Chapter One
In history, there is no single point of beginning.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
It had justgone six o’clock in the evening and nothing had exploded yet. This was good news for the staff of the Minervaeum, London’s premier club for academics, where arguments and experiments all too often detonated into chaos. They dared not relax, however, for the night was still young and the library full of historians. No one is more dangerous than people who have little interest in the future.
Some fifty gentlemen cluttered the somber, book-lined chamber, enjoying sherry, nibbles, and a haze of pipe smoke. A few dozed in leather armchairs, for they had been up since the twelfth century, academically speaking, to prepare for a symposium that commenced the next morning.
Only one woman was present, alone at a table in a corner. Several books lay open before her, and she consulted them as she wrote page after page of notes. Lamplight dappled with rain shadows from a nearby window flickered over her tightly bound dark hair and black dress, making her seem evanescent, like a ghost trying to research a way back into life.
“Who is that charming creature?” asked Mr. Beaulieu, a junior professor who had come over from Paris for the symposium. Studying the woman’s quiet poise as she sipped from a dainty porcelain cup, and noting in particular the lack of a wedding ring, he felt something stir in his heart where before there had been only midterm breaks and Brie cheese.
“That’s Amelia Tarrant,” Mr. Dummersby of the British Museum told him. It sounded rather the same asthat’s a Viking ship coming toward us.
Beaulieu’s eyes widened. “The antiquarian professor from Oxford University?”
Dummersby nodded solemnly. “Correct.”
“Mon Dieu!”Beaulieu reared back, crossing himself. “In France we call her La Terrifiante Erudite.”
“In England we try not to call her anything, in case she hears us.”
They regarded the woman from behind the safety of their pipes. She set down her tea to stir it before laying the teaspoon on a napkin and taking another sip. Her eyes closed at the taste.
“She looks so genteel,” Beaulieu remarked rather wistfully.
“Looks can be deceiving,” Dummersby warned. “I once paid her a compliment and she’s refused to work with me ever since.”
“No!”
“Yes. I ask you, what kind of woman doesn’t like being told by a colleague that she has beautiful lips? And last week she argued with Professor Sterling over a magical candlestick, causing a fire that nearly burned down the Ashmolean Museum.”
“Mon Dieu!”
Dummersby gave a shrug that said quite plainly,it’s all youcan expect from antiquarians.They were forever causing drama with magical antiques instead of just quietly reading about drama like proper historians.
“Sterling,” Beaulieu mused. “Isn’t he the one who found Jane Seymour’s lost ghost in a jewelry box?”
“That’s him. He and Tarrant are fierce enemies.”
“Fascinating,” Beaulieu murmured, eyeing Amelia once again. Then the library door swung open, admitting bright light from the corridor beyond and dazzling his attention. Beaulieu turned to see a man enter, reading a book as he walked.
Beaulieu gasped, for the newcomer was scandalously close to being naked. Clad in nothing more than trousers and an open-collared shirt, he had no pomade in his blond hair, not even the merest hint of a mustache anywhere about him, and worse, his fingernails were polished with a red tint. Beaulieu had never seen the like before, and was uncomfortably interested.
The man looked up from his book and, discovering a crowd of historians staring at him, blinked with surprise. “Good heavens,” he remarked mildly. “What have you done to the kitchen?”
“It’s next floor down,” someone called out.
“Oh.” He paused, seemingly hoping that the library might transform itself into a kitchen if he but waited a moment. Then he caught sight of the buffet table and, with a shrug, headed for it. Historians scattered from his path.
“Who is he?” Beaulieu whispered rather trepidatiously.
“That,” Dummersby intoned, “is Professor Caleb Sterling.”
Clink.
At the small, sharp sound, both historians jolted. Amelia Tarrant had set her cup down in its saucer. She stared across the room at Sterling.
