Wrapped

by Jennifer Bradbury

  But reading was the last thing I wanted to do. I had so many questions, so many possibilities, that I felt a story was unfolding around me at this moment.

  Chapter Six

  I returned home that afternoon with Aunt Rachel in tow. I’d been wholly unsuccessful in persuading her that she’d be wiser to nap while I called on Julia. As a result, I’d learned nothing new by day’s end except that local gossip had the mummy rising off the table last night to strike white the hair of one of the party guests. And Julia was no help in piecing together last night’s mysteries, especially as we had both our chaperones with us, which meant our conversation was confined to dresses and the weather.

  Aunt Rachel retired to her rooms. I was meant to be reading in the library.

  But I still needed to speak with Father.

  His study door was shut, a whisper of voices carrying through the panels.

  Telling Father about my experiences last night would have to wait. Instead I raced to my bedroom, tossed my bonnet onto the bed, and hurried to my chair by the fireplace—the very one that shared a chimney with the hearth in Father’s study.

  “—should he succeed in the Channel, we’re done for!” my father was saying as I heard the creaking lid of the rosewood box in which he stored his tobacco insert itself into the conversation. The lid fell shut again. I knew from watching him a hundred times that he was now adding a pinch of cardamom (a habit he’d acquired while in India).

  “He does seem to have more lives than a cat,” admitted a voice I recognized as belonging to the Earl of Bathurst, the secretary of war. I felt truly sorry for Mr. Bathurst. He probably hadn’t anticipated actually administering the cabinet in a time of conflict. His predecessor had retired barely six months ago when we thought that the greatest of the danger had passed. But that was before Napoleon came back.

  The greatest enemy of all Britain and her holdings had been defeated—soundly—last winter.

  But he returned. Like always.

  For over a decade, he’d terrorized all of Europe and even gone so far as Africa and the Americas in his quest to extend his influence and power. Bonaparte had come terribly close to overtaking the Continent completely.

  Only the ships that patrolled the narrow channel between Normandy and Dover protected us, and they were spread dangerously thin dealing with the emperor’s forces all over the Atlantic. All England lived in fear of what might happen if he ever succeeded in breaking through our naval blockades and bringing his Grande Armée to our shores.

  Since I’d discovered that when the fires were unlit I could listen in on Father below, Napoleon had been the favored topic. At first it had merely been a game, but as I grew and understood more—and after David took to sea—my eavesdropping took on greater purpose.

  And it wasn’t simply Father or Parliament members who could seem to talk of little else. Bonaparte’s infamy and the latest drama on the Continent found its way to the ladies at cards after dinners when the men had all retired to billiards and cigars, where they also offered undoubtedly sage advice on what to do about the tiny Frenchman. The newspapers carried daily war news, but it was nothing like as accurate as what I could glean here by the fireplace. And by the time what my father knew made it out to the general papers, I’d often known about it for several days.

  I knew the situation at present was perhaps as dire as it could be. Napoleon had only a month ago been rescued from his exile on Elba and reinstalled as emperor. France was mad for him, his power and popularity even greater now, after he’d been absent from leadership for so long. In his last letter, David said he’d seen men taken prisoner after battles at sea who prayed to Napoleon before they prayed to God. The villain had, after all, resurrected himself from the dead (politically and militarally speaking, of course) not once but twice since he first ascended.

  And now he’d done it again. His armies were gaining strength and zeal each day, and our navy and shipbuilders were preparing for the inevitable moment when Napoleon did overtake the rest of Europe and made to cross the Channel and come for us.

  It seemed inescapable that he—the man who’d survived for eleven years as the most feared in all the world—would one day march on British soil. It seemed almost as inescapable as my future.

  Almost.

  “What of our recent attempts to . . . eliminate him?” my father asked Bathurst.

  The earl sighed. “Our spies cannot get close. His return was unexpected enough that the assets we had in place have not had sufficient time to reintegrate themselves into his household.”

  “When I think of last spring . . . the coach driver . . .” My father paused to draw on his pipe.

  “We lost a good man and made the monster more cautious in the bargain,” Bathurst lamented.

  These were the pieces of conversation that set my heart racing. I had overheard planned assassination attempts, reports on secret military missions, summaries regarding suspected persons in the service of a foreign, malevolent power.

