London, late April 1810
A Monday Morning
On Monday morning Annabel, Lady Fellbridge, left for the weekly meeting of Almack’s Lady Patronesses a little early in order to accomplish an important errand. She was slowly clopping around the corner onto Old Bond Street (or rather, her carriage was) when she noticed a familiar figure hurrying in the same direction on the pavement.
“Pull up, please, Thomas,” she called to her coachman, then more loudly, “Frances! May I offer you a ride?”
Lady Frances Dalrymple, one of Annabel’s fellow Lady Patronesses, looked up and smiled. “Annabel! Thank you, but I’ve a stop to make before I go on to King Street.” She held up a book. “I must just run into Hookham’s.”
Annabel held up her own book. “So must I.”
Frances’ smile widened. “The Fifty Shades?”
“What else? Climb in!”
As the groom helped Frances up, Annabel glanced at the blue sky above the buildings around them. Sometimes, being in London on a warm day in late April just seemed wrong. “Back at home, my narcissus beds are probably in their glory,” she observed with a small sigh.
“Back at my home, the flowerbeds—not that we have many because my father doesn’t approve of them—might still be under six inches of snow. Of course, that’s Scotland for you,” Frances added philosophically.
“Why doesn’t your father approve of flowerbeds?”
“Flowers make him sneeze. And…” Frances hunched her shoulders. “Flowerbeds would mean hiring more gardeners than are needed to just keep the grass scythed and the kitchen gardens growing.”
“Ah.” Annabel could sympathize with that. Only the knowledge that their families would likely starve if she didn’t keep the gardeners at Chalfont employed had prevented her from reducing the outdoor staff.
“But I know what you mean,” Frances continued, hurriedly. “Spring does seem rather wasted on the Season, doesn’t it? Then again, if we were in the country, neither of us would likely have a circulating library close by. I do hope they have two copies of the third volume available,” she added, patting her book.
“So do I, or one of us will have to call the other out. Pistols at dawn and everything.” Annabel chuckled. “Except that our seconds will be too busy themselves, fighting over who gets to read it first.”
It had been more than a week since her sons Will and Martin and their friend Gus had returned to Eton, and to keep from missing them too much, Annabel had plunged into an orgy of novel-reading in her free time, visiting Hookham’s Circulating Library almost every other day. Emily Cowper had told her she simply had to read E.C. Spruce’s latest, The Fifty Shades of Udolpho, which had come out just a few weeks before and had taken the reading public of London by storm.
“Have you read The Fifty Shades yet?” had replaced “good morning” as a greeting among her acquaintances. Conversations everywhere, from chance encounters in the street to dinners in the houses of the Ton, revolved around whether the lovers Ermentrudina and Osberto would be able to escape the horde of dread phantoms—the “Fifty Shades” of the title—that plagued the ruinous Apennine castle in which they had taken refuge whilst fleeing Ermentrudina’s sinister suitor, Count Atroccio, and her equally sinister stepmother, the Marchesa dell’Obesa. Annabel had devoured those first two volumes in two days, and was now bent on the devouring the third, as was Frances…hence the threat of pistols at dawn if only one copy were available.
As they drew up in front of Hookham’s Circulating Library, Frances glanced at the watch at her waist. “We should just have time before the meeting starts…and wasn’t I clever, being on the right side of the street just as your carriage went by? Because now I can get out and into Hookham’s first!”
Annabel laughed. “‘O, thou fiend! O, I am undone!’” she quoted. They were the last words of volume two, uttered by Ermentrudina as the Count bundled her into a antique coach at the height of a furious tempest, while the Marchesa lured Osberto into a death-like stupor with her seductive but poisonous perfume.
“Do you think he’ll ravish her?” Frances asked anxiously as they entered the shop.
“Who? Osberto? I’m not sure he’d be capable at the moment—”
Frances giggled. “No, silly! The Count and Ermentrudina.”
“Oh. I shouldn’t think so. An old, badly sprung traveling carriage is hardly a conducive setting for a ravishment. On the other hand, the use of the word ‘undone’ does make one wonder about the state of her stays… But this is E.C. Spruce, so who knows?”
