The Wild Marquis Page 16

  Not a good idea. He was supposed to be finding himself a bride and that bride couldn’t be Juliana.

  “The Tarleton sale starts again tomorrow. Is there anything you want to buy this week?” That was Juliana, single-minded when it came to books.

  “I looked for the catalogue yesterday but my new servants seem to have hidden it.”

  “Never mind, I’ll fetch mine.” She hurried into the back room with the bounce that bibliographic enthusiasm always added to her step. “There’s some very fine poetry coming up this week,” she called. “Better than the Herrick. Beautiful copies of some true rarities. How do you feel about Spenser? Or do you prefer Milton?”

  Cain was fairly sure he didn’t have any feelings about Spenser, one way or the other. Milton he quite liked. He found the character of Satan interesting.

  She returned with the catalogue in one hand and a package in the other. “The binder delivered the Herrick to me by mistake last week.”

  He tore off the paper and surveyed the red morocco volume with satisfaction.

  “You’re the only man in London with a library to match your carriage.”

  “So it does. I don’t know how much I will be adding to it. I’ve been busy trying to get married.”

  The words were jaunty but his enjoyment dissipated. Judging by Juliana’s expression she felt the same way. He wondered if her displeasure went beyond anxiety about how matrimony would influence his book-purchasing habits.

  “And how are you going about that?” she asked.

  “I’ve attended balls and danced with young ladies.”

  Aunt Augusta had been correct. The mamas of these pretty creatures were only too happy to welcome a reformed marquis to their collective bosom and offer him his choice of nubile lovelies as his marchioness.

  Not that he had anything against them, mamas or daughters. Cain rarely encountered a woman he didn’t like.

  “Do you enjoy that?” He didn’t imagine the strain in her voice.

  “The girls are sweet, well drilled in polite conversation, and ready to be charmed by me.”

  “I’m sure you are very charming.” She sounded quite cross.

  “I do my best, but it isn’t really important. My Aunt Augusta, who has undertaken the restoration of my character, assures me my wealth and title are enough to ensure forgiveness of any past transgressions.”

  “I see. Have you made your choice?”

  “They all seem so young. I’ve never fancied extreme youth.” Which was ironic under the circumstances, and perfectly true. His first mistress, Lucinda, had been twenty-eight to his sixteen. “But I suppose one of them would make a good sister for Esther.”

  “How is Lady Esther?”

  “Staying with my aunt, Lady Moberley, until the court hears her petition. And buying a lot of clothes.”

  “She’ll enjoy that. Will your aunt allow her to have a purple gown?”

  “Told you about that, did she? I’m thankful to say my aunt took over Esther’s wardrobe choices before I gave in and indulged her craving for unsuitable colors. I did just settle the account for an evening cloak in claret ruched velvet, lined in white satin and trimmed with ermine.”

  “My goodness, that seems hardly suitable for a girl of sixteen.”

  “No, I recognize my aunt’s taste. She’s exacting her pound of flesh for helping me by replacing her entire wardrobe at my expense. If she continues at her current pace I shan’t be able to afford so much as a pamphlet, let alone the Burgundy Hours.”

  “Cain…” She approached him and put a hand on his arm. But whatever she meant to say was interrupted by the entrance of a customer.

  Juliana drew back hastily. “The poetry we spoke of is on that shelf, my lord,” she said indicating a section of books in the alcove formed by two bookcases emerging at right angles from the wall. “May I suggest you examine them while I attend to Mr. Penderleith?”

  The look she gave him he interpreted as Do not leave.

  He plucked a volume from the shelf, half listening to her conversation with Penderleith, an elderly quiz in a periwig and a moth-eaten moleskin waistcoat liberally stained with snuff. He wondered what Juliana wanted to say to him. He wasn’t, at this particular moment, feeling terribly reformed. If she were to make the first move and invite him upstairs, he feared for the fate of his good resolutions.

