Harry, wisely, made no reply. He left his coat draped about my shoulders, and for all the unorthodoxy of our appearance, we attracted little notice as we moved through the throngs in King’s Cross. A quick journey by cab saw us to the back street that bordered the far side of Bishop’s Folly. Stoker and I had agreed that a discreet entrance would be the wisest course of action. Harry and I slipped in through a small door concealed in a wall of ivy, locking it carefully behind.
I had expected the dogs would assail us, but we were greeted by nothing more active than Patricia, the Galápagos tortoise, lumbering through the shrubbery like a boulder with legs. She lifted her head as we passed, but we did not stop. We hurried on, past the pond and the little arrangement of follies that Lord Rosemorran’s father had assembled at the edge of it. The tiny Gothic chapel was my private domain; the Chinese temple was Stoker’s. It seemed an age since I had slept inmy own bed, and I was conscious of a new and unaccountable lowness of spirits as I passed my chapel.
Just beyond the pond was the vivarium, a vast glasshouse where I nurtured butterflies, rearing them from larvae to imago, and then collecting the specimens after Nature had taken her course and their brief life spans finished. I had been training George, the hallboy, to tend them in my absence, and I could just see his slender form through the misted panes of glass, moving about the drifts of foliage, setting out plates of cut fruit and rotting meat. (The latter was for the benefit of my little colony ofApatura iris, a luscious little violet butterfly that feasts on carrion. I was preparing an article forThe Aurelian Sisterhoodon the subject, and had set up an experiment testing their preferences by providing them with the carcasses of a frog, a mouse, and a rabbit. The frog, the interested reader might care to note, was by far the favorite.)
Atop the rise at the front of the property, the house itself glowed with light from the windows of Lord Rosemorran’s study to the nursery floor, where his children were no doubt busily authoring mayhem. I wondered if Lady Cordelia were amongst them, putting her baby down for his evening sleep, and I felt another sharp pang. I did not envy her having a child—far from it. I had no maternal instincts whatsoever. But I envied her stability, her sense of place in the world. Wherever she went, whatever she did, she would always be Lady Cordelia Beauclerk, sister of the Earl of Rosemorran. She would always have a home at Bishop’s Folly, and she would always move with the assurance of the class into which she had been born. My own sense of authority had been hard-won by experience, and I realized, perhaps for the first time, that it had begun to falter. Being confronted with the specter of Harry Spenlove had knocked my confidence badly. He had been the greatest mistake of my life, and seeing him, I was once more a girl of twenty, following her impulses straight into disaster. I had not beenmyself since the moment I had come face-to-face with him at Hathaway Hall, and I was suddenly, blindingly furious at him for robbing me of my carefully cultivated sense of sureness.
I put aside my ruminations as we reached the Belvedere undetected. The dogs leapt on us with lolling tongues as soon as we entered. Harry fended them off as I closed the door and lit a pair of lamps.
“Here, madam, be a little kind, I beg you,” he said to an exuberant Vespertine, who stood on her hind legs, front paws braced on either of his shoulders. She was sniffing his face with a wary intensity.
“Harry, stop playing with the dog,” I ordered.
“I am hardly playing,” he protested. “I think she has designs upon me.” He pushed her gently away, and she dropped to all fours with a low grumble.
He came to stand at my side as I surveyed the Belvedere. It had been built as a freestanding ballroom more than a century before, a Georgian pleasure pavilion with a staircase leading to the encircling gallery above. The gallery, with its alcoves and vantage points, had served as a suitable place for seducers and chaperones alike, I suspected. A gentleman might whisk a partner behind a bit of drapery for an illicit embrace even as a cluster of spinster aunts perched on gilt chairs to survey the dancers below. After the ballroom had fallen into disuse, a previous earl had enclosed one of the alcoves and installed a proper water closet in order to use the Belvedere as a sort of retreat away from his domineering countess. He was the first to store the London contributions to the Rosemorran Collection in the Belvedere, while the present earl was the one who had ordered the various other Rosemorran acquisitions brought from their country properties. It was stacked with trunks, crates, and portmanteaux of every description, to say nothing of the statues, paintings, cases, and pieces of furniture that crammed every corner.
Harry gave a soundless whistle. “Thank heaven we do not have tosearch every inch of this place. We would have been here until the crack of doom,” he said.
I gave him a narrow look. “Is that why you did not avail yourself of the chance to find the diamond whilst we were in chains?”
“I am hurt that you should suspect mestill,” he said in an aggrieved voice. “But I will admit, if I had been tempted, the very thought of locating the diamond here brings to mind adages about needles and haystacks.”
Without further discussion, I made directly for the thylacine, pausing only to take up one of Stoker’s scalpels as I went. I tested the blade on my thumb, drawing a bright bead of crimson blood from the pad.
“Hold this.” I thrust a lamp into Harry’s hands. “I must have good light if I am to do this without damaging his tiger.”
“He put the Eye of the Dawn into ananimal?”
I was not surprised at his tone. When Stoker had whispered its location to me, my own reaction had been one of astonishment. But it made its own kind of logic, I had reflected. Few people had Stoker’s enthusiasm for dead things, and it would be easily overlooked in such a place. Of course, its location also accounted for his reluctance for anyone except me to retrieve it. He would never have trusted Isabel or Göran with his beloved thylacine; his confidence in me was shaky at best.
But I merely shrugged at Harry and applied myself to the task at hand.
“Can you think of a place that might be better?”
Together we wedged ourselves under the trophy—somewhat awkwardly—as the dogs gathered around. Nut, apparently sulking that Harry had been absent for the better part of the day, was pointedly ignoring him whilst Vespertine resumed her examinations, snuffling at Harry as he tried to twist away.
“For heaven’s sake, hold still,” I scolded. “I nearly took off a finger.”
“I am trying,” he said in a strangled voice. “This creature is making me exceedingly nervous. I much prefer cats, you know. They are entirely indifferent to one’s presence.”
He broke off with a sort of strangled sound as Vespertine gave a breathy sigh and butted her enormous head into his stomach. The lamp swung wildly, but I had just broken the last stitch and the precision work was finished. I slid my hand into the pouch of the thylacine and my fingers closed instantly over a small parcel. The parcel was a piece of oilskin tied around a nest of cotton wool. I opened it and what lay inside sparkled in the lamplight. Harry struggled to look past Vespertine’s head, but she was proving difficult to dislodge. I waved it at him and wrapped it up at once, knotting the string several times to hold it fast.
“Come on,” I said, pushing myself to my feet with an audible groan. “We must get back.”
“Not so fast,” he said, putting a hand to my wrist.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, my gaze flying to his even as I clutched the parcel to my chest.
“Trying to take care of you,” he said in a tone of mild injury. “Whilst you were sleeping, I studied the timetable. The next train does not leave for another hour. You have a few minutes to change your clothes and bathe the blood from your face. You will be more comfortable,” he pointed out. “You should also take a little food. Something to sustain you. It will be a long night.” He nodded towards the parcel. “Take the jewel with you while you get fresh clothes. I will find food.”
“I have clothes upstairs in the snuggery,” I said.
“Good. Go. I will keep watch of the time.”
I looked at my bloodied hands and ruined gown and nodded. “You are right, of course. Thank you, Harry.”
His mouth curved into a ghost of a smile. “You might take that dog with you before her attentions turn unpleasant.”
