“I had subscribed to this theory as well.” She took a deep breath. “But it seems as if they, and I, were wrong. Terribly so.”
“You can’t honestly believe Pandora’s box was created by the Greek gods,” he said, not even bothering to hide the bite in his tone.
Esme stiffened. “Of course not. That would be blasphemy.” Light sparked in her eyes as she leaned forward, the insult apparently forgotten. “However, I do believe that Pandora’s box exists and that it has powers, as unexplained as they may be. There is simply too much evidence to be ignored.”
“So where do these powers come from?”
“No one knows, of course. But there are many references to Pandora’s box, dating back to 500 BC. Cleopatra herself was said to possess a box that gave her the power to rule all of Egypt. By all accounts, she was a physically unremarkable woman, yet the most powerful men in the world were devoted her. What if she used Pandora’s box to control first Julius Caesar and then Marc Antony?”
“Or perhaps she was simply beautiful,” he said. Beautiful in an interesting way as the woman before him was. Esme wasn’t a conventional beauty; her features had too many angles, and with her narrow nose and straight eyebrows, her face was not one of delicate curves. Still, there was beauty before him. Thick lashes framed her wide green eyes, while sweet freckles smattered across her nose, and her pouty mouth had a heavier bottom lip that begged to be nibbled.
Annoyance flickered across her face, but she ignored his comment. “And then there is the theory that Pandora’s box holds not charms but curses. There was the plague that traveled from Egypt to Byzantium along with a group of Egyptian traders who brought with them a box that spread death.”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “and we mustn’t forget about the Black Death.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Why, Mr. Grey, I see you’ve done a bit of research yourself. Yes, some believe the box caused the great plague. For example, Pliny the Elder described a box of mystical properties that spread greed and disease throughout the empire. He believed the box was responsible for the sacking of Troy. Don’t you see,” she said, “there is one thing all these stories have in common. A box. That can’t be a coincidence.”
His interested piqued, Fielding leaned forward. “Do any of these writings explain how Pandora’s box made it to jolly ol’ England?”
She frowned. “There is one. A modern scholar, George Winthrop, has found reference to a sixth-century Saxon warlord who gave his wife a spectacular box he’d purchased from an Egyptian peasant. He described the box as a gift from the gods, but later said it brought horrible death. I believe all these boxes have been the same box. Pandora’s box.”
“You have certainly done your research. But did you intend to merely dazzle me with your extensive knowledge or does this conversation have a purpose?” he asked.
She glared at him. “There is another theory that, frankly, I’ve never spent very much time on because, well, because it seemed ludicrous to me. But now I believe otherwise.”
He didn’t point out how ludicrous all of this sounded to him. Instead, he waited for her to finish.
She held her arm up to his face, and he pushed it back to see what she was trying to show him. With her other hand she shoved back the sleeve of her dress, only to have it fall back into place. “This is why we must make haste to my home.”
“Because of an ill-fitting sleeve?”
She looked down and made a growling sort of noise before switching arms. “No, this,” she said, pointing at the gold band encircling her right wrist.
The same sort of band that Thatcher and Waters had pulled out of the box. So, she had opened the box herself.
Sneaky little thing.
“I really wish I’d paid closer attention to those writings, that I hadn’t judged them so hastily.” She swallowed visibly. “I need to put the pieces together and discover what we must do to get this infernal thing off my wrist.”
“It won’t come off?” he asked.
“No, I tried.” Once again she held her arm out to him. He tried to remove the band by slipping it off her hand, but that did not work. Then he tried to open the bracelet somehow, but there were no grooves or clasps to be found anywhere.
“It does seem to be affixed quite securely,” he said. She looked up at him, her green eyes full of emotion. Apprehension, annoyance, anger. He wasn’t certain which, perhaps all.
“Yes, I see that,” she said tartly. “There is more.”
“More what?”
“More to my story. The bracelets, as I’m assuming there are more inside the box, have engravings that identify them. At least this one does, so it stands to reason the others do as well.”
“And?”
“I have lust,” she said in a tight whisper.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Lust! On my wrist.”
