Chapter
1
London, October 1889
I draw the line at monkeys," Stoker said with considerable severity. "I will have no monkeys, Veronica."
Stoker was usually amenable to animals of every description, but the fact that the creature in question was currently sitting atop his head in a posture of nonchalance had doubtless contributed to his irritability.
The monkey in question was a golden lion tamarin-Leontopithecus rosalia, to be exact-also known as a golden marmoset, a description which is far more enticing than the creature itself. It was small, weighing no more than a pound and a half, and of modest proportions. Its quizzical expressions and the bright orange hair that circled its head in an exuberant impression of a lion's mane might have been charming, but the effect was spoilt by its naked face and downturned mouth. It was scarcely a year old, but it studied everything around it with the sour judgement of a wizened old person. Occasionally, when it looked at me, it tipped its head to the side and pulled its mouth further down, as if it could penetrate my secrets and found me wanting. It was unpleasant in the extreme, and the fact that it had taken to Stoker with an affection that bordered on the aggressive was a welcome development. It had been a gift to our aged friend, Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk, from a Brazilian admirer, and in a moment of lunacy, I had agreed to care for it until Lady Wellie could make permanent arrangements. Unfortunately, there were few listings for callitrichines in the Situations Wanted advertisements in the London papers.
"It is hardly my fault the little beast prefers you," I said serenely. "Lady Wellie assured me it would be no trouble. A dish of tea, a spoonful of fruit, and a secure little nest is all it requires for its comfort, I am informed. And you must admit, it does not ask for much beyond that."
"Much beyond?" Stoker's voice took on a distinctly strangled note. "Veronica, she drinks out of my teacup. She purloins food from my fork. And the least said about her unhygienic sleeping arrangements, the better."
He might have been grumbling, but I observed with a smothered smile that he had already assessed the monkey's gender and applied the correct pronouns.
"It is adorable that the little beast dotes on you so," I assured him. "You are a very large, strong man. Surely you do not begrudge food and drink for such a tiny creature."
"I do not begrudge her the food and drink. I begrudge her the fact that she sleeps upon my pillow, and this morning she tried to join me in the bath." A delectable rosy blush tinted his cheeks.
"One can hardly blame her," I murmured, delighted to see the blush deepen to crimson. Stoker and I had, for some time, enjoyed a thoroughly satisfying and thrilling personal relationship, a meeting and mingling of minds and bodies that was as successful as our working partnership. We were both of us natural scientists, Stoker with an affinity for large mammals and extensive taxidermic skills whilst I preferred lepidoptery. We were employed by the Earl of Rosemorran-great-nephew of the monkey-riddled Lady Wellie-with cataloguing, repairing, and arranging his vast store of artefacts, art, and other agreeable treasures for eventual display in the Rosemorran Collection, the museum he planned to open for the edification of the general public. We had initially anticipated that his lordship's possessions, including the hoards inherited from his ancestors, a wealthy and acquisitive group, could be organised and ready for installation within a few decades. But as his lordship was an incorrigible haunter of auction houses, showroom sales, and other people's attics, the amount we had to sort seemed to increase on a frankly alarming basis.
The benefit to this, of course, was that Stoker and I could rely upon our employment to extend into extreme old age. The drawback was a tendency towards melancholy when contemplating exactly how much remained to be done. It did not help matters that we were, all too frequently, called away from our endeavours by the crime of murder and occasional instances of grand larceny. More times than would seem probable, Stoker and I had been prevailed upon-or had chosen, if I am honest-to involve ourselves in the investigation of the most heinous crimes. We had thwarted villains, saved innocent men from the hangman's noose, and restored priceless jewels to their rightful owners. We had masqueraded as royalty, foiled ancient curses, and evaded certain death. Our escapades were as invigorating as they were unlikely, and I had adored each and every one.
But I was conscious that morning, as a brisk October wind teased russet leaves from the branches of the trees, of a certain restlessness. We had, only the month previous, concluded a successful investigation that had imperilled both of our lives. Stoker had scarcely healed from the dislocation of his shoulder, and our dogs-five at last count-had just begun to accept that we were at last home and settled. Without the benefit of marriage, Stoker and I naturally occupied separate quarters at the earl's Marylebone estate of Bishop's Folly. A series of small, perfectly appointed pavilions had been built by one of the earl's ancestors-a Roman temple, a miniature pink Scottish castle, and so forth. I had claimed the French Gothic chapel for my own use whilst Stoker slept in the Chinese pagoda. Next to these charming buildings was a pond of significant size and depth to permit swimming, and bordering this pond was a shrubbery where the earl's Galápagos tortoise, Patricia, frequently upended herself, legs waving woefully in the air and giving lamentable cries until a rescue party could be formed to put her to rights.
