A Murderous Relation

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “As you are to the bed,” I replied helpfully.

  His gaze dropped to the iron cuff at his ankle, securing him to the bed by a length of chain. “Who the devil would have the effrontery to do such a thing?” he demanded, sitting bolt upright.

  “It is rather complicated,” I began.

  “Try,” he ordered.

  “Very well. The man who has taken us captive is an Irishman by the name of Edmund de Clare. He is a relation of mine and it was my abduction he intended to effect.”

  Interest kindled in his eyes. “I say, what did you do? Did you steal his money? Run off with an unsuitable man?” He flicked a glance to Stoker and had the grace to blush slightly.

  “Oh, I am as unsuitable as they come,” Stoker said blandly, “but de Clare was intent upon abducting Veronica long before she met me.”

  I threw him a repressive glance over my shoulder. “That is not helpful.”

  He shrugged and I went on. “Nothing like that,” I assured the prince.

  “What was all that palaver about you and a throne?” he inquired.

  “My uncle is rather strongly in favor of Home Rule. He thinks Ireland should be for the Irish,” I explained.

  “Oh, one of those,” Eddy remarked, punctuating his comment with a jaw-cracking yawn. “I say, is there food?”

  “Only a little porridge they brought round earlier, but it was thoroughly nasty,” Stoker said.

  “Is there any left?” Eddy asked, his nose quivering like a hopeful rabbit’s.

  “None,” Stoker replied.

  “Are you quite certain—” Eddy began.

  “Will you stop talking about the bloody porridge!” I demanded, blazing him to silence. He reared back, clearly astonished.

  “No one except my papa ever speaks to me like that,” he said, his tone decidedly sullen.

  “It is your papa I mean to talk about,” I said coldly. I took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “He is my papa as well.”

  Eddy looked at me a long moment. “Are you certain? I mean, you’re much better-looking than my other sisters.”

  “Quite,” I said, cutting off the word sharply.

  His expression softened. “Papa has not been stingy with his affections. I daresay there are more of you born on the wrong side of the blanket than the rest of us know about.”

  “I was not born on the wrong side of the blanket, not entirely.”

  He blinked rapidly. “Whatever do you mean? Papa cannot take a second wife. Motherdear is his wife and he is not a Mussulman. The Church of England would never allow it.”

  From behind me, Stoker’s fingers stole into mine, clasping, warming, lending me his strength and his support. I gripped them back with all the strength of a drowning woman, never more grateful for his presence.

  But he said not a word, knowing this tale was mine to tell.

  “My mother was an actress called Lily Ashbourne,” I began.

  “I know her!” Eddy exclaimed. Animation lent a childlike air to his usual languid expression. “I have seen photographs of her—oh, she was a beauty. You do indeed look like her.”

  “They met in 1860 in North America, and it was over her that the Prince of Wales quarreled with his father.”

  “Yes, I remember that story,” Eddy said excitedly. “Papa had behaved very badly and Grandpapa came to scold him. They went for a long walk in a cold rain and Grandpapa took a chill from which he never recovered.” He dropped his voice confidingly. “Grandmama still blames Papa for that, you know. She has never entirely forgiven him for the love affair.”

  “Yes, well, it was not a mere love affair,” I explained. “My parents were married. And it is the fact of that marriage that your grandfather confronted our father with when he came to see him.”

  Eddy began to shake his head again, as if the act could tidy his disordered thoughts, bringing them into some sort of sense. “But that cannot be. Grandmama would never give her permission.”

  “And so the marriage would not be legal in England,” I agreed. “But they were married in Ireland. By a priest.”

  He reared back. “A Catholic?”

  “My mother was a member of the Roman Church and it was a clergyman of that faith who joined them in marriage and presided at my christening.”

  “Then you are a Catholic as well?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Only in the most technical sense,” I replied. “I have never been confirmed and have no desire to be.”

  “But you were baptized,” he persisted. “Surely that must count for something.”

