“Absolutely not,” Montgomery said, interrupting our scheming. He reached out and grabbed the keys. “It’s far too dangerous. I’ll go alone.”
“To a ladies’ lecture?” Lucy asked. “You might stand out, don’t you think? Anyway, you haven’t a clue what to look for once we’re there. I’m the only one who’s read the letters.”
They stared each other down until at last Montgomery cursed under his breath and threw the keys back on the table.
“Very well. We go together.” He glanced at me. “Now I understand why you’re friends. I thought you were the most impossible woman in the world, but now I see there are two of you.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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TWENTY-SIX
PRETENDING TO FEEL FAINT during the women’s-role lecture wasn’t difficult, especially in light of my recent illness. We sat in the university’s mahogany-paneled lecture room amid a sea of straight-backed chairs filled with bored-looking ladies. The lecturer’s drone might have put me to sleep, if I wasn’t so jumpy from the knowledge of what we were planning to do. As he went on about tending to household tasks, it seemed perfectly natural to swoon and clutch the back of the chair in front of me and complain about the vapors. Lucy made a show of saying she’d fetch the driver, and soon returned with Montgomery. His presence woke up a few nodding heads in the audience, but we were gone before the lecturer had even started in on the proper way to attend to a sick husband.
We raced down the marble staircase to the main floor. Lucy led us past the long line of framed photographs, including the one from 1875 where Father’s young face watched me. She stopped at a locked door and pulled out her jangling key ring, but I held her back.
A finger to my lips, I pressed my ear to the door and listened for the sounds of voices within. Just because Lucy’s father was out of town didn’t mean the rest of the King’s Club wasn’t meeting, but the room behind the door was silent, and I gave her a nod.
She inserted a key emblazoned with the King’s Club crest into the brass lock and opened the door cautiously. It was pitch-black inside save the light from a few windows on the east wall. The scent of cigars was heavy in the room, though beneath it I detected a lingering trace of men’s cologne, and another more earthy scent that made me think of Sharkey when I buried my face in his fur. I swallowed. Why would a smoking room smell like animals?
We entered cautiously, and Montgomery found a switch on the wall and flipped on the electric lights. I shaded my eyes from the sudden brightness.
Lucy let out a cry and I whirled around. A beast hovered on the wall next to her, fangs barred, black eyes glinting. She ducked behind a sofa as I let out a deep breath. It was a taxidermied boar, and it wasn’t the only trophy. At least twenty mounted heads hung on the walls: bucks with nine-point antlers, lions with snarls frozen in time, bodiless zebras, and stuffed owls perched atop the upper bookcases.
“This can’t be a good sign,” Lucy muttered, backing away from the boar.
“Not necessarily,” I said, studying the unblinking eyes of a stuffed squirrel on the table nearest me. “Plenty of people like taxidermy, and it doesn’t mean anything. Even the professor keeps a stuffed bobcat in his study. A gift from some relative, I think.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Lucy said, shivering.
Montgomery had already gone to the bookshelves, and was now riffling through the leather-bound titles. Lucy occupied herself by inspecting the framed awards and diplomas on the walls. There were no cabinets, no desks or boxes where notes might be stored. The room was exactly as it appeared—an elegant, masculine space filled with leather club chairs and cigar humidors for a dozen or more men to lounge in while they bragged about their accomplishments.
I ran my hands along the seams of the walls and the grand fireplace for hidden compartments, but found nothing. There were more framed photographs on the walls that documented the King’s Club’s history of charitable works. Photographs of the construction of the orphanage, and a framed royal decree dated 1855 thanking the members for their efforts to stop the cholera outbreak. Seeing their supposed good deeds hanging on the wall only turned my stomach. There was no telling what their real motives were. For all I knew, those poor orphans were destined for a terrible fate. After all, that brain in the hatbox had to come from somewhere.
After twenty minutes, we had searched every inch of the room and found nothing about the plans for the New Year’s paupers’ ball, or references to any kind of scientific experimentation they were funding.
“They must store their records elsewhere,” Lucy said, flouncing onto a leather sofa.