Page 74 of Kiss Me Lady One More Time
“There!” The earl had spotted his wife. She stood across the room. Penelope, in her peacock costume, stood with her.
Sterne started toward them. Tensford and Lady Lowell came behind him. Halfway there, he stopped. The earl bumped into him from behind.
“That’s not her.” There was something about the woman who stood with the countess. The way she moved and held her head. The angle of her jaw beneath the mask. “That’s not Penelope.”
He surged forward again and stopped before the two women. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Where is Penelope?”
The woman moved the mask away from her face.
Mrs. Caradec.
His heart was going to pound out of his chest. “Lycett. She went after him, didn’t she? Where is she?” It was almost a shout.
“She is fine. Whiddon is with her,” the woman answered calmly.
“Where? Never mind. Let’s go. You can tell me on the way.”
“We’ll all go,” Tensford said.
“What?” Lady Lowell was looking between them all with growing alarm. “No. You cannot go, Tensford.” She gestured behind them and glanced back toward the exhibition room. “You must see the unveiling!” She looked back again. As the crowd parted, it was clear to see the door was still open. “Wait. No. Surely you don’t want your wife to miss the big moment. It’s all prepared. Come and see it, first, before you go,” she wheedled.
They were all heading toward the door as she continued to protest. Sterne looked back once to see her face gone red and her foot stomp like a child’s.
He turned away, already calling for a carriage.
Chapter 18
“You are sure? That is it?” Penelope asked. The carriage was passing slowly by the house that the Curtis brothers pointed out. The scarred brother rode up with the driver, while the other sat inside the carriage with her and Ruby. They were on Pall Mall Street, close to St. James’s Palace. The houses here were older, but still very fine.
“That’s it,” her passenger confirmed. “But listen, you did well enough, outsmarting your cousin. But he’s a bit of a bird wit, ain’t he?” He gestured toward the house. “These people are different. They are not stupid. Nor safe.”
The carriage pulled to the side of the road several houses away. The scarred brother opened the door and they all climbed out.
“Looks dark,” Ruby said. “Likely no one is at home.”
The scarred Curtis spat in the street. “More luck to you.”
“And you don’t know their names?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“It’s better not to know,” his brother added.
“Did you deliver the fossil inside?”
“Yes. They were all prepared for us.”
“Prepared?”
“Aye. They have a man, a servant. They call him Samseh, or something like. He made the arrangements with Lycett. He was waiting for us at a back entrance. He took us up a servant’s staircase and to the main floor, to the library.”
“Except we didn’t leave it in the library. They had an honest to God secret door, behind a bookcase. The room back there was big. It was full of different things. All on display, sort of. They had a place all set and ready for the fossil. All we had to do was hang it.”
Penelope frowned. “Were they also fossils, the other displays?”
“No. Not a one of them. Ours was the only one. The others—I could not see how they all went together. There was all sorts of things. Strange things. A fancy book. A sword.”
“Things that made a shiver go up your back, like the bones of a hand—just a hand.” His brother shuddered.
