Chapter Seventeen #3
“Dervorguilla of Galloway,” Amelia corrected her automatically. Then the import of what the woman had said struck her. She became the kind of calm that generally only happens before a storm.
“The most powerful antique in England,” Vanity went on. “Never mind the black market—governments will pay me for something like that. I know you think I’m stupid, Professor. So did the staff at the British Museum. I meant you all to. But I’m bloody sick of acting like a daft girl.”
“You’re clearly not daft,” Amelia said. “A woman of your intelligence and ambition ought not to waste herself in a life of crime. Get an education instead! Attend university, obtain a master’s degree, take on a junior role in a small, local museum, learn the ropes while dusting and making cups of tea, then after a mere seven or eight years you could become a very fine curator. ”
Vanity laughed. “I feel sorry for you, Professor. You think you’re so liberated, but the truth is, although men might have allowed ‘the fairer sex’ into their universities, the whole education system is misogynistic.”
“It is—” Amelia began, but her brain worked faster than her voice, and the intended “not” dissolved in her throat.
How could she rebut Vanity when all of Oxford’s history courses showcased the lives of men, relegating women to bit parts as their wives?
Even the great warrior queens like Isabella of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine earned no more than fifteen minutes in a lecture.
Queen Elizabeth alone was highlighted, being impossible to ignore, and the fact that she’d acknowledged herself a weak and feeble woman with the heart of a king went a long way in her favor.
“Besides,” Vanity continued as Amelia’s sensibilities reeled, “why should I bother with an education when I can just wave a teaspoon and make all my wishes come true?”
And just like that, Amelia returned to solid moral ground.
“You must not wield that teaspoon in Balliol College. It’s not stable; people could get seriously hurt.
Besides, if you don’t want an education, there are still so many opportunities for enterprising women these days that don’t require breaking the law.
I can give you the names of some support organizations that might prove of inter—”
“Don’t try to fix things for me!” Vanity shouted, her eyes flashing. “I don’t want or need it!” Shoving the sock with its dangerous cargo back into her skirt pocket, she climbed onto the windowsill and opened her parasol.
“No!” Amelia cried, holding out her hand as if that might stop the woman. But it was too late. With a witchy cackle, Vanity jumped.
Amelia ran to the window, heart pounding.
The ground was, after all, a considerable distance below, and neither youthful self-confidence nor melodramatic villainy would abbreviate that distance.
Vanity did not deserve to die for her various crimes (although tying Caleb up warranted several years in jail).
What she saw made her stomach lurch. Vanity’s parasol hadn’t slowed her fall. No, it had carried her away across the manor’s courtyard and toward the fields in the direction of Staveley, rotor blades spinning above the canopy.
“Helicopter parasol!” Amelia exclaimed. “By Jove! We’ll never catch her!”
“Mmmph!” Caleb demanded, rocking so forcefully on the chair that he almost tipped over. With one final scowl at Vanity’s departing form, Amelia turned to help him.
The moment he was freed from the rope Vanity had used to bind him, Caleb removed the handkerchief from his mouth and spluttered, grimacing and rubbing the back of his wrist against his lips.
“My God, couldn’t she have used a linen cloth instead of cheap cotton?
” Rising from the chair, he turned to the footman who still lingered in the doorway, looking rather bored.
“Why are you just standing there? We need some help!”
“Ahem.” The footman coughed discreetly against his fist.
“I don’t have any bloody money left!” Caleb shouted at him. “This place has been more expensive than a five-star London hotel!”
“Take this.” Snatching up a pair of cuff links from the dressing table, Amelia tossed them to the footman with blithe disregard for Caleb’s protesting gasps. “Please go and set up two horses—”
“Saddle two horses?” the footman suggested confusedly.
“Yes. That.” She flapped a hand at him in a manner saved from rudeness by the fact of the cuff links being sterling silver. “We’ll be right down.”
The man dashed off, leaving Amelia and Caleb staring aghast at each other.
“Well, this is a spot of bother,” Amelia said (and which may be translated from British English as it’s a complete disaster!).
“I’m sorry.” Wearily brushing back the hair that had tumbled over his brow, Caleb looked around at the mess in the room. “I wouldn’t tell her where the teaspoon was, so she ransacked the place and eventually found it. She had a gun, Meely.”
Amelia’s pulse thundered. Stepping closer, she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight against her heart. “You’re safe now,” she assured them both. “You’re safe.”
“I’m safe,” he agreed. “Everything’s okay.
” But his fingers clutched her blouse as if she were all that kept him from running.
He’d sometimes told her stories about gang wars in the rookery, and men shooting each other behind the stables where he worked, and how the fear of it had echoed through his dreams for years afterward.
She had her own memories, come to that, although far less awful than his: refusing to attend game-shooting parties with her family and their friends, but still hearing the crack of rifle shots ringing out from the fields, seeing the results served up at dinner, and knowing she could not cry, not for such an ordinary, everyday British thing.
Stroking Caleb’s hair, murmuring sounds of comfort, she rocked them both gently, and after a little while Caleb tilted his head against hers, sighing.
“Well, it’s not okay okay,” he said, “since Vanity has stolen the teaspoon. The bloody thing is a bomb waiting to happen.”
“Not to mention that it seems to have temporal disturbance powers,” Amelia added. “If the girl isn’t careful, she’ll experience time breaking apart just as she feared.”
“Bloody hell. And that’s even before she gets her hands on Dervorguilla’s brooch. We need to catch her, Amelia.”
“We will,” Amelia answered, feeling her nervous system clicking into Efficiency Mode as she spoke.
Never mind that Vanity was probably halfway to Staveley now, thanks to her helicopter parasol.
Such a complication only made the situation more invigorating.
They couldn’t possibly catch up to her—and yet, somehow, they would.
They’d solve the problem, save the world (or, at least, Balliol College, which was almost the same thing), and get her teaspoon back.
For the first time in far too long, Amelia felt like herself again.
A faint ghost of a thought knocked against a window in her mind, begging to be let in, and for just a second she frowned, sensing that she’d forgotten something, or missed an important point.
But that seemed unlikely, for if it were truly important, her well-trained intelligence would have remembered it.
Stepping back from Caleb, she pointed a finger at him, then at the pile of clothing.
“Put on a jumper and coat,” she instructed.
“It’s going to be cold outside. Then run downstairs and tell the others what has happened.
Dummersby needs to check that the boxes packed for the museum are all still there.
She might have stolen more things. I’m going to have Grimshaw send someone to the village with a telegram for the Home Office. I’ll meet you at the stables.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Caleb said with a salute and a crooked grin, and Amelia felt warm little flutters beneath her heart at the sight of him teasing her again, his eyes humor-bright and no longer haunted by memories.
She mentally checked that item off her to-do list. Then, giving him a quick, censorious frown like a kiss, she dashed away to her own bedroom.
Exchanging her shoes for a sturdier pair, she donned a cardigan, over which she layered her coat.
This wouldn’t protect her enough against the chill of the autumn evening, but she anticipated being back indoors soon, with the teaspoon once more in her possession and Vanity Tunnicliffe secured in Staveley’s jail.
After all, she’d become a liberal arts student in defiance of her family’s will, and she’d made several pipe-smoking, tut-tutting senior professors apologize and admit that girls were smart after all.
She was a Capable Woman. By the end of this day, Vanity Tunnicliffe would be regretting her poor choices.
Amelia was about to fix things.