Page 13 of Enticing Odds (The Sedleys #5)

“It’s rather vile,” Cressida said, her tone neutral even as her words were harsh.

What else was one to say when faced with a stuffed beast as colossal as this? Why, the thing must’ve been nearly as long as a coach and team, from snout to tail.

“From the Nile, did you ask? Yes, my lady, it is, and a fine specimen too. Rare to find a crocodile of this size.”

The shopkeeper, apparently mildly hard of hearing, shuffled to the corner of the room, where there hung a rope connected to a convoluted system of pulleys, and moved as if to lower the massive taxidermized reptile that hung from the ceiling.

“Oh no, no, please, don’t trouble yourself. I was simply…” Cressida stared at it once more. “Admiring it.” She raised a brow. “It is perhaps a tad overlarge for my purposes.”

“Of course, of course,” the sprightly shopkeep said, retracing his steps back to the counter.

How, Cressida wondered, had such a proud creature met its end? It must have once been a fearsome thing, feasting upon fish and birds alike. And now here it was, disemboweled and stuffed with heaven knew what, suspended from the ceiling of this odd little shop near the London Docks. Such was the heart of man, rapacious in its need to possess: riches, lands, fabled beasts, women. She would never allow herself to be caught in the clutches of another man, trussed up and put on display, the perfect viscountess. The perfect broodmare, more like. Now she found herself wishing this poor crocodile had kept its freedom as well.

Her sympathetic musings were interrupted by a shockingly loud ringing sound. She glanced to her right to see Henry, mallet in hand, next to a younger shop clerk who was holding up an eccentric-looking bit of metal that was ringing, low and clear, humming through her body from her teeth to her toes.

“Henry!” she chastised.

“He said I could,” her son protested.

Cressida sighed. Although the sound of the strange, almost anchor-shaped gong was in fact rather pleasant, it was still reverberating, so she moved deeper into the shop, further from its vibrations.

The entire establishment was a feast for the eyes. The large front room had been filled with live creatures, from tiny monkeys with huge eyes to squawking birds in brilliant shades of every color. Henry had begged for her to purchase Dr. Collier a lemur, with its hypnotizing yellow eyes and ringed tail. Cressida politely explained that the gift of a pet—especially such an exotic one—was not appropriate, that it would be a terrible imposition on the poor bachelor of a doctor. Thankfully, the next room boasted the most enchanting type of object for a young boy: weapons. Clubs and spears, curved swords, axes… Cressida had kept her hand atop Henry’s shoulder until he complained that her fingers were digging into him.

Moving on from the crocodile, she took it all in, fascinating objects from every corner of the globe, brought to London by sailors and adventurers. She knew Dr. Collier would love it all, would spend the whole of the day losing himself amongst the five-foot-tall vases, life-sized human sculptures, walls of masks, and shelves of mysterious animal skulls. Her chest tightened at the thought of him pushing up his spectacles, leaning over the display cases that he might get a closer look. He would love all of it, but what one item, what one curiosity, would speak to him above everything else? Cressida prided herself on her insight and discernment when it came to gifts, but the variety on display was overwhelming. A decent gift would communicate her gratitude, but an excellent gift would convey so much more.

Like how desperate she was to see him come undone.

Perhaps it was his initial lack of interest, perhaps it was the wide span of his shoulders and his large hands, or the way his eyeglasses tempered the brutal masculinity of his face, but Cressida had decided. And she wished to have him.

It had been far too long since she’d truly wanted for anything. It was, she ruefully admitted to herself, a delicious feeling.

“Have you found anything yet?” Henry said breathlessly as he materialized before her, both hands gripping a massive triangular tooth. “What?” he asked, noting her expression. “Oh, right, this is a shark tooth. May I have it? Please?”

“A shark? Henry, that’s nearly as large as your entire hand!”

He shrugged. “That’s what the clerk said it was.”

“Did he?” She sighed, moving across the room, guiding Henry along with a gentle hand on his back. “Well, who am I to debate the proprietors? It’s practically a museum, this place. I shall just give thanks that I am of land and not sea.”