  But it was the careful mentions of the shadowy souls carrying out these orders that stirred me most. There were hundreds of patriots—French and British—working secretly within France to advance Britain’s cause. The man who’d posed as the coach driver was one of these. But Napoleon had his spies as well—most of them working between London and the coast, gleaning information about naval deployments, defensive strategies, or what we knew of Napoleon’s plans.

  But I wasn’t even supposed to know any of this, so I could never ask questions. I’d understood the assassin had been unsuccessful, but it was the first I’d heard that he had been so unfortunate as to be killed.

  I was still pondering his sad fate when inside the study, my father rang the bell to summon the parlor maid. The sound made me jump, my movement dislodging the rack of pokers and shovels and the small broom used to clean the ashes from the grate in winter. The clatter echoed down into the chimney, and I knew into Father’s ears.

  Silence fell within the room. I dashed for the door and down the steps, willing my feet to fall silently on the treads. Before Father could puzzle together that I’d been listening from my room, I’d appear at his door.

  I knocked and swept in without waiting for an answer.

  “Hello, Father!” I sang. “I’m just back from my errands and hadn’t seen you since last night. Though I didn’t know you were engaged! I’m terribly sorry to have interrupted what must be very important to bring Mr. Bathurst”—here I paused, turned to my father’s guest, curtsied slightly, and slipped a “how do you do” into the middle of my lie—“all the way to the Park in the middle of the afternoon.”

  I uttered all this in one breathless burst, hoping the flush in my cheeks would register as excitement rather than guilt. Father eyed me skeptically. Bathurst merely smiled and sat straighter in his chair, something most of my father’s friends and associates had begun to do since my season began. Granted, my gowns had been let out a bit in spots, but certainly not enough to warrant such gestures of respect from men who’d known me from my infancy. It unnerved me.

  I felt Father’s eyes on me as I tugged off my gloves. Father knew. He always knew.

  “Hello, Agnes,” he said dryly, motioning me to his side. I took his hand.

  “I’ve not yet had opportunity to congratulate you on your debut, Miss Wilkins,” Mr. Bathurst said, after a moment during which I was sure my father would scold me for my skulking and spying.

  I turned to him, smiling as best I could after what I’d heard. “Yes. Thank you, sir.”

  “You must be pleased, Sir Hugh,” Mr. Bathurst said to my father, “such a fine girl. And already snagging the interest of a very prominent neighbor, I understand.”

  My father patted my hand and smiled, staring at the pile of papers and the inkwell littering his desktop. “I suppose.” He turned his gaze to me, his gray-green eyes mirrors of my own. “Yet I cannot help but feel much the same way as I do when I argue on the floor that we must send more ships or troops off to war.
”

  My breath caught in my throat. I fought tears. Lucky for us, Mr. Bathurst did not catch the significance of the moment.

  “My dear Hugh! She is merely free now to secure her place in society. She is not off to fight!”

  My father released my hand and busied himself with breaking the wax seal on a letter that lay on his desk. The downstairs maid appeared at the door and inquired as to the reason for her summons.

  “We’ll take some refreshment, please, before we go,” my father ordered.

  “Go?” I asked, alarmed.

  He nodded. “Bathurst has come to fetch me down to Tilbury. There’s a man there we need to speak with.”

  “How long will you stay?” I asked.

  “I hope we will return evening after next,” Father said, adding, “and I’ll be bringing with me a surprise.”

  I looked at the smile on his face and wondered what he could be bringing home from a port town half a day’s ride east to compete with the exotic gifts he’d brought me in the past.

  I wondered how he could see me as a girl about to make her debut, as the same girl he was loath to let Mother send out into the world of matchmaking, and still see me as the girl who grew giddy at the prospect of some trinket brought home hidden in his traveling case.

  He leaned forward and caught my eye. “Is something the matter?” he asked, stymied by my reaction to his promised surprise. I forced a smile. My father had enough to worry about, with a war brewing and a son at sea. He didn’t need to know I’d outgrown his little gifts. And he certainly didn’t need my silly fancies and petty larcenies to distract him from whatever part he was meant to play in thwarting Napoleon’s plans. At least not until his return.

  “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 unw
rapping. 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.