Beyond the shrubbery was the Belvedere, a freestanding ballroom of sorts which held the bulk of the collected artefacts. It was workroom, office, laboratory, and club, furnished with such oddities as a decaying camel saddle, a collection of caryatids, the workings of a Sicilian puppet theatre, and an Egyptian sarcophagus which served as our sideboard. Busts of emperors jostled with mediaeval weapons, and paintings of dour Madonnas looked down upon Wardian cases filled with creatures of every description. Upstairs, the snuggery provided shelving for acres of books and periodicals along with Napoléon's campaign bed-a surprisingly comfortable spot to nap. A porcelain Swedish stove provided tea-making facilities and a handy cloisonné cupboard was always stuffed with tins of biscuits, gingerbread, and assorted sweets. There were cushions for the dogs, and an entire wall of cubbyholes crammed with papers, waxes, inks, brushes, pens, paints, glues, filaments, furs, wires, and every other supply we might require. The roof was sound, the walls thick, and his lordship's numerous-and frankly anarchic-progeny were strictly forbidden to enter without adult accompaniment.
It was, in short, the happiest place on earth, in my estimation, and I was never more contented than when engaged with a new batch of Lepidoptera. I had meant to spend the forenoon writing up the talk I had been invited to deliver to the Aurelian Society, but the morning's deliveries had distracted me. They included a pair of elegant cases of French design, each holding a pristine sample of the Madagascan moon moth. I had sat for several minutes, admiring the elegant sweep of their hindwings and the vividness of their eyespots before Stoker and his monkey interrupted me.
I turned back to my magnifying glass and my enormous silk-spinning beauties. "I have every faith in your ability to cope with one of the smallest primates in existence," I assured him.
"I have work," he muttered. It was with an heroic effort at restraint that I did not point out he was interrupting my own work. It has been my experience that the male of the species, though often thoroughly illogical, can-when encouraged to sit quietly and think hard-be guided into a position of sense. I applied myself to my moths whilst Stoker considered his options. He had just begun to feed the monkey bits of honeycomb from the paper twist in his pocket when a discreet cough sounded from the doorway.
"I do hope I am not come at an inconvenient time?"
I looked up at our employer with sincere pleasure. "Your lordship! It has been an age since you have visited the Belvedere," I said, laying down my magnifying glass. "We have made real progress since your last inspection."
"I have no doubt," Lord Rosemorran said. He seemed a trifle uncomfortable, tugging at his collar. His fingers, as usual, were begrimed with ink and left a grubby mark upon the linen. It did not matter. His clothing already bore traces of encounters with his children. His garments were streaked with the acids, inks, and paints of their various activities. I was only glad to see no traces of Lady Rose's latest endeavours. Her attempts to dye her aunt's white Persian cat the same colour as a peony had resulted in the entire household's linen turning a virulent shade of pink. She was the youngest, and by far the most villainous of the earl's brood, and I made a point of avoiding her whenever possible. I do not care for children even when they are biddable, quiet, and clean, and Lady Rose was never any of those.
As if intuiting my thoughts, the child in question bounded in behind her father, her eyes dancing with an unholy light. "Have you asked him, Papa?" she demanded.
The earl shifted uneasily. "I was just coming to that, my dear."
She hopped from foot to foot. "Do it now, Papa. You must!" Her tone was imploring, and she gave him a look only an indulgent father would interpret as winsome.
"What is it you wish, Lady Rose?" I asked.
Her expression turned baleful. "Nothing from you, Miss Speedwell. I need Stoker," she said. The very sound of his name was adoring on her lips. Like females of all ages and most species, Lady Rose harboured a tender spot for Stoker. Whether it was the courtly manners which had been bred into him by his viscountess mother or the juxtaposition of those manners with his staggering appearance-one need only say the words "Elizabethan buccaneer" to conjure tumbled witch-black locks, an occasional eyepatch, and a wealth of tattoos and golden earrings-most feminine creatures found themselves utterly beguiled by him.
