about what they saw in the other, and yet they both knew that the mutual knowledge was there.
Any other day, Evelina treasured that shared complicity as something that bound them together. Tonight, with so much suspicion in the air, it felt unsafe.
Tobias’s mouth twitched downward, as if he sensed her discomfort. He turned with a slight hitch in his shoulder—the merest suggestion of a shrug—and left the room. A moment later, Evelina heard his footstep on the stairs. Going to bed. Returning to bed, if one believed his tale, though how one got a black eye while snugly tucked beneath the covers beggared her imagination.
Of course he knew Grace. He saw her just before she died
.
Yes, keeping his secrets forged a link between them, but it wasn’t at all the kind of intimacy she had dreamed of sharing with Tobias Roth. And for that merest sliver of time, she hated him for it.
L ET IT BE KNOWN that the Society for the Proliferation of Impertinent Events was formed this twenty-first day of September 1887, for the exploration of practical science. The charter members of this society are the Honorable Tobias Roth, Mister Buckingham Penner, Captain Diogenes Smythe, and Mister Michael Edgerton. Membership private and by recommendation only.
They have selected for their motto the phrase “Beware, Because We Can.”
—Official Charter of SPIE,
filed in the archives of the Xanadu Gentlemen’s Club
London, April 4, 1888
THE ROYAL CHARLOTTE THEATRE
8 p.m. Wednesday
IN A JUST UNIVERSE, A SPECIAL CIRCLE OF HELL AWAITED bad opera singers. And lo, the self-appointed administrator of that justice was to be Tobias—but very few knew that just yet.
At four o’clock that afternoon,
The Flying Dutchman
dropped anchor in the Royal Charlotte Theatre with all the
gravitas
of Wagnerian excess: elaborate sets, a massive orchestra, and singers with the lung power of bull elephants. Following some logic that Tobias couldn’t fathom, the performance had started at an uncivilized hour, too late for a matinee and too early for an evening performance—but all the better to bombard the poor audience with hours of Sturmund Drang. In short, the long-awaited London debut of the Prinkelbruch opera company was not so much entertainment as a juggernaut flattening the senses.
From his throne in the balcony, Tobias scanned the horseshoe of gilt and velvet boxes. The Royal Harlot—er—Charlotte resembled a cross between a whore’s boudoir and a stale wedding cake. There was not a single surface that was not swagged, tasseled, or crusted in flaking gold paint.
Anyone who mattered in fashionable London was there, and the scent of overwarm humanity mixed with competing perfumes like an expensive fog. The heat was making Tobias itch wherever the flannel of his perfectly creased trousers touched his bare skin.
His companion, Buckingham “Bucky” Penner, lolled in his seat as if fatally shot, fanning himself with the program. “I rather like opera, but would say this
Dutchman
is a
sinking
occasion. And I, for one, am ready to walk the gangplank.”
Tobias spared a glance for his friend. “We’re not here for the music. We’re here to win the bet.”
“Ever the general, with your mind on the plan.”
“It’s certainly not on the opera. I’d run mad. That baritone oomphs his arias like a morose foghorn.”
Penner snuffled a laugh. He reminded Tobias of a mischievous spaniel, always in search of food, soft pillows, and pretty young women to snuggle up to. About half the time, he was steady, sensible, and a good listener. However, behind those mild brown eyes lurked a talent for creative geometry. No one knew how to calculate the trajectory of projectiles quite like Bucky. Given a fulcrum and a sufficient amount of force, he made things go “splat” excellently well.
And splattage was key to their machinations. The preceding autumn, Tobias Roth had wagered that he could scandalize fashionable London, land on the front page of every
Any other day, Evelina treasured that shared complicity as something that bound them together. Tonight, with so much suspicion in the air, it felt unsafe.
Tobias’s mouth twitched downward, as if he sensed her discomfort. He turned with a slight hitch in his shoulder—the merest suggestion of a shrug—and left the room. A moment later, Evelina heard his footstep on the stairs. Going to bed. Returning to bed, if one believed his tale, though how one got a black eye while snugly tucked beneath the covers beggared her imagination.
Of course he knew Grace. He saw her just before she died
.
Yes, keeping his secrets forged a link between them, but it wasn’t at all the kind of intimacy she had dreamed of sharing with Tobias Roth. And for that merest sliver of time, she hated him for it.
L ET IT BE KNOWN that the Society for the Proliferation of Impertinent Events was formed this twenty-first day of September 1887, for the exploration of practical science. The charter members of this society are the Honorable Tobias Roth, Mister Buckingham Penner, Captain Diogenes Smythe, and Mister Michael Edgerton. Membership private and by recommendation only.
They have selected for their motto the phrase “Beware, Because We Can.”
—Official Charter of SPIE,
filed in the archives of the Xanadu Gentlemen’s Club
London, April 4, 1888
THE ROYAL CHARLOTTE THEATRE
8 p.m. Wednesday
IN A JUST UNIVERSE, A SPECIAL CIRCLE OF HELL AWAITED bad opera singers. And lo, the self-appointed administrator of that justice was to be Tobias—but very few knew that just yet.
At four o’clock that afternoon,
The Flying Dutchman
dropped anchor in the Royal Charlotte Theatre with all the
gravitas
of Wagnerian excess: elaborate sets, a massive orchestra, and singers with the lung power of bull elephants. Following some logic that Tobias couldn’t fathom, the performance had started at an uncivilized hour, too late for a matinee and too early for an evening performance—but all the better to bombard the poor audience with hours of Sturmund Drang. In short, the long-awaited London debut of the Prinkelbruch opera company was not so much entertainment as a juggernaut flattening the senses.
From his throne in the balcony, Tobias scanned the horseshoe of gilt and velvet boxes. The Royal Harlot—er—Charlotte resembled a cross between a whore’s boudoir and a stale wedding cake. There was not a single surface that was not swagged, tasseled, or crusted in flaking gold paint.
Anyone who mattered in fashionable London was there, and the scent of overwarm humanity mixed with competing perfumes like an expensive fog. The heat was making Tobias itch wherever the flannel of his perfectly creased trousers touched his bare skin.
His companion, Buckingham “Bucky” Penner, lolled in his seat as if fatally shot, fanning himself with the program. “I rather like opera, but would say this
Dutchman
is a
sinking
occasion. And I, for one, am ready to walk the gangplank.”
Tobias spared a glance for his friend. “We’re not here for the music. We’re here to win the bet.”
“Ever the general, with your mind on the plan.”
“It’s certainly not on the opera. I’d run mad. That baritone oomphs his arias like a morose foghorn.”
Penner snuffled a laugh. He reminded Tobias of a mischievous spaniel, always in search of food, soft pillows, and pretty young women to snuggle up to. About half the time, he was steady, sensible, and a good listener. However, behind those mild brown eyes lurked a talent for creative geometry. No one knew how to calculate the trajectory of projectiles quite like Bucky. Given a fulcrum and a sufficient amount of force, he made things go “splat” excellently well.
And splattage was key to their machinations. The preceding autumn, Tobias Roth had wagered that he could scandalize fashionable London, land on the front page of every
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