Wrapped (26 page)

“Help me lower it afore it goes topsy-turvy and shatters,” Caedmon ordered. I groped blindly at the edges and hugged the box. We gently lowered it to the floor as curses and oaths flew from within.

Caedmon seized my hand. “Stay close,” he said, leading me expertly through the darkness toward the office.

He shoved open the door, fumbled with a tinderbox, and lit another candle. He looked at me.

“You realize what this means, don’t you?” I asked him.

“That I’m likely to be sacked for using a priceless artifact to contain a dangerous criminal?”

“Apart from that,” I said. “We know who the burglar is! Who was meant to receive the message originally. It means we’re safe.”

“Agnes, I have no idea how long that box will hold. And anyway, you reckoned we were safe when your room was tossed and the jackal’s head was with me,” Caedmon pointed out.

I paused, humbled. “Then Tanner knew from the beginning that I was up to something.”

“Besides . . .” Caedmon hesitated a moment, thinking. “He said ‘we’! He said ‘you’ll be telling me everything
we
need.’”

“He has an accomplice,” I said, realizing he was right.

“Probably. And the only thing we can hope to do is move faster than whoever it is. And hope that he’s not here with Tanner now.” He pulled me into the office and shut the door behind us.

There were four desks, one pushed up against each corner of the room. Caedmon bolted for the one closest to the door and set his candle down. The surface was piled with papers. He looked sideways at me, seeming to note the mess all at once.

“I’ve not been back here all day,” he said. “Banehart’ll skin me for being late with his transcriptions, but—” He stopped abruptly and looked down at the desktop as he pulled down a large red leather-bound volume from a nearby shelf. He dropped the book when a plain brown envelope bearing his name scrawled in wild script caught his eye. He snatched it up. “That’s Deacon’s hand!”

He broke the seal, read quickly, and looked to me. “Deacon’s awake,” he said, eyes shining.

I glanced down at the note, saw that it bore today’s date and read simply,
Come at once.

“We have to go,” Caedmon said, bolting for the door, both the note and the ledger in his hand.

I held the candle aloft so he could see, and struggled to keep pace as we hurried toward the back entrance.

He flipped through the ledger furiously, scanning down each carefully written column of lot numbers and descriptions.

“Here!” he said, pulling at my wrist to bring the light closer. “Lot 11987—obelisk pedestal from Ptolemy the Ninth temple. It’s in London still!”

“Is there a name?” I asked, but I knew. I
knew
.

He shook his head. “No. But there is an address,” he said as we barreled down the stairs and wove our way back through the crates of books.

“Park Garden Circle?” I asked.

“Number sixteen. How did you—,” he began, pausing before we stepped outside. He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “No . . .”

I felt my skin chill and prickle at the confirmation of my suspicions. “Yes,” I said, nodding. “The obelisk base is at Lord Showalter’s house.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Despite the urgency, despite finally perhaps knowing where the standard was, we went to Deacon. I told myself that it was so he could advise us. But in truth I was as eager as Caedmon to see that he was well. Still, we had to hurry—if Tanner somehow managed to get free of that sarcophagus, he’d alert his accomplice. Worse yet, he might make straight for Showalter’s, catching us again even if he didn’t know to look for the standard there.

The front doors of the hospital were shut tight, the lamps all dark. There was no one to admit us as before. “Driver,” I called up, “take us around back.” We found a woman in a gray dress wrestling a sizable urn of milk over the threshold of the servants’ entrance.

“Perfect,” I whispered as we quickly disembarked.

“How do you figure?” Caedmon asked.

“Go and help her,” I ordered.

He started to protest before he got my intent, and trotted over. I followed at his heel.

“Here, let me,” he said, reaching for the urn. The woman looked up, revealing that she was in fact probably a year or two my senior, and despite her plain dress and calloused hands, she was unaccountably pretty. Wisps of blond escaped from beneath the wrap of muslin that kept her hair bound up on top of her head. Her blue eyes were as lovely as the tiny mouth that opened in a surprised O at the arrival of this strapping young man come to carry her burden for her. The delight in those eyes at seeing how handsome that young man was irked me more than I could say.

She stepped aside as Caedmon hefted the urn to his chest. He even managed to smile a little in return. He stood dumbly for a moment, looking at her, before she realized he was awaiting instruction.

“Oh! Through here!” She returned to life and ushered us into the kitchen. Caedmon deposited the urn on the floor in front of a table where she’d already laid out small stone pitchers for creaming tea.

“You’re like angels, the pair of you,” she said. “Dora took ill and I’m left to get the breakfast ready and up by myself.”

I elbowed Caedmon, hoped he’d realize he needed to offer to help her. He did so, but with all the conviction of a bad actor in a melodrama.

“I couldn’t dream of it,” she said, not even thinking that we had appeared on her doorstep for any other reason than to help her with her chores.

“Do it,” I whispered to Caedmon, this time perhaps too loudly, as the kitchen maid shot me a curious glance.

“I’m Molly,” she said brightly.

I nudged Caedmon hard in the ribs a second time. “Caedmon,” he said with a slight bow, “and this is my . . . brother, August.”

“Right regal names those are,” she said, eyes wide. Caedmon settled onto the stool next to hers and tugged the lid from the urn. She peppered him with questions, punctuated with furious bouts of batting her long eyelashes, as he told her we’d come early to visit our father in the ward before we headed off to our work at the docks. At some point I circled around behind her to fetch a towel when the milk she’d been ladling into one of the pitchers missed its mark because she refused to take her eyes from Caedmon. She noticed neither the spill nor my movement. I caught Caedmon’s eye as I edged toward the door. He seemed to squint a bit at me—the only communication I received that he was annoyed at not having been consulted regarding the plan.

