Wrapped (8 page)

“Nothing that won’t keep.”

“You’re sure?” he pressed.

I set my shoulders and smiled. “Quite.”

“Will the young miss be joining you, then?” Caroline inquired impatiently from the doorway.

“No, thank you, Caroline,” I said, stepping away from the desk. She nodded and withdrew.

“Are you off, then?” my father asked me, though I could hear in his voice an admonition to make as hasty a departure as was polite.

“I’m quite tired. I’ve been calling on Julia, and with last night’s late evening—”

“You’re all right, though?”

“Of course, Father.”

“A gossip with a friend is good medicine, I daresay,” said Mr. Bathurst.

“Truly. Of course we were a bit preoccupied with last night’s events.”

Father nodded. “More curse of the mummy nonsense, I suppose?”

“Something of an epidemic,” I said. “Not only were Lady Kensington and Mr. Squires attacked last night, but also Lord Morgan’s home was burglarized this morning in the broad light of day! Really, it seems awfully convenient to blame some otherworldly entity—”

“And no doubt whoever is perpetrating these crimes has thought of that very thing,” my father agreed.

“Certainly. That brings the total to three persons who’ve suffered since the party—of course, not counting the fellow with the broken neck—”

“Agnes!” my father said sharply. “Take care!”

I nodded. My face reddened now from legitimate shame. It was worse than unladylike to speak of the misfortunes of others so coldly: It was inhumane. “Of course, Father.”

I stood waiting for him to dismiss me, but Bathurst spoke first. “Did you say three, Miss Wilkins?”

I turned to our guest. “Yes, sir. Lady Kensington, Mr. Squires, and Lord Morgan.”

“Then you haven’t heard about Mrs. Blalock?” As a particular friend of Lord Showalter, Mrs. Blalock had been at the party with us. When Showalter had been almost a stranger to our London circle, she threw a ball to welcome him.

“Mrs. Blalock?” I asked.

Bathurst looked to my father before continuing. Father gave him a wave of his hand as if authorizing him to proceed and feed my strange fancies.

Bathurst explained that Mrs. Blalock had returned home this morning after a couple of hours at the shops to find her lady’s maid lying unconscious on the carpet of her bedroom.

“Oh!” I said, my hand flying to my mouth.

Mr. Bathurst nodded gravely. “They fetched some smelling salts, and then a doctor, but it took her hours to come around. She appears to have had some sort of fit.”

Or some new manifestation of the mummy’s curse? I wondered.

“I will send Mrs. Blalock a note and ask if there is anything we can do.”

“Your mother has already called on Mrs. Blalock. I think she is there still.”

“Very good, Father.”

“Now, go translate something,” he said with a grin. “Anything more lively than listening to a couple of old men talk about Napoleon, or imagining sinister goings-on in your neighborhood.” His attempt at a smile was only marginally successful.

I nodded and headed out the study door as Caroline returned with the tray, laden with a plate of sandwiches and a steaming pot. I made for the stairs and began to ascend toward my room. Try as I might, I could not follow my father’s advice and think on lighter matters.

Could it really be a curse? Could the awakened spirit of an Egyptian king be exacting vengeance for our disrespectful curiosity?

Possibly.

But something about that list of names troubled me. That something teased my mind as I topped the staircase and turned toward my door.

Kensington.

Squires.

Blalock.

Morgan.

Certainly they were all neighbors to a degree—almost everyone at the party had been. There were but a handful of guests who did not have homes within a mile of our own.

But they were not the wealthiest guests at the party. Certainly Lady Kensington and Lady Blalock both had more money than the king, but Squires was only a solicitor, letting rooms from a wealthy client during the summer to be near his employers. And it was well known that Lord Morgan’s assets were tied up in speculation—a scandal that had befallen him and that the rest of the neighborhood pretended not to know about.

If I were a burglar, these certainly would not have been the people I’d have chosen to victimize—particularly at such great risk. Two in the middle of the morning, all during the height of suspicion after last night’s events.

I passed into my room through the salon, securing that door shut after I entered. Everything was as I’d left it. I fished a key from the bowl on my desk, inserted it into the lock of the wardrobe I’d locked this morning as a precaution, and twisted. My dresses spilled out, crowded with the few new arrivals. I pulled out the hatbox and removed the lid.

Inside lay my secrets. A broken quill I’d liberated from the library one afternoon, the plume at its top too pretty to let it end its life in a rubbish bin. The playbill from the first time Mother took me to the opera. The band from David’s midshipman’s hat. He’d searched the entire house for it last time he’d been here, but I couldn’t bear to let him leave again without keeping some part of him where I knew it was safe. A seashell I’d saved from a trip to Brighton, the closest I’d come yet to leaving England. And beneath them all, the little dog’s head. I withdrew it and the little strip of linen still dangling from it. It was exactly as I’d left it.

No one had seen me remove it, had they?

Unless . . .

The waiter. His eyes on my bodice. What if it wasn’t my décolletage that had captured his notice?

I fingered the cool iron shape and the scrap of linen. Had he been chasing this?

Last night’s scene sprang back into my mind. The flickering of the torchlight, the oddly incongruous music, the mummy lying on the table—the faces of the guests crowding around. The sight in my mind’s eye jolted me.

When I’d returned from the garden, Lady Blalock, Mr. Squires, and Lord Morgan held in hand the cutting tools, even as Showalter rushed back into their midst and declared an end to the unwrapping. Before I’d left, it had been Lady Kensington with Rupert and me at the body.