They approached the counter, where a harried-looking young man was talking to another subscriber, an older woman in a velvet turban adorned with down-sweeping lavender-dyed ostrich feathers. “What do you mean, you don’t have it?” the lady was saying, her plumes quivering with the force of her indignation.
“I’m sorry, your ladyship, but they’re all out. Several are overdue, in fact. If you wish, I shall add your name to our list to be informed as soon as a copy is available—”
“But you do not understand—I cannot wait that long!” her ladyship cried. “Or rather, it’s…it’s my elderly mother. Yes, my dearest mama. She is on her deathbed, you see, and only my reading The Fifty Shades of Udolpho to her can soothe her dying sufferings! Will you condemn my poor mama to such a fate? I must have a copy now!”
The clerk looked appropriately sympathetic, but Annabel noticed the way his lips twitched before he mastered his expression. “Madam, were it in my power, I should provide it to you immediately. But I cannot give you what I do not have. I am certain a copy will come in later—or tomorrow. Perhaps these ladies—?” He looked at Annabel and Frances hopefully.
They shook their heads. “Volume two,” Frances said, raising her book.
“Ah.” He turned back to the woman. “In the meanwhile, perhaps your mother might enjoy a nice book of sermons? In such extremity, they might prove a comfort—”
The woman drew herself up. “If you will not have mercy on a dying woman, perhaps another library will.” She turned and swept toward the door, barely allowing her footman time to open it for her and get out of her way.
“Oh, dear,” Frances said, coming up to the counter after she was gone. “We could not help overhearing—”
The clerk struggled manfully for a moment, then grinned. “That was the best reason I’ve heard today. A dying mother…” He shook his head, then looked at them suspiciously. “You aren’t here for the third volume of The Fifty Shades of Udolpho, are you?”
“Er, I’m afraid we are.”
“But we promise that neither of us has a dying mother,” Annabel added quickly. “Are you truly out of the third volume?”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “You’ve no idea. All our copies are out. Overdue, too, most of them. I guess that third volume must be an out-and-outer. I can take your names, same as I said to Lady Lyer.”
Frances sighed. “I suppose so.” She laid her copy of the second volume on the counter next to Annabel’s. “And I was so looking forward to reading it this evening! I said no to a rout at my cousin’s house tonight because of it.”
“I have Marjorie Banks Gilbert’s latest one here,” the clerk said, picking a book from a shelf behind him and holding it out to her invitingly. “Came out just last Thursday—The Noble Barbarian. She’s supposed to be every bit as good as E.C. Spruce.”
Frances looked at it sadly and shook her head. “No, thank you. We really must be going, Annabel, if we don’t want to be late.”
“I should be happy to bring you to Earle’s or Booth’s Circulating Libraries after the meeting, if you like,” Annabel said as they regained the carriage. “Or we could stop at Hatchard’s or Ridgway’s and purchase it.”
Frances brightened. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble…and if we end up at Hatchard’s, I will buy a copy and you shall be the first to read it when I am done. Which will probably be by tomorrow noon. Oh, where do you think the Count will take Ermentrudina?”
Dorothea Lieven was alighting from her carriage in King Street just as they arrived. She waited for them, and they ascended to the Lady Patronesses’ meeting room together. Emily, Clementina, and Maria were already there, excitedly chattering at one end of the table. Annabel was pleased to see that Clementina looked much more animated than she had over the last weeks; perhaps she had left behind the difficult third month of her pregnancy.
“But will the perfume prove fatal to poor Osberto?” Maria was asking plaintively.
Clementina shook her head. “I rather doubt it, or the third volume won’t be very long, will it?”
“Yes, and what about that? Why hasn’t the Marchesa been poisoned by her own perfume?”
“Is it not obvious? She has been ingesting it in small amounts to build up her tolerance to it,” Dorothea interjected, peeling off her gloves.
“Dorothea!” Frances exclaimed. “You’ve read The Fifty Shades too?”
