Wrapped

by Jennifer Bradbury

  Showalter smiled. “Clever, Mr. Stowe. You’re right. This gun is handy for hiding in one’s jacket pocket, but it has its limitations.”

  “Then neither of your plans will work,” I whispered, backing a few steps away and toward the pedestal. I eyed the pistol. How long had it been?

  He turned the gun toward me, and I froze. “But I do suspect Mr. Stowe has sufficient affection for you that any perceived peril to your life is motivation enough to do what I say,” he said, moving toward me.

  “Stop!” Caedmon called. Showalter kept the gun trained at my chest.

  “Put the standard on the ground and take several steps back,” he ordered.

  “No,” Caedmon said.

  “Do it now or watch her die.”

  “Caedmon, don’t. He’ll kill us both anyway.”

  “You may be right,” Showalter said evenly. “But there’s always hope things will work out. Likely the same hope that let you”—here he turned to Caedmon—“believe a man of your status and prospects really might find the good fortune to fall in with a woman of Miss Wilkins’s means. Hope that let you believe you might persuade her to forsake a suitable husband. I suspect you are the hoping kind, Mr. Stowe. All those lonely hours deciphering a stone that one of your superiors will likely steal the credit for. Hope is all you have. All you’ve ever had. Pity.”

  Caedmon seemed to deflate; I could see the venom of Showalter’s words coursing through him.

  “Just imagine how things might have played out if you two hadn’t interfered. If only you’d remembered your place in the great scheme of things. A pauper and a girl and all their hopes? They don’t belong in the real world.”

  Just a bit longer, I told myself. “We’ve managed to confound you so far.” I flung the words at him, hoping the insult to his pride would be enough to stay his hand a moment more. Hoping he was petty enough to need the last word.

  “But if you hadn’t, you might have lived. And we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “And Napoleon would have himself crowned in Westminster Abbey,” I pointed out.

  “But don’t you see? He will be anyway. Despite all your efforts, you’ve only led us right to the point you were trying to avoid. You’ve simply made it more perilous for yourselves and tedious for me.”

  Surely it had been long enough now. It was time to force his hand.

  I was seething, so angry that I’d nearly forgotten the gun he held pointed at my chest. “I suppose the way a stupid, self-involved girl and a museum lackey managed to get the better of you, France’s most self-congratulatory espionage agent, is rather tedious,” I spat.

  He raised the pistol level with my brow. “I’ve so anticipated this moment.” Anger frayed the edges of his words. “All those times you couldn’t even be bothered to conceal that you’d rather be somewhere else than with me. I endured them all with the knowledge that someday, right before your death, you’d know who I was and what I’ve done. But you’ve managed to ruin this moment as well.” He steadied his arm. “I suppose we can’t always get what we wish for.”

  “No!” Caedmon shouted as I saw him shifting in my periphery.

  “Vive la France!” Showalter whispered, narrowing his eyes as he pulled the trigger.

  The pistol erupted in a flash of igniting powder. Smoke clouded the air between us. I wondered for a moment if I had been shot, if the lead ball had indeed hit me. But I knew it was the sound that caused me to stagger back, my own instinct to protect myself that forced me to the ground in the wake of the explosion.

  My ears rang as I blinked away the flash spots swimming in front of my eyes. When I finally looked up, I was glad I couldn’t see clearly.

  Showalter’s hand was a grisly mess.

  The ball had indeed slipped back with the powder and backfired into his hand, just as the gamesman had warned. The pistol now lay harmless and smoldering on the gravel at Showalter’s feet.

  I looked at Caedmon, found him whole and unhurt. I turned back to Showalter. He was gaping, stunned, transfixed by the sight of his own blood dripping from the end of a sleeve that used to hold his hand.

  And then he began to scream.

  Showalter’s anguished, terrifying curses filled the air for a brief moment before another sound, smaller and softer than the pistol report, silenced them. The sound of metal connecting with the back of Showalter’s head.

