“Yes, ma’am,” the butler intoned lugubriously. “He and Miss Tunnicliffe went upstairs. Together. Privately.”
Oh.
Amelia went from history to geography in one wild leap as memories of Caleb kissing her were crushed by what felt like an enormous boulder dropping into her stomach, their fragments turning to ash in the veritable forest fire blazing across her cheeks.
Half a second later, however, she was rescued by reasonable thinking and her faith in her best friend. Caleb might read poetry, but he wouldn’t caress one woman under a tree, then mere days later take another to his bed.
“It was just the pair of them,” continued the butler, fittingout a coffin in which to place his murder victim, i.e., Vanity’s reputation.
“I’m sure they are involved in academic business,” Amelia told him sternly. “I shall go up to let them know dinner is ready.”
“I’ll have a footman accompany you.”
“That is not necessary,” Amelia assured him, but Grimshaw had already summoned one of the servants. Thus encumbered, Amelia headed up to Caleb’s bedroom, with every step urgently trying to decide how she could fix this situation without causing embarrassment to poor Vanity.
But upon arriving at the bedroom, Amelia took one look at the sight that met her there and discarded any thought of kindness. “Good God!” she exclaimed.
“Mmphm!” Caleb interjected from where he sat bound to a wooden chair, gagged with a handkerchief. All around him was a horrifying mess of clothes, bedding, and—Amelia gasped—her Mary Wollstonecraft biography lying open on the floor, several of its pages folded! At the far side of the room, Vanity was pushing open the window. The young woman turned, raising a furled parasol like a weapon.
“Oh, it’s only you,” she said with a sharp smile. “Hello, Miss Tarrant.”
Ignoring these insults, Amelia crossed her arms and frowned, as if Vanity were one of her students. “What is going on here?” she demanded.
But Vanity just laughed, which no student would ever dare do. Amelia’s blood went cold. It was a gritty, confident laugh, the kind that would have stomped on a giggle, turning it to glittery dust. “That’s a stupid question from such an educatedwoman. Obviously, I’m stealing your seventeenth-century thaumaturgic teaspoon.”
“Mmmph!” Caleb protested, rocking the chair beneath him as he tried to escape. But Amelia just quirked an eyebrow.
“Stealing, Miss Tunnicliffe? I know the salary of a receptionist must be low, but—”
Vanity interrupted her, scoffing. “I’m richer than you’ll ever be. The receptionist job was just a cover.”
All at once, Amelia understood. Vanity’s crimes were far worse than making everyone play charades. “You’re a trafficker for the black market.”
“ ‘Facilitator in the covert trade of thaumaturgic antiques,’ if you please,” Vanity corrected her archly. “When I heard about Sir Nigel’s hoard, I decided to hitch a ride on this assignment. But then I saw you with this at the Staveley pub.” Producing from a skirt pocket Caleb’s Italian-milled sock, stuffed with the enchanted little spoon in its safe bag, she waggled it provokingly. “It took me a while to get hold of it—and when I finally did, I dropped the blasted thing in the drawing room and you stepped on it. You realized what it was before I could retrieve it, and I was stuck in this bloody cursed place for longer. Ihadto resort to robbing the pretty professor or else go crazy. But it was worth it. Forget singing tankards and flaming sauceboats—this one teaspoon is far more valuable than all the treasures in the house.”
Amelia managed to remain calm in the face of such an appalling revelation, despiteher future bestselling book about the teaspoonCaleb being in harm’s way. “It’s just an old spoon with a highly unstable thaumaturgic profile,” she said. “It won’t get you much on the black market.”
“Oh, I don’t plan to sellthis,” Vanity answered, sneering. “Iknow it brought down the Minervaeum Club’s ceiling. Professor Sterling has been most informative. A few giggles, a winsome interest in getting an education”—she fluttered her eyelashes, looking so earnest that Amelia, despite everything, felt an instinctual desire to hand her brochures on Oxford University’s history courses—“and he told me everything I wanted to know. If it can break a ceiling, it can break through barriers to somethingreallyvaluable.”
“You’re going to rob a bank using a teaspoon?” Amelia’s eyebrow longed to quirk again, but she repressed it with a frown.
“Not a bank,” Vanity retorted. “Dervgilly of Glasgow’s magic brooch.”
“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—governmentswill 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 haveallowed ‘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 tofixthings 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.
