Mr. Stoker nursed his resentment for the better part of that day, for I did not see him again until it was time for us to perform. That is not to say that I did not hear him. Shortly before we were to begin the act, I made my way to the tent, slipping through the shadowy areas behind, where few of the paying customers ventured. One had to be quite careful here, as the ropes and tent pegs were difficult to see, so I was picking my way slowly when I heard my name in conversation. It was Salome speaking, and I soon realized to whom.
“Why did you marry Veronica? Is she with child?” The voice was teasing, and the reply was brutal and swift.
“God, no!” Too late, he must have remembered that we were supposed to be devotedly in love, for he hastened to repair the damage. “That is to say, it is far too soon for that sort of thing. I would like some time with my bride all to myself before I have to share her with a child.”
Salome laughed, a velvety, seductive sound, and I knew instinctively that she would be standing quite close to him in the darkness.
“Oh, Stoker, why do you think you can deceive me? After what we have been together? Tell me the truth now. Do you really prefer her to me?”
I heard the rustle of fabric and a decidedly masculine gasp. “That’s really quite an inappropriate question under the circumstances, don’t you think? You oughtn’t—that is, I am a married man, Salome.”
“Are you? You don’t seem married to me.” After this came more rustling and another groan.
“Leave me be, Salome. I am quite devoted to Veronica,” he said, his voice strangled.
“I don’t believe that,” she murmured. “Tell me why you like her. Tell me why you married her.”
There was a moment of imperfect silence between them, for I heard still more rustling and then, quite abruptly, a ragged growl and another laugh from Salome, this one sharp and unpleasant.
“You think you can push me aside? You think you can forget me? For her?” Salome caught her breath suddenly. “Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.”
“And I will do a good deal more if you try any more of your sly tricks, either on me or on Veronica. You’re not to go near her, do you understand me?”
“A little late for you to suddenly play the protective husband, don’t you think? Why did you do it? Tell me why you married her.”
“I mean it, Salome, and if you think I don’t, I beg you to give me the chance to prove it. Leave her be. And me as well.”
He must have stalked off then, for she cursed as she came around the corner. She brought herself up with an exaggerated start when she saw me.
“Oh, Veronica! I did not know you were there.”
“Really, somehow I think otherwise.”
She gave me an appraising look followed by a shrug. “I was the first woman to know him. You will understand why I am curious about you. We are very different.” She stepped nearer. “How did you meet him? What do you speak of together?”
I tipped my head. “Such interesting questions. But really, you ought to ask Stoker if you want them answered. Oh, but I am forgetting. You already did.”
With that she flicked her hair and walked away, swinging her hips as she moved. Out of the shadows I saw a figure sidle up to her, and I was interested to recognize the form of the flirtatious groom, Mornaday. Having halfheartedly tried his luck with me and found it wanting, he had no doubt decided to cast his line in likelier waters, I reflected. I wished him joy of her, but it did seem a trifle much that we should now share two men.
I proceeded on to the tent and found Mr. Stoker pacing by the back flap.
“Finally! Where in the name of hell have you been?”
“Eavesdropping,” I said with deliberate sweetness.
He stopped and stared at me. “What—”
I reached up and applied my handkerchief to his face, scrubbing vigorously. “You have lip rouge on your mouth.”
He had the grace to blush. “Yes, well, that was—”
“That was none of my business, but you look quite ludicrous. Quite ludicrous indeed. If you mean to exchange favors with Salome, I would only ask that you attempt a little discretion. We must give the appearance of content married life if the masquerade is to be credible, must we not?”
He snatched the handkerchief out of my hand. “Give me that! You’ve rubbed my skin raw.”
I gave him a look of mock contrition. “Oh, I do apologize. It is such a garish shade, it is quite difficult to remove.”
He scrubbed at his own face. “Better?”
“Yes, although there is some on your collar. And you might want to attend to the top button on your trousers.”
He muttered a curse, but I gave him a brilliant smile. “It sounds like a very full house tonight.”
“Veronica, about Salome—”
I placed a hand on his sleeve. “Really, Mr. Stoker, you needn’t bother. I assure you she does not trouble me in the least. If you decide to pay a call upon her, I shan’t wait up. I will just leave the bolt on the caravan door undone. You can let yourself in—only do be quiet getting into bed, won’t you? I am quite tired this evening and would so hate to be awakened.”
He stared at me openmouthed, then snapped his jaw shut and took me hard by the wrist, half dragging me to the flap.
