Leo scowled. “What the devil has gotten into you?”
“In all the excitement, I forgot her words.” Beatrice gripped the arms of her chair and pushed herself very slowly to her feet. “Surely not.”
“Beatrice?”
“Madame Virtue said that Uncle Reggie’s mind was affected by the drug she gave him. When she asked him where the Rings were, he said something that sounded like ruin or ruined.”
“What of it?” Leo gave her a sympathetic look. “It was the truth. He was dying and he had lost his fortune in the pursuit of the Aphrodite.”
“I’m not so sure that is what he meant.” Beatrice stood on tiptoe in front of the bookcase and reached for the package that contained the copy of her manuscript.
“What are you talking about?”
“The original title of The Castle of Shadows was The Ruin. My publisher insisted upon changing it because he thought the new title would sell more briskly. He is very fond of titles with the word castle in them.”
Leo straightened away from the desk. A familiar glint appeared in his eye. “Are you implying what I think you are implying?”
“Uncle Reggie had just finished reading a copy of my manuscript. He sent it back to me the very day he made his last appointment with Madame Virtue. What with one thing and another, I never opened the package. I simply put it on a shelf and forgot about it.”
“Impossible.” But Leo was already halfway across the room.
Beatrice put the package down on a table and gazed at it, hardly daring to breathe. She studied the string that bound the bundle. “Scissors.”
“Scissors.” Leo halted, swung around, and went back to the desk. “I saw a pair here somewhere when I searched it the day you went off with Saltmarsh.”
“Top drawer.” Beatrice could not take her eyes off the manuscript package.
Leo found the scissors and brought them to her without a word. She took a deep breath and snipped the string.
The brown wrapping paper fell away to reveal the copy of The Ruin that she had sent off to Reggie. There was a letter on top.
My dear Beatrice:
Another masterpiece. I enjoyed every word of The Ruin. You will be interested to learn that I am at this very moment involved in the middle of a mysterious adventure of my own. If I am successful, I shall find a treasure of untold value.
There is, however, some danger in the affair. As I am not certain how it will end, I have taken the liberty of enclosing the keys to the story inside your manuscript. If all goes well, I shall fetch them from you in a few days’ time.
But if something happens to me, I bequeath these relics to you. You are the only other member of the family who will be able to solve the puzzle. Enjoy the mystery, my dear, but use great caution. There are others after the prize. I suggest you contact the Earl of Monkcrest for advice and assistance. He is an authority on this sort of thing.
With greatest affection
Your fond uncle, Reggie
“Dear Uncle Reggie,” Beatrice put the letter aside. “It is almost as if he had guessed.”
There was something wrong with the way the manuscript pages bulged. She thumbed through the sheets of foolscap.
A slender package had been stuck between the end of chapter ten and the beginning of chapter eleven.
She removed it and gave it to Leo without a word.
He weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. Then he ripped it open.
Two wide, heavy bands fashioned of the same green substance as the statue tumbled into his palm. A string of Latin words was inscribed on them. Leo translated quickly.
“The Keys of Aphrodite.”
He turned to look at the statue. Then he glanced at Beatrice.
She smiled. “Be my guest, my lord.”
“I cannot believe that we may have found the Forbidden Rings.” He crossed the study to where the statue sat on the floor near the fireplace.
Elf raised his head and watched with idle curiosity as Leo slowly slipped the Rings into the shallow circular grooves at the foot of the statue.
There was a distinct clink when the last ring was in place. At first Beatrice thought nothing had happened. Then Leo upended the statue.
“There is a crack along the base. It was not there earlier,” he said.
He prodded gently and finally resorted to one of his picklocks.
“It has likely never been opened since it was created.” Beatrice hurried to join him. “Just think, it has been sealed for as long as two hundred years.”
“On the other hand, it may well have been opened ten years ago and the treasure removed.” There was another click. “Ah, yes. There. I have it now.”
A portion of the base of the statue slid aside. Beatrice gazed into the small opening that had been revealed.
“Leo, there is something in there.”
“So there is.” Leo plucked out a small cylinder.
Beatrice crouched beside him. “What is it?”
“A sheet of parchment.” He unrolled it cautiously. “The writing is in Latin.”
“What does it say?” Beatrice demanded. “Read it aloud, Leo. Do not keep me in suspense.”
Leo scanned the Latin quickly. He smiled slowly. The smile became a grin. And then he started to laugh.
“What is so funny?”
Leo laughed harder.
“Leo. What is it?”
“It is indeed a treasure,” he managed to say. “But it is an alchemist’s notion of one.”
“Let me see that.” Beatrice snatched the parchment out of his hand. “My Latin is somewhat weak. It appears to be a series of instructions.”
“For changing lead into gold. Utter nonsense.”
“So many people dead because of this nonsense,” Beatrice whispered.
Leo’s amusement faded. He looked at her. “It is easy to say today that the alchemists were misguided, deluded fools. But two hundred years ago they believed passionately in the science of their craft. To them the secret of changing lead into gold would have been worth murder.”
