Chapter Eight
Small talk never makes great narratives.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
It was as if she’d stepped into a dream.
A sensible, sober dream of dark oak paneling, a dark oak floor, and books lining every wall.
By the light of numerous candles, their gilt-worked spines glinted.
The smell of their old pages filled the air with an intoxicating mustiness.
Some people sat around a large dining table, but Amelia dismissed them from her attention.
Was that a complete set of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire she spied?
And that oil painting of Lord Nelson above the hearth looked at first glance to be authentic!
She swayed a little with dizziness, for her mouth remained ajar, having abandoned any interest in breathing.
After all, what was oxygen compared to a really good private library?
“Professor!”
Vanity’s high-pitched voice yanked her back into her proper senses.
The girl was waving from the far side of the table, and Amelia shut her mouth in order to smile politely in return.
Only now did she notice the particulars of the dining setup.
A table of the same heavy, dark oak as the walls was laden with so much crystalware, gold-rimmed dinnerware, and silver cutlery that it looked like a display at a home decor exhibition.
A centerpiece of two swans facing each other with their wings extended charmed her until she realized with a lurch in her stomach that they were actual swans, and indeed part of the dinner.
Spontaneously converting to vegetarianism, she looked away, driven at last to regard the people present.
Other than Vanity, only four others occupied the room.
(And an uncounted number of servants.) Sheffield sat rigid at the table’s end with an attitude suggesting it would be a dereliction of his duty to consume anything.
Throckmorton was opposite Vanity, drinking deeply from a wineglass—an action that looked rather like how Amelia felt.
Sir Nigel sat hunched beside him. And presiding at the head of the table was a woman so ferociously dignified that Amelia initially wondered if a duchess had come to call.
Her voluptuous silver-haired coiffure gave the impression of being crowned with a tiara, although it was not.
Her black taffeta dress was so old-fashioned it rebounded into vintage magnificence.
She peered at Amelia through a lorgnette while simultaneously snapping her fingers at Sir Nigel.
“Sit up straight,” she muttered to him through the teeth revealed by her elegant smile.
“Welcome,” she told Amelia, lowering the lorgnette with a brisk little sniff that told Amelia she’d been classified as Uninteresting and Badly Dressed.
“I am Lady Ruperta Harroway, and you must be the antiquarian girl who’s come to look at Nigel’s knickknacks.
We’ve just been hearing all about you from Mr. Throckmorton. ”
Recollecting how laughter had emerged from the room, Amelia dreaded to think what the medieval studies professor had been telling these people.
And although she was no coward (after all, she’d chosen to become an antiquarian despite the very real risk of being killed by a fifteenth-century ashtray—and worse, her parents’ disapproval), she did wish rather fervently that she could retreat to her bedroom, where a comprehensive biography of Mary Wollstonecraft awaited her.
But the only way she could imagine that happening was if something exploded, and not even she wanted to see that befall such an excellent library.
“I am sorry if we’re late,” she said, resisting an urge to curtsy to the formidable Lady Ruperta.
“We’re not sticklers for time here,” Sir Nigel spoke up in his thin voice, gesturing to a longcase clock across the room.
Lady Ruperta sniffed in a manner that made it clear time was very definitely stickled, no matter what her husband might think, but Amelia had once again discarded any interest in the woman’s existence.
The clock was walnut…seventeenth century…
probably a Cabrier, considering the fine details on its front panel.
A subtle blue light tinted the air around it, suggesting the presence of thaumaturgic energy.
There was also the minor clue of its minute hand moving backward.
Ooh! Amelia thought (a professional term meaning I formally acknowledge this to be something worthy of my expert consideration).
An enchanted Cabrier clock far surpassed anything she’d seen in the manor’s entrance hall.
Even if it represented the only item of value in Sir Nigel’s collection, the British Museum would nevertheless be pleased indeed.
“And you must be Mr. Sterling,” Lady Ruperta was saying while Amelia mused whether she ought to run back upstairs and get her thaumometer. The hostess applied her lorgnette once more to the task of inspection.
“Hello,” Caleb said in the languid, smiling way he employed whenever he wanted to charm the greatest number of people possible in the shortest amount of time.
