Chapter 5
Ambrose stared at the woman standing in the doorway. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. Tilly was shaken, which wasn’t a look she wore often.
“Well?” he demanded. His heart had nearly stopped beating when he heard the footsteps coming from the wall on the opposite side of the room.
He’d left Charles with his coffee and gone to one of the smaller parlors to write a note. Ambrose had no wish to attend his appointment now, so he was putting it off until tomorrow.
A gentle tapping had him investigating a bookshelf. After removing the books, he’d studied the space behind and saw what looked to be a door. It had moved, and then he was face-to-face with Tilly.
“I want an answer,” he snapped at her with more force than was likely necessary, but his heart was still thudding far too hard inside his chest, and Ambrose never dealt well with the unexpected.
Especially if it included someone he knew or cared for suffering.
“How did you come to be standing on the other side of that wall?”
“I don’t have one,” she said glaring back at him.
He frowned at her. “One what?”
“An answer.” He could see the fear in her eyes through the narrow opening of the shelf.
“What has happened?”
“Nothing. Goodbye, my lord.” She tried to swing the door shut, but he forced a hand through the opening and stopped her.
“What’s going on, Tilly?”
She looked at him again, and he could see she was calculating whether or not to tell him. She hadn’t taken him to task for calling her Tilly, which told him how unsettled she was.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I was downstairs in a room, investigating, and found this statue behind a bookshelf and a lever that opened it. Then I walked into what appeared to be a secret passage and ended up here, at your silly club.”
“Why is my club silly but not yours?”
“I don’t have time to bandy words with you through a bookshelf, Lord Talbot.” Her eyes moved left and right as she examined the shelving. “Besides, were anyone to hear a woman’s voice in the hallowed walls of your club, it would be sacrilege.”
She attempted to shut the door again, but as he was still holding it, it didn’t budge.
“Where was the lever that moved your bookshelf?”
She clearly didn’t want to tell him.
“Tell me, Tilly.”
“It was under the lowest shelf.”
“Do not shut this door or I shall be exceedingly annoyed.”
“But as that’s something I aspire to daily, surely you can see the lure,” she snapped back.
Refusing to smile at those words, Ambrose dropped into a crouch and ran his fingers under the lowest shelf. He felt the lever and released it. The shelf opened, and he had a full view of her.
He’d long since given up wondering what it was about this woman that constantly vexed and lured him closer. She was beautiful, but then so were many.
“You have a cobweb in your hair.” He stepped closer to inspect it.
“Argh!”
Before his eyes, she turned into a crazed woman, attacking her hair and jumping.
“Tilly, calm down. It is merely a cobweb,” he said, grabbing her wrists and lowering them to her sides.
“Do not touch me!”
“If you have no wish for someone to find you here, then I suggest you lower your voice,” Ambrose hissed.
She stilled. “Remove it at once… please.”
He did so, peeling the long thread off her hair. “All gone.”
She shuddered again. “I loathe cobwebs.”
“Why?”
“Why do you wish to know?”
“If someone loathes something, there is usually a reason,” Ambrose said.
“It matters not. Now I have things to do. Good day,” she said dismissively.
Ambrose had a feeling there was a great deal more to her fear of cobwebs, but now was not the time to pursue this conversation.
“What did you find in the passage?” Ambrose pressed, his interest piqued.
“Steps that lead down, which I will now go back and inspect.”
“Right, then, lead on, and we shall explore together.”
“Absolutely not. I’m not exploring with you,” she said through her teeth. “My reputation would also be in shreds were we to be found together.”
“Who would find us?”
He knew she was trying to come up with something to stop him going with her, but she was failing.
“You are not exploring alone. What if there is danger down there?”
“How could there possibly be danger?” Her eyes were now shooting sparks at him.
“There could be another entrance from the streets outside,” Ambrose said. “If you went missing down there, how would I feel knowing I could have prevented it?”
She hadn’t thought of that, which he was pleased about. That was another thing about this woman. She reduced him to needing to better her constantly.
“Plus, who will save you from the cobwebs?”
The breath hissed in annoyance from her throat once more. “What if a member of your club walks in and finds me? They will likely faint on the spot,” she said.
Ambrose headed back to the door. He locked it and returned to her with the key. “Anything else?”
She didn’t speak again, just turned, bent to pick up the lamp, and began to walk away. Ambrose grabbed a handful of her skirts and tugged her back behind him. He then wrestled the lamp from her, and led the way.
