was obviously slight, but she put her hands protectively to her thickened middle, pulling her gown taut over the ripe, rounded belly.

  “There is your proof, Miss Speedwell,” she said, her voice ringing in triumph. “He would never abandon his son.”

  • • •

  We stood, the three of us, in a sort of frozen tableau. I did not look at Stoker to assess his reaction. I dared not. Before I could form a response, the door to the house was flung back and a lady entered. She had clearly just arrived, for she was still dressed for an afternoon outing, in rusty black from head to toe. The wing of a blackbird had been mounted upon her hat, and the effect when combined with her aggressive profile was one of arrested motion, a vulture preparing to take flight. I disliked her instantly, although I could not have said why apart from her appalling taste in millinery. Around her neck was some variety of weasel or stoat, dyed black to mimic mink, its bright glass bead eyes staring balefully at me as she advanced. She took in the scene with a glance, sweeping her gaze from me to Stoker and then to Caroline.

  Without a word to either of us, she turned to Caroline. “You oughtn’t upset yourself, my dear. Go and rest in your room until the dressing bell.”

  For an instant Caroline looked as if she would have liked to refuse. But she nodded. “Yes, Mama. I am quite finished here.”

  In spite of her thickening figure, her walk was still graceful. She did not look back. When the door had closed behind her, Mrs. Marshwood turned on us.

  “Bowles described the man who had come to see her. It required little imagination to realize it must be you,” she said, her tone cold as she addressed Stoker. Her mouth curled in distaste. “I am surprised to find you here, Revelstoke. I thought never to see you again.”

  He said nothing for a long moment, the seconds ticking past in the beat of my pulse. The woman had not acknowledged my presence, and a person of delicacy would have excused herself from what could only be a painful and private conversation. But delicacy has never been one of my failings. Stoker was my friend, and I would not give ground if there was a chance he had need of me.

  He lowered his chin, and when he spoke it was in a voice of such quiet intensity, such controlled rage, that I knew he was very near to breaking something.

  “You really mean to let her carry on with this ridiculous charade of being insensible? You cannot imagine the police will be put off by such a stratagem.”

  She shook her head, causing the blackbird’s wing to tremble. “They have thus far. It is an untenable situation, and we are coping as best we can. Her husband is missing and the authorities have misused her cruelly. If they believed they could get more information from her, they would hound her night and day. At least now she is left in peace.” The woman’s gaze flicked to me for the first time. “I think this interview is best conducted in private.”

  “Anything you would say to me, I will only repeat to my associate. Miss Speedwell stays.”

  She curled her lip again as she took the measure of me from top to toe. “Very well, Miss Speedwell stays.” She glanced about the moldering greenhouse. “I will not offer you refreshment,” she told Stoker. “Nor will I ask you to make yourself comfortable. I am an old woman and I have no stomach for this business. State your purpose and be gone.”

  He tipped his head, his gaze glacial. “How remiss of me. Permit me to make formal introductions. Mrs. Marshwood, this is Miss Speedwell, a fellow employee of Lord Rosemorran’s and my colleague. Veronica, this is Mrs. Marshwood. As you have no doubt deduced, my mother-in-law.”

  “Former,” she corrected swiftly. “For which I thank God upon my knees.”

  “No more than I,” he replied.

  She bridled at that. “I told you to state your purpose.”

  Stoker said nothing, and I spoke. “Mrs. Marshwood, we are investigating the disappearance of Mr. de Morgan.”

  “Investigating!” she said, her lips thinning into an unpleasant smile. “Revelstoke Templeton-Vane has no place here,” she said, the wing on her hat trembling in outrage.

  “We might be allies,” I began.

  “Allies!” She gave a sharp shake of the head, nearly dislodging her fur. “That is a pretty word to use to a lady. We have no need of the help of outsiders, and even if we did, to accept aid from him, of all people—” She carried on in this vein for some time while I let my thoughts wander to the conservatory and how it might be improved.

  Mrs. Marshwood continued her litany of abuse until I turned to Stoker.

  “I thought she would run out of air by now, but she has rather impressive lung capacity for such an elderly person. Do you think she will come to the point anytime soon? Not that this isn’t entertaining, but I really ought to get back to work. I have a delectable little Bassaris gonerilla that needs fixing. It is so difficult to get specimens from New Zealand, I should hate to lose this one,” I remarked.

  Mrs. Marshwood cut off her diatribe to fix me with a look of loathing. “You are an impertinent person, and no better than you should be, I would wager. Working with a man of such notorious reputation,” she said with a shudder. “It is not respectable.”

  I waved a hand. “Respectability is as overrated as virginity, madam, and I have precious little use for either. Now, Stoker has done a remarkable job of holding the reins of his temper throughout your abuses, but I cannot promise he will sustain the effort. In fact, I should encourage him not to.” I turned to Stoker. “Would you like me to give her a good shake? Nothing to leave a mark, just a bit of firm handling to bring her to the point.”

