Mina nodded. “Nobody can say where we’re coming from now, and running people catch the eye. We slow down and act a bit tipsy, and we’ll just be two out of many.” She paused for a moment. “You might put your arm around me.”
“Happy to oblige you.”
They walked onward, less than steadily, leaning against each other. Mina began to hum: a loud and somewhat out-of-tune version of a song Stephen had heard in his club once or twice. Then, as the streets nearby got more respectable, she stopped, straightened up, and stepped away again.
Colin waited on the corner ahead, with the carriage nearby. He’d had to button a coat rather clumsily over his broken arm, and his hair stuck out at odd angles beneath his hat. Presenting such a flawed appearance must have been killing him, Stephen thought, and couldn’t help smirking.
“Keep looking smug and I’ll leave you next time,” said Colin, as they caught up to him. “At least it’s too dark for anyone to see me. Did you find anything?”
“Aye,” said Stephen. “But I’d best save it for when we’re home.”
The carriage ride was quick and silent. All three of them slumped against the seats: Colin doubtless exhausted from so much exertion so soon after his injury, Stephen trying to collect his thoughts, and Mina clearly tired as well—and perhaps sore? Virgins sometimes were, he’d heard, though he’d always stayed away from them before. He should probably do the gentlemanly thing and refrain from propositioning her that evening.
He might ask her to join him in bed, though, even chastely. After the night’s discoveries, he would prefer not to sleep alone.
Looking forward to a shared bed, bracing himself to explain the ring to Colin, Stephen knocked at the door. It opened to show Mrs. Baldwin, face drawn and worried. She looked past him at Mina and pressed her lips together. Not disapproval, Stephen thought, but sympathy.
“Professor Carter’s here to see Miss Seymour, sir,” she said. “He says it’s urgent business.”
Thirty-nine
Good news was never urgent business. Good news never came after midnight.
At first Mina wanted to faint, or to burst into tears and scream at the universe:Goawayandleavemealone! I’mtoo tired! Haven’t you done enough?But the universe rarely listened, and she couldn’t do anything if she fainted.
“Should we come?” Stephen asked. “I’ve no notion what it’s about, but if you’d rather be alone—”
“No,” said Mina.
Stephen took her hand. He’d taken off his gloves, and the warm pressure of his fingers against hers took her further back from the edge of hysteria. She didn’t cling to him as they made their way to the parlor, but she squeezed his hand tightly when Professor Carter stood to greet them.
“You might as well come out with it, sir,” she said, before the professor could begin. “Breaking things gently never works with me.”
Mina expected the news to be about her family. What else did she have? What else that would concern her and not Stephen or Colin? None of the friends from her boardinghouse would have sent a message so late or in the person of Professor Carter, no matter how severe their problems.
So Professor Carter said, “It’s your sister,” and it wasn’t really a surprise, not a surprise at all, but still it hit Mina like a blow to the stomach. All the breath went out of her in a small cry.
“Which one?” she asked in a voice that might have been recorded. She half expected to hear the scratch and hiss of a gramophone as she went on. “What happened?”
“Your younger sister. Er.” Professor Carter pulled awkwardly at his beard, searching his memory. “Flora. Florence.”
“Florrie,” said Mina. Florence was her name, but nobody called her that. It had always been too long and too formal for her. There was a chair nearby. Mina fumbled her way into it, and Stephen knelt at her side, taking both her hands in his. The two other men—and Mrs. Baldwin—had to notice, but Mina didn’t give a damn just then. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s ill,” said the professor, “and I’m afraid it looks to be quite serious, though nobody’s really certain quite what’s wrong. She, ah, she lost consciousness this evening, and she hadn’t regained it when your brother came to find me. I’m terribly sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorryfor,” said Mina, finding and seizing a core of ferocity beneath the numbness of her shock. She sat up straighter in the chair. “Not yet. Have they had a doctor in? When did Bert find you? Where is he?”
“He came to my office about eight this evening. He said your father had gone for a doctor, but that your mother had sent him to find you at the same time, so he couldn’t tell me the results. He did tell me to add that he’d already spoken to—Alice?—and that she was on her way home. And I sent him back, of course,” Professor Carter added, shaking his head at the folly of the world. “A child his age on the streets after dark? I put him into a cab myself.”
“That’s very generous of you,” said Mina, and wanted to smile and cry at the same time. Riding in a carriage would have been the thrill of Bert’s life at any other time, thrill enough even to overcome his wounded pride at being thought a child or having his ease with the London streets called into question. Tonight, she thought he might hardly have noticed. “I’ll pay you back, of course.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, girl. The price of a cab ride won’t beggar me any time soon.”
“Oh. Well—thank you.”
She stood up, preparing to spring into action, and then had no idea where to springto.
For a brief and stomach-clenching moment, she thought that maybe the harshest of the preachers from her childhood had been right, that Florrie’s sickness was a judgment on her for—what? Pride? Magic? Fornication?