Kensington, Blalock, Squires, and Morgan.

That meant that if the curse—be it supernatural or man-made—was real, there would certainly be one more name soon added to the list of victims.

Wilkins.

Chapter Seven

I slept very little that night, puzzling over the “curse” and half fearing someone would come creeping through my window (though it was twenty feet to the garden below).

But that was only one source of my anxiety.

If the only other persons subject to the curse—whatever it might be—had been those who’d actually participated in the actual unwrapping, it seemed that either some vengeful spirit was exacting punishment . . . or someone was looking for something that was supposed to have been on the body.

I scrambled out of bed, reached beneath my mattress, and plucked out the dog’s head. I’d grown frightened enough that it no longer seemed sensible to leave it in the wardrobe.

No one else could possibly have been as deviant as I. Six people had had a chance at the mummy. Five items were found, four returned. I stared at the dog’s head, my heart pounding.
This
was what the perpetrator—supernatural or not—was after. This was causing all the trouble.

I
was the cause of all the trouble.

What to do about it had haunted me throughout the sleepless night. If it wasn’t a curse, whoever or whatever was looking for the dog’s head was up to nothing good, I reasoned. Why else would all our neighbors have been harmed? The violence brought about by the search for this object was surely evidence enough that something sinister was going on. So simply waiting for it to find me, to find the dog’s head, seemed foolish in the extreme.

And if it was a curse, then it seemed even more foolish to wait.

I needed help.

But the question of who to seek help from was far more difficult. The police? They’d dismiss me as a silly young woman caught up in the romance of the curse. Certainly Lord Showalter would take a similar approach. And there was still the possibility of a match to consider, and still the inconvenience of confessing to him, the potential for jeopardizing what Mother had worked so hard to achieve.

There was also the danger of it all to consider. There was no guarantee that by simply surrendering all to Showalter or some other authority, I wouldn’t transfer the same sort of bad luck that was lying in wait for me. No, my recklessness had resulted in this mess, and I must do what I could to atone for my error.

And perhaps it was a product of listening to sensitive conversations in Father’s study for all these years, but something else told me that if the burglar would go to such extremes to track down this object, then it was of some great importance. And objects of great importance were not the kind of thing to go crying from the rooftops about.

How I wished Father were home. Not only would he know what to do, whom to tell, how to let the sting of my embarrassment do its work and then ebb away without shaming me further, but his steady hand and sensible presence would allow me to do what I felt most tempted to. Panic. I was terrified, and the fear that our house, that my room, might be next threatened to swallow me whole. The fact that I might have jeopardized both my own future and the safety of my good neighbors made me queasy. And in truth, the only thing that would keep me from succumbing to the wave of guilt and fear was doing
something
.

I consoled myself that Father would appreciate the delicacy of my situation. I hoped that he would credit my seeking information as making the best of a bad situation. And I knew that the more I could share with him when the time came, the easier it would go for both of us.

And there was but one place in London where I might seek information about an important Egyptian relic. A place where I was not known. A place where I could ask my questions, gain what intelligence I could, and still be home in time to watch from the front window for Father in the event that he returned early from Tilbury.

The British Museum.

When morning finally broke and I heard the household stirring below stairs, I was already up and dressed. I checked my reflection in the glass and reached for my bonnet just as the knock came at my door.

“Enter,” I called.

Clarisse crept into the room, looking sheepish. “You have dressed your own hair this morning, Miss Wilkins?”

“Yes, Clarisse. I decided to make an early start of it today,” I replied in French. Though she was my mother’s lady’s maid, Clarisse had been sent to me each morning since my nurse was discharged three years ago. I already planned to persuade Mother to allow Clarisse to come with me after I married. Mother knew we’d have a hard time finding one so gifted as Clarisse in subduing my hair. But more to the point, Clarisse was dear to me. She was only a few years older than I was, and I’d come to think of her as a friend.

“You will have some breakfast before you go, mademoiselle?” she asked me, this time slipping into her native tongue.

I shook my head. “I rang for tea an hour ago.”

She looked toward the tray still bearing the nibbled crumpet I had been far too agitated to eat. “Then I will go and see if Madame Rachel is ready,” she said, taking a step toward the door.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “Aunt Rachel needs her rest. And besides, I’m only out to take the air this morning.”

“But your mother—”

“Won’t even know,” I said, turning and smiling. “I just need a few moments to myself—what with all the excitement of the past few days—”

She grinned. “And a certain man declaring himself . . .”

“
Assez
, Clarisse,” I said. “No one’s declared. He’s merely invited me—”

She shook her head. “It is there,” she said, smiling and lifting one shoulder. “I am French, after all. We know these things better than you English.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course you do. But you must trust me when I tell you I need some time away this morning. And trust me that I won’t get into any mischief.”

Clarisse didn’t exactly nod, but she moved to help me with my bonnet all the same. She held the light summer cap, meant to keep the sun from adding any more freckles to my nose, and stared woefully at my hair. I’d managed to apply a bit of pomade to the curls meant to frame my face, but they’d already unraveled.

“I really must go if I’m to get back before I’m missed,” I pleaded before she could offer to repair my handiwork. She smiled and tucked my head into the fabric of my bonnet, tying the ribbon as expertly as she might dress a lock of my hair.

“Perhaps you are not telling me the complete truth?” she said slyly.

I started. “What?”

“Perhaps you are off to a secret meeting with your intended?” she teased.

“Clarisse!”

“You
are
hiding something!” She laughed. “Though why you dare let him see you with your hair in such a state—”