The Serpent's Shadow (26 page)

She took a few deep breaths of relatively sweet air to raise her spirits. The museum stood in a neighborhood that was patrolled religiously by street sweepers, and until winter came, there would be no dense smoke from coal fires lingering in the air. Peter looked about for a moment, then turned back to her. “Would you mind terribly if I took you to my club for dinner?” he asked diffidently, as she stood on the sidewalk at the base of the lion statue and waited for him to indicate a direction. “I know I asked you to come here later than teatime, and I shouldn't like you to starve on my account.”

“Your club?” she said with surprise. “I thought that men's clubs were havens
away
from the company of mere females.” An older gentleman passing by overheard her response, and smiled briefly into her eyes before continuing on into the museum.

Peter chuckled. “They often are, but this one happens to have a room where one can bring lady guests for a meal without disturbing the meditations of the members—largely, I suspect, because the female relatives of our members have insisted on it.”

“In that case—” She thought for a moment. She
had
told Gupta not to expect her for dinner, expecting to make a meal of whatever she found in the kitchen when she returned home. “I suppose it is a place where we won't be overheard? If so, I accept your kind invitation—if not, perhaps we ought to, oh, take a walk in Hyde Park instead?” She tilted her head to the side, quizzically. “I've no objection to a walk instead of a meal.”

“Better to say that it's a place where it won't matter if we're overheard.” With that mysterious statement, he hailed a passing cab—a hansom—and handed her into it.

With the cabby right overhead, they kept their conversation to commonplaces—he, inquiring if she intended to take a holiday anywhere this summer and commiserating when she admitted that neither her duties nor her schedule would permit it. “I'm afraid I'm in the situation where I cannot leave my business, and London in the summer can be stifling,” he said with a grimace. “Especially in August. Usually the worst weather doesn't last long, but it can be very uncomfortable, even with doors and windows wide to catch whatever breeze there might be.”

“You say this to someone who lived through summers in Delhi?” she laughed. “Pray complain about ‘hot' weather to someone else! If the worst comes, I'll serve gin-and-tonics, then install a
punkah
fan in the conservatory and hire one of the neighborhood urchins to swing it!”

The cab stopped outside a staid old Georgian building of some pale-colored stone. Peter handed her out and paid the cabby, then offered his hand to help her up the steps to where a uniformed doorman waited. This worthy was a stiff-backed, stone-faced gentleman of military bearing, whose mustache fairly bristled disapproval as he looked at her.

“Good evening, Mr. Scott,” he said unsmilingly, holding the door open immediately.

“And a good evening to you, Cedric,” Peter Scott replied cheerfully. “Is Almsley in the club today?”

“I don't believe so, sir. Shall I tell him that you and your guest are here and would like to see him if he arrives?” Although the doorman's face held no expression at all, his eyes were narrowed in speculation.

“Please do.” That was all Scott had time for before the door shut behind them. He didn't seem the least disturbed at the doorman's disapproval, though perhaps that was only because he had already known what the old fellow would think.

She dismissed the thought and held her head high. No doorman was going to intimidate her. After all, she was a professional, a physician, and an adult, and had every right to go anywhere she pleased,
with
anyone she pleased. If it was her Indian heritage that the doorman disapproved of, well, that was his problem and not hers unless she chose to make it so. He could disapprove all he liked, since he was not in a position to bar her from entry.

They stood in a foyer that had probably been decorated in the first years of Victoria's reign or the last years of her father‘s, and hadn't been touched since. It featured the neoclassical motifs that had been popular then; the furniture was not burdened with draperies and flounces to hide its “limbs,” although the colors were more in keeping with the Victorians' love of dark shades—the room had been papered in brocade of deep green, the Oriental carpet featured the same color, and the upholstery was a faded burgundy. There was a faint hint of old tobacco smoke in the air, and a great deal of dust. Peter Scott led Maya in through a door immediately to the right before she had much more time to look around.