  I said nothing, giving him a long moment to work out the implications. I began to number the butterflies in the gossamer-wing family, Lycaenidae, starting with the subfamily Curetinae, the sunbeam butterflies.

  I had just progressed to the hairstreaks of Theclinae when he gave a sudden sharp intake of breath. “But the throne—your uncle! That is what he meant, the old devil. If you were born in Ireland to parents whose marriage is recognized by the Roman Church, the pope himself could proclaim you queen in Ireland when my father is dead,” he said, his eyes fairly popping from his head.

  “That is the essence of his plan,” I admitted. I saw no purpose to explaining the worst of it—that my uncle clearly intended to hedge his bets by taking the actual heir to the throne into his keeping to ensure that he would never wear the crown.

  “Your Royal Highness,” I began gently, but Eddy merely raised a hand.

  “No more just now,” he said, and it was not a command but a plea. I nodded and he lay down on the narrow bed. He put his hand into his trouser pocket and drew out a small object. When he saw me looking at him, he gave a rueful smile. “I know it’s frightfully childish, but it gives me comfort.”

  He opened his palm to show me a tiny grey velvet mouse. “He was a gift from my father upon the occasion of my birth,” he explained. “His name is Chester.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  The prince slept then, or at least pretended to, and Stoker and I, who ought to have applied ourselves to securing our freedom, instead fell suddenly into an uncomfortable doze. I awoke with a jerk, vaguely aware of the passing of time.

  “Good,” Stoker said. “I was beginning to think you were going to sleep right through your own escape.”

  He wriggled, causing the bonds connecting us to tighten. “Stoker, I do not know what you are about, but I must ask you to refrain from doing calisthenics. It is most vexing.”

  “What I am doing is working my way free,” he said, slipping out of the ropes that held us. In one swift motion he came around and knelt in front of me to work the knots at my ankles.

  “How on earth did you manage it?”

  “Veronica, I spent the better part of two decades either in the circus or Her Majesty’s Navy. There has yet to be invented a knot that I do not know.” To prove his point, he tossed aside the ropes that had bound my ankles and started on my wrists. The dim light fell upon his face and I saw the rivers of dried blood upon his skin, the deep violet of a bruise on his cheekbone, and the unnatural swelling.

  “Yes, it is broken, and do not make a fuss,” he instructed. “I am more concerned about what that villain might have done to you.”

  “I told you I was fine,” I reminded him. “And you told me you were uninjured as well.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said my head hurt,” he told me.

  “You lied by omission.”

  “I did not want you to be as concerned about my well-being as I was for yours,” he said simply.

  I bent forwards and took his face in my hands, pressing a petal-soft kiss to his broken cheekbone. “Do not play the great protector with me,” I told him. “I can avenge my own injuries.”

  “And mine as well,” he answered with a sudden grin. I felt a constriction in my chest ease. I had feared, almost wit
hout knowing it, that something had changed, that one of us would shoulder too much blame for this and shatter the fragile thing we had nurtured between us. But the smile that lightened his expression was familiar, and it promised that we would get our own back before this adventure was finished.

  “Where do you think they put the drugs?” I asked. “The porridge or the beer?”

  Stoker shrugged. “Either. Both. Little matter. They no doubt wanted to keep us quiet for a period of time and heavy sedation was the simplest way to do it.”

  “Very possibly,” I agreed. I toured the perimeter of the space, realizing that there was only one door—the one my uncle and his villain, Quiet Dan, had used. The windows were high and small and the floor was swept clean with no remnants, no discarded tools that might help us fashion a weapon. We talked in whispers as Eddy still slept.

  “Do you think we should free him?” I ventured.

  Stoker shook his head. “Let the poor devil sleep for now whilst we form a plan.”

  “Have you anything upon your person that we might use?” I asked.

  Stoker patted himself thoroughly. “No, and you will remember someone has taken the precaution of removing my boots.”

