1. In Which Tragedy Strikes

Bexley Estate

April 27, 1822

3 weeks to the opening

When Luk e Ashburton arrived at the Bexley Estate for the opening of its new museum, the last thing he expected to see was the building on fire.

He dropped the case he was carrying—dimly, he registered the sound of glass specimen jars breaking—and ran toward the blaze.

As he approached, he saw with relief that a line of servants was passing buckets of water up to the building, where footmen, gardeners, and stable hands were working fast to snuff out the fire. At the same time, smoldering artifacts, specimens, and books were being smothered in horse blankets and hurried away from the danger.

Luke looked around, trying to figure out where he would be of most use. That’s when he spotted Philip Denton.

Denton was standing on the steps. Too close to the fire. Staring at it with a startling vacancy in his eyes. His jacket and the knees of his trousers were sooty, as was his face and fair hair. He did not seem to notice servants running past.

Luke went to him. Noting his pallor, the tremble in his hands—one of which was burned and blistering. “Denton,” Luke said, sharply. When the man did not answer, Luke clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Are you sensible? Let’s step away, shall we?”

For a moment, Denton did not respond. Then he blinked, as though hearing Luke from a great distance away. “Come with me,” Luke said. “Before a spark catches.”

Denton slowly nodded. Luke put a hand on his shoulder, and began to walk with the man toward Bexley Hall. Denton was wracked with a coughing fit, spit out something black, but kept moving.

“How badly are you injured?”

Denton shook his head, indicating that he was the least of their worries. “At least a quarter of the exhibit is lost,” he muttered, his throat raw from smoke inhalation.

“How did it begin?”

Denton ran a hand over his face, which only served to smear it with more soot. “Bexley. Knocked over a lamp, I think.”

He meant Charles Calthorpe, Earl of Bexley. The museum was Bexley’s brainchild, and he’d spent the past seven of his forty-six years designing and overseeing the construction of an edifice dedicated to his passion for the life sciences. The museum was to be a library, a repository for rare specimens, and a grand exhibition hall for displays open to the public.

Luke had accompanied Bexley on several scientific expeditions over the years. They were recently home from India, their second journey there, an adventure that saw them collect over a dozen new insect species and some very interesting snakes.

They also both collected the same wretched illness, spending several days aboard their docked ship, feverish and violently casting their accounts. Luke recovered inside a week, but Bexley took longer, and in truth had never since shown his typical level of contagious energy. He’d seemed ... older.

Perhaps that was why Luke was overcome by a feeling of dread.

Knocked over a lamp, I think.

Luke did not want to ask. But had to. “Is he ... ”

Philip Denton’s face told Luke everything.

Later, Luke would learn that Denton had dragged Bexley from the building, shouting for help, whereupon Bexley revived and pleaded with him to save his field journals. Denton had plunged back into the building and secured the box from the smoke-filled anteroom of Bexley’s office, obtaining a nasty burn in the process. When he’d returned to the lawn, the earl was dead.

According to the doctor who arrived later, the earl showed every common sign that his heart had seized. “As deaths go, it is one of the more merciful. Often, it is over very quickly.”

In this moment, Luke only knew shock at the profound unfairness of it. They at last stood at the eve of the grand opening of the museum that represented Bexley’s deepest passion and life’s work. An institution that would serve to awe and educate the visiting public with the earl’s decades of work in the natural world.

And he had not lived to see it.

Denton, an investor in the museum and sometime shipmate, dealt with the tragedy the best way he knew how: by becoming exceedingly drunk and staying that way for the better part of the next week.

Luke was sorely tempted to join him, but several scientists had arrived from Oxford to help mount the inaugural exhibition. Luke was determined to rally them to work around the clock to salvage what they could. To try .

There were four of them, professors of the life sciences. Professor Fitz was a soft-spoken , spectacled man in his late thirties. Professors Mangrove and Wallace had been Luke’s lecturers at Oxford—the former rotund and enthusiastic, the latter a short-statured , snobbish perfectionist. The final, Lord Spencer-Beckett , was a school friend of Denton’s, six and thirty, raven-haired , pale, skinny, prone to overindulgence—famous in their circles for delivering word-perfect talks on the anatomy of Squamata while visibly typhooned.

The scientists had begun taking stock mere hours after the fire was extinguished. The exhibition was theoretically set to open in only three weeks, with a staggering list of aristocrats, scholars and luminaries planning to attend.

The only question was a painfully simple one: was the opening still possible?

Damage was worst in Bexley’s office, which was now held up by scaffolding as the charred remains were gutted and replaced.

The exhibition hall suffered serious damage to one wall, but the required repair was manageable.

Most relieving, the library wing was entirely spared.

Less fortunately, most of the crates from their most recent voyage had been stored in and around Bexley’s office. Specimens were preserved in alcohol, which spread the fire with nasty, ravenous speed.