Dorothea assumed her haughtiest expression. “Of course not. I do not have time to waste on foolish novels. I am bored to tears with the subject, but I have heard so much talk about it that I cannot help but know. It would merely seem to be the logical thing to do, that is all.”
“We shan’t ever know unless those of you who’ve got your hands on the third volume make haste to finish it and return it to Hookham’s.” Annabel sat down next to Emily and prodded her elbow in mock impatience. Emily had crowed to her at a ball on Saturday evening about having secured the third volume from the circulating library. “Well, how was it? Don’t you dare say you were too busy yesterday to read it!”
Emily turned bright pink. “I wasn’t, but…actually, I—er…I haven’t read it.”
Annabel groaned. “If you’re not careful, you’ll be drummed out of town. Very well, you’d better lock your doors and spend the rest of the day buried in it.”
“I can’t.” Emily looked as though she were about to burst into tears. “It’s gone.”
“What? What do you mean, gone?”
“I planned to spend all morning in bed yesterday, reading it. It was on my bedside table, even. But when I woke up, it wasn’t there!”
“Did your maid borrow it?”
“She swears she didn’t. Everyone in the house swears they didn’t touch it. And now darling Harry’s cross with me because it turns out he was reading my copy when I wasn’t watching, and he wants to know what happens, too.” Harry was “Cupid”, her lover Lord Palmerston.
“Then it fell behind the bed.” Dorothea gestured impatiently. “Make him crawl under it and look.”
“He did. He practically tore my room apart.”
“Now, that is odd,” Maria put in. “I can’t find my copy, either. I was certain I’d left it in my morning room, but it wasn’t there or anywhere else I looked.”
“Oh, how very droll—I’ve mislaid mine as well,” Clementina said. But her expression was thoughtful, not amused.
“But you haven’t heard the all of it,” Emily said. “I felt so badly about losing Hookham’s copy that I went to Hatchard’s this morning before coming here to buy a replacement, and they don’t have any copies. None at all.”
“Well, it is hugely popular,” Frances said, with a disappointed look at Annabel. “I suppose we can cross them off our list.”
“No—they had several copies yesterday when the shop closed. This morning, none. They’re all gone!”
“Sold out that quickly? My goodness!” Maria marveled.
“But that’s it—they didn’t sell. Last night they were there, and this morning, they weren’t. They’ve just…disappeared.”
“It is far more likely some enterprising clerk took them to sell himself,” Dorothea put in, but Emily shook her head.
“I said as much to the head clerk, but he was quite certain that wasn’t the case. He was the last to leave the shop last night, and the books were all still there. And don’t say he took them, because he didn’t—I looked. Besides, the poor man was distraught.”
Annabel nodded. Emily very rarely used her thought-reading abilities so directly, but this was clearly a special case.
“Oh dear. Who was distraught?” Sally Jersey had breezed in, followed by a footman carrying the usual baskets for the sorting of voucher petitions. He placed them on the table, bowed, and left.
“The head clerk at Hatchard’s,” Emily replied. “All their copies of the last volume of The Fifty Shades of Udol—”
“No, don’t tell me!” Sally clapped her hands over her ears. “I just started it yesterday! And besides, we need to get to work. There are a ridiculous number of voucher requests for us to go through—leftovers from poor Annabel’s adventure, I expect.”
“Frances and I are going to stop by a few more circulating libraries and bookstores after the meeting,” Annabel murmured to Emily as they took their seats. “Would you like to come?”
Emily’s face cleared. “Would I!”
To Annabel’s surprise and growing confusion, their stops by “a few more” circulating libraries and bookstores ended up taking the rest of the day.
At every circulating library they visited—Haldane’s, Booth’s, Dangerfield’s, and even Cheesewright’s in Cheapside—the story was the same: all copies of the third volume of The Fifty Shades of Udolpho were out to subscribers. Several were overdue, but that wasn’t unusual for such a popular new book.