  I shrugged. “Can you pick the lock? Even if we must escape with you in stocking feet, we should at least attempt to get out of this room.”

  During my tour of the room he had been applying himself to an examination of the lock. He rose, shaking his head.

  “Not a chance without tools. There are two heavy locks, quite new.”

  “New? Installed on our behalf?” I wondered.

  “Quite possibly.” He straightened and stretched a little, wincing as he straightened his arm. A dark crimson stain had settled on the white cotton of his sleeve. “Those bollocking stitches have burst again,” he said in some annoyance. He had sustained a light stabbing—Tiberius’ handiwork—during our foray in Cornwall, and the stitches—my contribution—had been repeated after the first attempt had failed during the exertions of an unexpected swim. It was yet another indication that my uncle and his fiends had been none too gentle in their efforts to convey us to our present location. I added a new hash mark to the tally against them as Stoker settled himself back onto his chair.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded as he folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

  “Resting.”

  “Resting? Stoker, we are meant to be escaping!” I remonstrated.

  He opened one blazing blue eye—the other was swollen nearly shut—and regarded me. “We have no means. We have been fed drugs, and judging from the angle of the sun through that beggarly little window, we have gone without food or water for the entire day. My head hurts. My arm hurts. My cheek hurts. When de Clare deigns to make another appearance, I will dismember him with my goddamned teeth if I must, but until then, I mean to marshal my strength. I suggest you do the same.”

  “How you can sit so calmly right now is beyond me,” I fretted.

  The eye took on a roguish look. “Can you think of anything else to occupy our time?”

  “You cannot seriously be attempting to seduce me into physical congress at such a moment,” I said in an appalled whisper.

  “No, but I have distracted you enough to stop your infernal pacing around.” He closed the eye and sat, brooding or sleeping, I could not have said which. I drifted off myself after a while, and was just enjoying a rather pleasurable dream involving Stoker and a picnic hamper in a rowboat on a glittering sea when the key scraped in the lock. The noise roused all of us as Quiet Dan entered, this time with a companion. Stoker jerked awake with a growl while Eddy came to slowly, blinking and yawning until he spotted the revolver clutched in Quiet Dan’s hand.

  “Are you pointing that at me, sir?” Eddy asked, his indignation unmistakable.

  Quiet Dan said nothing but kept the pistol aimed at Eddy while his companion carried in a tray laden with dishes. Whatever advantage our being loose from our bonds might have won, it was lost with the precaution of keeping the prince under the beady eye of the gun’s barrel. De Clare had clearly anticipated the fact that we would liberate ourselves at the first opportunity and had taken no chances that we might escape.

  Quiet Dan remained just inside the doorway, never taking his eyes from the prince as his colleague set the tray down upon the floor with a resounding clatter. He disappeared through the door and returned with a porcelain pot for hygienic purposes. He placed it wordlessly in the corner and gave a jerk of the head to make certain we saw what he had left for us. He paused long enough to unlock Eddy’s chain to permit his use of the hygienic equipment and left us as silently as he had come, Quiet Dan keeping the gun trained upon Eddy to ensure his safe departure.

  “And they say the Irish are talkative,” Stoker said, coming forwards to inspect the tray with a connoisseur’s sniff. “There’s no pudding.”

  “Don’t be such a child,” I scolded fondly. “Look, there is an overripe pear. You can have that for your sweet.”

  For the rest, there was a watery-looking but not entirely unappetizing stew, fresh bread rolls, a wedge of cheese, and some apples, soft and a little bruised but otherwise wholesome enough. I held one out to Eddy. “Eat,” I instructed. “We will need all our strength if we mean to fight our way out of here.”

  He took it with fingers that trembled slightly. “That fellow had a revolver,” he said slowly. “Pointed at me.”

  “Yes,” I said, as kindly as I could.

  “Do you think they mean to kill me?” he asked, drawing up his chin with all the lofty courage of his station.

