She smiled winningly up at him from her chair. “Why yes. Thank you.”
He gestured to the paper-wrapped bundle, which he’d deposited just inside the door. “I’ve also located the last of your purchases.”
“Have you?” said Tamsin dryly. “Strange, how they were all mislaid like that.”
“Baffling,” he agreed. “Perhaps the Scourge is to blame.”
“Oh indeed.”
Ruby got to her feet and moved toward the door. Archer backed hastily away.
“Wait,” she commanded.
He attempted to ignore her directive, but the remaining puppy seemed to be entangled in his bootlaces. He tried to dislodge her while also smiling innocently at Ruby. “So sorry. Can’t stay. I have a prior engagement.”
“Not right this minute you don’t.” She was already upon the parcel, her fingers searching out the paper seams. “I mean to ensure that all our purchases are accounted for. There were several items remaining we had yet to locate, and I require—oh.” She paused in the act of unfolding the waxed paper. “Alice, did you order this for me?”
Ohhell. Now Gerry and Lamentation were looking up as well, and the puppy was still fastened to the toe of his boot. He crouched down to try to pry her free and got a needle-like fang embedded in his finger for his trouble.
Alice glanced over at the items in Ruby’s hand. “What is it?”
“A book.The Polychromatic Ornament of Italy.I’ve been longing to read it—however did you know?”
“I didn’t.” Alice’s long black lashes fluttered. “Does it say where it came from? Perhaps it got mixed up in our things?”
Ruby riffled through the book’s glossy pages. “It says... Kneebone’s Circulating Library.”
“That’s in Penzance,” Lamentation said, blithely unaware of the betrayal he was executing. “You ladies didn’t go all that way, did you?”
“No, of course not,” Alice said.
“You were in Penzance,” Gerry rumbled. “Weren’t you, Cap? Two weeks back?”
Archer stared at the recalcitrant, traitorous puppy and attempted to become invisible.
Ruby’s brows drew together. She looked at the book in her hands. At the paper parcel she’d just unwrapped.
And then she looked at Archer.
He had not, evidently, succeeded in vanishing. He smiled weakly at her, and—bloody hell. The puppy sank several more teeth into the tip of his finger, and he tried to pretend that was why his face felt hot.
“Do you know how this book got in here?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea.” Through sheer will and iron fortitude, he managed to outmaneuver a dog the size of a turnip. He stood, deposited the creature into Alice’s waiting arms, and then turned to the door.
Ruby was blocking his path of escape. The waxed paper had slipped to the floor, and she clutched the book to her chest. “You have no suspicion as to where it came from?”
“Not a one.”
It had been an absurd notion. He had been in Penzance for the day with Oliphant, making plans for the next shipment of wine casks, which they meant to tie to theDelphinium’s stern and then drag underwater to avoid detection. Archer had taken a turn about the circulating library as he always did, his mind flickering helplessly back to his childhood and the room he’d shared with his mother, her hands tracing the crisp leaves of a new book.
When he’d seen the Italy volume, lying open on a shelf, he’d thought of Ruby instantly. It was brilliant. Vivid. Eye-catching and unapologetic. Like she was.
It was about classical art and decoration, which he knew well enough that she fancied. For some terrible reason that he refused to contemplate, he’d bought the thing before he could think the better of it. He’d meant to slip the volume onto the Pomeroy House shelves and let her discover it on her own, but she and her ladies had scarcely left the library during the room’s extended refurbishment. Hiding the book in the ladies’ parcels had seemed a perfectly plausible alternative.
Only—damn it to hell. He hadn’t expected he’dbe therewhen she opened it.
He blamed the situation entirely upon the dogs.