I smiled to myself that I had provoked him to such a fine display of temper, but I was by no means finished. I had not even begun.
We stood outside the tent, listening to the incoming crowd, a thin layer of canvas providing us with a modest bit of privacy. “They sound keen,” I remarked. “Almost as keen as you in the arms of the delicious Salome.”
He whirled on me. “That is enough,” he growled. “I swear to the devil, Veronica, if you vex me further, I will not be responsible for my actions.”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Stoker. You will have to do better than that if you mean to make me afraid of you. I have been menaced more effectively by poodles.”
“God, you have a vicious tongue,” he retorted. “But I am no more afraid of you than you are of me. I have little doubt your bark is worse than your bite.”
“How do you know, Mr. Stoker? I haven’t bitten you yet.”
I leaned close and snapped my teeth, a whisper away from his nose. He bent to me and my lips parted of their own volition. My fingers crept to his shirtfront and I could feel the pounding of his heart under my palms. His hands were curled into fists, and he held them at his sides, as if fighting the urge to touch me with every particle of his being. His mouth was a breath away from mine, and yet he did not move closer. He did not finish it. He simply stood, as perfectly still as one of the mounts in his own workshop, captured in a moment that stretched tautly into an eternity.
I was conscious of a curious buzzing in my ears and realized it was my own excitement fizzing in my blood. I understood then what a significant miscalculation I had made. I had thought to toy with him and instead had managed to rouse myself to a fever pitch. Whatever pleasant dalliances I had enjoyed in the past, those interludes would be drops in the ocean compared to the tidal wave of this man. And the knowledge of that shook my composure to the core—a composure I would not, could not, afford to lose. Worse still, I had used my trick of prodding his temper to provoke something entirely different, and it felt suddenly shabby and mean to have done so.
I stepped sharply backward, letting my hands fall, empty, to my sides.
“How uncivil of me,” I told him, forcing my tone to lightness. “I do apologize.”
He ignored the apology. “We are on,” he told me, turning to enter the tent. He did not look back to see if I would follow.
For the whole of the act, something was off about Mr. Stoker. His patter was forced, his conjuring sloppy, and the crowd was restless. Without the dulling effects of the aguardiente, I noticed the pungent smell of the tent, the mingled aromas of sweat and sawdust, and the sharp odor of excitement. I noticed the faces with their avid eyes and ruddy cheeks, countryfolk bent on a little harmless entertainment. I heard their murmurs and whispers, the titters of anticipation as he moved to the knives. He buckled the restraints, his hands tight upon my limbs, his movements ungentle. He was clearly still disturbed by the scenes behind the tents, and I could not imagine why. I had given him carte blanche to visit Salome and he had responded with irritation and a fine display of temper. I should never understand men, I reflected, even if I devoted myself to the study of them as I had lepidoptery. To begin with, I should need a considerably larger net, I decided with a private smile.
But if he was not himself, I must in fairness own that neither was I. I had been aware of a dullness settling upon me, an ache in the bones that usually presaged fever. I shook it off, forcing myself to smile at the crowd and play the devoted assistant, all the while longing for my bed and the sweet release of sleep.
He finished his work at the restraints and invited a local fellow, this time the dispensing chemist, to test them. He did so, and Mr. Stoker took up the first blade. He held it a bit longer than was his custom, and when it flew through the air, I felt it divide the hair at the top of my head. The crowd gasped. Mr. Stoker went rather pale, but the second blade was true, striking precisely where it ought. I gave him a brief nod of encouragement, and with the slight movement, pain shot through my head like a bolt of lightning.
“Not now,” I muttered through gritted teeth. But the body is a treacherous thing, and I felt the swoon coming upon me as a creeping blackness advancing from the edges of my vision. My knees gave way and my body sagged against the leather restraints just as the knife left his hand. I opened my mouth to cry a warning, but of course it was too late. Instead of the dull thud of the knife hitting the wood, there was the soft whisper of blade on flesh, and the horrified gasp of the crowd was the last thing I heard as I slipped into unconsciousness.
• • •
The swoon lasted only a few seconds. I revived swiftly enough to find that I was still confined by the restraints and that the edge of the blade was still resting solidly in my arm.
Mr. Stoker was at my side, staring at me in nearly incoherent horror. “For Christ’s sake, Veronica, I wish you’d stayed unconscious. You will not enjoy this.”
A bubble of hysterical laughter rose within me. “Neither will you,” I observed.