“If only Uncle Reggie had known the truth about the treasure he sought.”
Leo gripped her shoulder. “Beatrice, listen to me and listen well. There are always those who will seek treasure, especially the ancient sort. The lure is a fever for some. Nothing you can say or do will discourage them.”
“I suppose you are right.” She met his eyes. “I know how much old legends and artifacts mean to you, Leo. I am well aware that it must have been difficult for you to destroy those few relics in Trull’s chamber that disturbed me. It was very kind of you to humor me by getting rid of them.”
“Think nothing of it.” He raised one shoulder in a gallant shrug. “It is a well-known fact that the Monkcrest men must suffer for the sake of love. Part of the family legend.”
“For the sake of love?” She suddenly felt very light. “Leo, are you saying that you love me?”
He looked straight into her eyes and smiled. “I said it the night I gave you the Monkcrest ring.”
“You most certainly did not. Believe me, I would have remembered.”
He searched her face. “I thought everyone knew the family legend concerning the Monkcrest Ruby. It is given only once in a lifetime. I had to wait all these years to give it to you.”
She touched the ring, conscious of its warmth against her breast. “You have never given it to anyone else?”
“Never.”
Joy exploded inside her. “I do love you so, Leo.”
He grinned. “Enough to risk marriage to the Mad Monk?”
“If you had ever bothered to read any of my novels, my lord, you would know that my heroines love a good legend.”
Epiloque
ONE YEAR LATER
Leo stormed into the nursery, a familiar journal gripped in his hand. “Those bloody idiots at the Quarterly Review will not get away with this. How dare they call The Mysterious Artifact a work of overwrought prose that places undue emphasis on the darker passio
ns?”
“Calm yourself, my lord.” Beatrice smiled down at the gurgling baby in her arms. “The critics at the Review always label my novels overwrought. One grows accustomed to it. Besides, you yourself have never actually managed to finish one of my stories.”
“That is beside the point. And what the devil is wrong with dark passions? I rather like dark passions.”
“Yes, my love.”
“I shall write a letter today.” He slapped the copy of the Review against his thigh. “Those fools do not know excellent writing when they see it. They obviously do not possess the refined degree of sensibility it takes to appreciate the imagination, the cleverness of the narrative, and the exquisite descriptions—”
There was only one certain way to divert his attention. “Here, Leo, hold little Elizabeth for a moment, will you?” Beatrice thrust the infant into his arms.
“What?” Leo’s scowl of outrage vanished instantly. He looked down into eyes that were mirror images of her mother’s and grinned like the happy father he was. “Good morning, my sweet. You are looking lovelier than ever today.”
Elizabeth laughed up at him and scrunched her tiny hands into fists. Leo was an excellent father, Beatrice thought. His two sons, who had returned from the Grand Tour a few months earlier, were living proof of his abilities. Carlton had taken lodgings in Town, as was the habit of young men his age. William was at Oxford. But they came to visit often. She had liked them both from the moment they had been introduced, and they had accepted her with heartwarming enthusiasm.
Beatrice smiled at her little daughter. “One day when you are a famous authoress, Elizabeth, your father shall write scathing letters to the critics of the Quarterly Review on your behalf too. He is really very good at it. He possesses a particularly blistering turn of phrase.”
“Not that it appears to have much effect,” Leo muttered. “Dolts.”
“It is of no great concern,” Beatrice assured him. She stood on tiptoe to brush her lips against his cheek. “I have everything that matters.”
“A perfect, harmonious union of all the physical and metaphysical bonds that can unite a man and a woman, would you say?”
“At the very least,” she assured him. “And what about you, my lord?”
He grinned at her as baby Elizabeth wrapped her tiny fingers around his thumb. “Oddly enough, I was just thinking that I enjoy the very same things. What great good fortune brought you into my life, Beatrice?”
“If you had ever bothered to finish one of my novels, my lord, you would see that in the end the heroine always marries the hero.”
Author’s Note
“Horrid” novels—chilling tales of romantic gothic horror—were enormously popular in the early 1800s. The most successful authors in the genre were women. Everyone, including such notables as Jane Austen and Percy Shelley, read the books. Not everyone approved of them, however.
The critics deplored the taste for thrills and dark mysteries. But novels with titles such as The Mysterious Hand, or, Subterranean Horrors and The Enchanted Head found a wide and enthusiastic audience.
In the end, the critics managed to keep most of the horrid novels and their authors out of the respectable literary establishment. But no amount of criticism could dampen the enthusiasm of the readers. The archetypal nature of the stories proved too powerful to subdue.
We seldom study the horrid novels in English literature classes today, but that does not mean that their influence is not strongly felt. The authors left a lasting impact on modern popular fiction. The genres of romance, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and horror are especially indebted to them.
