Lash looked upon the drawings once again. His scowl evaporated. A smile kept pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I accept your apologies. And what you say makes sense. What do you think, Elizabeth?”

“They’re magnificent,” she said.

“More than magnificent. They are … everything to me.”

“Your happiness, sir,” said Julian, “is our happiness. Does this mean we win the bidding?”

“It means you are far ahead in the running,” Miss Mulloy answered, rather crisply for her position as hostess. “Vice Admiral Lash will take his time in making a decision. Also, Miles Merda has not offered his—”

“Elizabeth, let us not be too opaque in our appreciation, lest Count Pellegar think we hold this collection in low regard,” said Lash. “As far as I’m concerned, you will be the winners. And yet …” His hand again caressed the red book. “I do have the luxury of time in which to consider. In any case, I have an entertainment planned for later which I think you gentlemen will enjoy. So let us not rush to any statements of completion.”

“As I say, your happiness is—”

Lash laughed. He grinned fiercely up into Julian’s face. “Do you two even know what it is you’ve brought to me? Can you even guess why I went to all that trouble to contract your services to Duke de Valasco?”

Julian hesitated, perhaps a beat too long. Then: “Of course. For the plans you have before you.”

What Lioness had said in the parlor, Matthew remembered: I understand Duke de Valasco contracted you and the baron to murder his elder brother, and you were rewarded with an item of—shall we say—importance. Matthew wondered if the gold bars were not from this Portuguese duke but from some Prussian criminal group that desired the book, and the parchment plans had come along because Lash had in some way arranged for them to be part of the bid. If that was true, Lash had reached a hand nearly fourteen hundred miles to secure the sheets of parchment that he now seemed to be viewing with such excitement, and Matthew reasoned that this plan must have been at least a year in the making.

“You don’t know,” said Lash, with a trace of pity for the uninformed and stupid Prussians in the room. “This is the future of warfare, gentlemen. You have brought me plans drawn up in 1664 by a Spanish inventor named Ferriz Maldonado. He unfortunately was also a drunkard, and he died of drink in 1670. His life’s work was scattered to the winds, some of it burned to ashes in a fire. Do you know what Maldonado’s life’s work was, Count Pellegar?”

“I fear I do not.”

“The dream that all laughed at him for, and drove him further into decline. These are plans for an airship.”

“A what, sir?”