The Book of the Seven Delights (38 page)

The only one to suffer at LaCroix's demise, besides LaCroix himself, was the captain of the French cargo ship
Maintenon
, who was forced to delay the vessel's departure for Marseille by several days. Its only scheduled passenger and the owner of a majority of its cargo was gone, and the Sultan insisted on a full inventory and accounting of the items being shipped, lest stolen goods or materials escape Moroccan soil.

Apollo came hurrying back into their room a few days later with news that they'd freed the ship to sail to Marseille.

"It leaves tomorrow morning," he said, looking around the rooms that they had shared for the better part of a week, locating his satchel and laying it open on the bed. When he looked up moments later, she was staring at him as if he'd just announced he was headed for the North Pole.

"Any word on when the next ship bound for London will leave?" she asked, looking at the amphora stacked against the wall and then at her scuffed carpetbags beside them with a sudden, intense feeling of loss. After all she and Apollo had been through together…

He turned from the bed and stood looking at her.

"Come with me to Marseille," he said. "It will only be a couple of weeks. I have to set things right and see what is left of my family. And my inheritance." She rubbed her hands together, gazing at the amphora, and he continued: "Then we'll catch a ship to London and stare down your crusty 'old boys' together."

She looked up with tears collecting in her eyes.

"You really want to come with me? You're not just saying that?"

He went to her, feeling every bit of her uncertainty and desperately needed hope in his own heart as he took her into his arms.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said, willing her stiff form to melt against him and let him know that what they had found together was as important to her as her other dreams. "We're partners, remember."

After a moment he added: "Besides, we've still got two delights to go and from the sound of them, they could be pretty interesting.
Control
. And
Surrender
."

And there it was, that melting, that joining he had come to crave on a daily basis. Above her head, he grinned and felt his own body relax. She was his.

As her body molded to his, she heard his chest rumble and then go quiet except for a soft, dependable thudding. She had been listening to his heart like this for nearly three weeks now. And whatever happened between them, that reassuring primal rhythm would be a part of her forever.

"There is one condition," he said, with a tenor to his voice that made her know he was grinning and whatever came next was probably wicked indeed.

"Yes?" She bit her lip, waiting, knowing she would probably agree no matter how outrageous the requirement sounded.

"The next time we check into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Smith… I want it to be for real."

Assistant Jonas Pratt trotted up the sweeping main staircase of London's Savoy Hotel at the heels of the director and principle librarian of the British Museum, Maunde Thompson. He scarcely had time to catch his breath and nudge the knot of his tie higher before he found himself joining a remarkable congregation of men of letters in the famous Pinafore Room. He stood for a moment, staring like a country bumpkin at the understated luxury of the furnishings and the celebrated illumination of some of the finest minds in all of Britain.

Some he actually recognized from when they visited the British Museum to call on Director Thompson.

Lord Edmund Drinkwater of the Royal Society; Sir Amos Greenley of Cambridge Institute of Antiquities; Sir Chester Edgerton, Balough Scholar at Oxford; B.P. Grenfell, one of the directors of the Oxyrhynchus dig in Egypt; Simon Cresswell, one of the world's leading classicists; Professor Bertrand Hall of Queen's College and Sir Henry Merchant of Christ College, Oxford. Then he spotted Walter deGray Birch, Keeper of Seals at the British Museum… one of the few "keepers" who ever seemed to have time for him… though in fact—he thought to himself—the man was one of the lesser lights of the museum and hardly anyone to claim as an important acquaintance.
Seals
, after all. A completely dead specialty.

When he realized Director Thompson had moved on and begun to greet still other dignitaries, he hurried to his superior's side in hopes of an introduction to… dearest heaven… Pierre Monteneau of the Louvre's Department of Antiquities. The dapper fellow looked right through him when Director Thompson introduced him. Cursed French. He glanced down at the man's spats and then up to his silly, pencil-thin moustache. They always thought they were so much better—

The doors opened and a contingent of three men entered, moving with an aggressive stride to take up a commanding position in the middle of the room. They surveyed the gathering with cool analysis, then immediately spotted Pierre Monteneau and Director Thompson.