Incidentally, one horrid novel did make it into the modern era. The critics at the Quarterly Review savaged it when it was first published in 1818, but today everyone knows the title. That novel was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
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PROLOGUE
The intruder’s eyes blazed with a cold fire. He raised a powerful hand and swept another row of vases off the shelf. The fragile objects crashed to the floor and shattered into a hundred shards. He moved on to a display of small statues.
“I advise you to make haste with your packing, Mrs. Lake,” he said as he turned his violent attention to a host of fragile clay Pans, Aphrodites, and satyrs. “The carriage will leave in fifteen minutes, and I promise you that you and your niece will be aboard, with or without your luggage.”
Lavinia watched him from the foot of the stairs, helpless to stop the destruction of her wares. “You have no right to do this. You are ruining me.”
“On the contrary, madam. I am saving your neck.” He used a booted foot to topple a large urn decorated in the Etruscan manner. “Not that I expect any thanks, mind you.”
Lavinia winced as the urn exploded on impact with the floor. She knew now that it was pointless to berate the lunatic. He was intent on destroying the shop and she lacked the means to stop him. She had been taught early in life to recognize the signs that indicated it was time to stage a tactical retreat. But she had never learned to tolerate such annoying reversals of fortune with equanimity.
“If we were in England, I would have you arrested, Mr. March.”
“Ah, but we are not in England, are we, Mrs. Lake?” Tobias March seized a life-size stone centurion by the shield and shoved it forward. The Roman fell on his sword. “We are in Italy and you have no choice but to do as I command.”
It was useless to stand her ground. Every moment spent down here attempting to reason with Tobias March was time lost that should be spent packing. But the unfortunate tendency toward stubbornness that was so much a part of her nature could not abide the notion of surrendering the field of battle without a struggle.
“Bastard,” she said through her teeth.
“Not in the legal sense.” He slammed another row of red clay vases to the floor. “But I believe I comprehend what you wish to imply.”
“It is obvious that you are no gentleman, Tobias March.”
“I will not quarrel with you on that point.” He kicked over a waist-high statue of a naked Venus. “But then, you are no lady, are you?”
She cringed when the statue crumbled. The naked Venuses had proved quite popular with her clientele.
“How dare you? Just because my niece and I got stranded here in Rome and were obliged to go into trade for a few months in order to support ourselves is no reason to insult us.”
“Enough.” He whirled around to face her. In the lantern light, his forbidding face was colder than the features of any stone statue. “Be grateful that I have concluded that you were merely an unwitting dupe of the criminal I am pursuing and not a member of his gang of thieves and murderers.”
“I have only your word that the villains were using my shop as a place to exchange their messages. Frankly Mr. March, given your rude behavior, I am not inclined to believe a single thing you say.”
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “Do you deny that this note was hidden in one of your vases?”
She glanced at the damning note. Only moments ago she had watched in stunned amazement while he shattered a lovely Greek vase. A message that looked remarkably like a villain’s report to his criminal employer had been tucked inside. Something about a bargain with pirates having been successfully struck.
Lavinia raised her chin. “It is certainly not my fault that one of my patrons dropped a personal note into that vase.”
“Not just one patron, Mrs. Lake. The villains have been using your shop for some weeks now.”
“And just how would you know that, sir?”
“I have watched these premises and your personal movements for nearly a month.”
She widened her eyes, genuinely shocked by the infuriatingly casual admission.
r /> “You have spent the past month spying on me?”
“At the start of my observations, I assumed that you were an active participant in Carlisle’s ring here in Rome. It was only after much study that I have concluded you probably did not know what some of your so-called customers were about.”
“That is outrageous.”
He gave her a look of mocking inquiry. “Are you saying you did know what they were up to when they came and went in such a regular fashion?”
“I am saying no such thing.” She could hear her voice climbing but there was little she could do about it. She had never been so angry or so frightened in her life. “I believed them to be honest patrons of antiquities.”
“Did you indeed?” Tobias glanced at a collection of cloudy green glass jars that stood in a neat row on a high shelf. His smile was devoid of all warmth. “And how honest are you, Mrs. Lake?”
She stiffened. “What are you implying, sir?”
“I’m not implying anything. I am merely noting that most of the items in this shop are cheap replicas of ancient artifacts. There is very little here that is truly antique.”
“How do you know?” she shot back. “Never say you are an expert in antiquities, sir. I will not be taken in by such an outlandish claim. You cannot pass yourself off as a scholarly researcher, not after what you have done to my establishment.”
“You are correct, Mrs. Lake. I am not an expert in Greek and Roman antiquities. I am a simple man of business.”
“Rubbish. Why would a simple man of business come all the way to Rome in pursuit of a villain named Carlisle?”
“I am here on behalf of one of my clients who employed me to make inquiries into the fate of a man named Bennett Ruckland.”
“What was the fate of this Mr. Ruckland?”
Tobias looked at her. “He was murdered here in Rome. My client believes it was because he learned too much concerning the secret organization that Carlisle controls.”