  Mrs. Marshwood’s hat trembled in rage. “Odious creature!” She launched into another venomous monologue, criticizing my morals and appearance before returning to the subject of her former son-in-law’s shortcomings. Stoker took it, stoically accepting every bit of abuse she heaped upon him, arms folded over his chest as he regarded his mother-in-law.

  Bored with her acidulous remarks, I cut in swiftly, interrupting her in full flow.

  “What do you think happened to John de Morgan?” I asked.

  She blinked furiously. “What happened to him? He ran away, of course. He stole that diadem and abandoned my daughter.”

  “Are you certain of that?” I asked. “Mrs. de Morgan doesn’t seem to think so.”

  Mrs. Marshwood curled her lip in distaste. “I am not answerable to you, Miss Speedwell.”

  I ignored the provocation. Frankly, it was not one of her better ones. “Mrs. Marshwood, do try to use a little intelligence, taxing as it may be,” I instructed. “There is no proof that John de Morgan stole the diadem and abandoned his wife. No one knows what has become of him. Surely the truth, no matter how painful, would be better than this current state of affairs.”

  “My daughter’s welfare is none of your concern,” she returned.

  “On that we are in complete agreement,” I told her. “But the facts behind de Morgan’s disappearance must be established. Your daughter cannot even be declared a legal widow without a body,” I pointed out.

  The old woman reared back, her thin lips suddenly bloodless.
“Caroline cannot be left in a state of limbo. It is intolerable.”

  “Then help us discover what happened to her husband,” I urged.

  She said nothing, but her mouth worked furiously as she gnawed her own lips. After a moment I sighed. “Never mind, Stoker. Mrs. Marshwood will not be persuaded to see reason. Let us take our leave.”

  I extracted a card of my own and left it lying upon the garden seat. “You may reach us at that address should you change your mind.”

  She curled a lip. “I ought to lodge a complaint with the police that you have forced your way into our home uninvited. It would serve you right.”

  Stoker, who had moved to leave, turned back. The leafy shadows of the ferns played over his face like jagged fingers, giving him a menacing look, and when he spoke it was in a quietly terrifying voice I had never heard before.

  “Before you do, think of everything you have said about me, every evil act you have attributed to me, every sin you have laid at my door. Recite to yourself my catalog of cruelties and ask yourself if you really want to provoke me.”

  Mrs. Marshwood shrank back, her lips trembling. She lifted a bony finger that shook with rage and fear. “Go!”

  We did not look back.

  CHAPTER

  10

  We returned to the Belvedere in silence, and I had not even divested myself of my coat before Stoker had shed his, drawn the cork on a bottle, and splashed a hefty measure into a tooth mug.

  “Stoker—” I began.

  He held up the mug, sloshing the contents. “Drink with me or get the hell out,” he ordered.

  I held out my hand and he gave me the tooth mug, then drank straight from the bottle. He stalked up the small staircase to the snuggery on the upper floor, kicking a fossilized coprolite out of his way as he went. He flung himself into a chair while I stirred the fire and hung my hat.

  Between swallows of extremely expensive single malt, he wrenched off his collar and necktie, waistcoat and cuffs, flinging them aside. I took the chair opposite, pacing my sips.

  “Would it do any good to apologize?” I asked finally.

  He tipped his head. “I am not one of your bloody butterflies, Veronica.”

  “I never thought—”

  “Yes, you did.” He tipped the bottle up, taking another deep draft of whisky. “You like to think you are smarter than everyone else, and the bloody hell of it is that you usually are. You like to put people into little boxes just like those bollocking moths, a pin through the thorax and pop them up on a bit of card to look at when you’re bored.”

  I stared into the fire, saying nothing.

  “You think you know me. You have me all sorted—Homo sapiens exsolutus. It has quite the ring, doesn’t it?”

  “Your Latin is filthy,” I replied, keeping my tone light. “I should have said vulneraverunt.”

  He gave a mirthless laugh. “Even now you cannot be wrong. But you are. You are so unbelievably, unbearably wrong.”

  I nearly turned my head then. I nearly turned and told him that I did understand him; I knew he loved Caroline. He loved her with a passion that excused everything she had done to him and was not blunted. Perhaps he loved her the more for her cruelties, I reflected. It would be a sad irony if he did. How appallingly tragic to carry a torch for a woman who had abandoned him and exposed the secrets of his unkindnesses to public scrutiny. But how often do we learn to kiss the boot that kicks us?

  He went on in a bitter voice. “I am glad you saw her. She is beautiful, is she not? Like an angel come to earth. That’s what I thought the first time I saw her. It is the most appalling cliché, but it suits her. She is not of this earth. That is what a poet would tell you. I was shy with her. Can you imagine that? The first time I put out my hand to touch her, it shook. The hand that had killed men in battle and saved men in surgery, and it shook to touch her. What sinner would dare to touch the hem of the saint’s gown?”

  I let him speak, but that silence cost me dearly. Each word out of his mouth was a laceration, flaying me to the bone as he talked on, listing her perfections. And the worst of it was that he spoke the truth; she was the loveliest creature I had ever seen. Menelaus might launch a thousand ships to reclaim Helen, but the gods themselves would have quarreled over Caroline de Morgan.

