The Earl Who Played With Fire

by Sara Ramsey

  The shop was splendid. It was what had convinced her that Ostringer was the perfect person to sell her forgeries. He had wide-ranging interests, and it showed in the eras he dealt in. The large main room was neatly divided by tall shelves, creating alcoves dedicated to different time periods and locales. A mummy leaned against one wall. A full suit of armor and a variety of medieval weapons faced it, as though ready to engage in battle. There were Grecian urns, Chinese vases, Persian and Indian metalwork, French furniture, Turkish braziers…and that was just what Prudence could see from the entrance. The room stretched far enough away from the windows that not everything was visible, just the outlines of more treasures obscured by shadows.

  “Do you know Ostringer well?” Alex murmured into her ear.

  Better than she cared to admit. “I…may have sold more than a stone,” she whispered, low enough that Ellie and Nick didn’t hear it over their own private conversation.

  Alex stared at her. “What in the devil have you been up to?”

  She held up her hands. “I’m a badly behaved bluestocking. Now you know it. We can leave if you wish.”

  “I like badly behaved bluestockings,” he said. “Although it would have been more fun if you’d taken me into your confidences so that I may have behaved badly with you.”

  His teasing warmed her heart a bit, but she tried to concentrate on the business at hand. She turned to Ostringer, focused on finding a cure. “Do you have someplace where we may talk privately, Mr. Ostringer? Lord Salford and I have a question, and I think you may be the only person in London with an answer.”

  He seemed to size her up again, performing some calculation she wished she could read. Then he nodded. “Please, come into my office. We will be quite undisturbed there.”

  He called up the stairs that ran along the side of the room, asking one of his servants to come down and attend to Ellie and Nick. Then, he ushered Alex and Prudence toward the back of the shop, leaving the marquess and marchioness to cool their heels among the towering shelves of antiquities. As they approached his inner sanctum, the mustiness grew stronger, adding to the pressing sensation of age and memory.

  Ostringer pushed aside a tapestry on the back wall, then opened the small door hidden behind it. His office was more of a parlor, with a large antique desk and an odd assortment of furnishings that he either couldn’t sell or had taken a liking to. Against every wall were locked cabinets and chests of various sizes, labeled in a spidery script that Prudence couldn’t make out from the doorway.

  “Would you care for tea, Miss Etchingham?” Ostringer asked.

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” she said.

  Alex didn’t say a word. His opinion hadn’t been asked for. She sensed him beginning to seethe beside her.

  Ostringer poured water from a pitcher into a kettle and hung the kettle in the small fireplace. “I’ll confess I would rather offer you whisky and cakes. But I suppose tea is more proper for the future Duchess of Thorington.”

  The gossip had been in the papers for the past two days. “Perhaps whisky would be more appropriate, if you’ve any knowledge of Thorington,” she said.

  Ostringer didn’t laugh. “You are very perceptive, Miss Etchingham, if perhaps a trifle too loose with your tongue.”

  She flushed. “I did not mean to insult the duke, Mr. Ostringer.”

  “It’s not the duke I care about,” he replied smoothly. “If anything, it’s likely that I despise him more than you do. But if you are here, you have taken Lord Salford into your confidence about something related to me. And that is an unfortunate turn of events.”

  “Let’s cut bait, Ostringer,” Alex bit out. “Miss Etchingham has only one question. Once you answer it, we can leave you to your hoardings.”

  “How curious,” Ostringer observed, pulling a ring of keys from his waistcoat pocket and rifling through them. His voice was soft, but insinuating, like an assassin’s knife rather than a grenadier’s assault. “I have never known you to lose your head in a negotiation before, my lord. Have a care, or you will lead me to believe I can name my price for whatever it is you want.”

  “You know me better than that,” Alex said.

