Stoker sniffed deeply. “I think it safe to say it was not.”
Harry sighed. “For a civilized country, England is absolute death to a nice wardrobe.” He produced a key from his pocket and bent to unlock Stoker’s wrist irons. “There you are, old man. The other key is still broke off in your ankle iron, so you must make the best of it with a hacksaw,” he advised, producing the tool in question. He freed me then, and I resisted the urge to box his ears.
“Would you mind,” I said icily, “explaining exactly what you are doing here?”
He rolled his eyes heavenwards. “I have already told you. I am rescuing you. I am beingheroic, Veronica. It has been my ambition ever since I read of the ancient Greeks. Theseus, Perseus—all capital ladswith all sorts of daring. Although, I must say, I always imagined the ladies being rescued demonstrated a good deal more gratitude. You are not exactly being appreciative, Veronica.”
Stoker flicked him a glance. “She is always bad-tempered when she is hungry. She needs feeding.”
“Ah!” Harry patted his pockets and produced a pair of gently squashed sausage rolls wrapped in a handkerchief. “One for each of you. And I’ve a pork pie in another pocket, but I think I might have sat upon it.”
I devoured the sausage roll and Stoker waved at me to take the second as well. I would have resisted, but then I recalled the succulent seductions of his duck dinner and took it without remorse.
“Better?” Harry asked when I had finished.
“Much,” I admitted. “I apologize for my churlishness. The rescue is appreciated,” I told him humbly.
He grinned and turned to where Stoker was still working away at his ankle irons. “We ought to be speedy about this. If Isabel returns, well, I shouldn’t like to be caught is all I will say upon the matter.”
“When did you leave her?” I asked.
“On the road to London—and I mean that quite literally,” he said with a grimace. “I waited until Göran was whipping the horse up a hill and then I flung myself out of the carriage. I rolled down the hill and flagged a hansom going the opposite direction. They had not even got the carriage turned round by the time I was well and truly gone.”
“And you think she will come here to look for you?”
He shrugged. “Isabel is a mercurial creature, as are all women,” he added with a meaningful look in my direction. “She will most likely deduce that my precipitate flight means I intended to return here and free the pair of you. In which case, she must decide either to take her diamond and flee or come back here herself and finish us all off—in which case I would vastly prefer not to be at hand when she arrives.”He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Of course, if my departure has struck her as suspicious, she may well examine the diamond, in which case, she will most definitely come here and we are all well and truly sunk.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because,” Stoker said coolly. “She does not have the Eye of the Dawn.” He rose, dropping his ankle irons to the floor with a clanging flourish. “I do.”
•••
I stared from Stoker to Harry and back again before pressing my fingers to my temples. “I beg your pardon?”
Stoker nodded to Harry. “Clever of you to have figured it out.”
Harry gave him a modest nod. “Well, it was clever of you to have hid a false diamond. It very nearly fooled me.”
I held up a hand. “If the pair of you might possibly leave off admiring one another for just a moment and explain?”
“Not now,” Stoker said in a tone of unmistakable command. “Harry is quite correct. We need to leave, and quickly. Did you keep the hansom?” he asked.
Harry nodded. “It will be a bit of a squeeze with three of us, and we shall have to pay him over odds to keep quiet about this.”
Stoker looked at his clothes ruefully. His shirt was still missing and his trousers were liberally stained with blood. Harry had found his coat and Stoker managed, wincing, to drape it over himself to conceal the worst of his wounds. “Not much I can do to remedy this.”
Harry shrugged. “We shall tell him we were engaging in some country fisticuffs and I beat you.”
“A likely story,” Stoker muttered, but he did not stop to argue. He pushed me out of the cellar ahead of him, and Harry brought up the rear. We hurried through the house—pausing only to snatch up a coldduck leg that Mrs.MacGregor had left behind—and hurled ourselves into the hansom. The driver looked startled and grumbled at the extra distance and the demands upon his horse with a third passenger until Stoker flung the contents of his notecase at him and ordered him to drive.
The fellow complied, much happier with his pockets stuffed with banknotes. I huddled between Harry and Stoker, a thousand questions tangling in my mind. But the driver was too near, and the events of the day too fresh; the hour too late, and the moment too impossible. We hurtled along under that April moon, the heavy scents of the country flowers bearing down upon us in bursts of exquisite sweetness as the rushing hansom brushed the dew from the leaves. We were jolted and jostled, and yet there was something magical about that moment, that liminal time between our liberation and our arrival back in London. We could do nothing but be carried along like so many leaves upon the surface of a churning river. The leaf so moved does not think, and neither did I, content to feel the whip of the wind against my cheeks as we dashed through the night.
Stoker had ordered the driver to leave us some distance from Bishop’s Folly lest a pursuer be watching. But we saw no one as we made our way on foot the last half a mile through the dark streets of London. We wended around Marylebone High Street, keeping to the narrow alleys until we came at last to the back gate.
Once more I led the way through the estate until we reached the Belvedere. The dogs, exhausted by our nocturnal adventures, did not even stir as we entered. Stoker locked the door behind us while I lit the lanterns. I instructed Harry where to find food and he retrieved more slabs of fruitcake and a bowl of apples gone only a little soft. I looked around for Stoker but he had vanished. I found him with his thylacine, bent over the creature with a solicitous air.
“I assure you I did not damage it,” I said, bristling. “I cut only thestitches you placed and did not so much as nick the hide.” Its teeth seemed even more menacing, its lips curled back in a snarl that might well have been a fair imitation of my own. Stoker was at the far end, beneath its belly, lying on his back as he maneuvered his tools. To my intense irritation, he said nothing but continued to work, doing something—I could not imagine what—to the scrotal pouch.
