“Is that so?” she said absent-mindedly as she held them in her gloved palm, rolling them about, thinking.
“May I?” she asked the clerk, who agreed with a wordless nod.
She threw the dice gently onto the flannel. One boasted five gleaming diamonds, the other six. She picked them up and triedagain. This time it was only three on one die, but six on the other. She picked up only the second die and rolled it. Six.
Cressida took both once more and rolled them about her hand, wondering whence they’d come and who their previous owner was. And how they had come to be parted.
“One wouldn’t expect to find items of this… nature here,” she said carefully as she set them back into their gold casket, clicking the lid shut.
She thought she saw the clerk wince, but he quickly looked away, hands behind his back.
“Objects of all sorts… wash up here, you might say. We do a busy trade, and are never ones to turn down fine craftsmanship, with such rich materials.”
Cressida smiled at the non-answer, her finger tracing the lines of the goldfish upon the lid. “I’ll take this, fine craftsmanship as it is.”
Then, looking to Henry and his absurdly sized shark tooth paired with his absurd puppy eyes, she sighed. “And that as well.”
Henry gleefully handed the tooth over to be wrapped up, his gaze drifting to the golden casket.
“I don’t think he’ll care for it, to be honest.”
“Oh?” Cressida said. “And why do you suppose it’s for Dr. Collier?”
“I thought we were to get him a gift?”
“We shall, although I can think of something altogether more pleasing to him, if it is true that our kind friend finds dice anathematic to his gambling ideals.”
Henry frowned at the gold box for a moment. “What else could be more pleasing to him? The mummified head?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of access to our library.”
“What? Books?” Henry wrinkled his nose as he regarded the golden box waiting upon the flannel cloth. “I think I’d ratherhave the gold dice. At least they cost something, even if games without any element of skill are best avoided.”
“How fortunate, then, that neither gift is for you.”
“Can we visit again? There’s a dagger I really ought to have, if you insist upon sending me to school. I’ll go only if suitably armed.”
Cressida looked heavenward. “A discussion for another time, darling.”
Dr. Collier, for all his brawn and handsome features, was not some medieval brute who’d throw her over his shoulder at the first sign of her interest. No, that much had been made clear. She’d not seduce him with coy glances and loaded language.
A thinking man like him could only be won with one thing: stacks upon stacks and rows upon rows of leather-bound literature.
He spent nearly the entirety of the next lesson with young Master Caplin with a pit in his stomach, anxious about having lied to Sir Frederick.
For someone who excelled at giving card cheats what they had coming to them, Matthew hated lying, even if it had seemed the lesser evil in this particular instance. For if Lady Caplin did not wish her brother to know something, Matthew would not be the fool who betrayed her. He thought himself wholly incapable of such a thing, for he was entirely at her mercy and disposal. With every recollection of those moments in her conservatory, the memory as thick and heavy as the air had been, he knew he’d come up against someone far too cunning, far too enchanting, far too powerful for him to resist. He would lie down prostrate before her. Hell, he’d lick her boots if she so commanded.
Which was why he dreaded the moment when the lesson would end, for he would then have to approach her, hat inhand, and tell her what he had told Sir Frederick at lunch about inspecting her library.
Matthew was sure he wasn’t fit to sit upon the low couches in such a palace of knowledge, let alone run his fingers along the spines and breathe the heady scent of aged parchment and vellum.
On many occasions he and Henry had held their lessons within, cards laid out on the long oak table. Matthew felt as if he were in heaven each time they did, surrounded by enough knowledge to fill the sharpest of minds for a lifetime.
Today, though, they were settled in a stately drawing room done up in reds. It felt a bit off-putting, to be honest—far too intense a backdrop to be discussing probabilities with a young lad only just on the brink of manhood.
“I don’t understand,” Master Caplin groaned, his body melting onto the table. “How is it you’ve won so much more than me? I’m making the right plays.” He lifted his head just enough to glare at his three cards atop the table. “At least, I think I’m making the right plays.”
They were playingvingt-un, the very game Matthew had played alongside Master Caplin’s mother several weeks prior.