  Not finding anything remotely interesting in an edition of Cowper’s works, he tried to replace it. It wouldn’t go in all the way. Something was wedged at the back of the shelf. Removing several neighboring volumes, he reached in and removed a slender square book in a green leather binding. He recognized it at once.

  What the hell was Cassandra Fitterbourne’s Romeo and Juliet quarto doing in Juliana Merton’s shop, instead of awaiting sale at Sotheby’s, along with the rest of Sir Thomas Tarleton’s library?

  Juliana closed the door firmly and with relief behind the foxy old collector. A customer since she and Joseph had opened their shop, Mr. Penderleith no longer had credit with any bookseller in London. She’d promised to set aside Grose’s Antiquities of England and Wales for him, but the book wouldn’t leave her premises until his account was settled.

  At least Cain hadn’t left. She’d told herself she was merely anxious about his intentions vis-à-vis the auction. The intense pleasure she felt upon his appearance this morning threatened that particular illusion. She’d missed him terribly.

  “Thank goodness he’s gone,” she said as she closed the door behind Penderleith and came back around the corner into the main aisle of the shop.

  Cain stood with a book in his hand. There was no need to ask what he held. She knew that volume as well as her own face in the mirror. Better perhaps.

  “My God,” she whispered. “Where did that come from?”

  “I found it behind the books on this shelf.”

  Juliana felt sick. A book she desperately coveted had been found in her shop. And it was stolen property.

  “I didn’t put it there,” she said.

  “I didn’t believe for a moment that you had.” The certainty in his voice reassured her. “I’ve been thinking. Someone was meant to find the Romeo and Juliet. That volume of Cowper was thrust forward a little so I pulled it off the shelf. When I couldn’t put it back properly I investigated the obstacle.”

  “I might have been the first to find it.”

  “You don’t sound confident.”

  “I’m not. That corner is a little dark so unless I had reason to look for a particular book there I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “When did you last examine the poetry section?”

  “At least a week ago,” she said after some thought. “A customer asked me for Pope’s Satires.” Her mind reeled as she grasped that any number of visitors to the shop could have recognized the Romeo and Juliet. She had narrowly avoided being taken for a thief.

  “And has anyone else been in that area of the shop since then?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “The dog, last night,” Cain said. “He barked because he heard something.”

  “He didn’t want a walk, he wanted to stop an intruder!”

  Cain looked grim. “It appears I’ve wronged the animal, but I’m damn glad you didn’t give in and take him downstairs. Someone has the ability to break into your premises at will, and whoever it is may be dangerous.”

  “But why? Why would anyone want to get me into trouble?”

  “Perhaps the question we should ask first is, who knew this book was special to you?”

  “A number of the booksellers know of my connection to Mr. Fitterbourne. My upbringing was never a secret, merely my birth. I mentioned it to Sir Henry Tarleton. And to Mr. Gilbert. And to a couple of other dealers in the last week.”

  Cain stared at the volume, his face creased in a frown, then opened it, peering at the rear paste-down endpaper.

  He gave a little grunt.

  “What?”

  “Look at this. I think someone had done
something to the binding inside the back cover.”

  Juliana knew the book well enough to detect a slit in the paper along the hinge, and faint traces of glue that looked fresh.

  “You are right,” she said in wonder, running a finger over the repair. “Something could have been removed from the binding.” She turned to the front. “The same thing has happened here.”

  “May I have another look?”

  She relinquished it willingly. Even holding it for a few seconds frightened her.

  Cain started to go through the volume, page by page. “Why are there so many blank leaves in the book?” he asked.

  “It’s only a single play, so the binder added blanks to make the volume thicker and have enough room to put the title on the spine. What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know.” He continued turning the leaves, even when he got to the end of the play.

  “Have you ever looked at these blanks?” His voice sounded odd.

  “No, why should I?”

  “There’s something written here, covering part of a page.”

  “What?” Juliana tried to peer over his shoulder, an impossibility due to his superior height.

  “Here, stop jumping up and down.” He held it so she could see.

