A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) by Deanna Raybourn (english novels for students .txt) 📕

I sipped. “You mightn’t enjoy playing the hostess, but no one can gainsay your expertise in the garden.”

“I wish I were there now,” she told me. “I understand plants. People are a different matter entirely.”

She hesitated, then nodded with obvious reluctance towards the empty space on the sofa beside her. I sat and sipped at my tea, refusing cake and sandwiches and bread and butter.

“It’s all so pointless,” she said at length and with some bitterness. “Why must we sit around so stupidly, having precisely the same conversations with exactly the same people, day after day? I would far rather have a quick cup of tea in the garden and then get back to my work.”

“Surely not on a day like today,” I teased with a glance to the window. Ribbons of rain silvered the glass.

“Especially on a day like today,” she countered. “Plants behave differently when they are wet. I learn something new every time I am near them. You must feel the same about butterflies,” she challenged.

“Butterflies do not fly in the rain,” I reminded her.

She tipped her head as though the thought had never occurred to her before. “What do they do in the rain?”

“Cling to a handy bush or shrub, shelter under a leaf. Their wings are made of overlapping scales, so tiny they are almost imperceptible to the naked eye. If the scales collect too much moisture, the wings will be too heavy to lift the butterfly from its perch. Part of the charm of hunting them is the knowledge that they thrive in good weather in temperate climates.”

“But I know I have seen our glasswings flutter about in the rain,” she said.

“That is what makes them special,” I told her. “The distinction of the glasswing is that it lacks the scales of other varieties. It is the scales that lend color to a butterfly’s wing. A creature without those scales is colorless but magnificent in its own way and able to fly in the rain. Perhaps it is an example of Mr. Darwin’s theories on adaptive evolution,” I suggested.

“You mean the weather here is so changeable that in order for a butterfly to thrive, it would adapt to the conditions in which it lives?”

“Something like that.”

“You are a follower of Mr. Darwin’s theories?” she asked.

“I am interested,” I corrected. “I tend towards Mr. Huxley’s more reserved approach. I am an empiricist and believe what I observe. Stoker tends to give greater credence to Darwin,” I added, and at the mention of his name, Mertensia flushed.

She covered her blushes by munching at a prawn sandwich, and I took the opportunity to change the subject.

“I am sorry if I distressed you yesterday with my question about Rosamund. Impertinence is rather a bad habit of mine.”

She brushed the crumbs from her fingers. “Not so impertinent after all,” she said. “It seems Malcolm had a purpose to this gathering the whole time.”

“Did he share it with you?”

“He did not.” Her dark eyes were wary. “It seems he has been keeping secrets from me,” she added with an attempt at lightness.

“You didn’t know about the traveling bag?”

She shook her head and took up a piece of cake but did not eat it.

“It must have come as a shock,” I supposed. “To have so much uncertainty about her fate and then to learn that your brother believes she never left the island alive—it is ghastly.”

Her eyes flashed to mine. “I never believed Rosamund left the island,” she said with brutal finality.

“What makes you think she never left?” I pressed.

“Because she would never have walked away from her life’s ambition at the moment she achieved it,” Mertensia told me.

“Then what do you think became of her if she did not leave the island?” I pressed.

Her lips parted and she looked down at her hands, almost in surprise, it seemed. The piece of cake had been crumbled to bits. She wiped her fingers and put her tea things aside, her movements deliberate. “You must excuse me now. I have spent the morning cutting hydrangeas and must put them into glycerin if I am to preserve them for the winter.”

She left me then and almost immediately Helen Romilly slipped into her place. “May I pour you another cup, Miss Speedwell?”

I assented and she played Mother. Her hand was steady, I noticed, and she passed me the cup with a small smile.

“I must thank you, both for your kindness and your discretion,” she began.

“Think nothing of it,” I instructed.

She held up a hand. “Please. You were very understanding and I have no excuse for my behavior, only that it is difficult being here again.”

“You were here for the wedding, were you not?”

She nodded, her dark hair gleaming in the lamplight. At her throat was pinned a mourning brooch, a lock of hair woven into a crosshatched pattern forming the center.

“Lucian’s,” she said, putting a finger to the brooch. “I do not like coming here, but I feel closer to him, knowing this place was so dear to him.”

“You must miss him terribly.” I sipped at my tea and watched a tiny wrinkle etch itself between her brows.

“Not as much in London. Here he is always present because this was his home, but in London we were always changing lodgings, forever buffeted by the winds of chance,” she said. Her voice was light, but there was a strain in her manner and I wondered exactly how happy her marriage had been.

She went on. “My husband was an optimist, almost childlike in his belief that the next great thing was about to happen. He had great power to make others believe it too, or at least he made me believe it,” she added with a gentle smile. She turned and beckoned to the cat, Hecate, who leapt lightly onto her lap and settled herself, regarding me with lamplike eyes. Helen’s hands, beautiful and slim, fell to stroking the animal as it purred.

“There is an otherworldliness to