  But Ostringer knew he had Alex in a bind, even if he didn’t know what Alex wanted. He took his time finding the key he needed, then unlocked a box sitting on the mantel. Prudence was disappointed to see that it held tea leaves, not something more exotic. He spooned the leaves into a teapot and gestured Alex and Prudence into a pair of chairs opposite his desk. “If you will wait a few minutes until the water boils, we can be quite comfortable,” he said.

  They couldn’t be comfortable, not with the way he eyed them as though still trying to take their measure. But they sat, mostly because Prudence sat and Alex didn’t seem willing to leave her side. She tried to feign disinterest, but it was hard to stay disinterested in a room that held so many secrets. Not only were all the boxes locked, but the window looking out over the interior courtyard was protected by a grid of iron bars. The interior door was reinforced oak with multiple locks and bolts. Despite the fortifications, the room seemed almost cheerful, saved from grimness by bright carpets, lavishly upholstered chairs, and gleaming gold candelabras.

  She had never seen Ostringer’s office before — they had always done their dealings in the shop. She began to understand why Alex had wanted her to stay away. But it was too late for that. The minutes passed in silence until Ostringer handed around the cups. “No milk, I’m afraid. You’ll have to do with sugar.”

  Alex set his untouched cup on a table. “I suppose I should thank you for showing me your inner sanctum. I never thought I would see it.”

  “I never saw the need to show it to you before,” Ostringer said, taking his seat behind the desk. “I do not care to encourage dilettantes.”

  She expected Alex to take that as the greatest possible insult, but he surprised her by keeping all trace of a reaction off his face. “I typically do not care to encourage pillaging merchants, but we all have our own standards, don’t we?”

  “I’ve never stolen anything,” Ostringer said.

  Alex scoffed at that. “Every antiquities merchant in London has stolen something. If not with your own hands, then with your money funding activities abroad.”

  “And your money doesn’t fund those same activities? We all have blood on our hands, my lord. Some of us merely have more blood than others. And if the rumors about you are true, you have more blood — or at least dearer blood — than all the rest.”

  She glanced over at Alex. He had turned perfectly still, but perfectly brutal. He looked like he would happily add to the blood on his hands if he could force Ostringer to give him what he needed.

  “What are you insinuating?” Alex asked, his voice remarkably calm given the death in his eyes. “Take care with your choice of words.”

  Ostringer sipped his tea. “Merely a rumor I heard a decade ago. I’m sure I was mistaken.”

  He knew about the dagger. From his words, it sounded like he’d known about Alex’s curse even before she’d written her vague question to him the day before. Prudence was sure about it. And she was also sure she couldn’t waste an entire day watching Alex and Ostringer circle around each other like a pair of jackals.

  “If you believe that Lord Salford has the dagger that you and I corresponded about several years ago, you are correct,” she said. “Would you be willing to share the cure with us?”

  Alex shot her a quelling glare. Ostringer laughed. “Not much of a negotiator, are you, Miss Etchingham?”

  He had laughed about it before — she had been completely, eagerly willing to accept his first offer of forty percent of her sales. During that failed negotiation, he had sighed and increased it to sixty.

  “You know I’m not a negotiator,” she said. “But we aren’t here to negotiate. I merely want to hear more about what you said in your letter. Surely you can share what you know in the name of friendship?”

  Tonight, he didn’t
seem willing to extend her the sympathy he’d given her in the past. “Friendship?” Ostringer asked. “I’ll grant you, I find you charming. I will help you when I can. But you’re in over your head. And the antiquities world isn’t a friendly one. Historians, perhaps, would be willing to share for the thrill of discussing what they’ve learned. Collectors are a different beast. We are all quite cutthroat, aren’t we, my lord? The desire to find and possess something no one else has…it’s very nearly a disease.”

  Alex’s jaw tightened. “Don’t paint us all with the same brush, Ostringer.”

  The dealer held up his hands. “I am sorry for causing offense,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t sorry at all. Then he turned to Prudence. “What is it you wish to know? If you are looking for a cure for your upcoming marriage, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Unless you’d rather run away with me instead?”

