It was well past midnight, and heat still radiated from the fireplace in Mr Campion's study, warming the two figures who had just entered through a window along the western wing.
"Looks like I counted correctly," Georgiana said as she locked the study door, her eye drawn to the tiered bookcases that surrounded the fireplace, then upward, to the balcony that spanned the length of the study.
"Are you... accustomed to carrying knives?" Arthur asked warily as he stoked the coals of the fire. The sudden appearance of flames illuminated the bookcases nearest them.
She pocketed the small blade, "It would be foolish to trust that you would always be around to protect me - and it proved useful to break into this very room, did it not?"
"I suppose you are right, Miss Lambe, but I am rather put off that you have assumed I may not make it out of this intact."
"Well," she flashed a grin at him in the darkness, "I wouldn't say I didn't entertain the possibility."
"I'll have you know-" he started in an affronted tone.
"That you are more capable than I give you credit for? Is that it?" she asked. Her smile faded as she studied him, "Yes, I can just about imagine what that might be like."
The fire bloomed to life and Arthur brushed ash from his breeches as he stood. "I have no doubt you could, Miss Lambe."
She had drifted over to the desk, now bathed in the glow of firelight, and lingered almost hesitantly over it. "That's... unusual."
"How do you mean?"
"The papers on the desk. They seem to have multiplied since we were here last."
"Well... Mrs Higgins wasn't very pleased with our meddling. Perhaps she looked everything over after we left."
"Perhaps," Georgiana murmured, a hand hovering over the desktop, "but why?"
She crouched down to open the bottom drawer for the second time that day, her hand reaching down into the shadows, grasping at nothing but air.
"What is it?" Arthur stepped toward her.
"Arthur... I'm beginning to think someone else has done exactly what we came to do ourselves."
"What?"
"The drawer... it's been emptied."
A look of alarm flashed over his face as Georgiana searched through the imposing mahogany desk.
"Miss Lambe," he looked to his feet, then crouched down to examine papers strewn across the floor.
"It doesn't make any sense. It's almost as if-," she paused.
She looked around the room, at the darkest corners of it, the places hidden in shadow, suddenly aware of the fact that they may not be the only ones to occupy it. The fire popped.
"Impossible-" she murmured, at last, turning back to the desktop, "Bicknell would have told me if he had stationed someone here."
Arthur gathered the papers on the floor, "I should hope so, Miss Lambe," he said, shifting stacks of paper back to the desktop. Georgiana reached for them.
"Yes, well, it will do us no good now to dwell upon it," she said, tilting the paper to catch the light, "But I dread to think what information might have been lost to us."
"And I dread to think what they might have sought," Arthur said, turning to look over his shoulder to the spiral staircase. "You don't think they might-"
"What... still be here?" she asked, an eyebrow raised, "Don't let the unknowns get the better of you, Arthur."
"Right..." He peered over his shoulder one last time and went back to gathering papers from the floor.
Georgiana reached for another stack, and worked through it one page at a time, scanning the contents of every letter and document she came across. "For someone so rich," she let another page flutter back to the desk, "she has an alarming amount of debt."
"Anything we might use?"
She shuffled through more papers as Arthur combed through what remained on the floor.
"Miss Lambe-" he started, lifting the stack closer to his face, "Were you familiar with the name of Campion... before."
"Before?"
"Coming to England."
She swallowed. "It is a common enough name."
"She owned a plantation?" he scanned the document a second time, then tossed it up to her.
She scanned the paper, "a bill of sale?"
"Read the name."
"From Eliza to... Robert Campion." The document trembled in her hand.
"And she made a hefty profit from it, as it looks," he slid the next few pages over to her.
"Arthur... hand over the rest of that stack."
She paged through; her face inches away as she read the tidy script. "I need you to search for a set of ledgers," she breathed, rubbing at her forehead absently.
He came upon a candle, set upon the table before the fire, and lit it in the flames, exploring the bookcases that bordered the room as Georgiana pulled out the drawers of the desk completely, reaching as far back as she could to check for hidden compartments or sliding panels - anything that might reveal more.
"Miss Lambe," she heard Arthur call out in a whisper from the balcony above.
"Yes?"