  Showalter’s eyes grew wide and flashed empty for a moment. He teetered there a second longer as the muscles in his face relaxed from their contorted anger and pain, lapsing for a moment back into the soft, shapeless visage of the man I’d known. And then his eyes shut slowly as he collapsed to the ground in a heap, the back of his neck bearing an angry red welt.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Caedmon stood over him with the standard still raised. “I haven’t killed him, have I?”

  I scrambled to my feet. “I don’t know.”

  “I had to do something to stop the screaming. The pistol shot might be blamed on an enthusiastic marksman, but a man screaming is sure to bring all the neighbors out.”

  “You did the right thing, Caedmon,” I said, reaching for him and pointing at the standard with my other hand. “Incantations be damned, there is some power in that thing after all.”

  He tore his eyes away from Showalter.

  “And you’re all right?” he asked, pulling his hand away from mine and running it across my face.

  I nodded, then explained what I knew about the gun, how I’d gambled it would backfire.

  We stood looking at Showalter a moment longer. “What should we do with him?” Caedmon asked as he tucked the standard back into his waistband.

  “Leave him,” I said. We had no idea if there was another person in his household who knew his secret, who might also wish to do us harm.

  We bolted for my garden and crept up to the lower wall bordering the paths. Our gardeners were not about, but Aunt Rachel sat in a chair on the patio, right in front of the trellis to David’s room.

  “You couldn’t make the climb without being seen anyway,” Caedmon said, seeing my dismay. “What about that wicket there on the south corner?”

  I looked and saw that one of the tall, narrow windows of Father’s study was indeed standing open. “But Aunt Rachel?”

  “Pity it couldn’t have been your Clarisse,” Caedmon lamented.

  I nodded. “Yes, she’d have cleared the way for the star-crossed secret lovers.”

  I thought I saw Caedmon smile as he took my hand. “We’ll have to rig things ourselves—as always. Come on,” he urged me, edging over the wall and stepping onto the lawn.

  “Caedmon!” I whispered, but it was too late; he had already let go of my hand and was on the lawn and striding toward the house.

  I hastened to his side. “Excuse me?” he called out to my chaperone.

  She turned and surveyed the two strangers coming up the lawn from the river.

  “My brother and I were out rowing this morning, and our scull seems to have broken an oarlock. D’you mind terribly if we leave her tied up on the bank down there while we bring a rowboat upstream to tow it home?”

  Aunt Rachel eyed us dubiously. “It isn’t right for young men to come calling at this time of morning.”

  “We don’t mean to trouble you,” Caedmon said, confused.

  “Some of these careless chaperones may let young men come traipsing under the windows of their charges, but I take my duties to Miss Agnes’s reputation quite seriously.”

  I couldn’t fight the giggle that bubbled up.

  “And to laugh at an old woman, at the face of tradition!” She threw back her shoulders. “Shame!”

  “But our boat—,” Caedmon began before she cut him off again.

  “The river is too low this season to row. I know you’re up to nothing good,” she said, and then turned for the house, shouting, “Mrs. Brewster! Come quick, there are vagrants in the garden!”

  “Run!” I whispered to Caedm
on as we hurried around to the side of the house. Aunt Rachel couldn’t follow, but she was raising the household—if not the neighborhood—with her cries.

  “Well done,” I panted to Caedmon as we ducked into the shrubbery beside the open window. The threshold hovered two feet above the lamb’s ear planted in the bed below. I peeked inside and found Father’s desk unoccupied, the room still.

  “How was I to know your chaperone was an even greater saucebox than you?” he asked.

  “Seems we’re all full of surprises this morning,” I said, reaching up to grab the edge of the window. I could hear the shouts as the servants responded to Aunt Rachel’s cries. It would be a miracle if I made it up the steps undetected.

  “I’m going to tear across the garden and lead everyone away,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I get caught, but you can’t be found looking like that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s have the standard. I’ll give it to Father.”

  Caedmon nodded, and placed the standard in my free hand.

