The Wild Marquis (15 page)

“I don’t know.” He continued turning the leaves, even when he got to the end of the play.

“Have you ever looked at these blanks?” His voice sounded odd.

“No, why should I?”

“There’s something written here, covering part of a page.”

“What?” Juliana tried to peer over his shoulder, an impossibility due to his superior height.

“Here, stop jumping up and down.” He held it so she could see.

“My mother wrote that.” She recognized Cassandra’s handwriting at once. Unfortunately she could make nothing of it. It was gibberish, an apparently random collection of letters without spaces or punctuation. She peered at it desperately, trying to discern meaning. She yearned for a message, a thought, even something as mundane as a household receipt.

“It’s nonsense,” she said sadly.

“Do you notice that the same letters are used over and over again? Tell me again how those price codes work.”

“Of course!” Immediately she knew Cain had the answer. “I never knew Cassandra’s code but there are Js, Es, Ts and Xs here, just like in the price at the front of the book.”

She repeated her explanation of how collectors disguised their prices. “You take a ten-letter word and
assign the digits to each letter.” Seizing the volume she turned back to the front. “Xx/je/t. The Xs are probably naughts so we are looking for a nine-letter word or phrase made up from the other letters on this page.”

Without another word they both hurried back to the library table where Juliana, hands trembling with excitement, found pens and paper and wrote a list of the letters in Cassandra’s mysterious message. There were indeed a total of nine in addition to the X. The two of them sat side-by-side and furiously scribbled, trying to find the anagram that was the key to the code.

“It’s impossible!” Juliana moaned. “I can’t make anything work with the J.”

“No, wait. Look.” Cain pointed at his sheet of paper. “JULIET. The letters of the name Juliet are here.”

“What’s left?”

“A. P. C. PAC. CAP. Cap! JULIET CAP! This was her favorite book, wasn’t it? She probably loved the play before she even bought the book and used Juliet Capulet as her code.”

“You solved it!” She flung her arms around Cain’s neck out of sheer gratitude. “Thank you, thank you!”

Juliana had spent years trying to guess the code, but there were only a handful of books that had belonged to Cassandra. It was such a little thing, but she somehow felt closer to the woman she thought of as her mother. Cain held her close, pressing his lips into her hair. Relaxing in his arms, she was happy he was there to share this precious moment with her. She tucked her head under his chin, feeling crisp starched
linen under her cheek and inhaling his now familiar scent. She sighed with deep satisfaction.

“Juliana,” he murmured after a minute or two. “I’m glad you are happy, and I’m even happier this discovery has brought us, er, into such an intimate connection. But what exactly have we solved?”

“Now I know what Miss Cassandra paid for the book.” She thought for a second, counting the words off on her fingers. “J equals 1, E equals 5, T equals 6. Fifteen shillings and sixpence. That was a good price,” she said approvingly.

“Wonderful as it may be that your mother got such a bargain, it still leaves us with nothing but a lot of numbers.”

“Oh!” She pulled out of Cain’s embrace. “Let’s ‘translate’ the page.”

Loath as she was to admit it, he was right. When they made the “translation,” substituting digits for letters, they were no closer to a comprehensible message.

“It must mean something, it must,” she said, now frantic to know what Cassandra had written.

“There has to be a second step to the translation,” Cain said, staring at the sheet of numbers she’d transcribed. For a short while he was silent, nodding his head back and forth, his full lower lip curled over the upper in a thoughtful pout. Then he looked up. “Do you notice there are a great many 1s?”

“So there are. So what?”

“Suppose the numbers need to be turned back into letters. The simplest thing would be to make 1 equal A, 2 equal B and so forth. 13 could be either AC or M, the thirteenth letter.”

“Let’s try.”

It took about an hour and much trial and error before they coaxed the full meaning from the sheet of digits. The breakthrough came when they realized some of the numbers should remain numbers. The solution contained a date. All their work boiled down to one short sentence.

“On the 27th of March, 1795, Cassandra and her beloved Julian became one.”

“Julian,” she breathed in wonder. “My father.”

“When were you born?”

“The 3rd of January, 1796.”

“The timing is right. It sounds to me, Mrs. Merton, as though your parents were lawfully wed.”

“Perhaps not.” Juliana could hardly bear to hope. “Perhaps it’s just the date they…you know.”

Cain smiled. “That too. The date is definitely right for ‘you know.’”

He drew her to her feet and tipped her face upward with two fingers on her chin. She saw a hint of humor or mischief in his eyes, and something else too, that she’d never perceived before. He lowered his head and kissed her lips softly.

“I think,” he said, “we should find out if they were married. Because if they were, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be too.”

T
he auction viewing room was crowded with men looking over the new selection of books, brought out after the two-week hiatus. Cain wandered casually over to the section of the room where the greatest treasures were kept, the ones that wouldn’t be sold until the last day: things like the Burgundy Hours, and the Shakespeares.