  She laughed. “No, but I thank you for the offer. But if Lord Salford can find a cure for the curse the dagger gave him, I might be able to marry him instead of the duke. Do you have any knowledge of how we might break the curse?”

  “I might.” He paused, looking at the way Alex’s hand curled over hers, examining whatever emotions he saw on her face.

  “Your letter several years ago said you knew,” she reminded him. “As did your letter yesterday.”

  He seemed chagrined that she had stripped him of that bargaining point. “Very well, I know how to break the curse.”

  Prudence sighed with relief, already smiling back at him in anticipation. But Alex’s hand gripped hers more tightly — not with excitement, but with warning.

  She understood, a moment later, why.

  Ostringer leaned back in his chair. “The question, Miss Etchingham, is whether you are willing to pay the appropriate price for that knowledge.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Alex had known that Ostringer would want something outrageous if he had any knowledge worth sharing. But Prudence hadn’t realized it. He should have done more to warn her. Her optimism was quickly turning to dismay.

  “You won’t help us purely for the sake of helping?” she asked, betrayal layering over her voice.

  Ostringer held up his hands. “This is a business, Miss Etchingham. I deal in objects and information. Even my friends do not take anything for free.”

  “Then it seems unlikely you have friends,” Prudence sniped.

  “You wound me, Miss Etchingham,” the merchant said. “I consider you a friend. Our business has always been such a joy.”

  Alex wanted to end this quickly, before Prudence’s faith in others was utterly dashed. “Name your price, if you have something to sell me,” he said. “Be reasonable about it. I have better things to do than haggle with you.”

  “Better things to do than break this curse you’ve labored under?” Ostringer asked, taking another sip of his tea.

  “What do you know of the curse?” Alex retorted, stifling a fake yawn for good measure.

  Ostringer feigned a yawn as well. “This visit is tedious, isn’t it? Perhaps you should come back in a few months, when we’re both better rested.”

  Alex couldn’t wait months. Thorington wouldn’t even give Prudence days. And even if she didn’t marry, Alex’s love for her grew by the day — the risk that the curse would eliminate her was growing too great to ignore. He managed to keep himself from scowling, but his fist clenched over his scar. “There is no need to trouble you in the future. Give me a price and your information, and we shall be on our way.”

  “You surely do not think I merely require money?” Ostringer asked.

  Alex had known he would want something else. Ostringer usually didn’t deal in money, other than when selling decorative objects to society hostesses and theatre owners. All the rest of his business involved trading artifacts, information, or favors. Alex was sure he wouldn’t want to give Ostringer anything the man asked him for.

  But he tried to look calm. “I wouldn’t insult you by attempting to guess your plan,” he said.

  He succeeded in startling a laugh out of Ostringer. “Good. I doubt you could guess, in any event. I should warn you, though. I require payment in three parts.”

  Alex stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Let’s get on with it, then. If I must find three things to give you, I want to start immediately.”

  “Patience, Lord Salford,” Ostringer said. “Miss Etchingham, would you care for more tea?”

  She hadn’t said anything since realizing that Ostringer was not her friend. But her tongue had had enough time to recover. “No more tea, thank you,” she said primly. “Just the bill for your services.”

  He laughed again. “It’s a shame you’re marrying the duke, Miss Etchingham. If his curse doesn’t kill you, I would like to continue our business together.”

  “I would be more likely to work with you if you will help us now,” Prudence said, attempting to throw something into the bargain.

  Alex wanted to know exactly how much work she’d done with Ostringer, but he knew better than to ask in the middle of their negotiations. The collector shook his head. “I most sincerely doubt it. Thorington won’t want his duchess associating with me. The same holds true if you become Salford’s countess instead.”

  “Then perhaps I shouldn’t help either of them break the curse,” Prudence mused.

