CHAPTER
1
Bavaria, September 1889
You must not go into the forest at night,” the innkeeper warned, his voice trembling with fear. “Something dangerous walks there in the darkness.”
He carried on in this vein for some time as I applied myself to a stein of Weissbier and a plate of crisp, excellent sausages. My friend and travelling companion, the Viscount Templeton-Vane, listened politely as the fellow grew more vehement.
“The creature that walks by night, it is part wolf, part man. It has but one eye, the other a gaping hole of deepest black. It keeps to the shadows, and if you dare to come near, it snarls like a bear,” he went on, his eyes round in his chubby, shiny face. He was a character straight from a storybook, plump and bearded, an imp of a fellow, with lines of good humour etched upon his face. But there was no mirth to be found upon his visage as he told his tale, only fear, brightening his eyes and causing his mouth to tremble ever so slightly.
Behind him, a lurking barmaid whose ample charms were scarcelycontained by the lacing of her dirndl threw her apron over her head and fled through the door to the kitchens.
The viscount—Tiberius to his friends—quirked up one expressive brow. “My good man, calm yourself. Surely this is some piece of local lore meant to frighten the feeble. We English are made of sterner stuff.”
“But it is true,” the fellow insisted, colour pinkening the cheeks above the white fringe of his beard. He glanced around and lowered his voice. “I have seen it, a hulking shadow, moving in the silence of the firs. And when I stepped in its direction, it reared back and itgrowledwith the fiendish fury of a hound of Hell.”
Tiberius, usually a man of cool logic, looked startled. “Growled, you say?”
“Like a wolf,” the man confirmed.
I sighed. It was time to put an end to this. “My good man,” I said politely to the innkeeper, “whilst I must concede that your use of alliteration is impressive, I think we can dismiss the notion of a hybrid monster roaming these mountains.”
He gave me a look of profound injury and slunk away, muttering.
Tiberius met my gaze. “Can we? I realise the local folk are a superstitious lot, but how exactly would you explain the existence of such a creature?”
I ticked off the qualities as I said them. “A tall, unsociable creature that keeps to the shadows, shuns the society of respectable people, and growls its displeasure? Tell me, who does that seem to describe?”
Tiberius’ mouth went slack, then curved into a smile. “You mean—”
“Yes, Tiberius. I think we have, at long last, found your brother.”
•••
The Honourable Revelstoke Templeton-Vane—Stoker, familiarly—had not been lost so much as slightly misplaced. For some months Stoker and I had enjoyed an intimate relationship that hadproven thoroughly fulfilling, indeedenrapturing, in all the particulars. We were work colleagues, engaged in the endlessly fascinating task of preparing museum exhibits for our employer, Lord Rosemorran. We were also neighbours, each of us inhabiting a small folly on his lordship’s Marylebone estate.
And we were occasional partners in detection, as falling over corpses had become something of a habit. In short, our lives were so fully entwined it was difficult to say where one left off and the other began. We enjoyed it all—from the scientific work to the investigation of crime, to the exuberant physicality of our more private endeavours. (Stoker is singularly suited to the amatory arts through a combination of bodily charms, robust stamina, and an enchanting thoroughness that might have startled a less experienced or enthusiastic partner than I.)
But following a painful interlude, Stoker had taken himself off to nurse his wounded feelings. When last he and I had been together, there had been a complication regarding my marital status. Not a complication so much as a husband—one I had believed dead and whose resurrection was most unwelcome. The fact that we had nearly died as a result of Harry’s dramatic appearance into our lives had not endeared him to Stoker, and he had taken his leave of England whilst still believing me bound forever to a man with criminous tendencies.[*] As his parting words had been a directive to grant him time and privacy to smooth his ruffled feathers, I had naturally concurred. By the next morning he was gone, leaving only a hastily scribbled line to explain he was off to Germany in pursuit of a trophy—as a natural historian, his employment entailed procuring and improving a vast array of specimens—but no invitation to join him ensued.
At almost precisely the same moment, a letter had arrived from Tiberius urging me to come to Italy, where he had persuaded hishostess, an aging papal marquise, to part with a prized collection of rare birdwing butterflies. I am, first and foremost, a lepidopterist. I did not hesitate to pack my carpetbag and board the first train out of London. Through the end of the spring and the whole of that summer I accompanied Tiberius as he made his way through Italy, sending boxes of butterflies back to Lord Rosemorran’s burgeoning museum.
From Stoker, I had not a single line, although Lord Rosemorran frequently alluded to Stoker’s peregrinations through the Black Forest in his own letters. I thus had a vague idea of where Stoker was, and I was not at all distressed by our lack of communication. I knew two things: the depth of our feelings for one another and the fact that absence makes the heart as well as the libido grow stronger. I had little doubt that Stoker missed me—allof me.
No, the fact that he had taken his leave so abruptly and with no effort at a proper good-bye did not distress me in the slightest. And while another woman might have grown increasingly irritated that the post forwarded from England brought not the merestscrapof a postcard, to say nothing of a proper letter, I naturally devoted myself entirely to the study of lepidoptery. I passed my days in hunting specimens that flittered and fluttered from the Dolomites to the Sicilian hills and back again. I grew leaner and more firmly muscled from scrambling over peaks and pastures. I set out at daybreak each morning from our lodgings, when the night’s dew still bespangled the grasses at my feet. I did not return until the languid golden sun dropped beyond the horizon, leaving a few last gentle rays to show me the way back. I never used my net; its presence was merely a habit from my previous expeditions. Instead I followed the butterflies, making careful study of their mazy meanderings, their behaviours and habitats.
And when I returned to the solitude of my room, I spent long hours writing up my findings both for my private notes and for publication in the Aurelian journals. Invariably, I dropped into bedexhausted by my exertions, only to rise at dawn and repeat the process. Not for me the languid evening passed in mournful contemplation of the distance—both literal and figurative—between myself and the person I considered to be my twinned soul. I would not permit myself to waste away in pining and regret. I had the celibate consolations of science, and I made full advantage of them.
If I am to be strictly honest within these pages—and I have sworn to be so—then I will admit to the occasional wakeful night or interminable afternoon when I found my thoughts inhabited by his familiar form and face. When these moods came upon me, so strong was my longing for him, it required all of my discipline to refrain from flinging my things into a bag and dashing to him. The only remedy was another strenuous day spent in pursuit of my studies, driving myself physically harder than ever before even as I enumerated his flaws. I catalogued them as I strode the Italian hills, whipping up my annoyance.
“What sort of man justleaves? And without so much as a proper kiss good-bye,” I muttered to the nearest rock in a fit of particular frustration on the isle of Capri. “What kind of fellow thinks it is acceptable simply to disappear for months on end and send no assurances of his well-being? Not a telegram, not a semaphore flag, not so much as a hint of a postcard with his current address? Anass,” I told the rock.
But even as I said the words, I knew Stoker was not entirely to blame. He had left still believing I was the wife of another man. Only a handful of hours had passed between Stoker’s departure and my learning the truth of my marital status—that I was not, and never had been, legally married.
Why then did I leap at Tiberius’ invitation instead of rushing after Stoker to stop him before he left England?
It was some months before I could face the answer: I was a coward. When I learnt of Stoker’s resolve to leave, to take time for himself toconsider our attachment, my initial reaction, the longing of my heart, had been to go to him. And therein lay my terror. I, who had laboured and loved independent of real connection for so long, was entirely and besottedly enraptured with this man. When I most had need of a confidant, I had not turned to him out of fear of dependency, and when he left, the desire to run to him had kindled that fear once more.