A small card inscribed in a neat italic was pinned to one of the shelves: “Lot number 9324 is unavailable for viewing.”

Lot 9324 was, in fact, tucked into the capacious inner pocket of Cain’s greatcoat.

Juliana had been reluctant to let the
Romeo and Juliet
go, but anxious to get it off her premises. “Maybe I should tear out the page with the inscription? It’s only a blank so would it count as theft?”

Having listened to her argue back and forth at least six times, Cain had lost patience, though not sympathy.

“We know what Cassandra wrote and that’s the important thing. The inscription doesn’t actually prove anything.” He removed the book from her slackening
grip. “You’ll have the book eventually. If you don’t buy it yourself, I’ll buy it for you. In the meantime I’d like to try and get this back where it belongs before anyone misses it. “Don’t go out,” he ordered, before she could summon further argument, “and keep the dog close.”

Quarto growled at him. “Good boy,” Cain said. “That’s the way to treat visitors.”

Cain was beginning to recognize some of the auction regulars, among them Iverley and Compton, who stood against a wall. The latter called to him. “Chase! Last time I saw you, at the Duchess of Amesbury’s ball, you looked as though you’d swallowed a hedgehog.”

“I’d sooner swallow a hedgehog than attend a ball,” contributed Iverley. He shifted in irritation. “I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for a place at a table.”

Compton raised a quizzical eyebrow at Cain. “Rumor has you a reformed man.”

“That’s what my aunt tells me.”

“I make it a point never to believe what aunts have to say. Yet the presence of the Marquis of Chase, dancing with the lovely young maidens, was the talk of the card room.”

“Do you think you could bring yourselves to call me Cain? I’ve heard nothing but Chase the last week and it makes me think of my father.”

“As you wish. Call me Tarquin. I take it, Cain, the Saintly Marquis doesn’t arouse fond memories. My own sire died years ago. Perhaps I should be grateful.”

Iverley grunted something that sounded like “mine
fell out of a window.” Cain would have liked to pursue this fascinating piece of information. Another time.

“Do you know what happened to lot 9324?” he asked.

“The
Romeo
quarto?” said Tarquin. “Did you hear anything, Sebastian?”

“Some idiot probably put it away in the wrong place. They’ll find it eventually.”

Indeed they would, once Cain chose where, among the laden shelves and tables, that “wrong place” would be. Leaning against the wall with folded arms, he surveyed the room for a likely spot.

“Where’s Mrs. Merton today?” Tarquin asked. “I was thinking of going over to St. Martin’s Lane later. I hear she’s acquired a damn fine collection of English poetry.”

The blunt rustle of turning pages and the buzz of a dozen bibliographic conversations faded from Cain’s consciousness. “Where did you hear that?” he asked in a rasp.

“Newman. I think it was Newman who told me.”

“Where would I find this Newman? Is he here?”

Tarquin looked around the room and shook his head. “The best place to find him is in the taproom of the Red Lion. Better catch him soon or he’ll be senseless.”

“Always is.” Iverley had, contrary to appearances, been attending to the conversation. “The man’s a sot and you can’t credit a word he says. Highly unlikely that a female would acquire a collection of the caliber he mentioned.”

Cain was torn between defending Juliana’s abil
ity to stock good books and a fervent desire to keep everyone away from her poetry section. His instinct was to take carriage to St. Martin’s Lane without a moment’s delay and search her shop for further incriminating surprises. Whoever had planted the quarto, he thought with rising anger, wasn’t playing games. It was sheer luck that Juliana hadn’t already been accused of theft.

“Mrs. Merton said nothing to me about any new acquisitions,” he said. “And we were discussing poetry only this afternoon. I fear the rumor is unfounded.”

“Sadly, rumors so often are,” Tarquin said.

“But,” Cain continued, “I would like to know how this tale began. It seems someone is playing a little joke on Mrs. Merton, and I do not believe that is kind to an unprotected lady.”

He glared at Iverley. Not that he suspected him, but he suddenly resented the scruffy collector’s every disparagement of Juliana.

His rage seemed to penetrate Iverley’s habitual abstraction. “I may not have much time for women, Cain, but I don’t go round playing ‘little jokes’ on them.”

“Do you suppose the inebriated Mr. Newman invented the tale himself?”

Iverley thought for a moment. “No. Someone else must have told him.”

“Would he tell me who?” Cain was quite prepared to throttle the truth out of Mr. Newman if necessary.

“If he knows. Newman never forgets a book and never remembers a name or a face.”

Cain would stop at the Red Lion before he returned to St. Martin’s Lane. First he had a task to perform.

His heavy coat brushed a tower of books on the end of one of the long tables where Matthew Gilbert was seated.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said to the visibly irritated man, steadying the tottering pile by picking up several volumes and rearranging them so they lined up nice and straight.

Childish, yes, but Cain hoped the pompous bookseller would be just a little embarrassed when the missing quarto turned up among them.

