Page 21 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

If anything looked out of place, it was the three of them.

“I’ll check behind the paintings,” said Tommy.

“Check for what?” asked Viv.

“No idea,” Tommy answered cheerfully. “I’m counting on you two to let me know when we’ve found what we came for.”

“I’ll take the desk,” said Viv.

She settled into the tall, well-cushioned armchair. It felt like floating on a cloud. Good God, how did Mr. Olivebury get any work done? She could sleep in this thing.

Tommy tossed her the ring of keys. “If any of the drawers are locked, one of these might work.”

“Thank you.”

Viv peeked under her eyelashes at Jacob. He was on his knees before the bookshelf, releasing a quartet of mice from his coat pockets.

“What are they trained to sniff again?” Viv asked. She knew the answer but liked the warm rumble of Jacob’s voice.

He pointed at each mouse in turn. “Opium. Gunpowder. Pound-note ink. Refined sugar.”

Viv had her doubts that the answer to the mystery lay in a missing box of chocolates, but then again, if someone had broken into her house and stolen her emergency candy supply, she might not have wished to tell the newspapers about her secret addiction, either.

Just like she didn’t wish to admit her fascination with a certain Wynchester.

Despite herself, Viv could not help but be charmed by the handsome poet.

Jacob was an unpublished writer like herself, and a sweetheart of a man around whom animals flocked like mystical fairy tales.

If he’d told her his trained mice could lead them to gold, silver, uncut diamonds, and whooper swans, she absolutely would have believed it.

Jacob stroked the short fur behind the ears of the currency-sniffing mouse, which wiggled in obvious pleasure.

Viv couldn’t blame the creature. She’d reacted in much the same way when Jacob had caressed her wrist. Which was why she’d run from the barn rather than acknowledge her obvious attraction.

Ever since that day, Viv had wished she’d stayed a little longer. Experienced a few more strokes of his finger. Perhaps even—

The door to the study flew open.

Shite! Viv leaped up from the chair and shoved the ring of keys into her pocket. She hadn’t even had a chance to try them yet, and already they’d been caught in the act.

The hall boy stood in the open doorway, this time flanked by two young maids.

Reinforcements. Not a good sign.

“What do you think you’re doing in here?” demanded the elder of the two maids.

Jacob’s turn to deflect suspicion.

He’d made a nearly inaudible whistle, and now all four trained mice scrambled back and forth across the expensive carpet as if the politician’s study doubled as a playground for rodents.

“Chased these creatures in,” Jacob replied briskly. “If you’d like to wait out in the corridor, I’m sure I’ll have them rounded up in no time.”

To Viv’s surprise, the maids did not cringe back in alarm. If anything, they looked relieved that there was such a simple explanation for the trespassing.

“I told you that mouser isn’t worth a boiled bean,” the younger maid said to the older one. “We ought to acquire a new one, if you ask me.”

“Pah,” said the hall boy. “Who needs cats when you have me? I’ll catch these mice and wring their necks quick as you can say ‘squeak.’”

He dashed forward, arms outstretched, a mean smile stretching his lips.

Jacob brought his fist to his lips as if covering a cough—though in fact he was hiding another barely audible whistle.

All four mice immediately ceased crisscrossing the carpet and vanished into the shadows instead.

The hall boy stumbled, glancing around the study in confusion.

“You can wring the rodents’ necks later,” said the older maid. “I’ll have the mouser sent in. But all humans must exit. No one is to be in the master’s study without him present.”

Tommy clutched her chest, mere seconds away from feigning an apoplexy in order to give Viv and Jacob a few more moments in the study before they were all evicted.

Apoplexy was a terrible plan. Viv had told Tommy it should be much further down the contingency list. A medical emergency meant every servant in earshot would come running.

Doctors would be summoned, and soon the entire household would be crammed into the study, making it impossible to search for anything.

Jacob had the right idea with his mice. There’d been no way to predict that the maids would simply shrug rather than be scared off.

But that was why Viv had brought Sally.

Jacob noticed first. His eyes widened and he took an instinctive step toward Viv before cautiously freezing in place.

“Er…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to alarm you…”

A string of garbled syllables tangled in Tommy’s throat. “I really am going to suffer an apoplexy, if someone doesn’t get that thing out of here!”

Most likely because Viv had failed to mention she’d brought Sally along for the ride.

If the contingency became necessary, she’d need everyone’s reactions to be genuine.

The youngest maid gasped and stumbled backward toward the door. “What is that thing?”