What was unusual was what the booksellers had to say—the same story, each of them: their stocks of the third volume of The Fifty Shades seemed to have melted away like non-Scottish spring snow.
“Is it thievery?” Annabel asked the head clerk at Ridgway’s. “The story is hugely popular.”
“That’s the thing, your ladyship,” the clerk said. “If that were the reason, why haven’t the first two volumes disappeared as well?” He bit his lip, then continued. “It’s uncanny, is what it is. There were ten copies of the third volume in the shop on Saturday morning. By the end of the day, they were gone…but we’d only sold five of them. The rest had just vanished.”
“What do you make of that?” Frances asked when they were back in Annabel’s carriage.
“He was telling the truth,” Emily said firmly. “There’s something very odd going on here.” She turned to Annabel. “Let’s go to Allardyce’s in Oxford Street. I will be very interested to hear what they have to say about this.”
“That’s an excellent suggestion!” Frances agreed.
Annabel nodded and relayed the request to her coachman. Allardyce’s Bookshop had been in business for a very long time…and the Allardyce family had been known as accomplished witches and wizards for just as long. If anyone might have an idea about mysterious goings-on to do with a book, it would be them.
Young Mr. Allardyce was in the shop that day, looking harassed. But he greeted them with his usual politeness, waving aside his clerk to serve them himself. “In what way may I assist you, Lady Cowper?” he asked Emily.
“The Fifty Shades of Udolpho,” she said without preamble.
“Certainly. We have the first two volumes right here—”
“We would like to talk to you about the third volume.”
“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “If it would not be inconvenient, perhaps we could discuss this in my office?”
“That would probably be for the best,” Emily agreed, and they followed him past the counter to a small room which held a desk and table piled with books and papers. A small girl in a starched white pinafore, no more than five, sat at the table, tracing a map of Africa in a large atlas.
“May I present my daughter?” Mr. Allardyce said. “Melusine, why don’t you go upstairs and see if Mama needs help with your brother?”
“She sent me down here because he’s being a fussy little pustule and I wanted to turn him into an earthworm. Earthworms don’t squall and pull my hair,” she added, scowling.
“Earthworms are also slimy and wiggly,” Mr. Allardyce said severely. “And having one for a brother might prove embarrassing in later years. Now, up.”
The little girl sighed and closed the atlas. “I still wish we’d got a kitten instead of a brother,” she said, and fixed Emily with a stern look. “Do you have brothers?”
“Yes, and they get much nicer when they’re older,” Emily said.
Melusine looked unconvinced but left the room after dropping them a curtsy at her father’s urging. Mr. Allardyce sighed and pulled out chairs for them.
“Could she turn him into an earthworm?” Frances asked, wide-eyed.
“No. But that wouldn’t stop her from trying. She’s very advanced for her age.” He couldn’t quite conceal the note of pride in his voice. “Now, The Fifty Shades. Is this a formal investigation by the Lady Patronesses?”
“Er, no. At least not yet.” Emily told him about their conversations with the booksellers and library clerks, as well as her own experience with the disappearing book. “We wanted to know if you might know anything about it.”
“I wish I did,” he said, ruefully. “Having your stock mysteriously disappear is a shopman’s worst nightmare. But this isn’t ordinary theft.”
Emily glanced at Annabel. “We’d come to that conclusion as well. The question is, why are they disappearing from stores and libraries and even private homes?”
“There’s an important piece of information there: books are not being destroyed on the spot—there has been no evidence of burning or dissolution, no?”
Emily shook her head.
“Then someone—or something—must be physically removing them,” Mr. Allardyce said somberly. “Stealing them, to be blunt.”
“Something…not natural?” Frances asked in hushed tones.
“It may be entirely natural—most spiritous beings are. But certainly nothing human.”
“Why should a—a ‘spiritous being’ wish to take all the copies of volume three of a popular novel?”
“Oh, everyone’s a critic these days,” Emily joked, but her eyes didn’t smile. “Or perhaps it’s Fordyce’s ghost, jealous that novels are outselling his sermons.”
