The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard (London Paranormal 03) (4 page)

For the past fortnight she had worried so much, even going so far as to threaten her staff regarding the preparations for the solemn and supremely important occasion. This dinner tonight at the Towers was to be an elegant affair, with every course carefully selected. Eve had barely managed a wink of sleep last night, as she was more than a trifle concerned with the trifle… and the truffles… and the good doctors' opinions on her methods of treatment for her patients. She knew she was a fine doctor, and she espoused many of the new treatments for the mentally insane; however, she restricted the newer methods to a degree, believing that each patient deserved a treatment befitting not only their specific madness, but their species. She treated hotheaded merfolk and selkies to cold baths, but did not make other surly shape-shifters dip into icy waters. She had only once done a lobotomy, and only on a gargoyle in stone form who had too much on his mind. Restrictive jackets she used only on vampires with extreme oral fixations and in full bloodlust. Yes, her methods were different, but she was achieving results, and she hoped the other doctors would think so as well.

With great deliberation she had issued the invitations, hoping that the guests—Dr. Sigmund, Count Caligari, and Dr. Crane—might be able to contribute to the treatments of two of her more worrisome cases. But also, more important, she hoped they might provide much-needed funding for the Towers.

The doors flung back against the walls broke into her thoughts as Teeter tottered into the room. "Your visitor has arrived. Mr. Beard is here to see you, Dr. Eve," he pronounced.

Her father often used Mr.
Beard
as an alias, especially when in London, where he was wanted by the English government for crimes against the Crown on the high seas some three-score years ago. And although piracy was not the threat it had been in the 1700s, it was still enough of a concern to make certain Captain Bluebeard had a price on his head of twenty thousand pounds for capture, dead or alive. Twenty thousand was a tidy sum, even if her finicky father thought the amount on his head should be at least forty. That was a grievance he would usually raise after emptying a keg or two of rum.

Stopping her fingers from their repetitive drumming, Eve watched her father enter her study like a clipper ship under full sail, then waited for him to fire the opening volley. He had taught her well: Never fire until you see the whites of the skull and crossbones, and never let your enemies or friends see you sweat—not even when deep in the sweltering heat of the tropics.

This afternoon her father was wearing a blue velvet jacket with a blue carnation in his buttonhole. A large blue diamond earring twinkled from his ear. His blue eyes were large, and the corners were webbed with telltale lines of hard loving and living. He carried a cutlass and two pistols, both probably loaded.

Eve smiled as she stood to greet the wayward salt of the sea, scrutinizing him. His bluish-black hair was tied back in a queue, his beard neatly trimmed. He was a handsome man who still appeared to be in his late fifties, though with his werewolf ancestry he was much older.

The old pirate was dressed to the nines this afternoon, as befitted a gentleman, but a gentleman he was not; he was a wily old scalawag who gave no quarter and did not take mutiny lightly. And for the past twelve years, Eve had been the mutineer in his life. Her financial situation was getting desperate, but she'd never ask the Captain for help. He'd never share any of his ill-gotten gains, not without attaching conditions like babies galore and closing the asylum.

He came to a stop before her desk, rolling on bandy legs as if he were still stationed upon the deck of his ship. Glancing about, hands on hips, he grimly shook his head. "As always, I feel like I've blundered into a madhouse!"

Eve narrowed her eyes. So, this was his opening volley? "You have. But then, you're well acquainted with madness, aren't you? If I remember correctly, your first mate thinks he's a dog and is always barking at whales. Do you still have that same boatswain, the one who thinks he's the prince regent, having everyone curtsy to him?"

Squinting and growling, Captain Bluebeard snarled at her. "He's the best boatswain I've ever had, and you
know
me first mate's a weredog. I suppose ye be putting on airs now ye're all respectable."

Her return shot had drawn blood. Eve hid her smile. "And a fine weredog he is. I've always liked Mr. Collie."

Rolling his eyes, Bluebeard shook his head. "Don't try yer sweet talk now. It won't work," he said, then glanced around the room. "I can't believe me own daughter would choose to close herself up behind these dreary, dank walls. You should be sailing the oceans, with bluebirds of happiness flying high overhead, harboring in crystal-blue lagoons, the cries of gulls and a hearty crew of cutthroats
yo-ho-hoing
in yer ears."

