Swinburne was next to stoke the furnace of indignation. At lunchtime, he drank too much wine and mused that any flower probably enjoyed a closer relationship with the divine than even the most pious human could achieve. “What shrubbery doesn’t pass the day in silent meditation upon the pure and joyous elegance of existence?” he pondered.

“The cognisance of God in all His glory is exclusive to Man, Mr. Swinburne,” Eliza Arundell objected. “That is why we have dominion.”

“Really, ma’am?” Swinburne drawled. “Do you include the Brahmin and the Muslim? What of the African tribesman or Australian aborigine?”

Mrs. Arundell bristled. “Outside the Church there is no salvation, sir. Those you mention will go to the everlasting fire unless, before the end of life, they have joined the one true Church of Jesus Christ, the Saviour.”

Swinburne threw up his arms and squealed, “My dear lady, if a faith, in order to feel secure in itself, must condemn anyone whose opinion differs from its own, then it is a faith with no faith at all!”

“Algy, please,” Burton growled. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

Mrs. Arundell pushed her chair back and stood, her back stiff. “For once, I’m in agreement with my future son-in-law. If you feel it appropriate to question the beliefs held by your hosts, sir, then you are not a gentleman. I insist that you hold your tongue. If you cannot, you will oblige me by leaving this house.”

With that, she turned and stalked from the dining room.

“I say!” Swinburne muttered. “I never claimed to be a gentleman.”

“Pretend to be, lad,” Monckton Milnes advised. “Pretend to be.”

After lunch, the remaining Arundells made their excuses and left their wayward guests to their own devices.

Isabel returned to her bed. Isabella Beeton, Sister Raghavendra, and Lallah Bird settled in the drawing room.

Swinburne found a desk and set to work on his poem, Tristan and Isolde. Monckton Milnes and Levi buried themselves in the depths of a philosophical discussion. Sam Beeton and Doctor Bird played billiards. Burton chatted with Steinhaueser.

The afternoon passed, the rain pattered against the windows, and at seven o’clock everyone reconvened for dinner. Mrs. Arundell kept the length of the table between herself and Swinburne. Monckton Milnes assiduously regulated the poet’s drinking and Burton was at his sociable best, charming the gathering with tall tales of Africa and, quite remarkably, managing to keep those tales clean and palatable. Isabel, too—having napped for four hours—was effervescent and witty, which prompted Sam Beeton to say to Burton during the post-prandial smoking, “You two belong together, that much is obvious to all.”

“I never felt I belonged anywhere until I met her,” Burton replied. “Now I feel I can belong any place at all, provided I am with her.”

Beeton smiled and nodded. “I understand exactly what you mean, old man. Why, before I married, I was—Good Lord! What was that?”

A loud scream had echoed through the manor.

“Les femmes!” Eliphas Levi exclaimed.

Without another word, the men crashed out of the smoking room and raced along the hallway to the drawing room, where they found the women gathered around Lallah Bird, who’d apparently swooned onto a chaise longue.

“Stand back, please,” John Steinhaueser commanded. “Allow Doctor Bird to attend his wife.”

“What happened?” Burton asked.

“I don’t know,” Isabella Beeton answered. “She opened the curtain—” she pointed toward a nearby window, “—to see whether the moon had pierced the clouds, then screamed and fell back in a dead faint.”

“It was a face,” Blanche said. “I saw it, too. A terrible face!”

Smythe Piggott moved to his wife’s side and put a comforting arm around her.

“I need to get smelling salts from my bag,” George Bird muttered.

“Here, I have some. I always carry them with me,” Steinhaueser said, handing a small bottle to his colleague. He turned as a footman entered the room. “Would you fetch a glass of brandy, please?”

The clockwork figure clanged its assent and hastened away.

Burton moved to the window and looked out. The rain was still falling and the night was pitch dark. He couldn’t see a thing.

Lallah Bird uttered a small cry and pushed the smelling salts away from her face. She moaned and put her hands to her mouth. Her husband helped her to sit up.

The footman returned with the brandy, and after a couple of sips of it, Lallah’s eyes fluttered open and she wailed, “I saw a man! Oh, George! A horrible brute at the window!”

“There there, dearest,” Bird said. “It was probably Tom Honesty, the gardener.”

“He hardly qualifies as a brute,” Swinburne protested. “And at this time of night? In this rain?”

The doctor frowned at him. “I think it rather less likely that we’d have an intruder in such weather, don’t you?”

“It wasn’t Tom,” Lallah said. “It was a—a—a monstrosity!”

“I’m going to take a look outside,” Burton announced. The other men—with the exception of Uncle Renfric and Doctor Bird—immediately elected to accompany him.

While the group changed into overcoats and boots, the cousins Rudolph and Jack went down to the basement storage rooms and returned with five clockwork lanterns.

Separating into pairs, the men left the manor and spread out across the grounds. Burton, with Swinburne, first examined the lawn where it abutted the wall beneath the window, but the grass there was short, springy, and despite being wet, didn’t hold a print.

They spent forty minutes in the unceasing rain.

There were no signs of an interloper.

George Bird gave his wife a mild sedative and the women went to bed. The men stayed up until well past midnight.

When Burton finally retired, he looked in on Bram and found him fast asleep. The explorer hadn’t seen much of the boy—just for the change of clothes after visiting the castle and dressing to dine in the evening—but he knew the Whisperer was enjoying his time “below stairs,” having become a firm favourite with the staff.

The explorer fell into a profoundly deep sleep the moment he laid his head on the pillow. He dreamt he was inside a brightly lit castle, talking to Nurse Florence Nightingale, which was curious because he’d never met her.

“You will lie still, sir, or I shall have you strapped down.”

Damn and blast you, woman! I’m perfectly fine!

“You know that isn’t true.”

I know you’re an interfering, meddlesome, infuriating shrew!

“Undo your shirt. I have to listen to your heart.”

And I have to listen to whatever that blundering young dolt is thinking, which I can’t do with you fussing around me like a bloody gadfly. You’re a confounded distraction, woman!

“Thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Now shut up. You’ve made yourself breathless. Much more nonsense and you’ll have palpitations again, which is, need I remind you, exactly what you brought me here to prevent.”

Then hurry up about it and begone! The crisis is upon us. I must concentrate.

“Richard! Richard!”

Burton woke up. Someone was knocking on the bedroom door.

“Richard! Rouse yourself, man!”

Bram Stoker stepped out of the valet’s room, rubbing his eyes.

“See who that is, lad,” Burton mumbled. He sat up and reached for his watch. It was a quarter to eight.

Bram opened the door. John Steinhaueser, wrapped in a dressing gown, stepped in. “Richard. Come at once. Something is wrong with Isabel.”

“What? Is she ill?” Burton jumped out of bed, lifted his jubbah from the bedpost, and hastily wound it about himself.

“She won’t wake up. Her maid found her in—in—”

“In what?”

“She might be in a coma, Richard.”