  I stepped over the threshold softly onto the wide plank floor of the study. I turned to face Caedmon again, finding that for once, what with the advantage of the height of the floor, I was actually a little taller than he was. He looked up at me. We had no time, Aunt Rachel would have the entire household stirred to chase away the intruders. But standing there, staring at him, knowing that for the moment at least the worst was behind us at last, I couldn’t make myself hurry.

  “I believe this is the part in the story where Clarisse would expect me to thank you for a lovely evening,” I said.

  He laughed and looked away. At the sound of men’s voices joining Aunt Rachel’s in the back garden, I smiled and turned to go. Caedmon’s hand on mine stopped me.

  I turned back to him.

  “In the garden before,” he said, keeping my fingers bound up in his, “I meant what I said. About you being the most extraordinary—”

  “You said marvelous,” I corrected him quickly. I was rather tired of being extraordinary and plucky and whatever else he’d called me. Marvelous would do nicely for a change.

  “Both,” he said in surrender. “I was wondering . . . hoping . . . that perhaps you felt something like that for me.”

  “I do find myself unexpectedly short a suitor,” I whispered.

  “You mean—”

  “I mean,” I inched closer, “that Clarisse, when she presses me for details of my pretend love affair,” I said with mock gravity, “will be expecting a report on something else.”

  He looked confused, then brightened. “Oh! Well,” he said, nervously wringing my hand. “I suppose it wouldn’t do for us to shirk that duty.”

  I shook my head. “Wouldn’t do at all,” I said, leaning toward, letting his arms pull me the rest of the way into the embrace.

  The kiss might have taken a bit longer than was prudent for a girl needing to slip upstairs unnoticed and a young man on the run from an angry chaperone. Might have taken longer than was absolutely necessary to satisfy the curiosity of an overly romantic Clarisse. And it might have taken even longer were it not for the fact that I heard someone behind me clear his throat.

  I straightened and whirled toward the sound. “Father!”

  His eyes bore a flash of surprise before he collected himself.

  “Daughter,” he said, adding, “Daughter in my son’s clothing consorting with someone at my window . . .”

  “Mother said you wouldn’t return until this afternoon,” I stammered.

  “Sorry to have inconvenienced you,” my father said.

  I struggled to speak. I’d counted on a few hours to prepare my story for Father.

  “Now would someone like to explain this to me?” Father asked after too long a silence.

  I reached for his hand, turned it over, and placed the bronze standard into his palm. “Miles Deacon said you’d know what to do with this.”

  “Is this—,” he began before I cut him off.

  “Yes. And Showalter is a villain and lying incapacitated in his garden.”

  Father looked at the heft of bronze in his hand, then back to me. “But how?”

  “My associate, Mr. Stowe,” I said, gesturing toward Caedmon, “will be happy to explain if you should like to invite him in. But I really must change. Mother’s about to have a very strange day, and I shan’t compound it by turning up in David’s old things.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. Instead I sprinted across the room, cracked the door a bit, and turned back to find both my father and Caedmon staring at me in confusion. Finding the hall deserted—the house emptied of servants searching for the two young interlopers who’d so disturbed Aunt Rachel—I bolted up the stairs to my room. As I closed the door to my chamber and slid into an exhausted heap on the floor, I wondered if there were any better circumstances for the man I loved and the father I adored to meet.

  I had a suspicion there were not.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A month passed.

  An entire month wherein I did not see Caedmon.

  But what a month it was. On June 18—just three days after we recovered Wepwawet’s standard—Napoleon suffered his first debilitating defeat at Waterloo.

  All of London was wild with the news that the war had ended, that we would know peace at last. Fireworks that were usually reserved for other seasons erupted at all times of day and night in celebration.

  Two skirmishes later, Wellington and the combined powers of the English and Prussian forces sent the tyrant packing. Napoleon signed abdication orders in Paris and was exiled once again. His defeat was so complete, and his armies so devastated, that the heavy guard posted around his prison was—according to every paper, politician, and letter from David—a redundancy. Bonaparte had been defeated before, but this time, he’d been humiliated.

