“Good heavens,” interjected Sir Frederic every few sentences. “You don’t say! . . . Oh my . . . my, my, my . . . You did? . . . Oh, dear . . .”
When Georgette had acquainted him with all the particulars, everyone in the room exhaled at once. Only now did it seem their walk was truly over, her hands warm and her gown drying at the hem.
“My, my, my,” said the baronet again. “What a dreadful morning for you. Simply dreadful.” He looked about the study. “I haven’t a decanter in here. Ridiculous oversight. I haven’t yet had time to make this room my own, not entirely. But the wine cellar is up to London standards.”
He rang for a servant—and when the butler appeared, Sir Frederic beamed. “Hawes, pick out something sprightly for us to drink. A Madeira, let us say?” He looked to the others expectantly.
“Indeed. Mrs. Crowe ought to have something fortifying,” Hugo spoke up. “She has been through an ordeal.”
“I have?” Oh, the stubbornness of him. “I’m not the one with a hole in my shoulder.”
“Trapezius.”
“Right. Right. I’ll drink something fortifying if you’ll drink double.”
“I can’t agree to that,” Hugo said. “It would be excessive to drink so much wine after consuming laudanum. Besides which, it’s not my sprightly beverage to promise away.”
“Minha casa é sua casa.” The baronet’s round face wore a genial smile. “Picked up a bit of Portuguese over the years. Yes, Hawes, a Madeira,” he decided. “I had a pipe of it shipped from Portugal to my home in London last year, and it soon became a favorite. Had to bring it along when I inherited the baronetcy. The wine cellar here was nothing when I arrived.”
Hawes soon returned with a crystal decanter on a silver tray polished to a diamond brightness. Wealth, wealth, wealth. The butler laid the service on the desk before the baronet and set a quartet of glasses down, then bowed from the study. Sir Frederic poured out, handing each person a glass of liquid the color of burnt sugar.
Georgette breathed it deeply, scenting spice and sweetness and the bite of alcohol. It smelled, of a sudden, like the most delicious and necessary drink imaginable. She tipped her head back and gulped it down.
“My dear!” Sir Frederic looked pained as she reached forward to set down her glass on the desk. “Take care. That wine is older than you!”
Not to mention, it was fortified with strong spirits that made her wheeze. The Madeira was sweet and coffee-bitter, with a warming bite as she swallowed it. “Sorry about that. I’m not at ease. This morning was not what I expected.”
“You did well.” This grunt came, surprisingly, from Jenks. He was holding his own glass dubiously. After he spoke, he set it down untouched.
Then he turned a dark glare on Hugo and Georgette. “You were both fortunate. But this is no longer a matter for amateur involvement.”
They all peered at him curiously—then Sir Frederic spoke first. “What sort of matter are you discussing?”
“The gold. The bullet. Two bullets, to be accurate.” Jenks’s words were clipped. “Possibly the injury to the blacksmith’s toes. Mr. and Mrs. Crowe, you two will stay in Raeburn Hall for safety until my investigation is concluded.”
If Jenks had directed this order toward Georgette alone, she would have protested until her tongue went numb—or more numb than it already was from the gulped-down Madeira. But because he included Hugo, and because Hugo had bled on her hands today and drifted into unconsciousness, she would agree with anything Jenks asked.
Again, she was glad Hugo had given Jenks the bit of gold from Keeling. How had she once thought it beautiful? Finding gold that came coupled with gunshots was too great a risk for the possible reward.
Still. Even if she wouldn’t take a dangerous chance, she couldn’t stop wondering about the truth. Keeling gave out little pieces of gold. Lowe had been melting gold. Which of them provided it to the other? Or did they both get the gold from someone else? Were any sovereigns left, or had they all been melted into unrecognizable bits of metal?
As questions twirled and spun through her mind, Sir Frederic set down his own glass and leaned forward, resting his hands on his desk. “What,” he asked, “did Mr. Lowe say about this morning’s events?” His gaze flicked expectantly from one to the other.