“It’s crawling up her bodice,” the older maid whispered in obvious horror. She scrabbled to join the other maid in the relative safety of the corridor.

The hall boy’s face drained of color. “It’s… a furry… spider? The size of my fist!”

Small fists that were currently pale and trembling.

“Kill it!” called one of the maids from just out of sight.

“I can’t look,” moaned the other. “I’m going to have nightmares for years!”

The hall boy was still frozen in place.

Viv could fix that.

She feigned a panicked cry, bringing her arm up to her chest and flinging the enormous tarantula directly toward the hall boy’s shocked face.

He shrieked and dashed from the room before Sally even landed, slamming the study door shut behind him.

Viv leaped over her spider and bent her mouth to the keyhole. “Stay far away until we find it,” she called. “Save yourselves!”

“We will,” came the muffled reply.

Viv turned around and curtsied at Jacob and Tommy.

“What,” whispered Tommy, “was that?”

“Wolf spider,” Jacob answered. “ Lycosa tarantula , native to southern Europe. Because of the madness its venom is said to cause, Italians invented a dance called the tarantella, designed to represent—”

“Let me interrupt this fascinating lecture to rephrase my question,” said Tommy. “What the devil was that eight-legged beast doing on Miss Henry’s bodice, and how do we keep it from killing us?”

Viv dropped to the floor, palm up on the carpet.

“Sally wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, Sally?” she cooed. “Well, maybe a fly. You’d inject it with poison to dissolve its innards and swallow the remaining glop whole.”

Tommy gurgled wordlessly.

“Come on, sweetling,” coaxed Viv. “I’m sorry I tossed you at that nasty human, but you did the very right thing and scared him away. He doesn’t know that your venom is only capable of murdering small mammals, and that you rarely bite humans at all.”

“Rarely,” Tommy choked out. “Comforting.”

Sally scurried across the carpet and into Viv’s outstretched palm. Viv tucked the tarantula back into its protective sugar shaker in her reticule, then tied the string closed for safety. Sally’s safety. Viv would be very upset if any injury were to befall a beloved pet.

“I thought Sally was a rhinoceros,” muttered Jacob. “Or another attack badger.”

Tommy’s eyes widened. “I won’t even ask.”

“She’s a distraction,” Viv said firmly. “And it’s working, at least for now. We should still hurry. The maids might summon a stableboy with an affinity for stomping spiders.”

Jacob took her fingers in his larger hand. “I’m glad you’re all right. When I first saw that tarantula, I feared it would bite you.”

“She has, many times.” Viv couldn’t concentrate on her words, not with her suddenly trembling hand back in the warmth of Jacob’s. “Never hurts more than a bee sting.”

“I wouldn’t want you to suffer even that.” His voice was low as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the sensitive flesh of her hand. “I wish you only pleasure, not pain.”

“I like pleasure,” Viv said inanely. She imagined it would be nothing but pleasure if he kissed her. In fact, she often imagined a lot more than that.

“Yes,” said Tommy. “You’re both clearly in a big hurry to solve this robbery and exit the study.”

Viv’s face heated. Jolted out of her trance, she jerked her fingers out of Jacob’s hands and threw herself back into the armchair behind Mr. Olivebury’s desk, refusing to meet either Wynchester sibling’s eyes.

Tommy was right. They might not have much time.

As his sister peeked behind portraits, Jacob whistled for his mice to resume their original missions.

Viv tried all the drawers in the desk, and discovered only one of them was locked. She decided to ignore the rest and start there. Whatever Mr. Olivebury didn’t want the world to see wouldn’t be kept somewhere easily accessible.

It took until the thirteenth key, but Marjorie’s ring of skeleton keys worked as advertised. Viv slid the drawer open all the way, torn between sifting through in a rush before another interruption came, or taking her time so as not to miss something important.

“No opium,” Jacob called out quietly. “Gunpowder residue on the carpet, but nowhere else. Probably tracked in on hunting boots, either Olivebury’s or a visitor’s.”

“What about the other two mice?” asked Tommy.

“Still working.”

“I’ve got something,” said Viv. “I think. Maybe.”

Jacob and Tommy hurried to her side.

“What did you find?” Jacob asked.

“A diary.” Viv opened the journal and pointed at a random page. “It goes back years. Every few lines is a new date, and notes like ‘Meet the lads at the club at seven’ or ‘Don’t forget to accompany Mrs. O to the theater.’”

“That sounds innocuous enough,” said Tommy. “Does it mention insurmountable gambling debts or a secret love child?”