He wrenched off his neckcloth and tied it on my arm, knotting it firmly above the quivering blade. It was agony, and I gave a little groan, causing his hand to tremble for a moment.
He gathered hold of his nerves then, and when he spoke it was with calm authority. “I have to remove the blade now. When I do, it will bleed. Quite a lot. Try not to move. And do not hold your breath. It will only make the pain worse.”
I obeyed him and nodded, never taking my eyes from his pale face. He did not hesitate. He reached for the blade and pulled it free in a slow, steady motion. The blood flowed freely then, a scarlet ribbon spilling over the spangled blue taffeta of my costume. I heard a woman scream, but I stood, immobile as stone. The crowd pressed around us, gasping. They made no move to leave but edged closer still, and he cursed them.
“God damn you, get back! She needs air. Move back, I said, or I’ll gut the lot of you!” He wrenched me free of the restraints and caught me before I slid to the ground.
I motioned to the makeshift tourniquet he had fashioned. “Too tight,” I murmured. “It hurts.”
“Better that than losing the blood,” he snapped. He gathered me into his arms, as gently as one might take up a babe, and stood. He kicked and cursed his way out of the tent and carried me straight back to the caravan. He tore the place apart as he looked for needle and thread and the other assorted oddments he would require.
“You needn’t be so untidy,” I said drowsily. “I will only have to clean up after you.”
“Shut up,” he growled. “I can’t find the needles. Why in the name of hell can’t I find the needles?”
“You are holding them,” I pointed out helpfully.
Just then there came a jangling of the bells at the door and Leopold put his head inside. “I have come to help. Salome is bringing hot water and Tilly is brewing up tea for after. I told her to make it very sweet and add a full measure of brandy. What can I do?”
Mr. Stoker threaded the needle, and I noticed his jaw was set tightly.
“Perhaps you ought to do the sewing,” I said helpfully to Leopold. “Mr. Stoker seems a trifle upset.”
“I will stitch it myself,” Mr. Stoker contradicted. “Now, be quiet.”
I faded away again, slipping into unconsciousness, but it was the pain that brought me back again. I opened my eyes to see him with a needle in his hand, and when I tried to protest, he ordered Leopold to hold me fast as he worked. By then I had grown delirious and only ever remembered pieces of that night—the awful pain in my head, the fever that rose, higher and hotter, as Mr. Stoker worked over me, forcing open my mouth and pouring in a foul and familiar remedy.
There were pleasanter things too, a cold compress upon my brow and a murmur of reassurance when I fretted and tossed. I thought at one point that I was on board a ship—a ship that sailed on endlessly with no shore in sight, tossed upon a black, raging sea of pain that would not let me go. I wanted to drown in it, to slip overboard and let the deep carry me down, but every time I stepped towards the beckoning waves, something called me back, some sense of business left undone. At length I slept and the sea was quiet at last.
When I woke, my head still hurt but the pain was milder now, a dull discomfort instead of a hot knife into my temples. I moved a little, surprised at the stiffness and ache in my arm until I saw the bandage, white and neat as a nun’s habit, and the memory of it all washed over me like a crashing wave. The caravan was dim and I sighed in relief. It had been a short bout, then.
“You have been unconscious for two days,” Mr. Stoker informed me.
I looked to the little armchair where he sprawled. His eyes were sunk in exhaustion and ringed with grey shadows. “You look a fright,” I told him.
“Yes, well, I still look better than you. Could you take some soup? There is a little on the hob and you ought to have some nourishment.”
I nodded and he busied himself, returning in a moment with a battered tin cup and a spoon. The steam from the cup was fragrant and my stomach growled in anticipation. Stoker nodded.
“That is a good sign.”
Tenderly as a mother hen, he spooned soup into my mouth until the cup was empty.
“More?” I asked hopefully.
“Not just yet. Let that sit awhile, and if you manage to keep it down, you can have more in an hour.”
I turned my head to the windowsill to see that my jar was empty. “Where are my butterflies? The Vanessa and the Gonepteryx?” I demanded.
“I let them go. They were drooping and I felt sorry for them. Now, be still.”
He felt my brow then, impersonally, and when he had finished reached for my hand. He kept his finger on the pulse at my wrist for some seconds, then settled back with an air of satisfaction.
“How long have you had malaria?” he asked in a conversational tone. He was clearly pleased with himself for making the diagnosis, and for that he deserved the truth.
“Three years. How long have you been a doctor?” I wanted a little truth of my own.