  “My mother wrote that.” She recognized Cassandra’s handwriting at once. Unfortunately she could make nothing of it. It was gibberish, an apparently random collection of letters without spaces or punctuation. She peered at it desperately, trying to discern meaning. She yearned for a message, a thought, even something as mundane as a household receipt.

  “It’s nonsense,” she said sadly.

  “Do you notice that the same letters are used over and over again? Tell me again how those price codes work.”

  “Of course!” Immediately she knew Cain had the answer. “I never knew Cassandra’s code but there are Js, Es, Ts and Xs here, just like in the price at the front of the book.”

  She repeated her explanation of how collectors disguised their prices. “You take a ten-letter word and assign the digits to each letter.” Seizing the volume she turned back to the front. “Xx/je/t. The Xs are probably naughts so we are looking for a nine-letter word or phrase made up from the other letters on this page.”

  Without another word they both hurried back to the library table where Juliana, hands trembling with excitement, found pens and paper and wrote a list of the letters in Cassandra’s mysterious message. There were indeed a total of nine in addition to the X. The two of them sat side-by-side and furiously scribbled, trying to find the anagram that was the key to the code.

  “It’s impossible!” Juliana moaned. “I can’t make anything work with the J.”

  “No, wait. Look.” Cain pointed at his sheet of paper. “JULIET. The letters of the name Juliet are here.”

  “What’s left?”

  “A. P. C. PAC. CAP. Cap! JULIET CAP! This was her favorite book, wasn’t it? She probably loved the play before she even bought the book and used Juliet Capulet as her code.”

  “You solved it!” She flung her arms around Cain’s neck out of sheer gratitude. “Thank you, thank you!”

  Juliana had spent years trying to guess the code, but there were only a handful of books that had belonged to Cassandra. It was such a little thing, but she somehow felt closer to the woman she thought of as her mother. Cain held her close, pressing his lips into her hair. Relaxing in his arms, she was happy he was there to share this precious moment with her. She tucked her head under his chin, feeling crisp starched linen under her cheek and inhaling his now familiar scent. She sighed with deep satisfaction.

  “Juliana,” he murmured after a minute or two. “I’m glad you are happy, and I’m even happier this discovery has brought us, er, into such an intimate connection. But what exactly have we solved?”

  “Now I know what Miss Cassandra paid for the book.” She thought for a second, counting the words off on her fingers. “J equals 1, E equals 5, T equals 6. Fifteen shillings and sixpence. That was a good price,” she said approvingly.

  “Wonderful as it may be that your mother got such a bargain, it still leaves us with nothing but a lot of numbers.”

  “Oh!” She pulled out of Cain’s embrace. “Let’s ‘translate’ the page.”

  Loath as she was to admit it, he was right. When they made the “translation,” substituting digits for letters, they were no closer to a comprehensible message.

  “It must mean something, it must,” she said, now frantic to know what Cassandra had written.

  “There has to be a second step to the translation,” Cain said, staring at the sheet of numbers she’d transcribed. For a short while he was silent, nodding his head back and forth, his full lower lip curled over the upper in a thoughtful pout. Then he looked up. “Do you notice there are a great many 1s?”

  “So there are. So what?”

  “Suppose the numbers need to be turned back into letters. The simplest thing would be to make 1 equal A, 2 equal B and so forth. 13 could be either AC or M, the thirteenth letter.”

  “Let’s try.”

  It took about an hour and much trial and error before they coaxed the full meaning from the sheet of digits. The breakthrough came when they realized some of the numbers should remain numbers. The solution contained a date. All their work boiled down to one short sentence.

  “On the 27th of March, 1795, Cassandra and her beloved Julian became one.”

  “Julian,” she breathed in wonder. “My father.”

  “When were you born?”

  “The 3rd of January, 1796.”

  “The timing is right. It sounds to me, Mrs. Merton, as though your parents were lawfully wed.”

