“None of your affair, Miss Slythe, none at all.” He had spoken harshly, and she was provoked by his tone.

“Yet the seal becomes mine, sir, when I am twenty-five. Surely that makes it my business.”

He was laughing at her now, his shoulders heaving up and down and his chins wobbling above his tight, white collar. “Your business, Miss Slythe! Your business! The seal becomes yours, girl, because it is pretty! That is a woman’s business, the procreation of children and pretty things, no more. You say you have not seen a seal?”

“No, sir.”

His shoulders still moved with laughter as he beckoned at her. “Come here.”

She walked to the table as Cony struggled with the pocket of his waistcoat. His belly distended the brown cloth so much that he was unable to extract whatever he was looking for. She stared over his white, curly hair and saw that the boatmen still sat like statues in the barge, their white blades pointing at the blue sky. She thought of Toby in the alley, and wished he were with her. She was sure he would not be awed by this frog-like man who alternated between sarcastic friendliness and disdain.

“There.” The lawyer pushed something over the table.

It was exactly like the seal Toby held in the alleyway. Campion picked it up, surprised again by the weight of the gold. She saw the delicate banding of diamonds and rubies. Like the seal of St. Matthew, this one too had a long, gold chain so that it could be worn as a pendant. She turned the seal to the window light and saw the same ornately chased border on the steel impression. She held it close and saw, in place of the axe, a beautifully carved winged lion. The mirror writing spelled “St. Mark.”

Holding this second seal, so like the first, once again she felt their mystery. She remembered the letter which described the seals as keys to great wealth, and somehow this sight of the second seal made the power of the gold cylinders seem far more real. She understood now that men would want these seals and that the lawyer across the desk was her enemy so long as she possessed one. She had thought her adventure was love, and now it was danger.

Sir Grenville’s voice was light and careless. “You should see what is inside.”

He so nearly caught her. The meeting of the seal’s two halves was so cunningly hidden that it was not apparent that there was any interior to the cylinder, yet on his carefully contrived words her fingers moved automatically to unscrew the two halves. She remembered, even as her fingers took hold, and she kept her hands moving, as if all she wanted to do was dangle the seal by its long, heavy, gold chain. “It’s beautiful!”

Sir Grenville paused a long time. She could see the cylinder of gold reflected in his pale, glaucous eyes. He blinked slowly. “I said you should see what is inside.”