This room had something of an air of disuse, but was furnished to more recent taste—the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The blue wallpaper, figured with peacocks and sinuous acanthus, supported a pair of Morris tapestries; the furnishings, upholstered in dark blue brocade, romantic in style and evocative of the great hall of an ancient castle, could only have come from the same workshop as the tapestries. The quaintly figured carpet, also blue, had a pattern of twining green vines. There was even a painting over the fireplace that Maya was willing to swear was by Millais. A massive sideboard stood beneath the tapestries. There were couches beneath the two windows overlooking the street, two chairs with curvaceous side tables, one on either side of the fireplace, and four dinner tables with four chairs each, none of which were occupied. Peter made a motion to Maya to indicate that she could take her seat anywhere, and reached for a tapestry bell pull beside the doorway, giving it a firm yank.

By the time they were both seated—which was no time at all—a uniformed waiter had appeared at the door, bearing a tray that held two glasses, a bottle of whiskey, a siphon of soda, and a second bottle of something straw-colored.

“Would you or your guest like to see a menu, Mr. Scott?” the waiter asked, deftly pouring Peter a whiskey and soda and setting it down in front of him. Maya held up her hand to prevent him from pouring her a glass of ratafia, since her nose identified the contents of the decanter as he unstoppered it.

“I should prefer a whiskey and soda myself, please,” she said firmly. “But I don't believe that I need a menu. If you have a roast or a curry, I shall have that, with steamed vegetables and rice.”

The waiter raised an eyebrow; Peter's lips twitched, but something of a smile escaped him. The waiter poured her whiskey and soda, and murmured, with more respect, “It's lamb curry tonight, mum. Will that suit?”

“Admirably, thank you.” She granted him a smile, and he vanished, leaving the door half open, and prudently leaving the bottle and soda siphon behind.

“I think you frightened him,” Peter said, as she took her first sip and allowed the whiskey to burn its way down her throat. His eyes twinkled with suppressed amusement.

“What, because of this?” She raised her glass. “I rarely indulge, actually, but it has been a long day, and I am
not
going to be poured a glass of ratafia as if I were your maiden aunt!”

“Still,
whiskey?
And
before dinner?
I fear you have convinced him I've brought in a suffragette, and next you will be pulling out a cigar to smoke!” Peter was having a hard time concealing his mirth. “You will have quite shattered my reputation with the staff by the time dinner is over!”

She gazed at him penetratingly, then shrugged. “I
am
a suffragette, though I may not march in parades and carry banners. Or smoke cigars. I fear you may have mistaken me if you think differently. I am not the sort of woman of whom Marie Corelli would approve.”

“I shouldn't care to be seen in the company of the sort of woman of whom Marie Corelli would approve,” said a strange voice at the door. A tall, thin, bare-headed blond with the face of a merry aesthete and a nervous manner leaned against the doorframe. Maya would have ventured to guess that he was quite ten years younger than Peter Scott, and perhaps more than that, but he saluted her companion with the further words, “Well, Twin, I understand you were looking for me?”

Peter sprang up, his expression one of open pleasure. “Almsley! Yes, I was!
This
is the young doctor I spoke to you about—Doctor Maya Witherspoon, may I introduce to you my friend Lord Peter Almsley?”

Lord Peter came forward, his hand extended; Maya swiveled in her chair and accepted it. She half expected him to kiss it in the Continental manner, but he just gave it a firm shake, with a mock suggestion of clicking his heels together.

“Might one ask what you meant by slighting Miss Corelli?” she asked, as he dropped into one of the armchairs. She had the impression of a high-strung greyhound pausing only long enough to see if it was truly wanted. “Not that I'm any great admirer of her work.”

“Only that Miss Corelli has damned dull ideas of what women should do with their lives—which makes for damned dull women,” Lord Peter said cheerfully. “Shall I join you, or would you twain prefer to condemn me to the outer hells of the member's dining room to eat my crust in woeful solitude?”