Hugo sipped at his Madeira, looking every inch the gentleman despite his damaged clothing and bandaged shoulder. “Etiquette forbids asking probing questions of a man while bleeding onto his table.”
“Well, I don’t believe it does,” Georgette replied. “But I didn’t happen to think of asking Mr. Lowe his thoughts while Mr. Crowe was, as he said of himself, bleeding all over the table.”
“Yes, of course.” The baronet sank back into his chair, drumming his fingers on the desk. “But you are recovering, Mr. Crowe? You appear to be.”
“I appear to be, yes.” Hugo took one more sip of Madeira, then lined up his glass on the desk beside Georgette’s and Jenks’s.
His was not the certain reply for which Georgette could have hoped. “Aren’t you able to heal? Didn’t I clean the wound aright?”
“Oh yes,” said Hugo. “You did perfectly. I only mean that not everything has been as it seemed today. But what has been true, and who has been honest, I cannot say.”
Sir Frederic looked taken aback for a moment—then he laughed. “You sound like Jenks. Suspicious of everything, the old fusspot.” Jenks made a resentful noise.
“Here, finish your Madeira,” added the baronet. “Have another if you like. Two more, since your lady suggested it. And I’ll order a nice beefsteak for dinner. Got to strengthen your blood.”
They all parted, though not without more questions in Georgette’s mind. As easily as planning a menu, a bullet wound was thus dismissed by Sir Frederic. Hugo, too, seemed all too willing to forget that a lead ball had passed through his shoulder—pardon, trapezius. And Jenks? He was no more or less single-minded than ever. For them all, this was much like any other Sunday, albeit with a few unusual events to be taken in stride.
But something in Georgette had been changed when Hugo cast himself in the path of a bullet, guarding her. Protecting her heart.
No; silly Georgette, to think so. No, he had only made her heart all the more vulnerable.
Chapter Fourteen
The next day, Hugo did not ask Georgette to check and clean his wound. In fact, she suspected that he never would ask. The barb he had tossed—not asking for help, not wanting her help—had found home.
But since she knew it needed to be done, and since he had got the wound by throwing himself in the path of a bullet to protect her, and since she couldn’t bear the idea of him going through further pain alone, she decided she would see to the matter whether he asked her or not.
First, she had to find some strong spirits—and strong spirits were to be found with her host. Sir Frederic was in his study, wearing a perplexed expression as he paged through a cloth-bound volume.
She rapped at the frame of the door. “Beg pardon, Sir Frederic.”
He looked up, and a smile flicked on as soon as he saw her. “Ah, good day to you! Do call me Uncle Freddie, please.” With a confidential wink, he stage-whispered, “In case that dreadful Jenks is about.”
That dreadful Jenks, Georgette knew, was not about—though where he was, she was not sure. He was gone back to the Lowes’ cottage, maybe, or speaking with Linton, or tracking Keeling.
Not so long ago, Georgette could not have imagined anyone whose enthusiasm for locating the stolen gold sovereigns surpassed her own. Now she could not fathom what carried Jenks into the grim rain and through thankless conversations time after time, when the only reward he foresaw was that of knowing justice had been done. Justice was all well and good, but it wouldn’t keep him warm or provide him with pleasant company.
But maybe he felt strongly enough about justice that it took the place of the personal and the comfortable. Perhaps that was what it was like to have a purpose.
“I
confess, Uncle Freddie,” Georgette said, “I am here to beg you for spirits. I need to check and clean Hu—my husband’s wounded shoulder.” The lie about their marriage was more difficult to speak each time, for it had to cover too much truth.
Sir Frederic set down the volume atop a stack of others on his desk. “No idea what to do with these books,” he mused. “I suppose it’s time I ship them off. Well, that’s not why you’re here. Let me see—spirits. Spirits, spirits.” He eyed the decanter of Madeira. The level of liquid within it was much lower than it had been the previous afternoon.
“Not that,” he decided. “Brandy would be more medicinal, surely. But all the brandy I have is excellent.” His brow puckered with distress. “It seems a pity to pour it out.”