Many specimens were obliterated. Others, beyond salvage.

But some—perhaps, perhaps enough to pull some version of an exhibition together—had been pulled from the building intact, if wet, jostled, and sticky with soot. Under the hand of an expert, they might to be set to rights.

Of course, to exhibit them, one needed the Latin and common name of each creature. Where it was discovered, details of its observed traits and life cycle. Bexley had developed a system of simple numbered tags upon each specimen, corresponding to a detailed entry in his journal.

As for those journals, Denton had saved them. In so doing, saving the exhibition.

Or one might think. There was one small issue. They were written entirely in code.

This was not a surprise to anyone involved. Not Bexley’s brother John Calthorpe, now Earl of Bexley; not Denton, who considered the man’s penchant for ending letters with encoded postscripts to be among the most irritating aspects of their friendship; and not Luke, who, as a boy of fourteen, shadowing Bexley around his butterfly vivarium, was often handed a sheet of foolscap covered in absolute hieroglyphs.

Although Luke was familiar with Bexley’s ciphers, he’d never had to break one. Denton confirmed in no uncertain terms that he, too, would not know where to begin.

The opening of the Bexley Museum and Library had been a momentous occasion. Now, it felt yet more momentous, but crushingly grave. All agreed that the opening must occur as planned, to honor the late earl. Luke and the professors were hard at work salvaging specimens. The new earl was overseeing reconstruction. Denton helped manage workflow and communication with the public, and boosted morale via filthy jokes.

But someone needed to decode the journals.

This troubling fact hung over the party at a somber dinner a few days later. They’d all tried their hand at the cipher. They’d applied every key they could find among the late earl’s papers. They’d worked their way through a book in the library called Common Ciphers, and one called The Art of the Epistolary Secret.

They had made no progress.

They’d reached out to a professor of mathematics at Oxford, only to discover he was on sabbatical in the mountains of Germany. Another was ill. A third could not be located, and a fourth had not responded. They were running out of time, and considering such options as bringing in a horde of mathematics students, paying them extravagantly, filling them with strong tea, and locking them in the library.

But then Denton, perhaps because he’d chosen that day to pause in his drinking for the first time since the fire, realized that he had a better answer. The answer.

The dinner had progressed in near-silence . The new earl finally said what they were all thinking. “I fear the exhibit will need to be postponed. Regardless of whom we bring in, we cannot predict whether they can solve the problem swiftly. The mind that kept those journals was as singular as it was brilliant.”

Luke saw an expression pass over Denton’s face. The closest he’d seen to a smile since Denton had discovered his friend on the museum floor.

“I cannot believe I did not make the connection immediately. But I know the mathematician with the best possible chance of getting us our solution quickly.” All eyes turned to Denton. “Did you know, Ashburton,” he said to Luke, “that Bexley had a favorite young friend? Yet younger and favorite-er than thee?” With a wink, Denton chose that moment to pour himself a glass of wine with a flourish—evidently, feeling abruptly celebratory. “With whom he corresponded for well over a decade, entirely in those blasted codes? In that respect, no one on earth knows his mind better.”

Everyone sat up straighter. Luke leaned in. “Tell me who he is and I’ll fetch him at once.”

“ He is a dear friend of my cousin Arabella, Duchess of Blackflint. His name is Miss Grace Chetwood.” Denton smiled in earnest now, enjoying the table’s reaction.

L uke realized he was staring at Denton, and hoped he only seemed like a man dubious of the intellect of the fairer sex.

And not what he was. A man who knew that women were easily as smart as men, and quite often far smarter.

But that Grace Chetwood was vapid, distractible, spoiled, self-indulgent , and infuriating.

If she can work at the level we need, I’ll eat both my shoes.

Denton eyed Luke with interest. “Are you and Miss Chetwood acquainted?”

“In passing,” Luke said, hoping he sounded casual.

“Ah. For a moment, it looked as though you had a negative opinion of her.”

“Not at all. We have spoken but a few words to one another, and it was perfectly pleasant.”

Until it wasn’t. And she slapped me in the face.

“Well then. I shall write to her father at once.”

“I have heard,” Luke said, carefully, “That the lady is very newly betrothed.” He’d only yesterday read it in a long, busy letter from his sister, crammed with ton gossip. It is all anyone is talking about.

“We only need her for a few days—surely the wedding is not to occur so immediately.” Denton was too polite to add the unless. Unless they required a special license. For some reason. Related to indiscretion.

Luke suspected that indiscretion was the entire reason for it. “Surely not,” he agreed.

“Miss Chetwood’s father was friendly with Bexley, and given the tragedy, and the urgency, I hold hope he will be amenable to lending us his daughter.” Denton raised his glass, and the whole table followed suit. “To the possibility of divine intervention,” he said, and drank the entirety in one go.