“We’re not sticklers for time here,” Sir Nigel spoke up in his thin voice, gesturing to a longcase clock across the room. Lady Ruperta sniffed in a manner that made it clear time was very definitely stickled, no matter what her husband might think, but Amelia had once again discarded any interest in the woman’s existence. The clock was walnut…seventeenth century…probably a Cabrier, considering the fine details on its front panel. A subtle blue light tinted the air around it, suggesting the presence of thaumaturgic energy. There was also the minor clue of its minute hand moving backward.
Ooh!Amelia thought (a professional term meaningI formally acknowledge this to be something worthy of my expert consideration). An enchanted Cabrier clock far surpassed anything she’d seen in the manor’s entrance hall. Even if it represented the only item of value in Sir Nigel’s collection, the British Museum would nevertheless be pleased indeed.
“And you must be Mr. Sterling,” Lady Ruperta was saying while Amelia mused whether she ought to run back upstairs and get her thaumometer. The hostess applied her lorgnette once more to the task of inspection.
“Hello,” Caleb said in the languid, smiling way he employedwhenever he wanted to charm the greatest number of people possible in the shortest amount of time. And indeed, Lady Ruperta blushed. Vanity fanned herself with both a hand and her eyelashes. Throckmorton reached for the nearest wine carafe to refill his glass. “It’s an honor to visit your lovely home,” Caleb continued—at which even Sir Nigel began to look a little bewitched.
“Yes, it is,” Lady Ruperta replied. Recovering her wits, she showed a skill possessed only by aristocrats and high school teachers: looking down her nose at him while still peering through her lorgnette. “I trust, Mr. Sterling, that you and your assistant understand antiques.”
“Associate,” Caleb corrected her, still smiling.
“Girlfriend,”Throckmorton interjected, poorly disguising the word as a cough.
Caleb’s expression did not falter, but judging from the manner in which he blinked, Amelia knew he was dissecting the medieval studies professor with an imaginary butter knife. “Allow me to answer that question,” he said to Lady Ruperta, “by telling you that the cameo at your throat is a fine example of a late-eighteenth-century Tassie.”
“Oh!” The lorgnette slipped from Lady Ruperta’s hand as she reached up to touch the cameo under discussion. “How clever of you to notice! Sir Nigel gifted it to me for my last birthday. ‘A treasure for my treasure,’ he said.Didn’t you, Nigel?” she added, her voice cracking like a whip and jolting Sir Nigel from an apparent doze.
“Yes, dear,” he replied automatically.
“I say,” Vanity spoke up. “Isn’t a Tassie rather com—”
“Complex in its craftsmanship, yes,” Caleb spoke over her smoothly.
“Please, do sit down,” Lady Ruperta urged Amelia and Caleb, all graciousness now as she gestured to the remaining vacant chairs. Amelia was impressed. She hadn’t witnessed Caleb disarm a foe so swiftly in years.
Footmen moved forward then to aid in seating them. Caleb was placed next to Vanity, and Amelia into the seat beside Throckmorton, who gave her a sardonic glance. But she did not mind, for she was now in possession of an excellent view of the clock. The last time she’d felt this excited about an antique was when she found Richard III’s flame-breathing codpiece in a stable yard in Leicester. While the footmen began serving the meal, she tilted from side to side to see around them.
There followed an onslaught of pleasant conversation about the weather (ghastly), the journey north (hideous), and the accommodations (“I decorated those bedrooms myself,” said Lady Ruperta, which almost certainly meant she told hired tradesmen how to decorate them). Amelia inserted a word or smile now and again when prompted by her subconscious—although to be fair, this was all she’d have done even were she not absorbed in clock gazing. Peopledidinterest her, but usually only after they’d been dead a hundred years.
While noting the clock’s silver hands and trying to decide if its spandrels were genuine gold or just painted, she heard Throckmorton say, “Professor Sterling is a great adventure sportsman.”
“Then we shall have to arrange for some hunting and hiking, and perhaps some fly-fishing in the river,” Lady Ruperta replied.
Caleb’s coughing fit made it difficult for Amelia to listen for a whine of kinetic thaumaturgic energy emitting from the clock, but she surmised it was probably negligible since noneof the wineglasses had shattered. While theorizing that the finial would be its discharge point, she saw Vanity pat Caleb’s forearm and murmur something that must have been amusing, judging from the delighted grin he gave in reply. Her pulse stammered—for yes, a blue spark did leap from the top of the finial, proving her right!
Counting the seconds it took for a minute to unwind (forty-two), she absentmindedly ate a few spoonsful of mushroom soup. In the background, Lady Ruperta was describing the extent of her husband’s antiques collection. A few words breached Amelia’s concentration: “several rooms…basement…” and what sounded disconcertingly like “higgledy-piggledy.” Amelia translated that asat least three weeks spent away from homeand would have felt quite morose about it had not, at that moment, the clock chimed five.
Despite the hour hand being aimed at seven.
Quite electrified, Amelia set down her spoon—missing both the soup bowl and the table, and not at all noticing as it clattered to the floor. Everyone turned to look at her, and Lady Ruperta sniffed contemptuously.
“I see you’re interested in Nigel’s old clock. It’s quite valuable, you know. It cost what we would have paid for a holiday to Brighton.”
“It’s broken,” Nigel murmured regretfully.
“It’s enchanted,” Amelia told him.
Caleb looked over his shoulder at the clock and said, “Hm,” with mild surprise. The minute hand had begun to spin rapidly around the dial. “That doesn’t seem very safe.”
“Goodness me!” Vanity exclaimed with a nervous laugh.
“It’s stood there for three years,” Lady Ruperta said. “I can’t see why it would suddenly become dangerous.” She narrowedher eyes, as if suspecting Amelia or Caleb had crept into the room before dinner to sabotage the clock for some nefarious purpose. After all, university academics were about as trustworthy as snake oil salesmen, the way they went on about the value of getting an education. What would the world come to if everyone listened to them? Well-informed lower classes? But then nobody would want to clean her chamber pot!
“Sometimes the act of recognition can trigger latent magic in an object,” Amelia explained. “We still don’t fully understand why. I shouldn’t worry, though. From what I can see, the clock’s magic is unstable but appears weak. We’re quite—”
“Egad!” Lady Ruperta interjected with a horror that would have been assuaged had she only allowed Amelia to continue. “Nigel! Why did you allow into our house people who can recognize magic and therefore put us in danger?”
“Because you said I have too many antiques,” her husband answered. “You insisted I winnow the collection.”