"Ye gods. Americans," Lord Amos Greenly muttered, heading for the fresh tray of pastries being laid out nearby.

"Harrison Evans," Director Thompson extended a hand as the bluff looking fellow approached. Evans?

The Metropolitan Museum Evans? Pratt preened surreptitiously. This was a rare meeting indeed.

"This A. M. Smith has plenty of cheek," Pratt heard the American Evans say. "Inviting the three most prestigious museums in the Western world to view his discovery." The American's teeth were even and astonishingly white. "Have you gentlemen got your wallets open?"

Before Thompson or Monteneau could respond, the main door opened and a young woman in an exquisite gray velvet suit that matched her arresting eyes entered on the arm of a tall, dashing fellow wearing an eye patch. They paused and when she had collected every eye in the room, she smiled.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for coming."

Behind them uniformed hotel porters were pushing linen-draped carts into the room on which lay six urn-shaped amphora. At a command from the one-eyed man, the porters deposited the carts in a line at one end of the room and withdrew. The curators and scholars sorted themselves into an eager circle around the pair and the amphora, murmuring observations about the vessels.

"I am A.M. Smith," the woman declared, causing a murmur in the room. She smiled coolly. "This is my husband, Apollo Smith." The tall, dark fellow bowed slightly. "A few months ago, we undertook an expedition into the deserts of Morocco, guided by the lifelong work of Professor T. Thaddeus Chilton, late of Queen's College, Oxford. We are here to present to you the fruit of that expedition." She waved to the carts.

"In the desert, we located these six amphora containing manuscripts that we believe will be reliably dated from the first through the sixth century A.D."

There was a brief clamor among the scholars at that and in the silence that descended afterward a voice from the back could be heard saying, "Thaddeus Chilton? Good Lord—haven't heard that name in years."

"Professor Chilton is of course, deceased," Abigail said, scanning the faces, looking for one similar to the old wedding photo she had carried with her to Morocco and back. "After studying his work, I realized his theory seemed sound and his research was meticulous. I decided to finish his quest."

And there he was.

Sir Henry Merchant. Classical Scholar. Tall, aesthetic-looking gentleman. Graying but still vigorous at fifty. There was a keenness to his regard and a gravity to his presence that both owed something to the weariness she glimpsed about his eyes. She had difficulty looking away from him.

"Our expedition began in Casablanca and traveled to Marrakech, Ouarzazate, and then southward into the Sahara, which is where these amphora and the books they contain were recovered."

There was some throat clearing and Director Maunde Thompson, of the British Museum, spoke up.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Smith, but how do you know these amphora contain manuscripts of some sort?"

"I was told so. By their keepers. The books they contain were specially selected by a committee of ancient scholars to be included in a temple of learning that was hidden away in the desert for centuries. A temple to the goddess of wisdom, Athena."

The muttering rose to rumbling, equally divided between surprise and outrage. She could see their academic hackles coming up. She knew how they thought and how this must sound to them. They would need time to absorb it.

"And where did these books come from?" Pierre Monteneau asked. "You said they were selected,
non
?

Selected from where?"

Abigail felt Apollo's hand seeking hers behind the cover of her skirts and squeezed it gratefully. This was the part she dreaded.

"From the Great Library of Alexandria."

A wave of open disbelief swept the room at that claim and she lifted her head and raised her voice to maintain control of the proceedings.

"Professor Chilton spent his academic career developing and researching a theory that before the final destruction of the Great Library, a portion of it was secreted out of the city and carried into the desert for safekeeping. I stand before you today to say that his theory was entirely correct. I know, because I found that desert repository… as well as the temple that formed the heart of the sect chosen to preserve the knowledge it contained."

"You found the Great Library of Alexandria?" a portly, mutton-chop-clad fellow sputtered.

