“I see.” Lavinia planted her hands on the desk and pushed herself to her feet. “What do you say we have a little nip of sherry?”
Emeline frowned. “I expected something more inspirational from such a clever and resourceful lady. You are a woman of the world, after all. You have had some experience of men. Is this the best you can do? A drop of sherry?”
“If it is inspiration you seek, I suggest you consult Shakespeare, Wollstonecraft, or a religious tract. I fear that when it comes to advice on the subject of gentlemen such as Mr. March and Mr. Sinclair, a drop of sherry is the most I can offer.”
“Oh.”
Lavinia opened the sherry cupboard. She removed the decanter, poured two small measures, and handed one of the glasses to Emeline. “They mean well, you know.”
“Yes.” Emeline took a tiny sip of the sherry and immediately assumed a more philosophical air. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
Lavinia sampled the contents of her own glass and sought to organize her thoughts on the subject of men.
“In my experience,” she said slowly, “gentlemen are inclined to become tense and occasionally extremely overwrought whenever they feel that they are not in full control of a situation. This is especially so if the situation involves a lady toward whom they feel a certain responsibility.”
“I understand.”
“They compensate for these attacks of nerves by giving stern lectures, issuing orders, and generally making nuisances of themselves.”
Emeline took a little more sherry and nodded wisely. “It is a most irritating habit.”
“Indeed, but I fear it is the nature of the beast. Perhaps you can now see why I find Mr. March so exasperating on occasion.”
“I confess my eyes have been opened.” Emeline shook her head. “No wonder you are given to frequent quarrels with him. I can already foresee any number of rows with Anthony on the horizon.”
Lavinia raised her glass. “A toast.”
“To what?”
“To exasperating gentlemen. You must admit that they are, at the very least, quite stimulating.”
Chapter Twenty
The weak sun dissolved rapidly in the fog that crept over the city the following afternoon. The mist had nearly succeeded in bringing a hasty end to the pleasant day by the time Lavinia arrived at the premises of Tredlow’s antiquities shop. She came to a halt at the front door and peered through the windows, surprised to see that no lamp had been lit. The interior lay in heavy shadow.
She took a couple of steps back and looked up to examine the windows above the shop. A quick survey showed that the drapes were pulled closed. No light glowed around the edges of the heavy curtains.
She tried the door. It was unlocked. She stepped inside the unnaturally silent shop.
“Mr. Tredlow?” Her voice echoed hollowly among the shadowed ranks of dusty statuary and display cases. “I got your message and came immediately.”
Tredlow’s brief, cryptic note had arrived at the kitchen door less than an hour ago: Ihave news on the subject of a certain relic of mutual interest.
She had been alone in the house at the time. Mrs. Chilton had taken herself off to purchase some fish. Emeline had gone shopping to purchase gloves to wear to Mrs. Dove’s ball.
Lavinia had wasted no time. She’d seized her cloak and bonnet and set out at once. Hackneys were scarce at that hour, but she had managed to find one. Unfortunately, the traffic had been heavy. It seemed to take forever to arrive in the cramped street outside Tredlow’s.
She hoped he had not given up on her, closed his shop for the evening, and taken himself off to a nearby coffeehouse.
“Mr. Tredlow? Are you about?”
The stillness of the place was disconcerting. Surely Tredlow would not have failed to lock his front door if he had left or retired to his rooms above the shop.
Edmund Tredlow was not a young man, she thought uneasily. And as far as she knew, he lived alone. Although he had seemed to be in good health the last time she saw him, there were any number of dire things that could happen to a gentleman of his years. She had a sudden vision of the shopkeeper lying senseless on the floor after having been felled by an attack of apoplexy. Or perhaps he had taken a tumble on the stairs. Mayhap his heart had failed him.
A chill of dread flickered down her spine. Something was wrong. She could feel it in every fiber of her being now.
The logical place to search first was the shop’s cavernous back room. It was three times the size of the space allotted to the display area, and it housed the vault where Tredlow kept his most valuable antiquities.
She hurried toward the long counter at the rear of the showroom, rounded the far end, and grasped the edge of the heavy dark drapery that concealed the entrance to the back room.
Pulling the curtain aside, she found herself gazing into the deep gloom of the unlit storage area. A single narrow window high in the wall provided barely enough illumination to reveal the jumble of statuary, artfully broken columns, and the occasional outline of a stone sarcophagus.
“Mr. Tredlow?”
There was no response. She glanced around for a candle, spotted one stuck upright on a small, metal stand on the counter, and hurriedly lit it.
Holding the taper in front of her, she went through the doorway into the back room. Icy fingers touched the sensitive spot between her shoulders, and she shivered.
A well of intense shadow just beyond the curtain marked the steep staircase that led to the rooms upstairs. She would investigate that portion of the premises after she had made certain that Tredlow was not down here.
A seemingly impenetrable wall of crates, boxes, and chunks of stone monuments confronted her. She forced herself to move deeper into the shadows, eerily aware of the stern, inhuman gazes of the ancient gods and goddesses that surrounded her. Several broken, heavily carved gravestones blocked her path. She stepped aside to avoid them and found herself face-to-face with the figure of a crouching, armless Aphrodite.
She went past a pair of large statues of Roman emperors, their aging, unhandsome faces incongruously affixed to the elegantly modeled, extremely well-endowed bodies of young Greek athletes, and found her way barred by a massive stone frieze. The flaring candlelight fell on a cluster of mounted warriors locked forever in a scene of bloodshed and savage death. The desperation and ferocity on the faces of the men were echoed in the twisted bodies and slashing hooves of the horses they rode.
She turned away from the frieze and wove a path among a maze of urns and vases decorated with scenes from orgies. Just beyond, a sleeping hermaphrodite reclined languidly. To her left a large centaur pranced in the shadows.
She caught a glimpse of an open door and drew a sharp breath. Tredlow had proudly pointed out his strong room when he had taken her on a tour of his establishment. It was a specially fortified stone chamber that had been part of the original medieval building that once stood on this site.
Tredlow had been thrilled to discover it when he moved into the space, she recalled. He had converted it into a large safe and used it to store his smaller artifacts and those that he considered most precious. Presumably, since it was fitted with a bolt on the inside, it had originally been designed as the entrance to a secret tunnel constructed for the purpose of allowing the homeowner to escape his enemies. But the underground pathway had been sealed shut with stone blocks a long time ago.
Tredlow had installed a heavy iron lock on the outside of the door. He always carried the key on his person.