A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn

Author:Deanna Raybourn [Raybourn, Deanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

11

I had returned to the Belvedere and was hard at work on my gonerilla when Stoker finally appeared. The scales of the wing having been badly damaged, I had decided to remove the rest to expose the delicate tracery of the wings, leaving them transparent as a leaded window fitted with clear glass. I worked slowly, removing the scales carefully with the back of a silver fruit knife.

“Go back to bed,” I told him shortly.

“I am fine,” he returned in a low voice as he took a seat on his favorite camel saddle.

“You are unshaven, bloodshot, and weaving.”

“You have never before objected to my whiskers, my eyes still function, and I am very nearly vertical,” he said, pushing himself upright with a visible effort. “Veronica—”

“If you speak another word, I shall fling this fruit knife at your head,” I told him pleasantly as I brandished the weapon in question.

“Don’t be daft. You couldn’t hurt a caterpillar with that,” he replied. “You want something with a bit of heft. That brass cannonball, for instance,” he added, nodding towards the lump of metal resting on the desk.

“Would it do any good to apologize?” he asked.

“It would not.” I wrote out another card, blotting it badly. I tore it into careful pieces and wrote another, taking time to letter it perfectly.

“So we both behaved badly and we are neither of us going to make amends?”

“That,” I told him calmly, “is exactly right.”

“Veronica—”

“Do shut up, Stoker. I am in no mind to listen to your pathetic excuses.”

He was silent a long moment. “Very well,” he said quietly. “I cannot fault you for that. I can only tell you that one day I hope you will forgive me for what I said. God knows I will never forgive myself.”

I hurled the fruit knife cleanly past his head, causing him to sit up suddenly. “Don’t! Don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself,” I raged at him. “Self-pity is a gutter from which you will never arise. Do you know how hard I have worked to keep your head above the mud? But I was not the one who rescued you, you impossible fool. You were half-alive when I met you, a ruin of the man you could be. I have watched you claw your way back to life in the past months, taking an interest in your work, in your future. You have been the agent of your own resurrection, and you do not even see it. Have you no sense of your own gifts, of your own strengths? You are more blessed with natural abilities and native intelligence than any man I have ever met. You are a savage miracle, Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, knit together by the hands of Nature herself. But you cannot see it. In your mind, you are Samson shorn of his hair and Caroline has been your Delilah. Very well. Mourn what you have lost and pull down the temple on top of yourself. I will not weep for you. But neither will I watch you do it.

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