He gave me a smile that was no less charming for his obvious fatigue. “Considerably longer than three years. And strictly speaking, I am not a doctor. I am a surgeon. How did you know?”
I gestured towards his right arm. “Your tattoo. The asklepian—a serpent twined around the staff of Asclepius. No one but a medical man would suffer to get that. And given the anchor upon your other arm and the Chinese dragon upon your back, I would say you were once a navy man as well.”
“Surgeon’s mate aboard the HMS Luna. We sailed the tropics mostly, although I saw a bit of everywhere.”
“And that is how you recognized the symptoms of malaria.”
“I noticed the bottle of Warburg’s Tincture in your bag when you took out the oil of calendula. Bitter stuff, that. Most commonly used for tropical fevers—and the most common tropical fever is malaria. I have been watching for the symptoms ever since I found the bottle among your things.”
“Yes, well, I have had no recurrence for almost a year. I had rather hoped I was finished. The tincture was simply a precaution.”
“Pity you didn’t take a few more precautions,” he said meaningfully.
“You mean like telling you,” I countered. “It’s very simple, really. I didn’t want you fussing over me. I wanted to be treated as an equal.”
“And it never occurred to you that you might begin by treating me as an equal? Veronica, you cannot expect confidences if you will not give them.”
I closed my mouth, struck by the truth of it. I gave him a nod. “A palpable hit, Mr. Stoker. Very well, I will trade you confidences, tit for tat.”
“All right. What do you want to know?”
“Why do you hide your identity?” I asked.
His face went quite still, as immobile as marble under a sculptor’s hand—and just as pale. For a long moment he did not speak, but then he gave a gusty sigh and the fight seemed to go out of him. “How did you know?”
“The letters on the Wardian cases in your workshop. There are few natural historians with the initials R.T.-V. For Revelstoke Templeton-Vane. The cases were from an expedition, were they not?”
“If you know my name, you already know the answer to that.” His voice was clipped and cold. Our exchange of confidences was clearly not proceeding as he had anticipated, but I thought I would push my luck just a bit further.
“The Templeton-Vane Expedition to Amazonia: 1882 to 1883. For the purpose of cataloging the wildlife of the Amazonian rain forest,” I recited from memory.
“How noble you make it sound!” he mocked. “That’s what the newspapers and scientific journals called it. Really we were after hunting jaguars. As you can see, I found one,” he added with a flourish towards the scar upon his face.
I attempted a different tack. “Why do you no longer use the name Templeton-Vane?”
He gave me a smile that was half a snarl. “If you know the name Templeton-Vane, no doubt you know the answer to that question as well.”
I smoothed the bedcovers, pushing back the memories that threatened to engulf me. “I was on an expedition of my own at the time—in Java. You will understand why my grasp of news from the rest of the world is somewhat faulty.”
His brows lifted in astonishment, some of his bitterness falling away. “Java? Good God. You were there? When Krakatoa erupted?”
“Yes. I had the good sense to get as far away as Sumatra, but as it happens it was not nearly far enough. Things were . . . difficult.”
“I can only imagine.”
“No,” I said reasonably. “You cannot. No one can. I certainly couldn’t. That sort of horror is unimaginable, even for the most morbid of us. In a curious way, it proved Aristotle correct—‘In all natural things there is somewhat of the marvelous.’ If you use ‘marvelous’ in the strictest sense, as describing something that causes astonishment. I have never been so little, nor the wonders of the world so vast, as in those hours when the whole of the earth seemed to crack open.” I paused, then resumed my discourse with an air of brisk detachment I did not feel, could never feel about that time. “News from home was scarce. It was months before I saw an English newspaper. I only ever heard that your expedition was unsuccessful and that you disappeared for some time into the jungle.”
“And that is all that you heard?” he asked, his eyes bright with interest.
“I told you, I was familiar with the name and that you undertook an expedition to the Amazon which was not a triumph. Beyond that, I know nothing.”
“Well, that explains why you remained in my care even though you knew who I was. Anyone else would have run as if they had seven devils on their heels.”
I gave him a jocular smile. “Come now, how bad can it be?”
“As it happens,” he said, not returning the smile, “very bad indeed. I lost my marriage, my honor, and damned near my eye as well. The newspapers called me villain and scoundrel and monster and printed a hundred stories of the evil I have done.”
I shrugged. “You know what newspapers are. They forever make mistakes.”
His gaze was dark and fathomless as a midnight sea. “Yes, they do. In my case, they did not tell the half of it.”