"Oh," Lady Rose breathed as she looked at Stoker properly. "You have a monkey on your head. Did you mean to?"
"Yes," he told her solemnly. "I hear it is quite the fashion this year. Even the queen has one-a chimpanzee, I am told. It sits on her head in place of a crown and sleeps in a golden bed in the palace."
Lady Rose grinned. "You are very silly," she informed him.
Stoker returned the smile and gently removed the monkey from its perch, depositing it into the marble embrace of a handy caryatid. "Now, what can I do for you, my lady?"
Before Lady Rose could reply, there was a commotion at the door. Porters arrived bearing an enormous and obviously weighty crate. Lady Rose danced around it. "She's here, Papa! She's here!"
I looked in some alarm to his lordship. "She?"
The earl hurried to explain as Stoker directed the porters where to place their burden. "It is a trifle complicated. Perhaps it is better to show you."
The porters eased the crate to the floor and left, their pockets weighted with the earl's generous gratuities as Stoker applied a prybar to the lid. It was the work of moments to have the thing opened, and as the wooden sides of the crate fell flat, we stared in frank astonishment.
Inside the crate was a long glass box, a crystal casket, and inside lay a waxwork figure on a satin pillow. It was a young woman with long dark hair, rippling unbound over her shoulders. She wore an old-fashioned dress of heavy red velvet edged in fine lace, four inches deep. The neckline was deep and square, revealing an unblemished décolletage the same pale hue as the graceful hands. They were not, as one might expect, folded at the breast in a posture of stiff repose. Instead, they rested at her thighs, palms gently curved, the fingers tapered and relaxed. Her face was singularly beautiful, each feature moulded with grace, from the arch of the dark brow to the delicate line of the jaw. The complexion was pale except for the flush across the cheekbones and rosy lips which were softly parted. The whole effect was one of a maiden captured in enchanted slumber, a fragment of a fairy tale translated from the page to our workroom.
"She is exquisite," Stoker said hoarsely. His gaze rested dreamily upon her face, and I suppressed a flicker of irritation. One cannot be envious of a waxwork, I reminded myself firmly. I turned to our employer. "Where did you find her?"
"There is a warehouse in Shoreditch that currently holds a few items I haven't had the chance to transfer here," he said. I looked around at the already crowded Belvedere wondering precisely how much more his lordship intended to bring us. We could scarcely move about the place as it was. He must have seen something of my thoughts in my expression, for he hurried on. "Only a few items," he assured me. "Very small. You will hardly notice them when they arrive. But I happened to stop in to deposit a quite modest collection of-"
"My lord, you are not only keeping things in Shoreditch we knew nothing of, you are adding to them?"
He had the grace to look abashed. "Well, one sees things and one simply cannot resist them." He spread his hands helplessly. "In this case, I had purchased a full set of German tilting armour-very fine, fourteenth-century-from an auction house quite near to the warehouse. It seemed easiest to take delivery there and leave the armour until we had cleared space here in the Belvedere. Whilst I was there, I happened to notice the adjoining warehouse was clearing out items that had been left and never claimed." He nodded towards the figure in the glass casket. "When I heard there was a waxwork for sale, it seemed the happiest of coincidences. Rose had asked for one for her birthday."
"Had you?" I asked his daughter.
She was hopping from one foot to the other, fairly vibrating with excitement. "Oh, yes. Sidonie takes me sometimes to Madame Tussaud's." Their mother long dead, the earl's children were left frequently in the care of his sister. Since governesses left the house as frequently as the soiled laundry, the lady's maid, Sidonie, was occasionally pressed into service to lend a hand. I was not surprised that her notion of an appropriate outing for Lady Rose was a trip to the waxworks. The excursion was cheap and thrilling and conveniently located a quick walk away in Baker Street. "I am particularly fond of the Hall of Horrors," Lady Rose went on. "But Sidonie thinks I am too young to see them, so I made a point of escaping her to see the murderers. She found me in front of Burke and Hare," she said, pulling a face. "They robbed graves, you know. A nasty thing to do. So then we went to see something nicer and she showed me the Sleeping Beauty."
Copyright © 2024 by Deanna Raybourn. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