“I don’t believe it’s a ghost,” Mr. Allardyce said. “They’re not corporeal enough to carry off large numbers of books.”
Obviously, he hadn’t met Mr. Almack; Annabel wouldn’t have put it past the genial old ghost to do pretty much anything he wanted to do. “So if it’s capable of stealing books, then it must have some kind of body,” she said.
Emily brightened. “Well, there we go. If it has a body, then it must be possible to capture it.”
Frances looked unconvinced. “I suppose it might, but how?”
“We’ll lay a trap for it,” Emily said breezily. “Put a copy of the third volume in a locked room, hide behind the draperies, and wait for it to appear. Simplest thing in the world!”
“Assuming we can find a copy of the third volume to use as bait,” Annabel added.
Emily deflated slightly. “Oh. Yes, there’s that.”
“Very well,” Annabel said when they’d regained the carriage after exchanging promises with Mr. Allardyce to keep each other informed of anything concerning The Fifty Shades. “I doubt we’re going to find a copy in any bookstore or library, though I suppose we could continue to search. What do we do now?”
“Do you think it’s worth going to the printer?” Frances asked.
“That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “If anyone’s going to have a copy, it will be them. Where is the Aphrodite Press again? Leadenhall Street?”
“Yes. Thomas, Leadenhall Street,” Annabel called, and relaxed into the seat. The Aphrodite Press specialized in the sensational. They had been the premier printer of gothic novels for years, and E.C. Spruce was their most popular author. Surely they had some inkling of what was happening with The Fifty Shades and would want to know its cause…and maybe, if the press were so kind as to lend them a copy, she could sneak just a peek into it, enough to see where the Count was taking Ermentrudina—
“Georgiana seemed better this morning,” Frances ventured.
Emily grimaced. “No, she did not. She was just as horrid as ever to poor Annabel. Some people just can’t abide being proved wrong.”
Annabel sighed. Georgiana still refused to even look at her, almost two weeks after she’d wrongly accused Annabel of forging vouchers. “Surely she’ll get over it soon,” she said hopefully.
“I rather doubt it. Sally may have to have a word with her.” Emily waved a hand, dismissing Georgiana and her grudge. “Now, what shall we say at Aphrodite? Certainly nothing about ‘spiritous beings’ stealing books, or they shall think we’re trying to write our own novel.”
As it turned out, they didn’t have to say much of anything. Impressed by the confluence of no fewer than three members of the aristocracy before his desk, the harassed-looking secretary showed them into the office of the press’s principal himself, Mr. Hannibal Erastus Warburton, and handed him their cards.
Mr. Warburton was a small man of middle age but possessed of enormous vitality, as if a much larger person had been squeezed into his diminutive frame. He glanced at their cards and his eyebrows rose. “My dear ladies, I am—no, honored is not strong enough a word! But it will have to suffice in its insufficiency.”
He rose from behind an enormous desk littered with stacks of loose manuscripts, unbound books, and countless letters, and bowed deeply, one hand on his breast. “What, if it pleases you, may I do for such august—and charming—ladies?” His twinkling blue gaze caressed Emily’s delicate features, then slid appreciatively over Annabel’s figure. “Rest assured that whatever it is, I will do my utmost to complete it to your satisfaction.”
Frances looked taken aback at his effusiveness. They had agreed to leave speaking with Mr. Warburton to her, since visiting him had been her excellent idea. It would also give Emily a chance to take a quick look at his thoughts in case he was engaged in some shady dealings with The Fifty Shades. “Um…well…that is, we wanted to talk to you about a book—”
“Ah, a book! I am always delighted to discuss books. They are my life, my dear madam. Now, what book would you care to discuss?”
Emily came to Frances’s rescue. “Sir, we have just spent most of the day visiting bookshops and circulating libraries, trying to find a copy of the third volume of The Fifty Shades of Udolpho. We could not find a single one.”
To their surprise, Mr. Warburton clapped his hands in glee. “Isn’t it splendid?”
Emily sputtered slightly. “S-splendid?”
“Yes!”