“No,” Viv admitted. “But every Wednesday and Saturday, it says ‘Fs 4 in’ or ‘Jy 4 in’ or ‘Ch 4 in.’ The same three phrases are listed for this week and the next.”

“‘In’?” repeated Tommy. “In what?”

Viv pulled out her writing journal and started scribbling notes. “I don’t know yet.”

“It’s a code,” said Jacob. “For… something.”

Tommy’s brow creased in thought. “Maybe something legislative? What days does Parliament meet?”

“Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday,” he replied.

“How do you remember that?” she groused.

“How don’t you remember?” He gave a dramatic shudder. “If I’m not safe in the barn on those days, Chloe ropes me into attending the sessions.”

Tommy groaned. “That’s how she traps me. My bad sense of calendar.”

“I don’t know if Mr. Olivebury kept more diaries before this one,” Viv said, “but for the past three years, similar entries appear biweekly—and only when he’s in London.”

“So, matching the social season?” Jacob asked. “As in, it might be related to parliamentary sessions after all?”

She rifled through the pages. “Yes. No. Here, I found a visit to London when the House of Commons was adjourned, and the cryptic entries are still present.”

“At least you found something,” said Tommy. “There’s nothing behind these portraits but—”

Viv and Jacob looked at her.

Frowning, Tommy gripped the final framed painting. “It’s stuck to the wall.”

“Stuck?” Viv repeated.

“It can’t be.” Jacob crossed the room. “I’ll help.”

He tugged on the gilded frame.

It didn’t budge.

He narrowed his eyes, then pushed the painting toward the left.

Nothing moved.

He shoved the painting toward the right. A six-foot section of wall moved with it.

Viv gasped and leapt to her feet, then remembered to lock the diary back in the drawer where she’d found it.

“It’s a secret panel,” Tommy said with respect. “But it doesn’t appear to go anywhere.”

The movable wall hid an eight-inch-deep recess, stretching from floor to ceiling, and as wide as Jacob’s outstretched arms, from fingertip to fingertip.

There was nothing inside but dust.

“Wait,” said Viv. “I see something.”

“I can see that it’s empty,” said Tommy.

“Empty now,” Viv agreed. “But look close.”

She traced a barely discernible rectangle, in which the wallpaper’s floral pattern was ever so slightly brighter than the rest.

“Something hung here,” said Jacob.

Viv tilted her head. “Mr. Olivebury must leave the secret panel open when he’s alone in his study. Light from the window fades the bits of wall covering exposed to the sun, but the part behind the object stays protected.”

“Until it was stolen,” said Tommy. “This has to be what the thief took.”

“Another watercolor, like the ones decorating the rest of the house?” Jacob guessed. “But why would anyone steal that? Or hide it in the first place?”

“A treasure map,” Tommy said confidently. “That’s what the letter-writer to Ask Vivian wanted to find, remember? And did so successfully, from the looks of it.”

Jacob appeared skeptical. “What kind of treasure? You really think there are chests of gold buried here in London?”

“Maybe in America,” Tommy suggested. “No one said the treasure had to be located in London. Gold could be anywhere.”

“The missing rectangle could be anything,” Viv said in frustration. She straightened. Not knowing gave her an idea. She turned to a blank page of her journal and fumbled for a pencil.

“I’ve got the mouser!” came the hall boy’s voice from the other side of the study door. “I’m coming in!”

Blast. Viv ripped out the sheet she’d been scribbling on. She folded the page in half, then hurriedly affixed it to the wall covering using a pin.

“Close it, close it!” she hissed, motioning frantically to Jacob.

He hauled the panel shut just as the study door banged open, revealing the pasty hall boy, a hissing cat, and no sign of the two maids.

“Good man,” Jacob said grandly. “But there’s no need for your assistance. We’ve killed the spider and caught the other beasts.” He scooped up the last two mice.

The hall boy did not look impressed. “Those are still alive. Want me to kill them for you?”

“I’ll handle the rodents,” Jacob assured him. He raised his brows at Viv and Tommy. “Ladies, if you’ve had enough excitement for one day?”

“Oh, yes.” Viv fluttered her hand at her throat and tried to look properly traumatized. “I hope never to set foot into a house like this ever again. My poor nerves. Maid service doesn’t suit me in the least.”

“I tell you, lad. Aren’t young girls missish?” Tommy murmured to the wide-eyed hall boy as the trio sailed past. “Good help these days is so hard to find.”