Chapter Ten
“This is Mrs. Cartwright’s worst nightmare. The dusting!”
Ginny was agog at the sight of row upon row upon row of little vases, dishes, bowls, match keepers, salt cellars, and more
stretched on into infinity in Fleegle’s Emporium, which was milling with people picking things up and putting them down again.
“It’s a lot of people’s worst nightmares,” Marchand said grimly. “Imagine the crashing sound after one mighty sneeze.”
“Or if you swung a cricket bat in here,” Ginny said.
Marchand had in fact presented a cricket bat to her a half hour go when he’d returned to the Grand Palace on the Thames. He’d
been at Lucifer’s Fall all morning interviewing new guards to replace the one he’d fired for letting her in, or so he told
her. He’d been out at Lucifer’s Fall last evening, too, as the boardinghouse rules allowed. While she’d played a rousing game
of whist with the ladies, Ginny worked up a little resentment by imagining him strolling through a thicket of drunk heirs
happily engaged in losing their fortunes. It was an attempt to offset something that felt disconcertingly like disappointment.
The room felt diminished by Marchand’s absence.
“Apparently, this is one of the ‘whimsical’ things your brother won,” he said when he handed the cricket bat over to her.
“It was sent to him care of Lucifer’s Fall.
And look, it’s even signed by Silver Billy Beldham.
” Silver Billy was a famous batman. Her brother worshipped him.
“It might actually be worth something.” Marchand had paused.
“Not anywhere near as much as Hogarth wagered for it, of course.”
Ginny had sighed heavily and brought it up to her boardinghouse room, muttering beneath her breath about her brother.
“Let’s speak to Fleegle’s proprietor,” Marchand said now.
They waited in line as several people ahead of them made purchases.
Mr. Fleegle turned out to be a bald gentleman with a long, regal nose and bushy white eyebrows. He flicked his eyes over the
two of them and adjusted his posture to ever-so-slightly straighter. Likely he smelled money.
“Good afternoon, sir. Would you be Mr. Fleegle?” Marchand asked.
“Yes, sir. And you would be?”
“A potential customer. Mr. Fleegle, would something you purchased from a customer three days ago already be out on your shelves?”
“Anything pretty we received three days ago would have already been sorted and recorded by our staff and put out on the shelves.
Anything ugly we use for target practice for the fun of it or sell for skeet.”
“How do you determine ugly from pretty?” Ginny wondered. Only slightly ironically.
“Taste, my dear.” Mr. Fleegle tapped his temple. “You have to be born with it.”
“How interesting! One learns something new every day, don’t they, ah, dear?” She turned to Marchand.
He fixed her with a quelling look.
“A vase to which we are sentimentally attached was inadvertently added to a box of knickknacks and brought here by a woman
named Mrs. Cartwright,” Mr. Marchand informed him. “You purchased it from her for three shillings. Do you recall this, Mr.
Fleegle?”
“Quite a lot of gewgaws, dogs, and things? Shepherdesses? Several vases? Little bowls?”
“That sounds like it,” Marchand confirmed.
Ginny crossed her fingers in her skirts.
“We put some of it out on the shelf, if I recall. I sold some of the shepherdesses to a bloke who wanted to line them up on
a fence and shoot them for target practice.”
“Oh no!” Ginny’s hand flew to her heart, as if he was talking about murdering real shepherdesses. Men. For heaven’s sake. “Do you have any shepherdesses left?” she asked.
“I think I see one on that top shelf over there, where the staff usually puts out knickknacks that look like people.” He squinted,
and pointed.
She pivoted to stare sorrowfully at the homely little shepherdess that Harriet Parker had allegedly cherished.
“Do you keep an inventory list or record of purchases?” Marchand asked.
“What kind of establishment do ye think we are, fine sir, that we wouldn’t keep a list?” Mr. Fleegle said this with cheerful
indignation. “We get so many similar things in that we number the items, then cross them off our list when they’re sold. V125
for a vase, and so forth.”
“No description of the item, such as color and shape?” Ginny pressed.
“Not really necessary, is it, if it’s numbered? And we really haven’t the time for that. Much more efficient this way.”
“It’s a clever system,” Ginny confirmed disconsolately.
“How many vases did you sell over the last few days?” Marchand produced a handful of coins and was hefting them in his gloved
hand, and Mr. Fleegle thumped what looked like a ledger up onto his counter and opened it to a marked page.
“Five,” he told him. He took the coins.
