Wrapped (23 page)

“Agnes?” he repeated. “I think we’re safe.”

Safe. We most certainly were not. I pushed myself up and over the edge before I lost my head.

He clambered from the coffin after me.

“I think I’d better see you home,” he said, patently avoiding my eyes.

I consented to allow him to lead me from the room, back down our staircase, and outside.

At the street, he found a coach for me.

“Tomorrow?” I said, climbing in.

“It is tomorrow,” he pointed out. “But given your—”

I cut him off. I didn’t want to hear all the very good reasons he might have prepared. I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t have the strength.

“Good evening,” I said, thumping the roof of the coach, ordering the driver to move before I could change my mind.

Chapter Eighteen

Clarisse’s entrance the next morning came painfully early.

“Busy day, mademoiselle,” she said, crossing to my table.

By the time the coach had dropped me near home, and I’d climbed back up the trellis, returned David’s clothes to his wardrobe, and deposited myself in bed, there were but few hours left until daylight. Most of those I’d squandered thinking about Caedmon, remembering what it felt like to have him look at me, what it felt like lying next to him.

I groaned, tossing the sheet from my legs and swinging my feet to the carpet.

“Though not nearly so busy as your evening?” she whispered slyly.

I could no more stop the smile that burst across my face than I could change the color of my hair.

Clarisse glanced toward the door to the hall, and then back to me. “You must tell me all,” she ordered, “but not now. Your mother is already up and dressed. You are to be downstairs as soon as possible.”

“Downstairs for what?” I asked, stretching, letting Clarisse slip the cotton dressing gown over my head. It was the most recent of my gifts from David, one he’d picked up when his ship resupplied in Morocco.

She shook her head. “You have forgotten him completely, have you? Your
other
suitor?”

I sprang from the bed. “Showalter!” I recalled, wondering how I’d spent the entire evening dreaming of Caedmon but hadn’t managed to remember that Showalter was taking us to the museum this morning.

To the museum.
“Oh, no,” I said.

Clarisse laughed. “You have a problem, I do not doubt.” She led me to the chair in front of the dressing table and began to work on my hair.

She couldn’t imagine. Caedmon would be at the museum—he might not even have left last night. And Showalter would likely parade us through the Egyptian gallery, eager to show off how his largesse had made the collection possible.

“Love is always full of problems,
n’est-ce pas
?” she teased, reaching into her pocket. “But perhaps the morning’s post will cheer you.”

I took the letter from her outstretched hand.

“From David!” I said, tearing into the folds.

“Your mother had one for the family, but that one came special to you.”

I nodded.

“Look up, please,” she said. I obeyed, unfolded the letter in my lap, and lifted it to my eyes.

“What is this?” she asked, pulling back the tangles with the brush, revealing the sad little stump of hair I’d sawn off in my haste last night.

I glanced up from my letter and saw the ragged edge in her hand. “Oh, yes . . .
that
.”

She shook her head. “Generally when a young lady wants to give her beau a lock of hair, she favors something a bit smaller,” she muttered, “especially if she’s bound to marry another.”

I ended Clarisse’s inquiry by burying myself in David’s note.

My dear Aggie,

Chin up.

Yours ever,

David

I let my hands and the letter fall to my lap.

“He is well, miss?” Clarisse asked as she piled the braid she’d just woven onto the top of my head, securing it with pins.

“Better,” I said. “He is brave.”

“Of course, miss.”

I prayed for my brother as the conversation we shared on the day he arrived echoed in my mind. I had work as important as David’s to do.

“All right, Miss Wilkins?” Clarisse asked, working to tuck in the last bit of what I’d cut.

“Yes, thank you,” I said quietly.

She squeezed my shoulders, hurried to the wardrobe, and withdrew a gown of fine pink linen.

“Shall I help you dress, miss?” Clarisse asked.

Finally I stood. “No, thank you. I’ll manage today. Tell Mother I’ll be down soon,” I added, summoning my resolve.

“Very good,” she said, inching from the room. “And I will be expecting a lovely tale this evening,” she said, wagging a finger at me.

I stared at my reflection in the glass. What would I tell her? That what I’d pretended to secure her cooperation for was coming true? At least for me? That perhaps it had been true since I’d first laid eyes on Caedmon that evening at Showalter’s?

I was grateful I had more pressing matters to offer some distraction. Because anything less than a threat to England’s sovereignty seemed to pale in comparison to the questions troubling my heart.

I failed to persuade Showalter to take us somewhere else for our grand morning out, and we found ourselves at the museum just after the doors opened. Showalter led us inside as if it were his own home he welcomed us into.

“We haven’t been here in ages,” Mother said, looking round the entry hall. I caught the eye of the porter who admitted me the first morning I’d come, but looked away quickly, afraid he might give me away.

“Then I’m sure you’ll be delighted by the wonders that await you. Despite the blockades, the museum has managed to keep a steady supply of acquisitions,” Showalter offered. “There are plans in the offing for an expansion. I’ve agreed to underwrite some of the costs.”

“Shall we have a look at some of those newer pieces?” I asked, desperate to avoid the Egyptian collection, as apprehensive about seeing Caedmon now as I’d been eager last night. “I understand there are some new marble friezes from Athens—”

Showalter waved a hand. “Nonsense,” he said. “We’ve come to see proper mummies, and that’s what we’ll do. You were so keen at the party, and I had so little time to address your adorable curiosity. Now we must make the most of this opportunity, mustn’t we?”

