“Is something amiss, Uncle Ford?” the little girl asked.
“No. No, not at all. I’m hoping something is very right.” He hastened them down the street, his gaze focused straight ahead to where the barge sat waiting. “Hurry. Quickly.”
In her fashionable high heels, Violet had a hard time keeping up, and she completely forgot to worry about who might see her wearing the spectacles. In no time at all, he was ushering them aboard.
“Straight home, Harry.” Ford hesitated, though for barely an instant. “No, stop at the first decent inn—but not until we’ve cleared the town.”
The children joined Harry at the helm while Ford hurried Violet into the cabin, apparently forgetting it was unsuitable. He pulled the door shut behind them. When the barge began moving, he let out a long, audible breath and dropped heavily onto the bed.
Since there wasn’t any other furniture, Violet seated herself primly at the foot of the bed. “What’s going on?” she asked, concerned by this odd behavior.
“I just…I suppose I feared Mr. Young would come running out and take the book back.” It was still clenched in his fingers. “It’s foolish, I know,” he said, offering her a sheepish smile.
“Is it that important, then?”
“If it turns out to be what I’m hoping it is, yes, it’s important.” He relaxed his grip and, opening the book, turned a page and then another. If she could judge from his smile, the crackle of old paper sounded like music to his ears. “Very important.”
“I imagine your friend will be pleased.”
In the midst of turning another page, he looked up. “My friend?”
“Your friend who is good with languages.”
“Oh.” She’d never seen a gentleman blush before. “That wasn’t the whole truth, I’m afraid. I just didn’t know quite what to say. If the bookseller realized what this was…well, what it might be…but maybe I shouldn’t…” He met her gaze. “What am I saying? Of course I can trust you.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out. “This book could be extremely valuable, Violet.”
Just the way he’d said her name, earnestly, like he cared, made her warm to her toes.
Rowan opened the door and poked his head in. His gaze sought out the book. “That looks very old,” he said soberly. “Is it the emerald secrets book?”
“It might be,” Ford said. “Everyone thought it was gone. I’m not certain I quite believed it had ever really existed.” Light streamed through the cabin’s two windows, illuminating the old pages, but they didn’t glow nearly as brightly as his eyes. “The book was supposed to have been small and bound in brown leather, and of course it would have been handwritten, as Gutenberg’s printing press hadn’t yet been invented. And here, look.” He flipped to the first page. “The alchemical symbol for gold. And five words in the title. But I cannot be sure. I wish I could read the thing.”
If Violet had never seen a gentleman blush before, she’d never seen one so excited, either. About anything. “The emerald secrets book?” she asked. “What’s that?”
Her brother smiled importantly. “It tells the lost secret of the Philosopher’s Rock. I’m going to tell Jewel.” He slammed the door, and she heard his footsteps pound across the wooden deck.
“The Philosopher’s Stone,” Ford corrected the empty space where Rowan had stood.
Violet gasped. “The formula to turn metals into gold?”
“The very same. Secrets of the Emerald Tablet has been missing for three hundred years, and if this is it…”
“Do you think it really is?”
“I don’t know. It could be. Everyone assumed it had been destroyed.” He turned a few pages and stared down at the ancient text. “I’m crossing my fingers—and I’m probably the least superstitious individual you’ll ever meet.”
Suspecting he was right, she smiled at that. “What is the Emerald Tablet?”
He shut the book. “It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long way down the river,” she pointed out.
“Very well, then,” he said, looking pleased. He stood up and began pacing in the skinny, cramped space around the bed, his hands clasped behind his back. “It all started back in Egypt, some twenty-five hundred years before Jesus Christ. Where the Divine Art first had its birth.”
“The Divine Art?”
“Alchemy. An Egyptian priest named Hermes Trismegistus was known to have great intellectual powers. The Art was kept secret and exclusive to the priesthood, but more than two thousand years later, when the tomb of Hermes was discovered by Alexander the Great in a cave near Hebron, they found a tablet of emerald stone. On it was inscribed, in Phoenician characters, the wisdom of the Great Master concerning the art of making gold.”
He paused, looking at her where she still sat perched at the foot of the bed. “You look uncomfortable there,” he said, reaching to scoop up one of the pillows. “Lean back against the wall.” He tossed it to her.
He’d told her it was a long story, so she scooted over to the wall and tucked the pillow behind her back, her legs stretched out on the bed. Noticing their outlines were visible beneath the drape of her peach gown, she fluffed her skirts a little. “Where is the Emerald Tablet now?”
He resumed pacing. ”We don’t know. But years later, in the thirteenth century, a man named Raymond Lully was born to a noble family in Majorca. He took up the study of alchemy and wandered the Continent to learn more of the science. Many stories have been told of Lully’s abilities to make gold, which he claimed to have learned from studying the Emerald Tablet.”
“What sorts of stories?”
His mouth curved in a faint smile. “You’re really listening, aren’t you?”
She cocked her head at him, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason.” Still smiling, he turned the book over in his hands, then opened it again absently. “It’s said that the Abbot of Westminster found Lully in Italy and persuaded him to come to London, where he worked in Westminster Abbey. A long time afterwards, a quantity of gold dust