“Do you recall anything distinctive about the vases sold, or the people to whom you sold them?” Marchand asked.
“If I’d known you’d be in with a handful of coins asking for such things, young sir, I might have made more of an effort to
pay attention. We don’t sell things on account here. The transactions are all in coin. We mark sales out of the book as they’re
made. We don’t sell antiquities, as you can see. No one even needs to sign a receipt.”
“Efficient,” Marchand finally allowed, after a moment. Somehow tersely.
“Thank you, sir, for your time,” Ginny said, feeling thwarted.
“You’re both welcome to have a look at what we have. If it’s blue-and-white vases you love, we’ve lots of chinoiserie. We keep them along the back wall.” Mr. Fleegle gestured to a cluster of blue-and-white odds and ends on a
series of shelves about twenty feet long. “And people often come in to buy odds and ends and then go on to sell them again
at market stalls about the city. If you don’t find that vase in the shop today, you may yet find it somewhere else.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ginny turned to Marchand. “I’ll take the far end of that section while you take the part nearest the door.”
She smiled when his eyes widened somewhat warningly at her audacity. She doubted anyone ever ordered him about.
But somehow she wasn’t surprised when he obeyed.
Marchand idly plucked up a small white vase patterned in a tracery of vines and flowers, glanced at the bottom, and put it
back down again. His search was perfunctory. He had the peculiar sensation that he was floating over himself, watching Gabriel Marchand, of all people, pick up and put down knickknacks.
He in truth had learned nearly a decade ago how to spot Ming from not-Ming fairly quickly—he didn’t own any, but in the first
flush of his wealth, he’d contemplated buying a piece as an investment, and had ultimately decided it was too dear for him.
There was something softly, subtly otherworldly about the glaze on Ming porcelain, something uniquely graceful about the forms
it took—and he would wager his eyeteeth that not one scrap of Ming was currently in this shop.
So why was he doing this?
He felt sympathy for but no real guilt about Miss Woodville’s plight. And while vase hunting distracted him from dwelling
upon the beautiful yet excruciating anniversary he would be marking a day from now, that wasn’t the entire reason, either.
Though it seemed related in some way he was unable to quite put his finger on.
It was more as though he’d stepped into some sort of undertow against which he had no defenses. St. Giles had prepared him for a lot of things. But not this.
A case could be made that it had begun when Miss Woodville first appeared in his office. And he supposed he could assign that
cozy bloody boardinghouse some blame.
But if he was forced to trace the origins to a single moment, it would be when he’d swept the soft, scented weight of Miss
Woodville up in his arms and deposited her into the hack outside of the Earl of Sydenham’s town house. During those few seconds,
something within him had unexpectedly righted when she was in his arms, as if she was ballast and he’d long been a listing
ship.
He was certain Miss Woodville somehow sensed it.
She’d begun to test her power over him.
She could never win a contest of wills against him, of course. He couldn’t help this. Winning was what he did; it was how
he was made. And he knew that girl was all untapped sensuality—pupil flares and flushed cheeks did not lie. He did not for
an instant believe she would take him up on his original offer, but he was confident that in a matter of days, if he really
wanted to, he could be admiring the firelight-burnished curve of her round white arse as he took her from behind in front
of his hearth. And she might wonder how on earth she had come to be on her hands and knees in front of a bastard from St.
Giles, but he would know. Because he would have subtly, gradually steered the both of them right up to that moment.
He was smarter than that.
Few women were more dangerous for a man like him than a virgin aristocrat with a messy life.
As he idly picked up another vase he surreptitiously admired the sway of her walk as she moved down the aisle. The bands of muscle across his stomach went taut in a reflex as old as time. As if his body was preparing to pounce.
Darkly amused, he drew in a steadying breath, put the vase down, and picked up another one.
“Pardon me, madam, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with Mr. Fleegle a few minutes ago. Are you looking
for a white vase with blue flowers and a pair of lovebirds on it?”
Marchand’s head shot up alertly. A strange man was addressing Miss Woodville.
“Yes!” Miss Woodville confirmed eagerly. “I am looking for a vase with birds on it!”
Marchand narrowed his eyes. The man was dressed a bit like Mr. Ogden, though everything about him was considerably less crisp
and shiny. His boots were scuffed, his coat was rumpled, his hair was a bit greasy. Something about the glittery intensity
of the bloke’s gaze plucked a warning note from Marchand’s intuition. Every decent man knew better than to directly approach