“Sir Richard and guests?” he asked, in a clipped and precise tone.

“Yes, good afternoon,” Burton replied.

“Good afternoon, sir. Thomas Honesty, groundsman. I’ll drive you to the house.”

They entered, followed the dapper fellow to the lodge house, and waited while he stoked a steam carriage’s furnace.

“My fiancée speaks very highly of you, Mr. Honesty,” Burton said. “Your flower beds are the pride of the county. I hear you had your work cut out for you after the great storm.”

“Shambles,” Honesty replied. “Place in disarray. Bad timing. Had to work fast. Clear up. Big party and lots of guests coming.”

They mounted the conveyance.

“Are there many already arrived?” Burton asked.

Honesty climbed onto the driver’s seat. “Some, sir. Miss Raghavendra. Been here a while. Mr. and Mrs. Beeton came last week. Mr. Monckton Milnes this morning—”

“Ah, old Monckton Milnes is here already!”

“Yes, sir.” The groundsman pulled a lever on the tiller and the carriage started across the grounds, steam pluming from the funnel at its rear.

“I understand the master of the house is of the Bible-thumping variety of Catholic gentleman.” Burton made this statement with a loaded glance in Swinburne’s direction. The poet grinned happily, held his fingers up to either side of his hat like little horns, and pulled a devilish face.

“Not for me to say, sir,” Honesty answered. “Lord Gerard is a good employer. He’s not here. Called away on business. Will be back for the party.”

Their vehicle rounded a small grove of oak trees and New Wardour Castle came into view.

“Mon Dieu! Il est magnifique!” Levi exclaimed.

“Cor!” Bram Stoker added. “Would ye be a-lookin’ at that, now!”

The Palladian-style manor was, indeed, a majestic edifice. Comprised of a huge main block with flanking pavilions, it was nestled among trees in a wide expanse of parkland, meadows, and lakes—a scene of exquisite pastoral beauty—that gently sloped up southeastward to a low peak, upon which, about one and a half miles away, the ruins of the old castle stood outlined against the grey sky. Even at such a distance, Burton could see the ravens Isabel had described, but more so, he could hear them. The entire estate was filled with their cawing and croaking.

“Great heavens, Mr. Honesty, you appear to have been invaded.”

“The birds, sir? Often have them. Never before in such numbers. Displaced by the storm, I suppose.”

Having followed a path across a wide lawn, the carriage eventually drew to a halt before the manor’s entrance, a modest door beneath a very large Venetian-style arched window. Honesty jumped down and, as he did so, the door opened, a clockwork footman glanced out, ducked back in, and a moment later reappeared with another of his ilk, both following the household butler, who gestured for them to take the new arrivals’ bags.

“Good day, sirs. I am Nettles. The family and guests are currently gathered in the music room. Would you care to join them immediately or shall I have the staff escort you to your rooms first?”

“I think we’d like to splash water on our faces and change out of our travelling clothes,” Burton replied. He turned to the groundsman. “Thank you, Mr. Honesty.”

Honesty touched his finger to his temple.

Nettles led Burton and his fellows through the elegant reception hall and into a grand rotunda, dominated by a double staircase that rose some sixty feet through the entire height of the building up to a beautiful domed skylight. Gazing in admiration at the stunning architecture and decor, the three men and disoriented boy—such surroundings were totally alien to Bram—trailed after the butler past the colonnaded first floor and onward up to the third, where they were shown to their adjoining rooms.

Nettles indicated one of the clockwork footmen and said, “Clunk will wait at the top of the stairs, sirs. He’ll guide you to the music room at your convenience.”

Burton, accompanied by Bram, entered his room and found soap, flannels, towels, and a basin of water on a table beneath a mirror.

“Unpack my portmanteau and lay out the clothes, would you?” he said to the boy.

Opening an inner door, he saw a small valet’s room and said, “This is where you’ll be sleeping, lad. The lap of luxury, eh?”

“I ain’t seen nothin’ like it afore, sir, so help me, I ain’t. What’ll I do with meself?”

“You’ll attend me when I require it, which’ll be first thing in the morning and just before bed, for the most part, and for the rest of the time you’ll perform whatever duties the butler assigns to you. Don’t worry—they will be light. As my valet, you’ll be treated with the proper respect by the manor’s servants, despite your youth.”

While Bram got to work unpacking, the explorer washed his face and changed his clothes. He’d just finished buttoning his waistcoat when someone knocked on the door.

“Come.”

Swinburne pranced in, his arms flapping.

“What a place, Richard! My hat! Your fiancée’s great-uncle inhabits a palace! Are you ready? Shall we say hello to the rabid Catholics? I say, they’ll offer us a drink, won’t they?”

“We can but hope.”

Monsieur Levi joined them and Clunk led the guests down to the first floor—where Bram left them to accompany a second footman to the servants’ chambers—and along to the music room, from which the tinkle of a piano could be heard. As they stepped through the double doors, Blanche saw them first, stopped playing, and gave a cry of pleasure. Her audience turned and Isabel jumped up and ran to Burton. With her family watching, she was more restrained than usual in her greeting of him, but the explorer noticed something else, too—she was pale, seemingly tired, and had a faraway look in her eyes, as if daydreaming.

“Are you all right, darling?” he murmured.

“Yes, yes, now that you are here at last!” she replied. “I haven’t been sleeping well the past couple of nights, that is all. Come and say hello to Mama and Papa.”

The Honourable Henry Raymond Arundell—nephew to Lord Gerard, the 10th Baron of Arundell—was a small man with a boyish face supplemented by an oddly square-shaped beard growing from beneath the angle of his jaw; his cheeks, upper lip, and chin were all clean-shaven. His hair showed the same golden blondness his daughter had inherited. Henry Arundell held a grudging respect for Burton—an attitude not shared by his wife—and shook the explorer’s hand with genuine warmth.

Mrs. Eliza Arundell was tall, like Isabel, with a face too masculine and severe to qualify as beautiful, though she was certainly handsome. She greeted Burton and his friends politely but cautiously, and looked down at Swinburne with an expression of bemusement, as if her son-in-law-to-be had ushered Shakespeare’s Puck into her presence.

The rest of the family was introduced; Isabel’s cousins—Rudolph, tall and somewhat bumptious in manner; Jack, short, rotund, and shy; her Uncle Renfric, white-bearded and thoroughly disapproving of, it appeared, just about everything; and Blanche’s wayward husband, John Smythe Piggott, who, though handsome, carried himself with an air of superiority that Burton found thoroughly irritating.

Next, the other guests were presented, starting with Doctor George Bird and his wife, Lallah, both of whom Isabel held in high regard. “Dear George has been teaching me to fence,” she told Burton.

“Indeed!” the explorer exclaimed as he shook the tall physician’s hand. “Have you practised the art for long, Doctor?”

“Not long enough to hold my own against you. You’re reputed one of the best in Europe.”

Burton bowed his head courteously, then said to Isabel, “But why have you taken up the foil, my dear?”

“To defend you should we be attacked in the Arabian wilderness, of course!”

Burton raised an eyebrow and shared a slight smile of amusement with Bird.