flatter your pride, announced the voice in her head. This one is a charmer. Be on your guard.
She touched her finger to her chin, pretending indecision, and scuffed the floor with the toe of her boot. Then she stared at him and spoke without irony. ‘We are going to allow me to get on with what I was doing, Potts. It may still amount to nothing. But if I do not do what I came here for, you will do it yourself as soon as my back is turned and abscond with anything you find.’
He nodded. ‘You have a surprisingly bleak view of my character, Miss Strickland. Not inaccurate, mind you. Simply bleak. But if the thing you are searching for can be split easily between us, I will be out of your hair and your life before cock’s crow.’
She clutched at her heart, feigning ecstasy at the thought of his absence. ‘Will you really, Potts?’
‘My plan on coming here was exactly what you suggested when we first met. I have urgent business back in America and no money for a return passage. I should not have to count every last part of the Comstock entail to get it. If I can find something of value that won’t be missed, I will take it, sell it and get a ticket on the first ship bound for Philadelphia.’ He pointed to the fireplace. ‘If there is such a thing hidden up that chimney, then go to, Miss Strickland. Go to.’
‘Very well, Potts,’ she said, with another insincere smile. If they found what she was looking for, there was no way he could take half of it, any more than she could. But he had planned to take something that would not be missed. She must hope that he could be steered towards discretion and not greed. Then she remembered that there were other issues to be dealt with. ‘I have but one problem. I was too short to reach it on the last visit.’
‘I am taller,’ he said, standing up, ready to take her place.
‘And wider,’ she reminded him. ‘It was a snug fit, even for me.’
‘There is nothing for it then,’ he said, went to the fireplace, hauled the grate out of its place and went down on one knee, patting the level plain of his opposite thigh. ‘Up you go.’
‘I was thinking more of finding a ladder,’ she said.
‘Have you brought one with you?’
‘Do not ask me facetious questions,’ she snapped.
He patted his knee again. ‘Come along, Miss Strickland. Let us settle the mystery in the chimney and then you will have time to berate me on my character.’
She sighed. She did not need her sisters to tell her that what he had suggested was improper. It would take only a minute or two to find something else to stand on. But she wanted an answer to the mystery, not in two minutes, but now.
Everyone said that impatience was a major flaw in her character. And she would address it later.
She stepped forward, crouched to move past him in the fireplace opening, braced herself on the walls of the chimney and raised a foot.
Before she could fumble, he had grabbed her boot and guided it to a place on his thigh. Then he reached beneath her skirts and tapped the back of her other knee as one might do to a horse to make him raise a hoof.
She lifted the foot that was still on the ground and he made a stirrup with his hands, boosting it to join the other one so she could stand on his leg.
He was right. She was several inches higher than she had been when standing on the grate. She felt the bricks surrounding her for the expected niche.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she admitted through gritted teeth. She stretched her fingers upwards and brushed a ridge and empty air where there should be brick, but nothing else. ‘I can feel it above me, but I am still too short.’
‘Step on to my shoulders, then.’ Before she could argue, his fingers were around one of her calves, firmly guiding her leg upwards.
For a moment, her normally agile mind went blank. His head and shoulders were under her skirt. This was the first, and possibly the last, time that a man would see her legs, much less touch them. She must pray that it was dark under there. If he looked up, he would see far more than her legs. He would be inches from everything she had to offer.
It was…
She shepherded her thoughts, trying to analyse the sensations running through her. The feel of his hand on her ankle was different to any touch she’d felt before, though it was not even skin to skin. The flesh under her wool stocking felt cold, but the blood beneath was racing hot, back towards her heart. And above it all, she was sure she felt the gentle stirring of his breath.
The world seemed to spin and waver around her, unsteady, as if she’d had too much wine. Then she realised that the feeling was not imagination. Her body trembled, trying to find balance as he guided it to stand on his shoulders like a Vauxhall Gardens acrobat. She could stop it by bracing herself against the brick walls around her.
She did so. But she didn’t like being steady. She wanted to feel strange and unsure, laughing as the whole world dropped from under her and she fell to land breathless in his lap.
‘Miss Strickland?’ The voice coming from under her skirts was muffled, but unemotional.
‘Uhh, yes,’ she said, hurriedly feeling for the niche in the wall that was now on a level with her face. Her heart gave another sudden swoop as her fingers encountered a box. ‘I have found something.’
‘Excellent.’ Both hands transferred to her left ankle as he began the delicate process of helping her down. By the time her feet were back on the hearthstones, she had regained control of her senses and could emerge, sooty but fully rational, from the fireplace. Then she held out the thing she had found: a wooden box about eight inches square.
‘It is not very large,’ he said, staring down at it.
‘It does not need to be,’ she said, fumbling with the catch. But she had thought it would be bigger than this. She had imagined a rectangular, leather case similar to the one that held the duplicates, with an easily found latch and hinges. But the wood under her fingers was completely smooth. Nor did there seem to be a separate top that could be lifted off. If she had not felt the lightness and heard a faint rattle from within, she’d have assumed that it was a solid block and not a box at all.
‘Hand it here for a moment,’ he said, fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief. Once he had hold of it, he buffed enthusiastically to remove the accumulated ash and grime. Then he handed it back to her to admire.
She adjusted her spectacles, wiping the grime from them to get a clear look. What had seemed to be plain mahogany was at least three colours of wood, inlaid in elaborate marquetry, no two sides alike. But though it was lovely to look at, the way into it was not more apparent now that it was clean than it had been fresh from the chimney. She stared back at him. ‘Do you have a penknife I might borrow?’
‘And spoil the fun?’
‘I am supposed to enjoy this?’ she asked, giving it a frustrated shake.
‘You are holding a Chinese puzzle box,’ he said patiently. ‘Perhaps you are not familiar with them, but I have seen them brought from the Orient by sailors.’ He held a hand out for the box.
She hesitated. She had spent half a day up a chimney, rooting around in the dirt. She had run back and forth from the house, twice. All she wanted was a cup of tea and a wash and some sign that this quest was nearing its end. Instead, this clean and poised stranger stood ready to take it away and finish it for her.
She pulled it back. ‘Thank you, Potts, but that will not be necessary.’
‘I thought we agreed to share,’ he said, giving her a smile that could melt the snow off a roof.
She shook the box again, hearing only the faint rattle of the trick marquetry that hid the latches. ‘As you can hear, there is nothing inside. And, even if the box is rare enough to be valuable, it will no longer be so if you try to take