  “I never felt worthy of her,” he said after another deep pull at the bottle. “Not once. She was so unspoilt and shy. We hardly spoke two words alone before I got down on my knees in a moonlit garden and begged her to marry me. She was too timid even to answer me for herself. She ran to her mother, who gave me the happy news. The day I married her should have been the happiest of my life, but it wasn’t. Do you know why? Do you?” he demanded, reaching out a booted foot to nudge my chair. I held quite still. “Because I never really believed she was mine. I did not deserve anything so beautiful for my very own. I knew what I was—my father, my mother. My dirty little soul was just a patchwork of compromises and lies and desperate acts. Tainted from birth by other people’s deceptions,” he said bitterly. “But I asked and she came. She married me and I carried her off to Brazil. I thought, fool that I was, that it would be a grand romantic adventure.”

  He broke off, his gaze unfocused. He was not with me then, sitting in the snuggery of the Belvedere, with a cold British February outside and a warm fire within. He was tramping the jungles of Amazonia with his best friend and his beautiful bride.

  I cleared my throat. “Jungles and mud and crocodiles,” I said lightly. “I don’t know that I much blame her for going back to England without you. I suppose it was gentlemanly of him to escort her home if she were unhappy at traveling in so wild a place.”

  He tipped his head, his smile cold. “My dear Veronica, you don’t understand. She did not leave with him. She left me for him.” He pierced me with his gaze. “Don’t you see? I was never the one she wanted. I took her for my wife, and I thought it meant that God understood, that God forgave what I was. Just a filthy little changeling bastard. That’s what my brothers called me, and they were right. I was nothing more than the product of some frantic tumbling by people who ought never to have given in to their lusts. You of all people understand that, don’t you, Veronica?”

  I thrust myself out of the chair. I went to the stove and took up the empty coal hod and placed it carefully next to his chair.

  “You’ve drunk an appalling amount. If you mean to be sick, do it there. I’ll not clean up after you.”

  I did not look behind me as I left, but his laughter followed me down the stairs and into the darkness.

  • • •

  The next morning I had no stomach for work. I began a dozen projects and cast them aside, furious at myself, at Caroline de Morgan, and thoroughly out of charity with Stoker. I could bear anything except his self-loathing. I was ripe for a diversion, and when the note arrived from Lady Tiverton inviting me to meet her at the Curiosity Club, I was on my feet and reaching for my hat before I finished reading.

  The Curiosity Club was a unique establishment. Formally known as the Hippolyta Club, its purpose was the edification and support of women of adventure and accomplishment. Membership was strictly private and by invitation only, and I had been permitted to darken its hallowed halls only once before as a guest of Lord Rosemorran’s sister. I longed to return, and even if I had not been eager for Lady Tiverton’s company, the lure of the club itself would have been sufficient. The day had dawned bright with a valiant winter sun doing its best to banish the coal fog and grey clouds that scudded on the horizon. The banked snow at the edge of the pavement was grimy with soot and other unspeakable things, but now and again I caught a glimpse through a garden gate of a pristine stretch of white, glittering in the sunlight.

  Almost against my will, I felt my spirits rise as I strode up the front steps of the club and rang the bell. A discreet scarlet plaque identified the club, but apart from that, it was a p
erfectly ordinary town house in a perfectly ordinary square. The door was opened by the portress in scarlet plush. I recognized her from my previous visit, but before I could speak, she smiled.

  “Miss Speedwell. Welcome back to the Hippolyta Club.”

  “Thank you, Hetty.” She stood back to admit me, signaling to a page to take my coat as she closed the door upon the winter chill. Inside all was crimson warmth, from the thick carpets to the blazing fireplaces in the public rooms. The walls, draped in dark red silk, were hung with assorted photographs from members’ expeditions as well as sailing charts, maps, and a rare collection of memorabilia from around the world.

  Over it all presided Hetty, the serene face of the Hippolyta Club. She wore a shawl wrapped elegantly around her head—a fine bit of Chinese silk in a shade of deep blue that flattered the dark color of her skin. Her eyes were dark as well, and sharply attentive to every detail of the club. She indicated the leather ledger with a smile.

  “Lady Tiverton has already signed you in, Miss Speedwell. She is awaiting you in the Map Room.”

  I thanked her and was just turning to follow the page when Hetty called, “A moment, Miss Speedwell.” She reached below the desk where she presided, bringing out an envelope of thick creamy paper sealed with a bit of scarlet wax and the emblem of the club, the letters H and C entwined in an Amazon’s bow with the legend ALIS VOLAT PROPRIIS circling the perimeter. She proffered it with a grave smile.

  “A message for me?” I took it, noting my name inscribed in an elegant hand in a swirl of crimson ink.

  “An invitation. You have been proposed for membership to the club and this is the official notice.”

  My heart thudded against my ribs. “Proposed for membership? But Lady Cordelia never said—” I broke off, thinking how curious it was that the earl’s sister should think of such a thing while she was stuck in Cornwall supervising the education of her brother’s children.