He could feel her anger, but she remained silent thankfully.
“This is my passage,” she muttered a few seconds later.
“As it leads to my club, and I was the one who heard you knocking, then you can no longer claim it, surely?”
She sounded like a dog grumbling then, muttering under her breath.
It was cool in here, and the light showed him that the walls were damp with moisture as they descended.
“Have a care, as the surfaces could be slippery beneath your feet.”
“I am not one of your sisters, my lord.”
“I know that. You have far worse manners, which is saying a great deal.”
She snorted.
“Did you just laugh?”
“Absolutely not,” she lied.
Reaching the bottom, he raised the lamp and saw the direction she had likely come from and instead took the stairs down. Ambrose walked slowly, gripping the railing with one hand and the lamp with the other.
“What are those?” Tilly asked him.
Stopping, he looked at her. She was pointing to their left. Raising the lamp, he studied the walls. There were symbols and letters everywhere.
“Can you read any of those?” she asked him.
“No, but that is a Freemason symbol,” he said, pointing to one.
“I don’t know what is down there, but have a feeling I’m not going to like it,” Tilly said.
“And yet you were willing to go alone.”
“You must be a vexatious brother,” she said.
“I am an excellent brother,” he retorted before continuing on.
They descended further until reaching the bottom.
Once there, they found a long passageway.
Along one wall was a row of hooks with garments hanging on them, all hooded cloaks in what appeared to be different colored silks.
Ambrose felt his tension climb and fought the need to send Tilly back up the stairs to safety.
Passing the cloaks, he tried the first door, and it opened. Stepping inside, he raised the lamp again.
They found a double triangle drawn or chalked on the floor, with candles at each point.
“Does the air feel different down here? Sinister,” Tilly added, moving to his side and standing so close, her arm pressed against his.
Ambrose wondered if she realized she’d done that—sought him for protection, when in the normal course of a day, she’d do the opposite.
“It does.”
Beyond the triangle was a long table draped in black, bearing a skull, an hourglass, a chalice, and a drawn sword.
“My guess is that until we took over the lease of The Iris, this was still being used by someone for something, and possibly still is,” she said, moving deeper into the room.
“Agreed.”
Ambrose fought the need to push her behind him once more. There was no one in here but them, but still, she was right. It felt sinister.
Following her, he saw a set of shelves on one wall. Tilly stopped before them to study their contents.
Ambrose picked up the book with the Seal of Solomon on the front cover. It was bound in leather and tied shut with a blood-red ribbon.
“Open it,” Tilly said.
“Please.” He said, handing her the lamp. Ambrose then untied the ribbon, and opened to the first page.
The first word was Hierophant, which Ambrose knew was Greek.
“He who reveals sacred things,” Tilly said.
“You understand Greek?”
“Not really, but I remember my father reading something to me with Hierophant in it, and he explained the meaning.”
“The next word is Latin Magnus. The great magician,” he said.
“You read Latin,” she mocked him.
Ambrose ignored her.
“Adeptus is he who has attained. Philosophus is lover of wisdom,” he continued to read. “Lastly Zelator, the zealous one.”
He turned the next page.
“Those look like spells and incantations, my lord,” Tilly said when he’d reached the third page.
The words were all handwritten and there were drawings and what appeared to be calculations.
“Ambrose,” he said, still looking at the pages.
“I can’t call you that.”
“I have given you permission.”
She didn’t add anything to that.
“Invocations,” Ambrose whispered reading another page.
“Instructions for summoning angels, demons, or spirits by name?”
“Yes,” he said, shooting her a surprised look.
“Just because I am not a man does not mean I’m uneducated.”
He ran his eyes over her pretty face. “You must be hell to live with.”
That made her lips twitch.
There were diagrams he couldn’t understand and pages of writing in Hebrew and Latin.
“I don’t like this, my lord.”
“Ambrose,” he corrected again, still reading the book. “And I’m not happy about it either.”
“To me, it looks like a place where people who are dealing in things they shouldn’t come to do things they should not.”
“Agreed,” Ambrose said.
She left his side, and he instantly missed her closeness. Tilly had a scent he could pick out in a room full of women.
After putting the book back, he followed her to the altar. On one end was a candle, which she had lifted and was sniffing. She coughed and held it up for him to smell. It was pungent and heavy. If he had to say where it originated, he’d say somewhere Eastern.
Next there was a black obsidian mirror, and the last object was a dagger.