Mistress - Amanda Quick [143]
He looked briefly, chillingly, amused. “Does it make any great difference?”
“No.”
The situation was impossible. She had no choice but to concede the victory to him.
With a soft exclamation of frustration and anger, she whirled and rushed on up the stairs. When she reached the small, lantern-lit room, she saw that, unlike herself, Emeline had made good use of the time allotted to them. Two medium-size and one very large trunk stood open. The smaller trunks were already crammed to overflowing.
“Thank goodness you are here.” Emeline’s words were muffled, as her head was inside the wardrobe. “Whatever took you so long?”
“I was attempting to convince March that he had no right to toss us out into the street in the middle of the night.”
“He is not tossing us into the street.” Emeline straightened away from the wardrobe, a small antique vase cradled in her arms. “He has provided a carriage and two armed men to see us safely out of Rome and all the way home to England. It is really very generous of him.”
“Rubbish. There is nothing at all generous about his actions. He is playing some deep game, I tell you, and he wants us out of his way.”
Emeline busied herself rolling the vase into a bombazine gown. “He believes we are in grave danger from that villain Carlisle, who used our shop as a place to send and receive messages from his men.”
“Bah. We have only Mr. March’s word that there is any such villain operating here in Rome.” Lavinia opened a cupboard. A very handsome, extremely well endowed Apollo gazed out at her. “I, for one, am not inclined to put much faith in anything that man tells us. For all we know, he wants the use of these rooms for his own dark purposes.”
“I am convinced he has told us the truth.” Emeline stuffed the cushioned vase into the third trunk. “And if that is the case, he is right. We are indeed in danger.”
“If there is some villainous gang involved in this affair, I would not be surprised to discover that Tobias March is their leader. He claims to be a simple man of business, but it is obvious to me that there is something distinctly diabolical about him.”
“You are allowing your ill temper to influence your imagination, Lavinia. You know you are never at your most clearheaded when you allow your imagination to run wild.”
The sound of shattering pottery echoed up the staircase.
“Damn the man,” Lavinia muttered.
Emeline paused in her packing and tilted her head slightly, listening. “He certainly is intent on making it appear that we were the victims of vandals and thieves, is he not?”
“He said something about destroying the shop so this villain Carlisle would not suspect he had been discovered.” Lavinia wrestled with the Apollo, struggling to get it free of the cupboard. “But I believe it is just another one of his lies. The man is enjoying himself down there, if you ask me. He is quite mad.”
“I hardly think that is the case.” Emeline went back to the wardrobe for another vase. “But I will admit it is a good thing we stored the genuine antiquities up here so we could keep them safe from street thieves.”
“The only bit of luck in this entire affair.” Lavinia wrapped her arms around Apollo’s chest and hauled him out of the cupboard. “I shudder to think what might have happened if we had put them on display alongside the copies downstairs. March would no doubt have destroyed them too.”
“If you ask me, the most fortunate aspect of this thing is that Mr. March concluded we were not members of Carlisle’s ring of cutthroats.” Emeline shrouded a small vase in a towel and stored it in the trunk. “I tremble to think what he might have done to us had he believed us to be consorting with the real villains and not just innocent dupes.”
“He could hardly have done worse than to ruin our only source of income and throw us out of our home.”
Emeline glanced at the old stone walls that surrounded them and gave a delicate sniff. “You can hardly call this unpleasant little room a home. I shall not miss it for a moment.”
“You will most certainly