“Did she pay you for this work?”
“No.” He looked a little offended. “We survived on righteous fervor and the sheer thrill of it. I raided ten, twenty, fifty brothels in those early years, removing hundreds of girls. Young girls, old girls, grateful girls, girls who were belligerent and who I had to toss over my shoulder and haul away screaming. I rescued small boys and old men and dogs and—it simply became a habit, really. Once you begin seeking out injustice to liberate, you find that injustice seems to flourish everywhere you look. There was always someone else to rescue.”
“But you were educated, Stoker. You went to university. I know you did not raid brothels and rescue these girls forever.”
“Well, I stopped with you, didn’t I?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
Sabine considered this. Should she somehow be offended that he placed her rescue on the same level as that of prostitutes?
No, she decided, she was not offended. She had been just as desperate as anyone else, trapped with an oppressor and unable to find her way free.
He went on, “Elisabeth saw potential in me beyond muscle and cunning, and forced me to sit for tutors. When I excelled at lessons—I was pathetically desperate to please her—she discovered a university that would take an unrefined but promising blighter like me.” He exhaled loudly. “And she forced me to go. So you asked if she paid me to rescue the girls. Not in money. Only in opportunity.”
“Surely, you are grateful.”
“Surely,” he said.
“But that was years ago,” she prompted.
“Yes, that was years ago. But since I met her, I had never stopped stumbling across people who required my help in some way. Girls in subjugation. Widows beholden to cruel landlords. Children in workhouses with unthinkable conditions. Slaves in every port in the world. Entrapment. Blackmail. Terrorizing. Advantage taken at the cost of another. The strong dominating the weak.” He sighed as if it pained him to tell the story. “Joseph says I have a ‘heroism affliction.’ God knows it’s not that. The things I have seen and done?” He made a noise of misery. “I’m no hero—I’m... I’m trying to save a mother who had no wish to be saved, trying to change a boyhood that has already come and gone.” He made a bitter laugh. “I’ve never said that out loud. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought it.”
“Are you saying you did not do it for the girls, but for yourself?” Sabine asked. She’d never been more rapt. She scooted closer.
“God knows why I did it,” he said. “All I know is, when you begin busting through walls and knocking heads as a very young man, it’s difficult to simply stop. I have the strength, I have the skill, I’ve seen virtually every evil known to man—seen the very depraved source of it and seen desperate people do desperate things to survive. Most important, I’ve come to know that putting a stop to most evil is simply a matter of strength and confidence. The larger dog compels the weaker to piss off. I am good in a fight. Why shouldn’t I deliver helplessness when I see it?”
“But you haven’t... enjoyed it?” said Sabine. “Not once? Have you not known some sense of righteousness or satisfaction from standing up on behalf of these people?”
He let out a deep breath and lay back on the pillow. “I’m tired, Sabine.” He rolled his head to the side and looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “So bloody exhausted. Just because I know how to vanquish petty evil does not mean I have the energy to do it forever. As I’ve said, it changes nothing, for me.”
“And so why not simply... stop? God knows you’ve done enough. You’ve done more than most people do in ten lifetimes.”
“I did stop. I stopped with you.”
She laughed at the simplicity of his answer. “Why didmypredicament qualify as permission for you to cease being... being a hero?”
“Because the thing required to save you was such a very great departure for me. It felt like... enough.”
“Freeing me from a cupboard and locking my uncle inside wasenough?” she asked.
“Marrying youfelt like enough.”
“Ah,” she said. “Because I am so terrible?”
It felt a little wrong to say this, considering Sabine knew she was not terrible at all. She’d not given much thought to suitors or marriage before her father died, but she knew that when the time came, she would be reasonably easy to marry off. She was pretty enough, if you liked strident, bold, wildish girls; she was well-dowried enough, and she was clever. She was not, perhaps, biddable and pliant, but she could offer intelligence and self-reliance in exchange.
Stoker didn’t answer, and she tried again, “Marrying me felt like enough because you said you would never marry?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding a little cornered. “I felt like I could give myself permission to stop being a... oh—isvigilantethe wrong word?”
“You seem far too rich to be a vigilante,” she said.
“Whatever I was, I felt like I could stop, because I was doing this thing I’d sworn never to do. Marry.”
“But you did anyway.”
“Yes, but only in a manner. As you well know. Our ‘arrangement.’”
“And was it enough? This convenient marriage we have? Have you spent the past five years feeling absolved from saving anyone, ever again?”