"More like a bunch of drunken sots
yo-ho-hoing
about their bottles of rum," Eve retorted, a little stung by her father's scurvy tidings.

"Come now, lass. Ye must miss the sea. It's in yer blood, it is. Ye have a head on your pretty shoulders, lassie. It's past time you started using it, instead of mucking about in people's mad starts. Ye have such a flair with the cutlass, and can navigate a ship near better than meself. Nobody dead or alive can yell, 'Hoist up the mainsail' better than ye. You're wasting away here, Evie! Ye should be surrounded by sea chests filled with booty, the brisk salt breezes blowing through that mane of yours."

Eve frowned fiercely. Bluebeard was using his considerable charm to bedevil her with guilt. "You know, trying to make me feel guilty isn't going to work. It never has. It's true that I love the sea, but I also love my work here." It was so like him to disparage her choices. He wanted her to be a chip off the old block, but she just wanted what she had.

"I've no longing to board a ship and sail away from my problems. I've worked hard for respectability, in both my profession and my personal life," Eve pronounced coolly. "It's what I want, and well you know it. Don't you ever tire of having this same lame discussion year after year?"

Bluebeard shook his head. "I never should have taken your mother to wife. What with her fancy ways and blue-blooded ancestry—gave ye airs it did, and the ill luck of making ye a bit too compassionate for those in need. Yer mother never could refuse anyone or anything in pain. We had more stray cats and dogs on me ship than the ocean has fish." His words were critical but his tone nostalgic.

Eve wanted to roll her eyes. Her father was exaggerating again, something all pirates were notorious for doing when not outright lying. Her father was no better. "Mother had a kind and loving heart," she reprimanded.

"Aye, that she did. But whatever her faults, I loved the woman dearly. She was the best of me and the best of me memories—besides looting."

Eve nodded reluctantly, conceding that the old salt had loved her mother, his sixth wife, as much as he was capable of loving anything that wasn't jewel encrusted or rigged with sails.

"Still, her blue blood did give ye those highfalutin dreams, and of course me own mother didn't help none—filling your foolish head with furball fancies of handsome, honest princes, and virtue as its own reward. Shiver me timbers! Everyone knows thieving provides a better reward, and virtue be for fools with pockets to let."

"There is nothing wrong with honesty or an honest day's work," Eve snapped, a scowl darkening her pretty features.

"Why ever would I want to toil for my supper when I can steal it?" Captain Bluebeard queried in frustration, gesturing with his big hands, flapping like a demented gull run amok. He would never understand women, and he had been married seven times. Scratching his chin, he vowed that someday he would get it right.

He went on: "I didn't mean to make you lose that fierce temper of yours. Although, for being the grand lady ye are… I wonder at the gentility of snapping at yer poor ol' dad."

Eve glared at her father. He only played the be-a-lady guilt-trip card when it suited him. Far be it from him to notice her manners at any other time. "I've worked hard to be a genteel lady, with proper manners and grace—a task, I might add, not easily undertaken, given my formative years of swinging a cutlass and robbing unsuspecting ships."

Shaking his head, Bluebeard stared at his poor misguided daughter, at her rising color and tightening lips. "Such a waste of cutlass training, and of teaching me little lass to fire a cannon," he said, fondly remembering. "What a chucklehead ye be. Once ye could hit the boarding side of a ship. Now I doubt ye could hit the broad side of a barn. Why, I have me doubts that ye could even scamper up the ropes to the crow's nest anymore, could ye? Gone all soft in the body as well as the mind."

"No, Da, I've left my cannon-firing and rope-scuttling days behind me," she replied stiffly. The last thing she wanted him to know was that she climbed ropes at least twice a week in the bell tower, whenever the hunchback Hugo escaped from his room.

"Argh! It does considerable harm to me feelings, seeing me only daughter running a madhouse and conversing with monsters with no more sense than their makers gave them or a goose. It ain't fitting for an heir to the Bluebeard heritage. Me ancestors are probably rolling over in their watery graves. What'll happen to me ships when I die? Who'll sail my
Jolly
Rogers—all three of them? I should have had me a son. Seven wives, and none of them provided me a lad. Only your mother gave me a child. And what a child! Instead of helping me with the pirating like a good obedient daughter, you're here helping this scurvy lot. This bunch of strangers. These freaks who should all be boiled in oil."