  “Perhaps not.” Juliana could hardly bear to hope. “Perhaps it’s just the date they…you know.”

  Cain smiled. “That too. The date is definitely right for ‘you know.’”

  He drew her to her feet and tipped her face upward with two fingers on her chin. She saw a hint of humor or mischief in his eyes, and something else too, that she’d never perceived before. He lowered his head and kissed her lips softly.

  “I think,” he said, “we should find out if they were married. Because if they were, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be too.”

  Chapter 15

  The auction viewing room was crowded with men looking over the new selection of books, brought out after the two-week hiatus. Cain wandered casually over to the section of the room where the greatest treasures were kept, the ones that wouldn’t be sold until the last day: things like the Burgundy Hours, and the Shakespeares.

  A small card inscribed in a neat italic was pinned to one of the shelves: “Lot number 9324 is unavailable for viewing.”

  Lot 9324 was, in fact, tucked into the capacious inner pocket of Cain’s greatcoat.

  Juliana had been reluctant to let the Romeo and Juliet go, but anxious to get it off her premises. “Maybe I should tear out the page with the inscription? It’s only a blank so would it count as theft?”

  Having listened to her argue back and forth at least six times, Cain had lost patience, though not sympathy.

  “We know what Cassandra wrote and that’s the important thing. The inscription doesn’t actually prove anything.” He removed the book from her slackening grip. “You’ll have the book eventually. If you don’t buy it yourself, I’ll buy it for you. In the meantime I’d like to try and get this back where it belongs before anyone misses it. “Don’t go out,” he ordered, before she could summon further argument, “and keep the dog close.”

  Quarto growled at him. “Good boy,” Cain said. “That’s the way to treat visitors.”

  Cain was beginning to recognize some of the auction regulars, among them Iverley and Compton, who stood against a wall. The latter called to him. “Chase! Last time I saw you, at the Duchess of Amesbury’s ball, you looked as though you’d swallowed a hedgehog.”

  “I’d sooner swallow a hedgehog than attend a ball,” contributed Iverley. He shift
ed in irritation. “I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for a place at a table.”

  Compton raised a quizzical eyebrow at Cain. “Rumor has you a reformed man.”

  “That’s what my aunt tells me.”

  “I make it a point never to believe what aunts have to say. Yet the presence of the Marquis of Chase, dancing with the lovely young maidens, was the talk of the card room.”

  “Do you think you could bring yourselves to call me Cain? I’ve heard nothing but Chase the last week and it makes me think of my father.”

  “As you wish. Call me Tarquin. I take it, Cain, the Saintly Marquis doesn’t arouse fond memories. My own sire died years ago. Perhaps I should be grateful.”

  Iverley grunted something that sounded like “mine fell out of a window.” Cain would have liked to pursue this fascinating piece of information. Another time.

  “Do you know what happened to lot 9324?” he asked.

  “The Romeo quarto?” said Tarquin. “Did you hear anything, Sebastian?”

  “Some idiot probably put it away in the wrong place. They’ll find it eventually.”

  Indeed they would, once Cain chose where, among the laden shelves and tables, that “wrong place” would be. Leaning against the wall with folded arms, he surveyed the room for a likely spot.

  “Where’s Mrs. Merton today?” Tarquin asked. “I was thinking of going over to St. Martin’s Lane later. I hear she’s acquired a damn fine collection of English poetry.”

  The blunt rustle of turning pages and the buzz of a dozen bibliographic conversations faded from Cain’s consciousness. “Where did you hear that?” he asked in a rasp.

  “Newman. I think it was Newman who told me.”

  “Where would I find this Newman? Is he here?”

  Tarquin looked around the room and shook his head. “The best place to find him is in the taproom of the Red Lion. Better catch him soon or he’ll be senseless.”

  “Always is.” Iverley had, contrary to appearances, been attending to the conversation. “The man’s a sot and you can’t credit a word he says. Highly unlikely that a female would acquire a collection of the caliber he mentioned.”