“I believe he’s asked Eugénie to forge his birth records on the off chance you’ll have him.”
Alice laughed, though her heart wasn’t in it. She’d finished flipping hastily through the letters and had set them back down unopened.
“No reply?” Tam asked gently.
Alice bit her lip and shook her head, then reached down and ruffled Vanessa’s velvety ears.
Alice had once been the first female member of the Aurelian Society. But as a woman, her place in the group had always been tenuous; after her father’s disgrace, she’d been cast out.
When they’d visited the Aurelian Society’s estate in Surrey, she’d spoken to Professor Joyce about her possible readmission, now that the scandal around her father had mostly died down. He’d told her he’d bring the matter before the society’s leadership, and she—perhaps foolishly—had nursed a small and futile hope that she might be one of them again.
She’d written to Professor Joyce three times in the last year. He’d yet to respond.
Tamsin picked up the letters and frowned down at them. “Fools,” she muttered. “I hate them, Alice. Start your own bloody bug association.”
She gave Tamsin a grateful smile, then picked up her beetle and delicately placed him back on his twig. She thought this one was a male—as a general rule, the male musk beetle grew longer antennae than did the female—though she had not yet witnessed the creature’s mating posture to be certain.
Tam settled herself back down and began to sort through the correspondence. Vanessa jumped up beside her—she was almost the size of the entire sofa now—and placed her black head in Tamsin’s lap.
After Captain Archer had told Princess Serafina the truth of his and his crew’s circumstances, the princess had agreed to hire Archer, Wall, Eugénie, Gerry, and Lamentation in a permanent capacity. They had no need to smuggle any longer, a fact that seemed to both relieve and alarm Captain Archer. He’d been forced to devise increasingly onerous household tasks for Lamentation in particular, lest the young man grow bored and invent more fictional sea monsters.
Alice and Tamsin had found themselves somewhat at loose ends. The princess had been rather pleased and amused by the prospect of maintaining a trio of court ladies in Cornwall, but the notion had been deferred when she’d returned to Monfalcone shortly after her testimony at Jack Penney’s court-martial.
Her departure had left Tamsin gloomy and irritable for weeks—a fact that Tamsin would have denied vigorously had Alice been imprudent enough to point it out.
They’d spent some time visiting Tamsin’s Aunt Frankie at her estate, and then, to their mutual satisfaction, they’d received word from Ruby that their presence was once more required at Pomeroy House.
Ruby, it seemed, had concocted a new scheme—and she needed their help. At her request, Captain Archer had put her into contact with the Dorset sculptor who’d produced Gravesmuir’s fake marbles. Ruby had enthusiastically taught the woman a far better technique for mimicking aging on the sculptures’ stone surface.
And then Ruby had had the notion of selling them.
“Not as the real thing,” she’d explained, looking earnestly at Alice and Tamsin as she outlined her proposition. “As replicas. Asexcellentreplicas. They’re all the rage, you know. You recall Penney’s house. The more decoration the better, some seem to think.”
“I should like to point out,” Tamsin had said, “that I do not, in fact, recall Penney’s house. Because I was trapped in a hayrick with an Italian hell-demon.”
Alice had patted her ankle. “We were very worried about you, though.”
“Yes, I’m sure. So worried that you planned an entireweddingin my absence.”
“I would not say ‘planned,’” Ruby had protested, and Tam had laughed.
Over the next several months, Ruby, Alice, and Tamsin had crafted a strategy to anonymously transact the sale of the replicas. They’d filled an auction house on Bond Street with the statues, put notices in every paper, and then arranged for Ruby’s sister—and a number of Monfalcone loyalists hand-selected by Signor Neri—to buy the marbles in a frenzy of heated bidding.
Within a handful of weeks, the replicas were all the rage in Mayfair. The Earl of Hangleton, who had no notion of his elder daughter’s involvement in the scheme, had bought almost two dozen.
Now Ruby managed the replica production. Tamsin arranged the logistical details with their London man of business. And Alice...
Well. Once, she would have endorsed the fashionable statues in every ballroom in London, but that time had long since passed. She tried very hard not to miss it.
The musk beetle, who’d once again reached the end of his twig, plummeted off for a second time.
Male, Alice thought. Most assuredly.
Tamsin’s voice broke into Alice’s entomological reverie. “This is an interesting letter.”
Alice rescued the beetle again, then looked across the desk at Tamsin. “What does it say?”
Tamsin was gazing down at the ink-covered sheet, her left hand absently stroking Vanessa’s ear. “It’s from a group of painters. The Baring Brotherhood of Naturists. It says they’ve received a special dispensation from Princess Serafina to spend the summer here at Pomeroy House. It says they are ‘in search of pacific vistas of rural splendor to instantiate a Platonic union of reason and soul.’”