I forced a smile as he pulled me up the stairs. He was being so kind. So accommodating. So attentive. He was a good man . . . too good a man for me to be slinking about at night with no thought of how he might be wounded were I discovered.

I prayed silently that Caedmon might be occupied elsewhere, or even sleeping off the late night in a sarcophagus. But those hopes were dashed as we passed through the high doorway and into the now familiar room. Caedmon was occupied with his tray of tools, bent over another of the cases, cleaning and arranging as he had been that day I’d first encountered him here. In spite of the dread I’d been living in as I anticipated this moment, in spite of the circumstances of meeting him with my mother and my possible intended, my heart leaped like a fool pup yanking at a chain.

“Now we’ll see if we can organize a proper tour,” Showalter said. “Excuse me?” he shouted to Caedmon.

Caedmon rose and began to turn toward us. “Yes, sir.”

He froze when he saw me, the smile starting at the corner of his mouth before he saw who accompanied me. His face blanched, the smile gave up, and he cut his eyes quickly to Showalter.

“Sir,” he dropped his voice even lower, “how may I be of service?”

I looked down, fixing my eyes on the tips of Caedmon’s boots.

“Mr. Banehart?” Showalter asked. “I was hoping he might be available to escort us through the collection?”

My head jolted up, panic arcing like lightning between Caedmon and me. If Banehart saw me again, he would surely—

“Mr. Banehart is otherwise engaged,” Caedmon said, perhaps too quickly.

“Engaged?” Showalter said. “Surely if he knew who was asking for him—”

“He is in negotiations with a private collector,” Caedmon said, a bit calmer this time, “in Sussex. He returns tomorrow.”

Showalter shook his head and surveyed the open case where Caedmon had been working. “Rotten luck,” he said. “Though I suppose you might be able to give us a bit of a show?”

Caedmon’s eyes widened. “Me?”

Showalter nodded impatiently. “I presume you know
something
about the collection? Something that might make our journey here worthwhile?”

If he recognized Caedmon from the party, he didn’t let on.

Caedmon put his tools down. “Glad to oblige.”

Showalter snapped his fingers. “Right, then.” He whirled round to me. “Where would you like to start?”

My shoulders fell. We were really going to do this. “I . . .” I cast my eyes about for something, anything. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“There are some absolutely enormous items in here, aren’t there?” Mother said, surveying a granite spire that climbed halfway to the ceiling before breaking off in a jagged line.

“That’s an obelisk.” Showalter reached out and rubbed his palm against the carved side. “I’ve got some bits of these things back at home I can show you. They’re not much to look at,” he said dismissively, turning, eyes falling on the case behind us. “But these little beauties,” he went on, pushing past us, “these are stunning.”

“And what are they?” Mother asked, pointing at the collection of polished stones in the case in front of her. They ranged in color from deepest black to a smoky green. But the basic shapes were all the same.

Caedmon stepped forward. “Heart scarabs, ma’am,” he said.

“They look like giant beetles,” Mother said dubiously.

“The scarab beetle was revered in ancient Egypt,” Showalter offered, joining Mother and Caedmon at the case. “The natives associated it with the sun god.”

“The scarab lays its eggs inside a ball it fashions from animal dung,” Caedmon said carefully. “And it pushes the ball containing the eggs along the ground until it finds a safe place for them to hatch.”

“How dreadful,” Mother said, looking back and forth between Caedmon and Lord Showalter. I wondered what she saw when she looked at them. Wondered if she saw them as I did, if she ever could. If she could ever view Caedmon with the same hope and pride that I felt, or Showalter with the same kind of pity. Pity for pinning his hopes on a girl like me . . . a girl who felt too much for someone else.

And I wondered if she at least noticed that Caedmon was a bit taller, his hair a bit fuller, maybe even his eyes a bit kinder. . . .

I thought too how Caedmon must see Lord Showalter. Did he envy his luck at having been born into a fortune, a fortune that allowed him to indulge his passion for Egypt?

Did he envy him that that wealth also gave him access to me?

Was it awful that I hoped he did?

Caedmon was still trying to persuade Mother of the nobility of the scarab. “To the ancients, the sight of the young beetles emerging from the clod of dung was magical, a picture of life coming from a place it wasn’t meant to be. And the sight of the beetle pushing the ball along the ground gave them an image for another myth. They thought the sun was pushed along in the sky by a giant beetle like the ones depicted here.”

“The scarab was worshipped in Egypt, and the people there wore it as a talisman, like one might wear a crucifix today,” Showalter said, horning in, perhaps afraid of being shown up by Caedmon.

“These all seem a bit big for wearing,” Mother said, studying the pieces in the case below her.

“Heart scarabs were placed in the wrappings of a mummy, directly over the heart,” Showalter supplied, falling easily into that role he loved so much, the role of expert, the role of lecturer. “Had we not been interrupted a few nights ago, we’d have likely found one in the wrappings.”

“But I thought all the organs were removed from the bodies?” I said.

“All but the heart,” Caedmon said, without looking up at me. “The Egyptians saw it as the most important part of the body. And on the journey to the afterlife, it had to be weighed and measured for purity by the gods. They put these scarab beetles over the heart in the remains to remind the dead to avoid confessing to any sins they’d committed in their lifetimes, lest they be denied their final rest.”