Chapter 15 #2
He looked up with a start, part chagrined and part annoyed. Miss Florrie Janes waited on the lane, plainly amused, a dour-looking older woman just beyond her. He straightened, then bowed. “Miss Janes. Good morning to you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Burke. I wonder if it would be in vain to wish you the same.” She eyed the broken end of the stick he still gripped in his hand.
He tossed it toward the brush and wiped his hands together. “Of course not. Just lost in a bit of … reminiscing. I never could resist a good stick when undertaking a ramble.”
“Indeed,” she said, her blue eyes wide. “Nor a good thrashing of said stick?”
He gave in to a smile. “I’m a bit stronger than I was at twelve.”
Her sharp gaze took him in quickly, head to foot. “The poor stick never had a chance,” she muttered.
He looked away, hiding his amusement at her cheeky observation.
Florrie Janes was not known for her reserve.
To call her a flirt would be too simple and a degradation.
Most flirts he’d encountered seldom made direct eye contact without lowered or fluttering lashes while giggling at their gentlemen prey and were not quite so honest in their observations.
Miss Janes, heiress to the Grant-Janes empire, might have a careless, flighty, feminine air about her at first look, but the young woman was no featherbrain; she did not simper, and a gentleman would do well to regard her with caution and respect.
Cy had an idea that when Miss Janes decided to truly flirt, the unsuspecting man would be rendered quite helpless, not knowing up from down, as if hit in the head by a cricket bat.
He shuddered.
“Where is your ramble taking you this morning, might I ask?” She lifted her lace parasol and opened it, despite the enormity of her befeathered hat, as the sun brightened from behind a passing cloud.
He nodded toward the gardens. “Taking in the grounds. Just a walk to clear my head.”
“How extraordinary,” she said, brightening.
He repressed a sense of foreboding. “Is it? I thought it rather common.”
Her lips pursed in a condescending smirk. “Quite, but that is not what I meant.”
“Ah. What did you mean?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You are teasing me, Mr. Burke. You may appear aloof, everything responsible and dignified, but I believe there is a sense of fun hidden somewhere beneath that derby hat.”
He made no response, as it would likely only encourage her curiosity.
“What is hidden beneath Mr. Burke’s derby hat?
” Violet appeared on the lane, coming from the direction of the school.
“A frog? A secret letter from the king? No, wait. A tiny ship in a bottle.” She stopped next to Florrie, grinning, and placed her hands at her hips—a fetching pose for her figure—as she gazed at his chapeau.
Cy had quickly straightened, then cursed himself for doing so under the close scrutiny of Miss Janes.
“Good morning, Miss Whittemore.” He gathered himself, demanding the stronger beat of his heart to calm.
“Miss Janes was referring to my sense of fun or, rather, assessing whether or not I had any.” He placed his hand upon his derby, settling it further in place.
She tsked three times. “Would you care for me to enlighten her?”
He was in for it now.
Miss Janes looked to her friend with brow raised. “Please, do enlighten.”
“Oh, well, this is something of a lifelong study for me.” Violet clasped her hands in front of her in mock seriousness.
Cyril affected a scowl as she approached him, making a slow circle about him as if he were a new addition to a menagerie.
“Take note of the straight spine. The studious brow. The clenched—” She cleared her throat.
The chaperone gasped.
“—jaw.”
Miss Janes muffled a laugh.
Cy scowled for real this time, but Violet continued. “But what have we here?” she said.
Cy braced for the inevitable cheek.
She had come around the other side of him and directed her gaze toward his ear. Indeed, she dared a step closer and leaned as if gazing at his ear. Or, rather, in his ear. “There. Just to the left of his memory bank and aft of his thought-grinder …”
“What do you see?” Miss Janes asked, leaning forward as if she might spy something in his ear from where she stood. He bit back a harrumph as the chaperone, too, leaned forward to peer.
He rolled his eyes at Violet. “Please, do not leave us in suspense.”
Her lips twitched at his dry plea. “Oh my, look at the sudden whirring of his thought-grinder.” She shook her head as if concerned and stepped back. “Well, no one could accuse you of not being a hard thinker, Mr. Burke. Your thought-grinder is one of the most formidable I’ve ever witnessed.”
He bowed in deep and fictitious thanks.
“But, miss, what of the object aft his thought-grinder?”
