Last Night's Scandal (The Dressmakers 5)

“During which you’d forget I existed.”

“You could bring me a cup of tea,” he said. “That would remind me.”

“You’ve got Nichols for that,” she said.

“You could take off all your clothes,” he said.

“And dance naked in the desert?”

“At night,” he said. “Under the starry skies. You’ve never seen such stars, such nights.”

“It sounds heavenly,” she said softly. Then she bounced up from the bench. “But I know what you’re doing. You’re casting lures.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

Was he? Perhaps.

“I know you, Lisle. I know you better than anybody else does. Your conscience has been chipping away, night after night, chipping, chipping. And you’ve laid a cunning plan for my downfall. ‘I’ll lure her,’ you decide. And because you know me better than anybody else except Mama does, you know the way to do it.”

Did he? Was it working?

She came to him. “I’ve more patience than you think, but I’m out of sorts. This star-crossed tragic passion business doesn’t agree with me. Let me look at that accursed paper again.”

Egypt. Dancing in the desert naked, under the stars.

He looked so angelic—the golden hair and silvery eyes—but he was an evil tempter.

She took the paper from him and made herself concentrate.

The drawing showed two walls measuring twelve feet wide. Inside the squares representing stones were tiny markings and numbers.

About a quarter of the way up the drawing of the wall, on the right hand side, was a symbol.

“That one,” she said. “Not like the others, is it?”

“A mason’s mark, I think. It looks like GL with an arrow through it.”

“If it’s an arrow, it’s pointing left,” he said.

“But where is it?”

They both walked to the east wall and looked for the mark.

Nothing.

They walked to the west wall and looked for the mark.

Nothing.

“It ought to be on one . . .” She trailed off. “Unless we’re looking for the wrong thing.”

Words shifted in her mind, images, too. What the ladies had said. What Lisle had said.

“Remember when I said that a drawing of the wall was so obvious and you said maps are obvious?” she said.

He looked down at the mark. He looked at the wall.

“An arrow pointing to the spot?” he said.

“If the wall’s meant to be the west wall, perhaps it’s pointing to a window.”

“But why GL?”

“It’s your cousin’s drawing,” she said. “What if it’s one of his jokes?”

“ ‘The walls have eyes and ears’ ” she said. “ ‘Lookout below.’ ”

And that was when she saw it in her mind’s eye. The city on its great rock. The city where Frederick Dalmay had spent the last years of his life. “Edinburgh,” she said. “He would have thought it was funny.”

“I don’t—”

“Come,” she said. She took his hand.

His hand, his hand. Such a simple thing, holding his hand, yet what happened inside wasn’t simple at all.

She led him into the easternmost window recess, into the closet. She opened the door. “Gardy loo,” she said.

“This is the privy,” he said.

“The garderobe,” she said. “A play on the words and the meaning. In Edinburgh, when they’d empty the slops out of the window, they’d call out ‘gardyloo,’—garde à l’eau—mind the water. A warning, you see: Look out below.”

It was a small space, and dark. It was easy enough, though, to find a board to set over the hole, and the single candle Lisle brought in seemed very bright in the narrow room. It showed them the initials and primitive pictures and rude poetry scratched into the stones by various hands at various times.

Lisle did have to squeeze in amongst Olivia’s skirts, and they stood elbow to elbow, while he slowly raised the candle and slowly brought it down, so that they could scrutinize each stone.

Though they’d propped the door open, to allow in as much light as possible from the closet window, the room wasn’t meant to hold two people and not for any length of time. The air grew warmer and thicker, and her hair was under his nose, and the shadowy fragrance of her clothes and skin wrapped about him.

“We’d better find something soon,” he said. “This is . . . this is . . .”

“I know,” she said. “Is it like this in the tombs?”

“I’ve never been in a tomb with you,” he said. His head was bowing toward hers, where wispy curls dangled at her temple.

“Mind the candle,” she said, and in the same instant he felt the hot wax touch his hand, and he tipped it upright, and the light revealed a line of mortar around a stone. On each side someone had scratched a small cross.

“There,” she said. “Is that—”

“Yes.” He moved the candle. “X marks the spot.”

“Good heavens.” She clutched his arm. “I can’t believe it. It’s old, isn’t it?”

“It’s old,” he said. “And the marks are in the mortar, not on the stones. Old marks, old mortar.”

Everywhere else, the marks were in the stones.

His heart was racing. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was another of his cousin’s jokes. The marks were old, but it was impossible to say how old. Ten years or twenty or two hundred.

“Oh, Lisle,” she said. “We?

?ve found it.” She turned to him. “I don’t care what it is. But it’s old and we searched and we found it.”

He didn’t care what it was, either.

He set down the candle in the far corner of the privy seat. He wrapped his hands about her waist and lifted her up to bring them eye to eye. “You mad girl,” he said. “You mad, clever girl.”

She flung her arms round his neck. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. If we find nothing else, thank you for this.”

He kissed her. He’d lifted her to do so. She kissed him back. Once, long and fierce, as though it was the last chance they’d ever get.

Then slowly, he set her down. He picked up the candle and made himself do what he always did. Examine. Assess. Decide. He studied the mortar. He considered the alternatives. He decided.

“We need chisels,” he said.

It took forever. They’d brought pickaxes, but as Lisle had obviously realized, one couldn’t swing a pickaxe effectively in these close quarters.

And so they picked away at the mortar, standing side by side, their bodies touching from time to time as they worked.

Bit by bit, the mortar came away from the edges of the stone until, finally, they’d freed the stone enough to move it.

“The mortar wasn’t as solid as I expected,” he said. “I thought we’d be at this for hours.” He jiggled the stone. “I don’t think this is as heavy as it looks, either. Do you want to try moving it with me, or do you want to send for servants?”

“How can you ask?” she said. “After all the time we’ve spent with that vexatious piece of paper and those stubborn walls? After all that, I’m to let servants have the triumphant moment?”

“We don’t know that it’ll be triumphant,” he said.

“I don’t care if all we find is a pair of Cousin Frederick’s shoes,” she said. “We found something.”

“Very well,” he said. “You put your hand there, and hold it up, and let me do the shifting.”

She followed his directions, and slowly, by inches, the stone emerged from the wall.

It was less slowly than she’d expected, though. The back corner appeared so suddenly that she was unprepared, and would have dropped it, but Lisle quickly grabbed it. Then he heaved the stone out and set it down on the board over the privy hole. From the front it looked like the other stones, but it had been cut to a few inches in depth.