Lavinia felt herself turning pink now. She cleared her throat. “Mr. March and I have discovered that long walks are extremely invigorating for persons of our age.”
“Indeed.”
Lavinia narrowed her eyes. “What was it about your conversation with Anthony that disturbed you?”
“He is starting to sound altogether too much like Mr. March, if you must know.”
“I beg your pardon? In what way?”
“He told me that, in his opinion, I should reconsider my decision to follow you into the private-inquiries business.”
“I see.” Lavinia pondered that information. “What on earth made him say that, do you suppose? He seems such a sensible, modern-thinking young man.”
“I believe he was somewhat shaken by the incident with the carriage.”
“Interesting. I would not have guessed that he possessed such delicate nerves. Judging from his demeanor yesterday afternoon when you both returned, I would have said that Anthony gave every appearance of being just as cool in a crisis as Tobias.”
“It was not his own brush with danger that unsettled him, although it certainly gave me a terrible jolt,” Emeline said. “Last night he evidently allowed his imagination to get the better of his common sense. He managed to convince himself that I had been in the path of danger and that were it not for a bit of luck I might have been hurt.”
“I see.”
“The entire affair has rattled his nerves and he has concluded that I should, therefore, pursue another career.”
“I see,” Lavinia said again, very neutrally this time.
“I was obliged to endure an extremely tiresome lecture on the subject of how I ought not to put my person in danger. There was also a good bit of boring twaddle on the nature of suitable careers for ladies. In the end I fear I lost my patience and told him exactly what I thought of his overbearing manner. I bid him good afternoon and left him standing there in the middle of the park.”
“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.