They all turned to the chaperone, who looked at them as if they’d be daft not to get to solving this mystery, posthaste.
“Of course, Agnes. Forgive me.” Violet turned to Cy as he stepped toward her. Her eyes widened a fraction as they took in the breadth of his shoulders.
“Yes, Miss Whittemore,” he said, meeting her gaze. “You must tell me. What is aft my thought-grinder?”
She struggled to contain a giggle. Truly, he was surprised he could get the question out so evenly, let alone that he would ever utter such a sentence in the first place. But he remembered the marble, and it powered his self-mastery.
“It is a box,” she said.
He frowned. “A box?”
“Yes.”
Agnes stepped forward. “What sort of box, miss?”
“A dusty box, I’m afraid.” She shifted her compassionate gaze to the woman. “Chained up with a lock. The key forgotten.”
“Hmm,” Cy said. Growled, more like.
Miss Janes shook her head beneath the frothy hat and parasol. “What a shame. Is it …?”
Violet solemnly nodded her head. “Yes. I’m afraid it’s the compartment where his sense of fun is kept. It’s shriveled with neglect.”
Agnes closed her eyes as if the news pained her.
“So it is as I suspected,” Miss Janes said, placing her free hand on her heart. “I knew it was there. I imagine if I were to pick up the box and shake it very hard”—she demonstrated a rigorous shaking motion Cy didn’t altogether appreciate—“it would knock around like a rock.”
Violet nodded forlornly and sighed. “Indeed. Like a hard, shriveled, forgotten rock.”
“Pink, no doubt,” Cy muttered to himself. “Quartz.”
Violet blinked. “What?”
“Nothing. Thank you, ladies, for … aiding me at this time of … forlornitude.”
“Oh, but, Mr. Burke, I beg your pardon, sir.” Agnes hurried up to him, stopping at a proper distance, and bobbed her head.
“My mother fancied herself a spiritualist back in the day, what with Prince Albert leaving his queen too soon and so many of her loyal subjects experiencing the thinning of the curtain between here and the spiritual realm. It were a wondrous time. I seldom speak of it—”
“You’ve never spoken of it—” Miss Janes said, a bit put out.
“—but my mother believed the heart were made up of different compartments, much like our dearest Miss Whittemore has observed—”
Violet drew her head back in a look of utter surprise at being referred to as “dearest.”
“She must have the gift,” Agnes whispered. “For perhaps, too, our minds are made up of compartments. I sense your disbelief—”
Now it was his turn to draw his head back in surprise. He thought he’d been playing his bit quite well.
“—but you must give this credence. Else you risk”—she glanced to her right and left and said—“imbalance.”
He heard the others gasp.
“And we know what imbalance leads to,” she said knowledgeably.
They each leaned forward. “What?”
She looked at all of them as if the answer should have been common knowledge. “Why, an incomplete soul. A soul incapable of advancing to the afterlife. A soul left to haunt this world.” She pulled back, her eyes large.
A shiver coursed down Cy’s spine. He blinked.
“Whatever must we do, Agnes?”
He jerked his gaze to Miss Janes, who’d gripped the older woman’s arm.
“Do?” he said, not liking where this farce was taking him.
“Yes,” Violet said. “There must be a cure. A way to reverse the … shriveling?”
Agnes eyed him.
Cy had had enough. He backed away, waving his hands in front of him and drawing himself to full height. “Oh ho, now. I do not need a cure. There is no thought-grinder or box of fun or any other such nonsense, and there is certainly nothing shriveling about my person.”
A gardener walking past paused and gave Cy an arrested look. Cy waved him along.
“Look how he goes on so,” Violet whispered to Agnes.
Miss Janes joined her. “It’s almost as if he didn’t have a sense of …”
“Fun,” all three women said in chorus.
Except that Violet bit her lip afterward, joy sparking in her eyes.
Cy glared.
“The key,” Agnes said gravely. “You must find the key to unlock the compartment.”
“The key,” he repeated.
“Yes. I think Miss Janes has the right of it.” She turned to the ladies. “This neglected box must be picked up and shaken—in a manner of speaking, of course. And …” She paused, her gaze stilling on Cy. Her whisper gained a tremor. “I’m sensing the elements must be involved.”
“The elephants?” Miss Janes scrunched her nose.