"Preposterous! Gentlemen we've been brought here to become victims of a hideous hoax! Good day to you, young woman!" He started for the door, drawing two others with him before she delivered what she knew would be an irresistible challenge.

"I have asked you here not only to announce this find, but to put your brilliant minds to the test… to ask you to inspect the amphora, along with the professor's journals and maps… to help me begin the process of authenticating this find."

"Authenticate?" The old boy in the door was torn between washing his hands of it and charging back inside to debunk her obvious chicanery. "By thunder, you've got brass—dragging these gentlemen from their most important work to—"

"While you are making your decisions, gentlemen, I hope you will enjoy a bit of champagne and some refreshments," she said with a stiff little smile.

"What is it about champagne?" Apollo muttered into her ear as the men turned to find servers passing among them with glasses of golden bubbly and reluctantly accepted glasses that they sipped eagerly.

"Soothes the savage beast."

But Abigail barely heard him. She was absorbed in watching the reaction of her father, who hadn't moved from the spot where he had first seen her… nor blinked, from the looks of him. Was anything about her familiar to him? Did he remember her mother and her? Did he have any clue that this day was as much about meeting him as it was about her precious expedition and ancient books?

He seemed so rigid, so untouched standing there. Was that what twenty years of intense and loveless scholarship did to a man? Turned him and his heart to the very kind of stone he studied?

"I, for one, do not intend to participate in this charade!" The old boy with the muttonchops charged out the door, drawing two others in his wake.

Interestingly the major scholars and museum directors all remained, speaking amongst themselves, eyeing the amphora and the pair who claimed to have found them. Abigail began to remove T.

Thaddeus's journals from their bag and placed them at intervals on a draped table provided for that purpose. When Apollo reached for a box of magnifying glasses and began to lay them out on the table, Abigail could almost feel the mood of the room shifting.

"Mr. Birch, perhaps you would care to satisfy your curiosity," she said, offering the Keeper of Seals a magnifying glass and access to the amphora.

"Yes, very much so, Mrs. Smith." Walter deGray Birch jumped at the chance to give the seals on the amphora a thorough examination… asking if he might take one of the carts over nearer the window, where the light was better.

It was the first hole in the dike… followed quickly by a growing stream of scholars heading for the journals and maps and availing themselves of the lenses and each other's professional opinions. The noise and excitement level rose apace as the old boys rose to the challenge of shaking the rust from their critical faculties and plunging into a small mystery with potentially large implications.

The language classicists collected around T. Thaddeus's journals, excited to find them in Greek and shocked at how clever the old boy had been in his translations… while others headed for the amphora: feeling, "thunking," measuring, and comparing style and composition to known artifacts in their various collections.

As she watched, Abigail felt a certain gratification that they had at least taken her seriously enough to begin investigating her claims. She circulated through the scholars, listening to their comments and answering their questions when she could. But her eyes were never far from the tall, distinguished form of her father, bent over some of the journals, parsing out phrases and lines.

When she could stand it no longer, she approached the table where he had drawn up a chair to read some of Chilton's work… and found him perusing a page of her translation—something she hadn't realized she had stuck in the book. He looked up, then rose and set the journal down.

"Sir Henry Merchant, is it not?" she asked, hoping her voice wasn't trembling.

"It is," he said, thickly, clearing his throat afterward. "And may I ask what the 'A' and 'M' in your name stand for, Mrs. Smith?"

"Abigail and Merchant, sir," she said, feeling like she'd just dropped an anvil from the roof into the middle of the gathering.

"Abigail? Merchant?" a thin, disagreeable voice from nearby repeated. "I know that name." Jonas Pratt's sallow face flushed as he peered closer at her. "I know you! You're employed by the British Museum!"

he said pointing at her, oblivious to his deplorable lack of manners. "Or you were. You worked in—" He turned to find Director Maunde Thompson examining the amphora and called: "Director Thompson—I remembered where I'd seen her before. She's the female who used to work in our basement!"