  But there were no fireworks for me. Nor for Caedmon. No one would ever know the service we’d performed for our country. Perhaps that’s what it meant to be a servant. Only if you failed or performed sloppily did people pay attention. When you were successful, you were invisible.

  The celebrations continued. And the season and the pending debuts took on even greater significance. But I found very little to celebrate. Chiefly because aside from a single cryptic note from Caedmon reading I’ll see you soon, we’d had no contact at all since I left him in the study that morning.

  “He’s bound to be busy with filing reports and things,” my father said evasively when I asked if he’d heard from Caedmon. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

  I wasn’t convinced. In fact, I was beginning to worry that some danger had befallen Caedmon.

  But slipping off to see him was out of the question.

  After Father learned of how I’d taken advantage of Aunt Rachel and my lack of a proper chaperone, he remedied the situation accordingly. The morning after our adventure concluded, a Miss Dimslow appeared at the breakfast table. She explained that she’d been engaged by my father to serve as chaperone. I would have protested had he not also hired a new coachman to serve as my exclusive driver. And ultimately it was their startling similarities that made me doubt their real purpose in our household. There was none of the humility or subservience about them common to the other servants. Instead there was a vigilant awareness that bordered at times on protectiveness.

  So eager were they to screen anyone approaching me that after a few failed attempts to visit Caedmon at the museum—the last trip resulting in the news that he had left the institution for a different position—I gave up trying to go out at all. I half worried that since we’d secured the standard, perhaps the affection and emotion we’d felt might evaporate. This thought and his absence so depressed me that I found myself moping about the house, unable to read or work or study. I wondered if love was always so troubling, if the kind of love you grew into was as fraught with potential for disappointment as the kind you fell into.

  Mother, of course, misinterpreted the cause of my heartache.

 
; Showalter had disappeared.

  On one of the rare occasions that I had spoken to my father, he’d disclosed to me that men had been dispatched to collect Showalter within an hour of my arrival home, but found him gone. His servants and household staff were as bewildered as could be expected of people who’d lost both their raison d’etre and positions in one fell swoop.

  His disappearance was a blow of sorts, but Tanner was collected from his sarcophagus at the museum, swearing and cursing upon his release before buttoning up and refusing to speak to interrogators. From what I’d gleaned as the weeks passed, he at last had begun to reveal his mission and connections, and confirmed Showalter’s true identity as a spy.

  Father had also revealed to me that Lady Blalock had been implicated as an accomplice of Showalter and an agent of the French. Apparently the invention of his history and introduction into our society was entirely her work, and had been her primary achievement in the twenty years of service she’d given to France. She’d even colluded with Tanner and Showalter in organizing the attack on her own lady’s maid to make it seem as if her home too had been beset by the mummy’s curse.

  Of course, the public would never know any of it. The explanations for Showalter’s disappearance ran the gamut from some torrid affair to the more fantastical version that held him as the last victim of the mummy’s curse. Lady Blalock was reported to have retired to a country estate in Wales to calm her nerves. Such a bizarre turn of events provided sufficient grist to keep London’s rumor mill spinning.

  Whether I was jilted or tragic in London’s eyes, I did not care. I was pleased it meant I could be left alone and expected to be sour without consequence. Even Mother trod a wide and cautious path around me unless a dress fitting or other matter for the debut was absolutely necessary. And Rupert, in his way, offered his condolences. Chiefly this meant that he made some comment about the loss of all that lovely money, but beneath it, I chose to believe he felt some semblance of pity for his sister.

  No one pitied me enough to spare me the presentation, however. Though after a month of being sequestered in my room, enduring Mother’s concern and Miss Dimslow’s ever-vigilant presence, I actually found myself looking forward to the event we’d been preparing for. I’d never been to the palace, and I’d never seen the prince regent, so though it wasn’t half as exciting as what I’d been doing a few weeks ago, it was at least something.