She turned to me inquiringly and I introduced myself, shaking hands with her as the dog emitted another cloud of effluent causing Stoker to hold his breath.
“Stoker,” I admonished. “This is no time to indulge in asphyxiation.”
“It might be the foulest thing I have ever smelt, and I have worked on cadavers,” he muttered.
With the help of Puggy’s mistress, we disentangled Stoker from his new friend and gave our attention to the presentation of the prizes. We placed third behind the Amazons in second and the winner, a Mona Lisa who bore a startling resemblance to the original and turned out to be a slender youth called Edwin. He was thoroughly delighted with his prize champagne, but Stoker was not consoled with our placement.
“I was stripped nearly naked and almost suffocated by a decaying pug,” he grumbled as we made our way home, fully dressed and resembling once more the respectable citizens we were. “That ought to count for something.”
“Never mind,” I soothed. “The evening could hardly have been more productive. We have made the acquaintance of Miss Elyot. There has been the introduction of a complication in the form of a mysteriousgentleman in black, and he has a connection to Lord Ambrose, a fellow who has already engaged our suspicions.”
“Up to his pretty neck in it,” Stoker agreed. “I suppose you are going to insist we call upon Miss Trevelyan and Miss Elyot without delay?”
“For once, I mean to surprise you,” I told him. “I think we ought to wait.”
“Wait? Veronica, I had no notion that word was even in your vocabulary. You are the most impetuous, headstrong, reckless—”
“There is no call to make hurtful remarks,” I cut in.
“Hurtful? I mean them as compliments. I could not endure the company of a Miss Elyot for ten minutes, fainting and swooning and giving way to fits of the vapours.” He paused to shudder. “I cannot think of anything more horrifying than shackling oneself for all of eternity to a woman with anything less than your courage. You are a lioness, Veronica.” I sniffed hard and he peered down at me. “My god, if you mean to weep, warn me so that I may stop the cab and leave you here upon this pavement.”
“I donotmean to weep,” I said, blinking furiously. “How lowering that you should think so. I was merely reflecting on how felicitous it is to be understood and loved for oneself—really loved, with no design to alter or diminish the object of one’s affection. It is a rare thing.”
“To change one hair of your head would make you something other than Veronica,” he said simply.
“Stoker, do look that direction and survey the contents of that window,” I said, directing him towards the inviting goods of a pastry shop whose wares had been temptingly arranged.
He did as I asked and in a very few moments I had blown my nose and wiped my cheeks, slipping my hand in his.
“I was jesting, you know,” he said in a low voice. “You may weep in front of me. I do not promise to enjoy it, but I will endure it.”
“I do not care to weep in front ofmyself, ” I told him dryly. “You may imagine how little I like it with an audience.”
He squeezed my hand and we sat thus, enjoying a rare moment of calm as we surveyed the passing streets. It was early enough that the fashionable folk were still abroad, their carriage wheels ringing out as their silks swished up steps and into private houses and glittering theatres as the narrow crescent moon rose high overhead. The streetlamps lent a warm glow, causing amber pools of light to gather at the corners, and the first chestnut sellers of the season were abroad, roasting their wares over smoking braziers. The aroma of them mingled with face powder and falling leaves and the arisings of the horses waiting patiently at the kerbs. It was not a remarkable scene in any way, only the same comings and goings London had seen for centuries and would doubtless see for centuries more. We were tiny players upon that stage, I realised, called upon to deliver a short line or two before taking our bows and exiting forever. And the distance between one’s entrance and one’s final curtain was a short one indeed in the scope of eternity.
I said as much to Stoker, and he nodded absently. “Yes, we shall all be dead soon enough.”
“How maudlin you are!” I scolded playfully. “And so melancholy about it that I have half a mind to argue the opposite and say we shall live forever.”
He shrugged. “We thought of death often in the navy. The sea is so vast, it has a way of making everything else small. We planned for our deaths even. Hardly an evening passed that we did not debate whether it was better to be taken by sharks or lost in a storm or swept overboard by a rogue wave. And if the sea herself did not take you, there was always the chance of a handy bombardment to do the job.”
“And what did you conclude? How would you choose?”
“I never could make up my mind,” he said solemnly. “A man cannot choose to die when he has never yet learnt to live.” He paused and thetightness settled behind my eyes again. But before I could respond, he went on. He put a fingertip to the heavy gold earring hanging from his lobe. “Do you know why sailors pierce their ears?”
“Boredom?” I hazarded.
A tiny smile played about his mouth. “It is so that when we are lost at sea, if our bodies wash up on a foreign shore, there is money enough to bury us. Clothes are torn off in the waves, you see. Only an earring, solid gold and of high purity, might survive long enough to ensure a proper burial. A sailor is never far from his own death. He makes friends with it the moment he sets foot upon his first ship, and he walks with it forever.” He paused. “There was one lad, a young midshipman, newly come aboard. He was careless of his footing in a storm and slipped overboard. It happened so quickly, he never even had a chance to cry out. By the time we turned ’round, he was gone. We were not far off of Cyprus, and it is possible he landed there, on the rocks of the shore. But he hadn’t had a chance to pierce his ear yet. I used to wonder if his body ever made it to shore, and if it did, what they would have done for him with no money to pay for a grave.”
“I understand,” I said, pausing suddenly to search his face. “That is why you wish to find the Beauty’s identity, to lay her properly to rest. It is because she has washed up amongst strangers.”
“Something like that,” he said.
He might have spoken matter-of-factly about such things, but I understood that to speak of them at all meant he felt them deeply. He must have contemplated his own mortality on a daily basis aboard theLuna, and I was not surprised the experience had marked him forever, as indelibly as his collection of tattoos. We fell silent then, understanding one another better under the narrow glow of that cold silver moon.
When we reached the grounds of Bishop’s Folly, we alighted and he walked me to my little chapel. The interlude that followed was one of unusual tenderness, slow and ardent, and all the more passionate for itssweetness. Long after, when the candles had guttered into darkness and we lay, limbs and bedsheets entangled so thoroughly it was impossible to say where one of us left off and the other began, I stroked his hair.
“Stoker?” I whispered, uncertain if he slept.