And indeed, Lady Ruperta blushed. Vanity fanned herself with both a hand and her eyelashes.
Throckmorton reached for the nearest wine carafe to refill his glass.
“It’s an honor to visit your lovely home,” Caleb continued—at which even Sir Nigel began to look a little bewitched.
“Yes, it is,” Lady Ruperta replied. Recovering her wits, she showed a skill possessed only by aristocrats and high school teachers: looking down her nose at him while still peering through her lorgnette. “I trust, Mr. Sterling, that you and your assistant understand antiques.”
“Associate,” Caleb corrected her, still smiling.
“Girlfriend,” Throckmorton interjected, poorly disguising the word as a cough.
Caleb’s expression did not falter, but judging from the manner in which he blinked, Amelia knew he was dissecting the medieval studies professor with an imaginary butter knife.
“Allow me to answer that question,” he said to Lady Ruperta, “by telling you that the cameo at your throat is a fine example of a late-eighteenth-century Tassie.”
“Oh!” The lorgnette slipped from Lady Ruperta’s hand as she reached up to touch the cameo under discussion.
“How clever of you to notice! Sir Nigel gifted it to me for my last birthday. ‘A treasure for my treasure,’ he said. Didn’t you, Nigel?
” she added, her voice cracking like a whip and jolting Sir Nigel from an apparent doze.
“Yes, dear,” he replied automatically.
“I say,” Vanity spoke up. “Isn’t a Tassie rather com—”
“Complex in its craftsmanship, yes,” Caleb spoke over her smoothly.
“Please, do sit down,” Lady Ruperta urged Amelia and Caleb, all graciousness now as she gestured to the remaining vacant chairs. Amelia was impressed. She hadn’t witnessed Caleb disarm a foe so swiftly in years.
Footmen moved forward then to aid in seating them.
Caleb was placed next to Vanity, and Amelia into the seat beside Throckmorton, who gave her a sardonic glance.
But she did not mind, for she was now in possession of an excellent view of the clock.
The last time she’d felt this excited about an antique was when she found Richard III’s flame-breathing codpiece in a stable yard in Leicester.
While the footmen began serving the meal, she tilted from side to side to see around them.
There followed an onslaught of pleasant conversation about the weather (ghastly), the journey north (hideous), and the accommodations (“I decorated those bedrooms myself,” said Lady Ruperta, which almost certainly meant she told hired tradesmen how to decorate them).
Amelia inserted a word or smile now and again when prompted by her subconscious—although to be fair, this was all she’d have done even were she not absorbed in clock gazing.
People did interest her, but usually only after they’d been dead a hundred years.
While noting the clock’s silver hands and trying to decide if its spandrels were genuine gold or just painted, she heard Throckmorton say, “Professor Sterling is a great adventure sportsman.”
“Then we shall have to arrange for some hunting and hiking, and perhaps some fly-fishing in the river,” Lady Ruperta replied.
Caleb’s coughing fit made it difficult for Amelia to listen for a whine of kinetic thaumaturgic energy emitting from the clock, but she surmised it was probably negligible since none of the wineglasses had shattered.
While theorizing that the finial would be its discharge point, she saw Vanity pat Caleb’s forearm and murmur something that must have been amusing, judging from the delighted grin he gave in reply.
Her pulse stammered—for yes, a blue spark did leap from the top of the finial, proving her right!
Counting the seconds it took for a minute to unwind (forty-two), she absentmindedly ate a few spoonsful of mushroom soup.
In the background, Lady Ruperta was describing the extent of her husband’s antiques collection.
A few words breached Amelia’s concentration: “several rooms…basement…” and what sounded disconcertingly like “higgledy-piggledy.” Amelia translated that as at least three weeks spent away from home and would have felt quite morose about it had not, at that moment, the clock chimed five.
Despite the hour hand being aimed at seven.
Quite electrified, Amelia set down her spoon—missing both the soup bowl and the table, and not at all noticing as it clattered to the floor. Everyone turned to look at her, and Lady Ruperta sniffed contemptuously.
“I see you’re interested in Nigel’s old clock. It’s quite valuable, you know. It cost what we would have paid for a holiday to Brighton.”
“It’s broken,” Nigel murmured regretfully.
“It’s enchanted,” Amelia told him.