“It’s amazing, Mama. In that back room there’s a mummified head of a man! Oh, and a statue of a god they pulled from a river, and they said they once even had a tiger—a real live one!”

Cressida looked up in alarm.

Across the room an attendant waved his hands about, shaking his head vigorously. “No tigers, my lady. Er, not currently, that is.”

She arched a brow, momentarily placated. A case against the far wall beckoned, filled with trays of tiny, shimmering objects, and she felt herself drawn to it, eager to examine the strange assemblage like the filthy mudlarks who combed the shores of the Thames, hoping to find something spectacular amongst the wrack.

There were carved jade finials, long separated from whatever objects they’d once crowned, tiny animals fashioned from ivory, miniscule bronze and enameled bottles, silver hatpins, elegant yet solitary cufflinks forever divorced from their mates. Her attention was drawn to a small gold casket, engraved with a fish with one large diamond eye. It was a peculiar adornment, for it appeared to be a fat goldfish.

“I beg your pardon,” she called to the clerk across the room.

“Yes, my lady?” The young man crossed quickly, hands folded before him.

“May I see that?” She pointed to the small gold box.

The clerk produced a flannel cloth, then set the casket upon it. Cressida lifted it up, surprised by its heft.

She felt Henry sidle up alongside her.

“What’s that?” he asked as she clicked it open.

Two glinting gold dice lay within, their pips all tiny diamonds.

“Dr. Collier has advised me never to dice,” Henry said scornfully, with all the enthusiasm of newly molded devotee. “He says hazard is the most ruinous of games.”

“Is that so?” she said absent-mindedly as she held them in her gloved palm, rolling them about, thinking.

“May I?” she asked the clerk, who agreed with a wordless nod.

She threw the dice gently onto the flannel. One boasted five gleaming diamonds, the other six. She picked them up and tried again. This time it was only three on one die, but six on the other. She picked up only the second die and rolled it. Six.

Cressida took both once more and rolled them about her hand, wondering whence they’d come and who their previous owner was. And how they had come to be parted.

“One wouldn’t expect to find items of this… nature here,” she said carefully as she set them back into their gold casket, clicking the lid shut.

She thought she saw the clerk wince, but he quickly looked away, hands behind his back.

“Objects of all sorts… wash up here, you might say. We do a busy trade, and are never ones to turn down fine craftsmanship, with such rich materials.”

Cressida smiled at the non-answer, her finger tracing the lines of the goldfish upon the lid. “I’ll take this, fine craftsmanship as it is.”

Then, looking to Henry and his absurdly sized shark tooth paired with his absurd puppy eyes, she sighed. “And that as well.”

Henry gleefully handed the tooth over to be wrapped up, his gaze drifting to the golden casket.

“I don’t think he’ll care for it, to be honest.”

“Oh?” Cressida said. “And why do you suppose it’s for Dr. Collier?”

“I thought we were to get him a gift?”

“We shall, although I can think of something altogether more pleasing to him, if it is true that our kind friend finds dice anathematic to his gambling ideals.”

Henry frowned at the gold box for a moment. “What else could be more pleasing to him? The mummified head?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of access to our library.”

“What? Books?” Henry wrinkled his nose as he regarded the golden box waiting upon the flannel cloth. “I think I’d rather have the gold dice. At least they cost something, even if games without any element of skill are best avoided.”

“How fortunate, then, that neither gift is for you.”

“Can we visit again? There’s a dagger I really ought to have, if you insist upon sending me to school. I’ll go only if suitably armed.”

Cressida looked heavenward. “A discussion for another time, darling.”

Dr. Collier, for all his brawn and handsome features, was not some medieval brute who’d throw her over his shoulder at the first sign of her interest. No, that much had been made clear. She’d not seduce him with coy glances and loaded language.

A thinking man like him could only be won with one thing: stacks upon stacks and rows upon rows of leather-bound literature.

He spent nearly the entirety of the next lesson with young Master Caplin with a pit in his stomach, anxious about having lied to Sir Frederick.

