A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) Deanna Raybourn (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📖

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Under Tiberius’ capable direction, the entire island was searched. The fishermen and villagers scoured the buildings and fields, not omitting the various nooks and crannies and smugglers’ caves that were inevitable in such a place. Mertensia and Caspian formed an unlikely alliance and made a careful search of the grounds of the castle. Tiberius remained in the library with the understanding that anyone who discovered anything of note would report immediately to him, and Stoker and I were left with the task of searching the castle itself.

“It’s a ridiculous notion,” I muttered after we had climbed our fourteenth staircase and inspected what felt like our twenty-seventh empty bedchamber. “He might be anywhere. Has anyone even counted the boats? He might have sailed to one of the Three Sisters.”

“Impossible,” Stoker replied as he poked his head into a mercifully empty water closet. “He knows these waters. He would never have attempted such a suicidal act.”

I stopped what I was doing and leveled my gaze at Stoker.

“Don’t,” he ordered, intuiting my thoughts. “Do not even suggest it.”

“We must consider the possibility,” I insisted. “You will admit he has suffered a great deal, and he seems a sensitive sort of man. Who is to say that finding Rosamund’s traveling bag was not the final straw? It has clearly preyed upon his mind. Perhaps having that proof that she did not leave of her own accord was too much for him. He might have brooded on it ever since he came upon it until he could stand it no more. Just imagine—he was deeply in love with her, and losing her must have been a heart-wrenching experience. After years of uncertainty, he finally discovers evidence that she did not leave this island, that she must be dead. He invites a dearest select group of guests to help him discover the truth of her disappearance and instead he seems to have raised a ghost. What horror that must have kindled within him! He must have been nearly out of his mind with grief and shock. What more natural thing than that he should decide to join her?”

“You are forgetting two things,” Stoker pointed out reasonably. “First, if Rosamund’s traveling bag never left the island, neither did she.”

“Your point being?”

“That she was clearly murdered,” he stated.

“Feathers. She might have met with an accident. She might have died of natural causes. She might have—”

“She might have been swallowed by a whale, but it’s not bloody likely,” he retorted. “I forgot your tendency towards melodrama.”

“My tendency to melodrama! You are the one insisting Rosamund was the victim of a crime worthy of a penny dreadful.”

He folded his arms over the breadth of his chest. “Veronica. I realize that your feelings for Tiberius have clouded your judgment, but do try not to be quite so much a woman.”

I gaped at him in mute outrage.

He went on in a tone of such maddening calm that I was tempted to bring an andiron down on his head. “You have, upon many and various occasions, persuaded me that a woman might be just as capable of rational thought as a man. I might even be so generous as to point out that you have, once or twice, been possessed of more sangfroid than I myself. But I find you sadly lacking in any matter that touches my brother.”

“Of all the cheap and desperate insults, to attack my scientist’s brain,” I began.

He held up a hand. “If you mean to rage at me, can you do it whilst we search? Otherwise we shall never finish the entirety of the castle.”

He left the room and I had no choice but to trot after him, my footsteps clipping sharply on the stone floors. We continued to search in silence for some time, neither of us speaking beyond necessity.

We discovered nothing of note until we came to the last room. I pointed to the little card written in tidy script. Mrs. Lucian Romilly. I rapped gently but there was no reply. We slipped into the room, closing the door noiselessly behind us. The bedside table was littered with tins of pastilles, moist handkerchiefs, a tiny crystal goblet suitable for liqueurs, and a little flask of green glass with a chemist’s label. Stoker lifted it and gave a tentative sniff.

“Some sort of medicine?” I asked.

“Only to a Scotsman,” he said with a snort. “It’s rather fine single malt.”

I thought of her gin-filled bottle of hair wash and wondered how many other caches of spirits she had brought. Her slippers—ridiculously high-heeled affairs embellished with feathers and a satin ruffle—had been left where she dropped them. Hung by the washstand was her dressing gown, an impractical confection of lilac silk. “Curious,” I said, running a finger over the watery silk. “I should not have thought her the silk dressing gown sort.”

“What would you have thought her?” Stoker asked as he rummaged slowly through the drawers of a low chest beneath the window.

“Black satin. A sober velvet at a push. But not something as frivolous as pale purple silk.”

“She is a fantasist,” Stoker said flatly. “She would rather believe in her own imagination than in reality.”

“How can you know that?” I demanded.

He held up the book he had unearthed beneath her shirtwaists. “Her taste in private literature. A rather racy French novel with a dashing hero who risks all for his ladylove. He’s always selling himself into piracy to rescue her or renouncing holy orders to clasp her to his manly breast.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know what the book is about?”

“I’ve read it,” he said simply. “I trade books with the parlormaid at Bishop’s Folly, and she has a penchant for French romances. You wouldn’t like them,” he added with a malicious smile.

“And why not?”

“Because they always feature couples who trust one another.” Before I could respond, he canted his head, studying the trunk. “What is that doing here?”

“Perhaps it hasn’t been carried back to the box room,”