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339 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2015
I had just returned to the caravan and resumed adventuring with Arcadia Brown when Mr. Stoker burst in, soaking wet and covered in a soapy lather. His hair was dripping rivulets onto the floor, and he had wrapped a bath sheet about himself like a toga. He loomed over me, drenched and panting, having obviously run all the way from the bath tent.
“You look like one of the less capable Roman emperors,” I observed. “Go back and finish the job properly.”
“I have a crow to pluck with you. It just occurred to me – “
“It just occurred to you that I was at liberty and might make my escape. Yes, I know. You are a wretched abductor, Mr. Stoker. I suggest you do not take up felonious activity as a career.”
His expression was sullen. “You will have to make allowances. It is, after all, my first abduction.”
"...Perhaps some tidying up would be in order." I suggested hopefully, regarding the chaos of his surroundings.
"Touch so much as a hair of a sloth's head, and I will have you shot," he said darkly.
”But those of us who have been given the benefit of learning and useful occupation, well, we are the proof that the traditional notions of feminine delicacy and helplessness are the purest poppycock.”Veronica Speedwell, Victorian lady and globetrotting lepidopterist extraordinaire. Her wit, her sass, her quirkiness, her own original brand of early feminism, I loved each and every page in her company.
Something about his quickness of mind, his determination to live by his own lights, had called to me. I recognized his nature as my own. It was as if we were two castaways from a far-off land, adrift among strangers whose ways we could not entirely understand. But something within us spoke the same language, for all our clashes of words. He did not trust me entirely; that much was certain. And I frequently frustrated him to the point of madness. But I knew that whatever bedeviled him, he had need of me—and it seemed a betrayal to turn my back upon one of my own kind. I had seldom met another such as we, and I had learned that to be a child of the wilderness was a lonely thing.