For someone who excelled at giving card cheats what they had coming to them, Matthew hated lying, even if it had seemed the lesser evil in this particular instance. For if Lady Caplin did not wish her brother to know something, Matthew would not be the fool who betrayed her. He thought himself wholly incapable of such a thing, for he was entirely at her mercy and disposal. With every recollection of those moments in her conservatory, the memory as thick and heavy as the air had been, he knew he’d come up against someone far too cunning, far too enchanting, far too powerful for him to resist. He would lie down prostrate before her. Hell, he’d lick her boots if she so commanded.

Which was why he dreaded the moment when the lesson would end, for he would then have to approach her, hat in hand, and tell her what he had told Sir Frederick at lunch about inspecting her library.

Matthew was sure he wasn’t fit to sit upon the low couches in such a palace of knowledge, let alone run his fingers along the spines and breathe the heady scent of aged parchment and vellum.

On many occasions he and Henry had held their lessons within, cards laid out on the long oak table. Matthew felt as if he were in heaven each time they did, surrounded by enough knowledge to fill the sharpest of minds for a lifetime.

Today, though, they were settled in a stately drawing room done up in reds. It felt a bit off-putting, to be honest—far too intense a backdrop to be discussing probabilities with a young lad only just on the brink of manhood.

“I don’t understand,” Master Caplin groaned, his body melting onto the table. “How is it you’ve won so much more than me? I’m making the right plays.” He lifted his head just enough to glare at his three cards atop the table. “At least, I think I’m making the right plays.”

They were playing vingt-un , the very game Matthew had played alongside Master Caplin’s mother several weeks prior.

“It feels like a lot to remember because it is,” Matthew said. “The thing is to practice, over and over. Soon the combinations will become second nature; you will know what to do without even thinking.”

The boy made the sound of a cushion deflating.

Matthew fetched a sheet of paper and drew a grid on it, with one axis representing the player’s total and the other representing the dealer’s. He spent a few minutes filling it in, each square in the grid illustrating whether the player should ask for another card given that combination of totals. When finished, he showed Henry the patterns in the table, and how to visualize it in his mind to recall the proper play for any given situation.

“Bloody hell,” said Henry, after Matthew had quizzed him on a handful of different possibilities. “Is that really all there is to it?”

“If you can remember the right plays and avoid temptation in borderline cases, and vary your bets depending on what cards you think are left in the deck, then you can tilt the odds in your favor.”

Henry beamed. “I’ve for certain got this now. Here, let’s try it out.”

It was difficult not to be fond of the boy. He possessed his mother’s dark, intelligent eyes, even if his character was somewhat more reserved. But Matthew liked that about him. The boy considered things carefully, and he knew his own mind. Matthew could respect that.

“By the by,” the lad said, sweeping the tokens he had just won in their practice round toward himself, “I’ve got to show you the most topping thing. It’s a shark tooth, but positively massive . Almost the size of my hand, if you could believe it. I don’t think Mama believes it to be real, but she bought it for me all the same.”

“Ah, I’ve read of those. They are very real—or that is, they were, once. Carcharodon megalodon , they call it, meaning ‘big tooth.’ An ancient species of shark.” Classified by Louis Agassiz in 1843 , he added silently to himself.

A magnificent grin lit upon the boy’s face.

Warmth burst forth in Matthew’s chest, a combination of fondness and pride tangled up together. He couldn’t recall ever seeing the lad smile so wide.

“You know, I find myself thinking back to a question I had asked you before. Of what entertainments you might pursue, if you’d no restrictions placed upon you.”

The grin faded, and Matthew worried he’d said the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry, Doctor, I… I haven’t read that book you recommended.”

His contrition appeared to be in earnest. The boy didn’t want to disappoint him. Something about that made Matthew’s heart constrict.

“Don’t worry yourself over that.” Matthew smiled. “It was the furthest thing from my intentions. But, as I was saying, if prehistoric beasts are of a particular interest to you, perhaps we might take an excursion to the museum—”

“What? For gaming?” young Master Caplin asked, befuddled.

“No, no… just as an amusement. Not a lesson.”

The boy studied his face, perhaps weighing his words. And then, with another enormous grin, he agreed.

“Alright then.”

“I’ll have a word with your mother.”

“She’s probably in the conservatory.”

“Oh?” Matthew blinked. “Is she now?”

Fuck.