“I’ve had two people come in and ask for poetry in the last hour!” Juliana almost dragged Cain into the shop and relocked the door.

“I’m surprised it’s not more,” he said.

She felt chilled when he told her what he’d discovered. The excitement of deciphering Cassandra’s code had driven the question of how the book got into her shop to the back of her mind. But as first one and then a second customer asked for poetry, she’d begun to panic, closed the shop, and started an organized search through her shelves. Books she hadn’t touched in months were dusted off to see what mysteries might lurk behind them.

“Someone wants to get me into trouble,” she said. “But who?”

“I couldn’t get anything out of this Newman fellow. Sebastian Iverley was right. Newman had no idea who told him the story about you.”

“Who? What about
why
? What have I ever done to anyone? I cannot think of a single person who has even the smallest reason for a grudge against me.”

Juliana actually found this fact depressing. There were no booksellers envious of her superior success, no disgruntled collectors whom she’d beaten out for an important purchase. The sad truth was, she’d done nothing even to ruffle a feather or two, let alone inspire spite and retaliation.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Cain said. “Whoever placed the book here knew it meant something special to you.”

“I agree.”

“And he seems to have been looking for something in the volume.”

“Yes.”

“We have no way of knowing if he found anything, but
we
certainly did. And that is too much of a coincidence for me. I refuse to believe that what the thief sought and what we discovered are unrelated to each other.”

“Do you suppose the thief found the inscription too?”

“My guess is not, or if he did he couldn’t decipher it. If my idea is correct, he would never let you get near the volume if he knew what it said.”

Finally Juliana understood where Cain’s argument was leading. “You mean this person wouldn’t want me to know about my parents, about Cassandra and Julian.”

“Exactly. I think he was looking for proof of their marriage. Perhaps he found something hidden in the binding, perhaps not. Either way, he then decided to get you into trouble by planting the book, a book that many people know you wanted, in your shop.”

Juliana’s head reeled. Since she had spent her entire life believing herself baseborn, the possibility of discovering her father’s identity and her parents’ marriage was enough to take in for one day. Add a conspiracy to have her branded a thief and Cain’s theory of how the facts were connected, and she felt her composure unravel.

“It’s all nonsense, Cain. You’re making this up to suit your own goals. You want to marry me to save you the trouble of finding a young woman of your own station. Who else would even care whether my parents were married or not? No one, that’s who. No one!”

She stared at the ground, avoiding meeting his eyes. Something cold and wet nudged her hand. She sank to her knees and buried her face in the bulldog’s brindled neck. Quarto was a safe source of consolation.

“Juliana?” Her name was a caress close to her ear. Looking up she found Cain squatting beside her, his blue eyes deep and kind. To her relief he made no attempt to touch her. She didn’t want to find herself weeping in his arms again. She didn’t want to rely on Cain for her peace of mind.

“Juliana, my dear, you are upset. Hardly astonishing under the circumstances. What has happened today is not about me and my wishes. You are the center of this story. At the very least there is a mystery to solve concerning your birth, and it seems only too likely that someone else is interested in the truth as well.”

His words comforted and calmed her. She took a deep breath, and the chance of succumbing to a fit of
the vapors subsided. “There’s no sense to it. It’s not as though my legitimacy would make me heiress to a fortune.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Her abating distress was accompanied by a commensurate awareness of Cain’s proximity: the sleek planes of his face with a hint of afternoon shadow on chin and jaw; the faint, clean masculine scent; muscled thighs brushing her skirts where she knelt on the dusty wooden floor; his intent gaze fixed upon her face.

She stood up and stepped back. “I told you. My grandfather…My God, he really was my grandfather! My grandfather died in debt.”

“But the estate that went to your cousin? Would your mother have inherited it?”

Juliana shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t believe so. There was never a question of my having it, so I never asked. I do know Frederick complained bitterly about having to find a thousand pounds in the estate for me. It was one of the excuses he gave for not letting me keep any of the books.”

“Did you ask him for the
Romeo and Juliet
?”

“Many times. He said I didn’t deserve another penny.”

“So Frederick Fitterbourne knew the book was significant?”

“Yes,” she replied. “He did.”

“I think a conversation with Cousin Frederick is in order.”

“He’s in Wiltshire,” she said stupidly.

“I shall leave tomorrow.”

“
You’ll
leave tomorrow?”

“No! I’m not leaving you here. We’ll go together.”

“What has it to do with you?”

“Listen to me,” he said. He caught her shoulder and turned her, then took her face in his two hands, forcing her to look at him. What she saw there was new to her, an expression of deep concern and gravity. There was no trace of the cynicism, defiance, or even the humor that usually dressed Cain’s features.

“Listen, Juliana. My supposition about what is going on may be completely mistaken. But you are in trouble, perhaps in danger. And I am not going to leave you to face this alone. I take care of my friends.”