  “Probably,” Stoker said through a mouthful of stew.

  “Stoker, do repress the instinct to be quite so frank, I beg you.” I turned to the prince. “It is possible, but I think if they meant to do such a thing quickly, it would already have been done. I think it far likelier they mean to hold you for ransom.”

  “Do you really believe so?” Eddy brightened perceptibly. The notion of being kidnapped instead of murdered outright roused his appetite and he came to sit on the floor with us, helping himself to a bowl of stew and a bread roll. He poked a spoon gingerly at the stew, but finding it unexpectedly tasty, he dug in with ravenous vigor.

  When he had scraped the last of the meaty juices from the bottom, he looked to us with a shy smile. “I say, this is almost enjoyable. I mean, one naturally doesn’t like to be abducted, but if one must be, there are worse companions.”

  “Thank you,” Stoker said, his tone dry as a Mongolian desert.

  “You seem to have adapted remarkably well,” I observed as I helped myself to another bread roll.

  Eddy nodded. “Yes, well, one is prepared for this sort of thing.”

  Stoker choked on a crumb. “Prepared?”

  “Of course. There has been the possibility of abduction or assassination since the day I was born. Grandmama’s life has been attempted eight times,” he said with obvious pride. “Mostly by the Irish.” His expression turned pensive. “Come to think of it, my uncle Alfred was shot by an Irishman in Australia. But he recovered and they hanged the fellow,” he finished cheerfully.

  He chewed thoughtfully a moment. “Of course, it isn’t always the Irish one must be careful of. The anarchists have become dreadfully bold in recent years, particularly after their success in Russia.”

  The assassination of the Russian tsar had been a bloody affair, with bombs as the weapon of choice. At the time, I had just embarked upon a voyage to the Solomon Islands in search for some rather spectacular specimens of Papilioninae, and the violent aftermath of the assassination was front-page news for some months. The fact that the chief architect of the plot had been a young and attractive woman had only proved fuel for the flames, and her hanging had been both swift and public.

  “Were they anarchists?” Stoker asked, applying himself with appreciation to his pear. “
I thought they were Russian reformers.”

  Eddy waved a hand in an airy gesture of dismissal. “Reformers, revolutionaries, anarchists. They are all cut from the same cloth, are they not? They would tear down our world and rebuild it to their own ends.”

  “Well, we have had a chance,” Stoker pointed out. “Perhaps they could do a better job of it.”

  The prince dropped an apple from nerveless fingers. “Are you in sympathy with these devils, Templeton-Vane?”

  “No,” Stoker said flatly. “Having witnessed it at close quarters, I am no friend of violence to achieve one’s ends. But neither am I persuaded that our current system is fair or just. My brother inherited thousands of acres of land, a home that money could not build today, and privileges encompassing the ability to make laws and the right to be hanged with a silken rope should he ever commit a capital crime. And why? Is he more able than any of his brothers? Than a sister might have been? No. He has no claim to any virtue beyond punctuality—he was the first to be born—and that of a male appendage. It seems precious little justification upon which to build a society.”

  Eddy nibbled at his apple, then gave a slow nod. “I do understand what you say, Templeton-Vane. My aunt Vicky was born first, you know. She is quite different to Papa. She is sharp as a new pin, clever and good with words. She can grasp an idea before Papa can even open a book. I do not speak ill of him, you understand,” he added with a hasty glance behind him, as though the Prince of Wales were eavesdropping upon his son’s intemperate words. “But I know she was my grandfather’s favorite child, his eldest. Perhaps she would make a better queen than Papa would a king,” he finished in a thrilled whisper. It was clearly a daring line of conversation for him. He turned to me with a curious look.

  “Of course, people might say the same of us,” he mused. “You are the elder, and in some people’s eyes, you would have a better claim.”

  “I do not want the throne,” I told him firmly. “I am the very last person who would appreciate a crown.”