Annabel tried next. “Sir, are you aware that it even seems to be vanishing from private homes?”
“I know!” he said happily. “Any copies still left in my warehouse have gone too, and it’s the best thing that could have happened! Do you know what has occurred as a result? Sales of volume one and two have soared! Everyone has heard about the vanishing book and wants to know what it’s all about. Even persons who rarely read novels are clamoring to purchase all three volumes of The Fifty Shades, just so they can say their copy has disappeared too, and isn’t it terribly mysterious? It gives them a frisson far more exciting than the book itself. I wish I could say I’d thought of it. It’s genius, sheer genius, I say!”
Annabel realized she was staring open-mouthed at the little man who was almost bouncing in his high leather chair.
Frances leaned forward, plainly shocked. “But don’t you want to know who’s doing this?”
“Yes, so I might shake his hand! I could not have thought of a better advertisement if I’d tried!”
“But—but people want to know what happens in the third volume!”
“Pshaw!” Mr. Warburton waved a hand. “It’s exactly like any other E.C. Spruce novel. Justice and love win the day, at the end.”
“But we need to know how!” Frances sounded close to tears.
Emily patted her hand. “Mr. Warburton, would you have any objection to our investigating the cause of this—this strange phenomenon?”
He rubbed his chin and looked at her warily. “And putting a stop to it, I suppose?”
“Oh, come now, sir,” Emily said severely. “There are a great many people wanting to read that third volume. And the circulating libraries and bookshops will become very cross if the books they’ve purchased from you to stock their shelves continue to disappear.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Warburton looked thoughtful. “That’s true. I suppose I can’t afford to make them angry.” He sighed. “Very well, ladies. If it would give you pleasure to figure out the cause of the disappearing third volume, then by all means do so.”
“Thank you.” Emily beamed at him. “Now, would you happen to have any copies left of the third volume? We’ll need one to lure the thief.”
He shook his head. “There’s a second printing in the works right now, but it will be days before the books are bound and ready.”
“Oh.” Both Emily and Frances looked so disappointed that Annabel was sure they’d had the same thought as she about sneaking a look.
“Perhaps we could ask Mr. Spruce,” Annabel said. “Could you give us his direction, sir?”
Mr. Warburton sighed again. “Oh dear. I do hate to have to say no, my dear countess, but my authors are very jealous of their privacy. Mr. Spruce in particular does not wish his whereabouts to be known. Imagine how difficult it would be to write if adoring readers constantly showed up on one’s doorstep! If you wish, I could forward a note with your request and allow him to respond as he sees fit.”
“That’s better than nothing,” Emily said as Mr. Warburton passed a sheet of paper, pen, and ink across the desk. Annabel wrote a quick note explaining their mission and included her card and watched while Mr. Warburton folded and sealed it.
“There,” she said. “Now I suppose we must wait.”
“Just as Ermentrudina waits in the gown of antique, spidery lace the Count compels her to wear, at the top of the crumbling tower in Book Three,” Mr. Warburton said, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
“What tower?” all three of them demanded, in unison.
He smiled at them. “Ah. That would be telling.”
“Now what?” Frances asked when they were once again in Annabel’s carriage.
“Home. I’ve had enough of this for one day.” Emily discreetly yawned.
“And I was so looking forward to volume three tonight,” Frances mourned.
“We could stop at Hookham’s once more and find you something else to read,” Annabel said. Poor Frances looked as if she’d lost her best friend. “It’s scarcely out of the way. Didn’t the clerk there recommend a book for you?”
Frances wrinkled her nose. “I’ve never cared for Marjorie Banks Gilbert’s books. She’s far too overwrought.”
“More overwrought than The Fifty Shades of Udolpho?” Emily’s eyes were wide.
“Yes—but for all the drama, they just don’t have…I don’t know. Heart, I suppose one could call it. They’re like a bad opera, when you want to snicker at the star-crossed lovers rather than cry with them.” She sighed. “I’ll just have to reread volumes one and two and hope that E.C. Spruce writes back to Annabel soon.