Eve did roll her eyes this time. Oil boiling was one of her father's favorite threats. Here he went again, on one of his usual rampages.

"Makes me wonder if you're not as knocked about in the head as the rest of these swavies ye've got locked up here—or not locked up here, as they should be. Whoever heard of inmates running an asylum? Ye didn't fall from the crow's nest and not tell me, did ye?"

"If I don't help my patients, who will?" Eve retorted. Despite her extreme indignation, her outward appearance remained coldly polite. She would not let her father get her goat with his trollish attitude; she would strive to be a dutiful hostess, in spite of how infuriated he made her, and no matter his nefarious intentions. "Not every inmate needs to be locked up. Rather, they need counseling and understanding and the freedom to move about. Some of them have fears of locks and closed-in places."

"Ye mollycoddle them, Evie. Ye spend too much time with their hysterical fits and starts. Ye need to be free to come and go, to see the Seven Wonders of the World, not sit here wondering about your patients."

She ruefully shook her head. Her father never releneted in his quest to sever her from her patients. "You know how I feel about the insane. Think of Grandmother Ruby. The mind is a terrible thing to waste, and being lost in the dark, never to find the light of sanity, is a loss be-yond tragic—a loss to both humanity and the inhuman."

Unhappily, sanity could be as fragile as a very thin thread of gossamer silk. That line that separated the sane from the insane meant she had to walk like a tightrope to help them. Her patients dearly needed someone to walk it, to share their dark-shadowed worlds with them. Someone needed to help them reveal the things they feared went bump in the night.

"They are like lost children. They need a way home, a route, and someone to help them make the journey," she said.

"If I had me way, all these deranged loons would be walking the plank. Just like me fifth wife, that harpy," Bluebeard muttered.

Eve snorted. "Pirates always loved a good tale, especially a fish-tale. She had heard this story more than once, about Bluebeard's fifth wife, who had met her fate in Davy Jones's locker, where her husband had decided to hide while she and Davy were being unfaithful."

"Thought she could monkey about with me, she did, but I showed her different when I made her walk the plank. Watched her fall to her fate below," Bluebeard reminisced, an odd light in his devilish blue eyes.

Laughter burst from Eve. In spite of her irritation with her father, he did have a wry sense of humor. And he didn't mind directing it back at himself. "How fortunate that she was what she was."

"Unfortunate, to my way of thinking—and what a way to discover her perfidy! There I was, a fine figure of a pirate, standing proudly on board me ship, listening to the slattern's loud splash, waiting for a cry of help from the scurvy female… and what did I hear? Nothing, I tell ye. Instead of pleas for help I heard another splash, and then I saw a green tail batting at the water and her malicious grin. She saluted me; then next thing I know she flips up that saucy green tail of hers and dives below the surface of the sea! I can still hear her laughter ringing in me ears. Gave me old heart a start, it did. Ruined me plans of retribution, sunk beyond reproach. Like I said, she always was a harpy. I just never knew she was a mermaid."

Eve resisted the urge to smile. She knew her father's pride had been hurt, but that he'd also cared enough about the woman to leave her to the sea and her lover, Davy Jones. The old sea dog should have known better in the first place. Mermaids were never happy out of the water, even if it was on the rolling deck of a ship. Their relationship had been fishy from the start.

"Bested by a fishwife," he groused. "I've never lived that down with the crew."

Eve couldn't help but laugh again. It always tickled her funnybone to see her father defeated, because it was a rare occurrence indeed.

"It was skullduggery at its worst," the Captain remarked, shaking his head. His blue diamond earring sparkled in the light from the large beveled window. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he turned his attention back to his mutinous daughter. "Skullduggery, it seems, abounds in all places—on deck of me ship and in this dusty old asylum. The Towers? Towers of raging idiots is what it is. I had hoped for once in your life you might show some appreciation for what is owed your Bluebeard heritage."