“Join us, by all means!” Peter Scott exclaimed, when Maya nodded her agreement. Maya had been disposed to like this man before she had ever met him. Scott had told her something of this young lord-ling, the most important fact of which was that he was another Water Master. Now that she'd seen him, she decided that he was worth knowing, and worth counting as a friend. And it occurred to her if she was going to have to lock horns in combat with Simon Parkening, it would be no bad thing to have someone with Lord Peter's money, title, and influence behind her.

Peter Scott rang for the waiter a second time; the man appeared, left a third whiskey glass, took Almsley's order, and vanished again.

“I assume it isn't pleasure that urges you to seek the company of my Twin, here,” Almsley said, taking over the conversation with a natural arrogance that was both slightly irritating and very charming. “Not,” he added, “that the company of a woman who was likely to incur the frowns of Marie Corelli isn't exactly what he needs in his life, but your expression leads me to think that this is not a mere social call.”

Peter Scott actually blushed; Maya refused to allow this enchanting young rascal to get any kind of a rise in temper out of her. She had the notion that he was inclined to prick people at first in order to see what they were made of. “Actually, that is correct, it is not precisely a social call,” she replied. “Though if it had not been for certain inferences on the part of my patient, I wouldn't have thought of consulting him—but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.”

She began the short tale of Simon Parkening and Paul Jenner, pausing only when the waiter entered with their meals, and taking it up again as soon as he left. She made her story as detailed as possible, so that she only just finished as the meal did. The waiter came and cleared away the remains, lighting the lamps and the gas fire, and set up liqueurs on the sideboard before he left. Peter poured himself a brandy and Maya accepted a liqueur in lieu of dessert, but Almsley retired to the sofa under the open window, lounging there with a cigarette, while Maya and Peter sat by the fire in the armchairs. By this time, the sun had set, and the street noises outside had subsided. Almsley's cigarette smoke drifted out the open window into the blue dusk.

“And so it occurred to me that there might be other ways of tracing Jenner to my clinic than the use of private agents,” she concluded. “I don't know
how
one could employ magical creatures to spy, but I presume that a Master could do so. Furthermore, it occurred to me that there might be some danger to my patients, my clinic staff, and Mr. Jenner himself associated with those—other ways.”

“Quite right,” Peter Scott agreed, and looked to Almsley, who nodded.

“I don't much care for the acquaintances this Parkening fellow has made,” Almsley said at last, after a thoughtful silence. “I admire Annie Besant when it comes to everything
but
her metaphysical notions. On that note, she and the Blavatsky crowd are harmless enough, for folk who are utterly deluded about their mystical powers. But when it comes to Uncle Aleister and his ilk, well, Jenner was right to get the wind up about some of them. And you are right to worry about Parkening tracing him to your clinic.”

“What I don't like is that Parkening has been hanging about the hospital,” Peter Scott intersected darkly. “Given what Jenner's said about him. Hmm? Gives him a far darker reason to linger than just his failed ambitions to be a doctor, or his uncle's position as Head.”

“Oho! Good point, Twin,” Almsley said, sitting bolt upright, his cigarette dangling forgotten from his fingers. “There's a lot of suffering around a hospital. No offense, Doctor, I know it's your job to relieve suffering, but—”

“No offense taken, Lord Peter,” Maya replied, her brow furrowed with thought. “It hadn't occurred to me that the hospital could be a—a reservoir of—”

“Of the drink the Dark Powers savor most,” Peter Scott said grimly. “If I were to hazard a guess, it would be that the hospital holds no charms for Parkening as a place of healing, but he finds it immensely useful as a source of power.”

Maya nodded, but her mind had gone on to other possibilities. The movement of patients in and out of the hospital was not that strictly controlled; they'd had patients get up and walk out as soon as they were able before this. What if some of them hadn't gone off of their own accord?

No, surely not. He wouldn't dare kidnap sick and injured people to
—
to torture them! Would he?
She wondered.