“I’m not going to waste it. But I do understand, you don’t want a fine vintage used for anything but drinking before the fire. Have you nothing terrible?”
His eyes widened. “I would never keep anything terrible in my cellars.” He looked doubtfully at the decanter. At the stack of books before him. At the fireplace, the window, then the decanter again. “No, no. What am I saying? The wound must be cleaned. You and Mr. Crowe must visit the wine cellar and select whatever you think best. Hawes can give you the key.”
What a different sort of life, to have so many fine things that one was unable to use them. Yet Sir Frederic was not unwilling to help; he had been more than generous since Georgette and Hugo had arrived unannounced and unexpected at his door.
So she thanked him, promising to use the smallest possible amount of spirits, and retrieved the key to the wine cellar from the efficient Hawes. Then she fetched Hugo. He was reading in the library, his gold spectacles perched at the end of his nose. He was coatless, but his shoulder was pressed by a waistcoat and shirt.
“You oughtn’t to have anything pressing on your injured trapezius,” Georgette said by way of greeting. “It must be painful.”
He looked up from his book, then rose to his feet. “Good day to you. You said trapezius. Well done.”
“I’m not here to have my pronunciation praised. I’m here to drag you off to the wine cellar and splash something dreadful onto your bullet wound.” She brandished the key at him, a huge, old, toothy piece with an ornate head.
He closed the book and set it aside with a look of distaste. “I cannot muster the proper enthusiasm for that subject. A pity.”
“Do you mean the subject of having your wound cleaned? Or are you reading about vegetable acids again?”
“The latter.” He removed his spectacles gingerly with his right hand, nursing the shoulder, then rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his left. “Poor vegetable acids. I am sure we cannot live without them, yet I do not foresee a time when I will need to know of them in detail.”
“You won’t, unless you become a botanist. And though I wouldn’t place that out of the realm of possibility, right now it’s more important to place brandy on your shoulder.”
Hugo folded up his spectacles and tucked them into his waistcoat pocket. “You are enjoying this, aren’t you? Throwing caustic liquids at me?”
“Yes, I am. Because it’s helping you.”
When he blinked at her as if surprised, a sudden shyness made her add, “And because it’s good for your medical career. You’ll make a much less high-handed doctor if you know what it’s like to be a patient.”
“I probably ought to be offended by your use of the phrase ‘high-handed,’ but I grant the logic of the argument. Lead on to the wine cellar, then, and we shall see if our host stocks anything suitable for irrigating a bullet wound.”
They made their way to the cellar door, which Georgette unlocked using the great key from Hawes. Rather than leave it in the lock, she pulled it free and stuffed it into the pocket of her gown. “I don’t relish being locked in,” she told Hugo. “I suppose I’m growing as suspicious as Jenks.”
“I’m hardly going to chide you for displaying caution. Would you like me to descend first with a lantern?”
She would in fact like that, and once he had one lit he preceded her into the wine cellar. Stone steps, narrow and unprotected by a railing, led into the earth. Georgette picked her way down carefully, left hand trailing against the wall.
Inside the cellar, the lantern flung forth a candle-brightness, and light wells cunningly set into the walls let in dim, filtered daylight. The room held a pleasant, dry coolness, bounded by stone walls and a ceiling curved like sloping shoulders. Stone ribs supported the ceiling, and the floor was flagged in the same buff stone from which the walls were constructed.
She had never seen a space like this room, which appeared snatched from a castle and stuffed incongruously under Sir Frederic’s modern home. Along one side, barrels and casks were lined up. They stood on end, hooped in thick bands of iron, their contents branded on the lids. Their wood was pleasant-colored in the gentle daylight, everything from clean new ambers to deep gray browns of great age. At the other side, shelves formed a wooden grid along one wall, long as the room and divided into squares by vertical posts. Each was some degree full of glass bottles. Some were stacked horizontally, their bottoms turned out. Some were as fat at the bottom as an onion. These stood upright, listing slightly as if drunk on their own contents.
