To Catch an Earl - Kate Bateman Page 0,20
in an apartment in the east wing, my lord. I make a nightly patrol at eleven, just before I retire, and another at nine in the morning, just before opening time. And of course, there’s Brutus.”
“Brutus?”
“Our guard dog. He’s half Doberman. I let him loose in here at night. He’d let me know if we had any intruders.”
“Aren’t you worried he’ll relieve himself on one of the exhibits?” Alex chuckled.
Franks sent him an offended look. “Brutus wouldn’t do that. He knows he only receives his morning beefsteak if he waits to use the gardens.”
Alex nodded.
“Can I ask why you’re so interested in the museum’s security, my lord?”
“I expect you’ve read about the break-in at Rundell and Bridge a few days ago?”
Franks nodded. “Indeed I did, sir. A most worrying state of affairs. I do hope Bow Street don’t think the British Museum will be another target.”
“It’s a possibility,” Alex hedged. “You should stay alert.”
More like a certainty, if his theory was correct.
Franks drew himself up. “I am conscious of the fact that we house a great number of valuable objects here at the museum, sir. Rest assured that I shall be most vigilant when it comes to the security of our collections.”
Alex clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. I’m sure Bow Street can count on you to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Now, I have a mind to visit the sculpture gallery before I leave. Lord Elgin tells me the friezes he brought from Greece are worth a look.”
* * *
“The diamond is upstairs,” Camille murmured as she and Emmy strolled through the British Museum’s Greek and Roman sculpture gallery. Their skirts swished softly in unison against the polished parquet floor. Emmy counted the number of steps it took to reach the staircase, twenty-eight.
They paused to admire a marble depiction of a gladiator, and she tried to imagine the athletic figure dressed in clothes. It would be impossible to fit shoulders that muscled into the confines of a modern tailcoat. And what cravat would wind around a neck so thick? For one brief, startling moment, she wondered what Alexander Harland might look like without his clothes on, and her entire body begin to glow. Would he look like this? Both hard and smooth? All ripples and curves?
“Oh, look. There’s Lord Melton.”
Emmy swirled around in horror. Sure enough, the subject of her feverish imaginings was standing at the far end of the gallery.
She ducked behind the statue and closed her eyes. It was as if her outrageous fantasies had actually summoned him into existence, like some terrible, far-too-handsome genie. She tried to will him away, but when she braved a peek from around the gladiator’s thigh, there he remained, stubbornly, attractively present.
The one small mercy was that he hadn’t noticed them—he seemed to be inspecting a frieze of wall-mounted panels. They could still escape.
Since they were at a safe distance, Emmy allowed herself a moment to study Harland’s physical architecture in the same way she might study the floorplan of a heist, taking in every pertinent detail. Certainly he was built along monumental lines. Tailoring couldn’t disguise the bulk of muscle in his biceps, nor the breadth of his shoulders. His breeches conformed so faithfully to his thighs that she could actually see the ripple of muscles beneath. And the tails of his coat were undoubtedly hiding a remarkable posterior—
“We really should go and introduce ourselves,” Camille trilled.
Emmy clutched her arm. “Are you mad? Why would we want to do that? I thought we’d agreed to avoid his notice?”
“Oh, pish. He’ll turn around and see us at any moment. It will be far more noticeable if we don’t acknowledge him. We must be brazen. Confident. And besides, I knew his mother. I’m sure he’s a lovely man.”
“He is the enemy,” Emmy hissed as if she were the wicked stepmother in a badly acted play. “He works for Bow Street! He is the law.”
Camille waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.
“And he is not a ‘nice man,’” Emmy added. “He is a rake and a gamester. He might be an earl, but he is thoroughly disreputable. He owns a gaming club. In St. James’s.”
“And where else would one open a gaming club?” Camille asked tartly. “Blackheath? Limehouse? Is he rich?”
Emmy narrowed her eyes. “Well, yes, by all accounts. Not that it makes—”
“There you go, then.” Camille smiled. “Handsome, rich, and charming. The perfect trifecta.”
She began to sidle forward, using the sculpture of a recumbent Apollo as cover. Emmy tried