An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,50

I listened to the mantel clock—mercifully not an Alpenwalder goat clock—tick over the minutes, and just as the quarter hour chimed, the door from the sitting room eased open.

Stoker darted in, closing the door softly behind him. I gasped and instantly regretted it; the corset permitted no deep breaths, and I whooped with laughter as I attempted to catch my breath.

“You needn’t be rude about it,” Stoker reproached me in an injured tone.

“Forgive me,” I managed. “I did not mean to wound your pride. But . . . moustaches.”

Stoker had been scrubbed and polished to within an inch of his life, his chin freshly barbered, his nails cleaner than I had ever seen them, every trace of ink and glue removed. His hair had been clubbed back into an old-fashioned queue, and perched atop his head was a shako of dark blue trimmed with silver braid. They had found him a spare uniform, dark blue and silver, each button struck with an image of the Alpenwalder otter of St. Otthild, but it was his face that had undergone the greatest transformation. Between his nose and his lip burgeoned the most extravagant set of moustaches I had ever seen. Like those of the chancellor and Captain Durand, his had been waxed into the shape of a ram’s horns, extending out from the edge of the mouth and then curling back in a grand flourish as black as his hair, thick and dense as a shrubbery. I went to him and poked with an experimental finger.

“It looks like a hedgerow. Have you got wildlife in there? I think I spy a badger,” I said.

He grimaced, or at least I think he did. It was rather difficult to tell with the concealing layer of facial hair. “How on earth did they happen to come by such a monstrosity?” I asked him.

“Apparently they travel with contingencies,” he explained. “The moustaches are part of the uniform and in case any of the officers meet with an accident, there is always a spare to hand.”

“But why are you even in uniform?” I demanded. “Surely plain clothes would have been more discreet.”

“That is what I thought,” he told me in an aggrieved tone. “But then the chancellor happened to mention that a certain Inspector Mornaday has been tasked with the role of liaison with Special Branch.”

“Hell and damnation,” I muttered.

“I said a good deal worse when I discovered it,” he told me. Mornaday was a complication we could ill afford. Our sometime ally and occasional champion, Mornaday was unpredictable as quicksilver. He longed for promotion within the confines of Special Branch—something he had recently achieved. But there was no telling how long his goodwill might last. The fact that he harbored a tendresse for J. J. Butterworth complicated the situation. He had, once or twice to my knowledge, fed her titbits that would give her an exclusive story for the Daily Harbinger. As keen for her advancement as his own, he made certain to paint his involvement in a good light. In payment for his indiscretion, she always mentioned him in laudatory tones. It was a symbiotic relationship, that of parasite and host, I thought bitterly. It was Mornaday’s deficiencies of imagination that led him to think he was the host. I knew perfectly well he was often steered towards a story by the impetuous and deeply ambitious Miss Butterworth.

“What of Sir Hugo?” I asked suddenly. “If Mornaday is there, his superior cannot be far behind.”

“Sir Hugo is abed,” he told me. “With gout.”

“Poor fellow,” I said with real sympathy. “We must send him a nice calf’s-foot jelly.”

“Or perhaps just a calf’s foot,” Stoker suggested, a gleam in his eye. He and Sir Hugo enjoyed a state of armed neutrality at the best of times.

I sighed as best as I could in my confining garb. “I suppose we will simply have to make the best of it. Keep your moustaches primped and your shako pulled low.”

Stoker gave me an appraising glance, from extravagant jewels to exuberant décolletage. “I do not think I will be the one they are looking at.” He nodded to the impossible slimness of my waist. “How can you eat in that?”

“I cannot eat,” I told him coldly. “I cannot bend. I cannot breathe. In short, I cannot do anything for which the human body is fashioned. I am an automaton for the evening, a doll, dressed and polished for your amusement.”

I might have carried on in the same vein, but his attention was