Wrapped (16 page)

“Thank you, sir. But I must confess something. Your valet, Tanner—”

“Don’t let that buggy eye put you off. He’s as loyal as they come.”

“It’s just that . . . ,” I began, faltering in order to appear distraught at conveying such bad tidings, “I’ve been wanting to tell you . . . I think I saw him follow that murdered man from the party.”

Showalter’s expression was unreadable, distorted by the shadows cast from the lamps and the rising moon. Past his shoulder I could see that same poor firefly winking in the distance.

Finally he laughed. A sure, satisfied laugh that rang around the garden like music. “You’re a jewel, Agnes Wilkins,” he said, taking a breath and sighing, “such an imagination . . .”

I started to protest, to assure him that it was not my imagination. But a flurry at the patio caught my eye.

Clarisse burst onto the terrace and hastened to my mother’s side, panting and near tears. I watched her whisper furiously to my parents. My father stood, spilling half his drink in his haste. Mother sat frozen in her chair.

“Assemble the servants in the hall,” Father ordered.

The rest of us sped to him from our various positions within the garden.

“What’s happened, Father?” David asked, grasping his arm.

“Lord Showalter, would you be so kind as to escort Mrs. Wilkins and my daughter to the drawing room? You boys come with me,” he said to my brothers and our other guests.

Showalter helped my mother to her feet and guided her into the house and toward the sofa in the drawing room. I lingered behind, peeling away when we reached the hall.

“Father ordered you to the drawing room,” Rupert hissed as I followed the men thundering up the carpeted stairs. I ignored him and trailed the party to my brother’s open door.

“What the devil?” Rupert cried out as he shot past my father and into his room. I stopped short of the doorway. It looked as if David’s ship had opened up its cannons and fired in. Rupert’s clothes were pulled from the wardrobe; desk drawers had been emptied, their contents spilled into drifts of paper. The linens had been stripped from the bed, the washbasin, overturned, left water puddling on the rug.

“Capital,” Rupert cried, kicking at the chamber pot.

“Is this what happened to the other party guests?” David asked quietly as he crossed the room to the open window. Despite Mother’s insistence that we confine our conversation to lighter matters for the hours we had David with us, Rupert must have at some point told him of the events in our neighborhood of late.

My father nodded. “Clarisse discovered the mess and the man who made it when she came in to light the lamps.”

“She saw him?” I exclaimed.

My father started at hearing my voice. “Agnes, I asked you to wait in the drawing room.”

“Clarisse saw him?” I demanded again.

“Only for a moment. She was carrying a candle to light the wicks. He leaped from the window when she entered,” he said.

“He could have used the trellis here to climb in,” David said, crossing to the window.

I surveyed the disorder, and the thought struck me that if Rupert’s room had been burglarized, then—

I turned abruptly and fled up the hall to my own chamber. Clarisse always lit the lamps on Rupert’s side of the hall first. My door was shut fast, no light creeping from beneath it. I scooped up a lantern from the table in the hall and pushed open my door.

Inside, dresses and hats and hair ribbons littered the floor like scattered leaves. My books, too, had been disturbed, the spines uneven as they lined the shelves.

I took a few cautious steps in, picking my way through the debris. A glint from the floor beside my dressing table caught my eye, and then broke my heart.

My jade butterfly lay shattered. I’d tried to wear it tonight, but Mother had forbidden it, had said the green was garish next to my dress, had complained that I wore it too often as it was.

It was the only thing in the room that I could see that had been damaged in some way. It made me wonder if whoever had done this might have somehow known how precious the item was to me. Had the burglar sought and found the most readily available means to injure me?

A fury I’d never known threatened to choke me, but out of the cloud of anger emerged another thought.

My heart hammered, and I grasped the door frame to steady myself. The burglar, perhaps the very one who’d been meant to intercept the message, had been
here
moments ago. Now he’d made complete his inventory of the people at the mummy—

But he still hadn’t found the jackal’s head.

Caedmon had it and the message safe. My instincts had proven out!

And if the burglar was the agent of some evil curse, had it passed us by as well? I hoped so.

I hurried back up the hall to rejoin Father and the others to tell them that my room had also been ransacked. I now realized there would likely be no better moment to tell Father what I knew, what I’d done.

I expected he’d be proud of me, after all. And there was little lovelier than Father’s praise.

The men still gathered at the window.

“Father, I—,” I began.

“Not now, Agnes,” he said.

“I really must tell you something—”

“Agnes, you have already disobeyed me by following us upstairs. Do not incense me further by ignoring—”

“But Father—”

“Not now, Agnes!” he said without turning.

Well.

I stared at the back of Father’s head as he conferenced with the men by the window. If he did not wish to hear from me, I could oblige him. I fumed, thinking of all the trouble I’d gone to, all the very useful things I’d already learned, but even Father was ready to dismiss me out of hand. So, if he wanted my silence, he could jolly well have it.

On all points.

I’d had more than I could stomach of people assuming I was incapable of handling life’s challenges because of my sex. Even Father, the most open-minded man I knew, thought I belonged downstairs, protected from the unpleasantness in my own home.

Perhaps it was time to demonstrate how capable I was.

Perhaps I would ignore Deacon’s order to tell Father. Perhaps Caedmon and I would continue our own search. Perhaps the best time for Father to hear of it would be when all was settled, when Caedmon and I had secured the standard. After all, the burglar had come and gone empty-handed; the greatest of any danger had passed.

It would serve them all right.