  Her attempt to play to Ostringer’s atrophied sympathies worked better than Alex’s threats had. The man smiled at her — a genuine smile, one that seemed a bit rusty from disuse. “I would rather not help Salford,” he said. “I think he deserves to lie in the bed he made.”

  “He isn’t as bad as you think he is,” Prudence said.

  Ostringer sipped his tea. “I hope your faith isn’t misplaced, Miss Etchingham.”

  “It will only be misplaced if we cannot break his curse.”

  There was a small silence as they all weighed whatever arguments they might make, whatever prices they were willing to accept. Ostringer was the first to speak. “For your sake, Miss Etchingham, I hope his lordship can break the curse. You should be able to marry someone who might love you. Most desirable thing in the world, marrying for love.”

  He spoke as one who knew, even though Alex wasn’t aware that Ostringer had ever married before. But Alex did not care about what had happened in the man’s past. “If you knew this curse existed, and if you suspected that I suffered from it, why haven’t you offered to sell me the cure?”

  Alex had asked Ostringer about information related to the dagger before. Every time, Ostringer had claimed to know nothing. Today, the man just shrugged. “I never liked aristocrats very much. If you were foolish enough to think you knew what you were doing when you made that wish, why should I help you?”

  “But you could have made a lot of money off me or Thorington by selling it,” Alex said.

  “True. But perhaps I got more value out of knowing that I held the key you were searching for, when you wouldn’t give me the time of day if we saw each other on the street.”

  Alex stiffened. “I…apologize if I have caused you offense, Ostringer.”

  Ostringer accidentally showed some of his surprise, but he reined it in. “Thank you, my lord. I will help you for Miss Etchingham’s sake. But I am afraid you will disappoint her. I very much doubt that you can put the cure into effect.”

  “Why do you think he cannot be cured?” Prudence asked.

  Ostringer’s eyebrows furrowed, as though he had given the question serious thought more than once. “The cure requires more self control than most men have. Particularly men who are accustomed to getting what they want. Any man who was foolish enough to wish for something with a cursed dagger is unlikely to be capable of controlling himself long enough to undo the damage.”

  “Salford can accomplish it,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

  He didn’t think he deserved her blind faith. Nor did Ostringer, apparently. “No one has succeeded with the cure in the three thousand years that the dagger has bee
n in existence.”

  “How do you know this?” Alex asked.

  “The dagger is not what controls the curse — it’s merely a vessel. The legends I heard about it in Egypt say that it is a prison for a powerful djinn, one captured by an ancient pharaoh. The djinn refused to grant the pharaoh’s wish and was bound to the dagger as punishment.”

  “A djinn?” Prudence said. “This dagger grows more fantastic by the day.”

  Alex shot her a sidelong glare — this wasn’t a children’s tale. She mouthed him an apology before Ostringer continued. “It was an attempt to force the djinn to grant the pharaoh’s wish. The priest who did it decreed that when someone who had made a wish successfully cured himself, the djinn would be free. My sources speculated that the priest wanted a way to remove the effects of the djinn’s intervention, thinking that it would be easy enough to release the djinn within his own lifetime. Naturally, if the djinn were freed, it would remove the power that fueled any other wishes — so anyone else who had used it would be in for a nasty surprise when their wish stopped coming true. But no one has been successful yet.”

  “I’ve never guessed that it contained a djinn,” Alex said.

  Ostringer nodded. “Every person I spoke to in Egypt in ’01 mentioned the djinn first. You should perhaps reconsider trying to break it. A freed djinn might decide to kill you, since it would no longer be bound by your wish.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Alex said.

  Prudence squeezed his hand. “You can do it, Alex. I’m sure of it.”

  Ostringer shook his head. “You are very lovely and intelligent, Miss Etchingham, but you shall be disappointed if you do not realize that Salford will not succeed.”

  “Are your compliments included in your price, or must we pay more for them?” Prudence asked, completely unmoved.

  “They are free for you. Compliments for Lord Salford may cost more.”

  Alex sighed. “Again, name your price so we can get on with it.”