I touched my cap at him, slipped out the door, and fairly flew up the stairs.

I found the ward without trouble, most of its occupants still sleeping. I crossed quickly to Deacon’s bed and noticed with relief that his neighbor who’d seen through my poor attempt at a disguise a few nights ago was sleeping with his face toward the wall.

I knelt beside the cot. “Deacon,” I whispered, nudging his shoulder lightly through the sheet.

His eyes opened immediately, but he turned his head gingerly to meet mine.

“You,” he said, smiling. “Jackson was right. You do make a poor boy.”

I smiled. “Then we’re lucky Molly had a far better specimen to serve as distraction.”

He looked confused for a moment, but then relief washed over his expression. “Caedmon is with you? He’s all right?”

I assured him Caedmon was fine, that we’d both escaped Tanner unscathed.

“But what of your father?”

“He’s been away,” I said, conveniently leaving out the part about how I’d elected not to tell him when I had the opportunity. “He returns this evening.” I didn’t want to rile Deacon, even if he was lying injured in bed. And there was nothing to gain by telling him now.

“Listen to me,” he said, pushing up on one elbow, wincing, and looking round the ward to make sure no one was listening. “You must go to the authorities with this. If Napoleon’s agents find the standard—”

“We’ve already found it, Deacon,” I said, in as low a voice as I could manage.

“You—” He looked confused. “Caedmon?”

I nodded, then told him of our work thus far.

“Oh dear,” he said. “Never did I think it would all come to this. I meant to secure some help for you both. Some protection.”

“Protection? But how?”

He sighed and sank back on the pillow. “I hide things about myself a sight better than you.”

“You know my father by more than his reputation, don’t you?” I whispered.

He nodded. “He stood by me when that damned business about the assassination went awry. But the higher-ups were looking for someone to blame, and I wouldn’t give up the names of my contacts, so . . .”

“You were dismissed.”

“It was time anyway. I’d had enough. But then you two stumbled into my rooms and laid this on me,” he said. “I was on my way to consult some men I knew I could trust when Tanner turned up.”

I could hear cart and horse traffic increasing on the streets below as London roused itself from sleep. A few of the men around us began to shift.

“Will you be all right?” I asked him.

“Just a couple broken ribs and a nasty headache . . . nothing I’ve not dealt with before. But I’m safer in here than you are out there.”

“We’ll be careful,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter how careful you are,” he replied sternly.

“There are very dangerous people about who clearly have had an eye on you two for a while. You must give me time to arrange for assistance.”

“Any delay could give the French the time they need to get the standard. We must go now,” I said gently.

“But you’re not trained for any of this!” he said.

“We’ve managed,” I assured him. “And the worst of it is over, surely.”

He sank back on the pillow. “Tell me your plan.”

I explained what we thought we’d learned, and about our planned errand to Showalter’s estate. “We’ll approach from the stream behind the house. The garden is dense there, and there are a series of paths leading to the pedestal—”

Deacon gripped my forearm, his face as grave as I’d ever seen it. “If you find it, what then?”

“Father returns this afternoon. Will he know what to do with it?”

“The things your father knows might surprise even you, Miss Wilkins,” Deacon said. “Now go! Send word if you can. I’ll try and rouse some support if I can get a message out.”

I nodded, shifted my weight from my knees to my toes, and prepared to creep away. “I’m relieved to know you’re well.”

“I’m relieved to know you’re on our side.” He winked. “What those Frog spies would do with a prize like you . . .”

I squeezed his hand in gratitude for his praise and crouched to kiss his forehead. I gave him one last look before I turned to rejoin Caedmon, who I hoped hadn’t fallen entirely for the milkmaid yet.

I burst into the kitchen and grabbed Caedmon by the sleeve as Molly was offering to let him stir the porridge burning on the stove.

“Good-bye!” Caedmon shouted as I dragged him back over the threshold and to the waiting carriage.

“Nice visit?” I asked.

“How is Deacon?”

I assured him that Deacon was fine, that he understood our situation, that he would get what help he could for us when he was able. We climbed back into the carriage, and Caedmon ordered the driver to ferry us to Hyde Park. The gray light of dawn gradually brightened as we drove across town, shopkeepers and servants already bustling about as we made our way toward the Park. It was nearly five when we left the carriage and disappeared into the tangled hedge, bearing toward the river and Showalter’s gardens.

We hurried across a footbridge, coming out a hundred yards east of where I knew the path leading to the cultivated part of Showalter’s garden ended at the river.

“Won’t there be gardeners watering in the early hours?” Caedmon asked as we picked our way through a bramble toward the path.

I nodded. “But only closer to the main house. This part of the garden is mostly left to grow wild.”

“And then?” he asked.

“We’ll get the standard from there to my house and to Father,” I said, adding, “somehow.”

He hesitated. “And then?”

I tilted my head and looked at him. “If you’re worried that I won’t honor my agreement to recommend you to Father—”

“No,” he said quickly. “I’m far more worried about what happens when we have no more reason to see each other.”

My mouth fell open. Somehow I managed to speak. “Caedmon—”

He shook his head and seized my hand. “I . . . I could work in obscurity for the rest of my life if it meant I had some hope of seeing you now and then.”

He did care for me. He really did. My relief at this news was so complete that I felt my shoulders relax, as if I’d let go a breath I’d been holding for a very long time. The old worries tried to crowd in, that he was an unsuitable match, that Mother wouldn’t stand for it, that I would be breaking Showalter’s heart . . . but they all withered in the glorious, searing knowledge that Caedmon cared for me. Perhaps even
loved
me as hopelessly as I did him.

But I would have to wait to find out.

“This really isn’t the time,” I said, mustering all the resolve I could.