Some bottles were brown, some green, some dulled with age. Some were labeled by hand; others had press-printed labels. Some bottles were identified with letters scratched into the glass; some were unlabeled, but wooden plaques nailed to the shelves below identified the contents. It was a greater variety of spirits, more elaborately catalogued, than Georgette had ever imagined.
This, then, was Sir Frederic’s true library. Not the room with the gaudy-bound books; not even the study.
One could learn a great deal about a person by examining his library. Sir Frederic’s wine cellar told Georgette that he had traveled a little, bought a lot. That he liked to indulge himself so often that indulgence had become a habit. But many collectors were the same way. Book collectors, such as those who came to Frost’s in search of rare volumes, would spend any amount to acquire what they wanted.
Perhaps that, too, was what it was like to have a purpose. She had wondered about that more and more since embarking on her journey with Hugo.
After the journey, she’d no idea what would come. But for now, her purpose was cleaning his wound. Finding stolen gold. Preparing to leave.
No time like the present, was there? Especially since she was with Hugo. Who wasn’t wearing a coat, and who looked delicious, and who loved nothing more than preparing for anything he could think of.
“While we are in this cellar,” Georgette said, “we could look for the stolen gold. Keeling comes to Raeburn Hall as he pleases. Doesn’t this cellar look like the perfect place to hide something? How often do you think someone looks into every corner of this room?”
“Not often at all.” Hugo trailed his fingers along one shelf, looking over the bottles resting there. “But Jenks has searched the whole house. And no one can enter the wine cellar without a key.”
“Ah, yes. As Lord Science, you must consider every possibility and potential difficulty,” she said. “But Bone-box, the horrid urchin, knows that someone who could steal four trunks of sovereigns from a Royal Mint would not stick at the theft of a wine cellar key.”
“Meaning, if Jenks only searched once, he ought to do it again?”
“Or we ought to,” said Georgette. “If someone is going to find the gold, it might as well be us. I lost my taste for it when you were shot, but—”
“Now that I’m recovering nicely, you’ve got a lust for treasure again?”
He blinked, evidently taken aback by his own words. Word? One word—lust, dropping unexpectedly into the room. It landed perfectly, like the first snowflake falling to nestle amidst the winter grass. The prelude to more, much more.
Or was she hearing only what she wished to? Looking for signs of her own desire in him? No one had ever accused her of lacking imagination
. She fumbled for words. The right words. Words that would not reveal the tumble of emotion awakened by the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands.
“What looks good?” she asked, faltering.
“All of it, really.” Hugo’s brows were doing a sort of gymnastic affair, lifting farther and yet farther as he scanned the cellar shelves. “For drinking, that is. For pouring on a wound? I can’t blame our host for being reluctant. He has thousands of pounds’ worth of spirits down here.”
“Fine. We’ll get some lye.”
“Not the same thing.” He pulled forth a bottle of amber-colored glass. “Here’s a malted whisky. That ought to hurt like the devil.”
“That’s how you know it’s effective. I’ll draw some off and we’ll have this done.”
Hugo handed her the bottle. “I will have to take off my shirt.”
“Yes, that’s true.” She worked at the bottle. The cork was not pushed in completely, as though the bottle had been previously opened and enjoyed.
“I don’t have to take it off all the way,” Hugo added.
“I will not be offended if you do.” She deserved an award for achieving that level of understatement.
When Georgette looked up from the cork, he was working at the buttons of his waistcoat. A grimace tightened his features.
“Let me, let me.” She set the opened whisky bottle atop one of the barrels, then crossed the flagged floor to stand before him.
“Got it.” Hugo slipped the last button free. Once he shrugged out of the waistcoat, grimacing again, he laid it aside atop another barrel. “I can’t forget, I’ve got my spectacles in the pocket.”
“I promise not to step on your waistcoat.”
The fine linen of his shirt was enticingly thin, hinting at the outline of his torso. Could she see the dark hair on his chest? Would he need her to help him remove his shirt?
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