So resolved, I stooped to collect up a handful of Rupert’s books that had been knocked to the floor. I placed the volumes back on the shelf, but hesitated as I discovered among them a small notebook bound in soft leather. It bore no title on cover or spine, and when I flipped it open I found the pages covered with Rupert’s handwriting, arrayed in careful columns and stanzas. Poems, I realized as I glanced at the title of the one I’d landed on. “To Emmaline.” Emmaline? The only Emmaline I knew was Julia’s chaperone, Mrs. Perkins.

Rupert was on me in a moment. “What are you doing?” he yelped, snatching the book from my hand.

“Nothing,” I managed, “I was merely—”

“Isn’t it enough my room has been vandalized by a stranger? Must I endure your invasion of my privacy as well?” he fumed, placing the book in the drawer of his writing desk and turning to find us all staring at him.

Father broke the silence at last. “Rupert is right,” he said. “We should avoid disturbing the room further until it has been thoroughly examined.” He motioned us all toward the door, dispatching David’s friends to fetch a constable.

“Let’s speak no more of this tonight,” he said, clapping a hand on David’s shoulder. “We’ve precious few hours left with our young captain. We’ll go down to the drawing room and collect Mother and Lord Showalter and salvage what we can of this evening.”

“You’ll want to have a look at my room before that, I think,” I said coolly.

Father turned to me. “Your room?”

“Rupert’s wasn’t the only one disturbed,” I said, leading them up the hall.

Father hurried past me.

“I tried to tell you,” I said as I pointed toward my open door. Father and the others looked in.

After a long moment, Father reached for me. “Agnes, come here,” he ordered. I let him fold me into his arms.

“Forgive me for being so curt with you before,” he said. “I didn’t realize—”

“It’s all right, Father,” I said evenly.

“You are an unusual girl, Agnes,” he said, holding me at arm’s length. “Sometimes even I manage to forget that.”

“Thank you, Father,” I said, sure he’d never forget when Caedmon and I succeeded.

Chapter Fourteen

Both Father and David were gone the next morning when I came down to breakfast. Father had ridden back to Tilbury to escort David to his ship, observe questioning of the prisoner, and meet with various commanders encamped there before they shipped across the Channel to face Napoleon’s forces. Now that he was gone, I wondered if I’d done right in waiting to tell him.

Mother put down her teacup. “Don’t look so grim, Agnes,” she said. “Father is due back Friday afternoon—”

“It’s not that,” I said quickly, realizing as I said it that I couldn’t tell her exactly what it was that had me so distracted, so I added even more quickly, “I miss David.”

She lowered her eyes, nodded once, and lifted her napkin to her lips. “We all do,” she said. “But we must soldier on, mustn’t we?”

She was, as was often the case, more right than she realized. Caedmon would need my help now more than ever.

I spent the morning concocting a careful lie about visiting friends who were up from the country. Later that morning, I presented Mother with my story, convincing her that a fellow debutante, Fiona Delacroix, had hired a small skiff, with the intent of taking some of us cruising in the harbor. There would be no room for Aunt Rachel, who was prone to seasickness anyway. I assured Mother that Fiona’s chaperone would be in attendance, that I would keep my hat on the entire morning, and that I would be home in time to make our appointed visit to Julia’s at three.

Once outside, I did not take one of our drivers, instead sneaking off to hire a cab. I had him ferry me on a circuitous, lengthy journey covering half of London before I consented to tell him my real destination.

At the museum, I found Caedmon in one of the small side rooms flanking the main display gallery, and greeted him with a smile that was hardly proper or ladylike. I could not help it. I was so pleased to see him.

“I have the most interesting news,” I gushed as I tugged off my gloves. He was positioning an information card in front of a display of embalming tools. He grunted something and tossed me a dismissive look.

I ignored his sullen expression as I related the adventures of last night, trying not to boast of my unforeseen genius at having deposited the jackal’s head with him.

“So for a time at least we are in the clear,” I finished up. “Whoever is looking for the object must think by now that I do not have it and will be forced to look elsewhere.”

Caedmon nodded. “Grand,” he managed, picking up a sharp, hooked object and polishing it with a square of cotton.

“But this is wonderful! The burglar will be searching between here and Egypt for the message. An impossible task!”

“D’you know what this is?” Caedmon asked quietly.

I stopped, hearing and noticing for the first time how utterly exhausted he looked. “No.”

“This is the device the Egyptians used in the earliest stages of mummification, to draw the brains from the skull. They had no regard for the brain, didn’t even trouble with preserving it with the other organs for the afterlife.”

“Caedmon?”

He pointed toward the hooked end. “This got shimmied up the nose, and then they tugged the brain out bit by bit.”

My smile faded. “Revolting,” I murmured.

“I reckon I know how it feels now,” he said. “I’ve spent every moment since we parted searching the museum’s stores for someplace the standard might be hiding. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was hunched over the Stone, wondering if there aren’t answers still for us there.”

I hung my head. “My brother—”

“All the while I expected word to arrive from you or Deacon.”

“Caedmon, I’m sorry.”

“So if it’s an impossible task that puts the color in your cheeks, you’ve come to the right place.” He turned and walked slowly away.

My heart sank. I spoke in a torrent, flinging out my tale of David’s visit, the break-in, my decision not to tell Father, and now his renewed absence, before Caedmon could argue or object.

“Away?” Caedmon repeated when I finally finished.

“At Tilbury,” I said quietly. “We expect him home Friday evening.”

“Then he knows nothing of the standard?”

I shook my head. Caedmon swore. “Deacon will be furious! I’m going to him straight after work. He needs to know what you’ve done.”

“Fine,” I returned. “If he wants us to send for Father, I’ll do it.”

“He will!” His eyes burned brightly, making the deep hollows beneath seem all the darker.

“I don’t understand!” I cried. “I thought you’d be pleased to have more time to work. You were the one who wanted to capitalize on this opportunity!”