"You might wish to see this-"
She dashed for the spiral staircase, lifting her skirts as she stepped lightly, moving as quickly as she could in the quiet, "Did you find them-"
He grinned back at her, standing in front of an entire wall of ledger books, shelved neatly apart from one lower shelf at the end, on which the books tilted haphazardly. She walked to the last section, crouching low to reach the very bottom shelf, and pulled the last ledger from its place. She flipped through its pages.
"Nothing suspicious," she said quietly, standing back to examine the pillars along either side of the bookcase, "and yet - it's all a bit too unblemished. I don't believe a word."
She ran her foot along the base of the bookcase, the wooden mouldings taking shape, "My father had a series of dentil mouldings similar to this in his study," she said. "Seems a bit odd, doesn't it? To have something so extravagant at your feet."
"That is a bit strange," Arthur said, moving the candle closer.
"But, the thing is," she said, putting more pressure upon them with her foot, "elaborate designs such as this might also have a purpose - a means of justifying the unnecessary ornamentation." She had reached the third dentil from the end, and it gave way under the pressure. The bookcase rotated before them, to reveal a second bookcase.
Arthur looked at her, blinking as if he were still registering what he had just witnessed. "Bravo, Miss Lambe," he whispered.
She eyed the contents of the hidden bookcase, which was sparsely stocked, "A manor house is little more than a showroom, Arthur - the darkest secrets are always hidden from view."
She lifted the last ledger from the dusty lower shelf. Its cover was pristine, almost untouched, compared to the others. "Now, I wonder," she said, flipping the cover open, the sarcasm in her voice evident, "why the Campions might find a need to keep two ledgers for the same year." She glanced up at Arthur, "I'll give you three guesses as to which illegal activity they are engaging in regularly enough to fill so many pages."
Arthur hovered over her as she turned the pages. "Since when did the Campions trade in Africa?"
"She didn't just own a plantation, Arthur," Georgiana said, looking up at him, "according to that bill of sale you found, the Campions owned a ship as well."
"For exports?"
She ran a finger along the columns of the ledger, "They exported brandy, hats, and knives from Britain - all within the past year."
"Well, that is not unusual... is it?"
"Not at first glance, no. But... the ship took port at Bonny," she said, seeing that he hadn't registered her meaning.
"Mmm? Oh, yes, yes. Bonny..."
"It's a trading port. The Bight of Biafra."
"You speak as if it were a crime to trade in Africa," he continued.
"What, dear Arthur, do you think they traded them for?"
She turned the page, and Arthur stood over her, silenced over the new columns that appeared in the ledger upon the ship's port in Antigua.
"Two and thirty men, women and children," she murmured as she snapped the ledger shut, her eye drawn back to the bookcase, "on a single page." She reached out to run a hand along the row of ledgers in front of her. "And yet, I wonder how many more are hidden away."
The candlelight heightened Arthur's drawn expression, "But, how? How might this have happened in the last year when slavery has been abolished for so long."
"It hasn't," she said, pulling out another ledger, "Not really. Do you think the Campions would give up all of this," she gestured to the expansive room they overlooked, "the source that has funded their hidden bookcases and fountain courts when they might as easily get away with continuing their trade."
"But... Sidney would never have-"
"Perhaps he has no idea..." she murmured, her eyes alighting, "what she would do to win... Arthur, do you have the bill of sale?"
"N-no," he said, "I gave it to you."
"I must have dropped it on the desk when you called," she drifted off, brushing her forehead again, "But, wouldn't it all make sense-"
"Miss Lambe?"
"-if she transferred everything to Robert Campion's name before she made her offer to Sidney. The plantation. The ship. Evidence of her involvement in illegal trade. All resulting in an exponential increase in her overall wealth."
"Which means-"
"That Tom's terrace may have been funded with the profits from this very ledger, and that Eliza was foolish enough to believe she wouldn't be found out," she said, eyes searching as her mind assembled the pieces, "Keep looking through the rest. We must be sure," she said, her skirts swishing as she turned.
The spiral staircase creaked under her weight, each footstep seeming louder than the one before. Georgiana paused, her hand upon the railing, her eye on a far corner of the room. She let out a breath.
"Is everything all right?" Arthur called from above.
"Yes, fine," she whispered, "I... thought I saw something," she pointed to the far corner of the room with her chin.
"Likely just a trick of the mind, Miss Lambe," Arthur said, reassuring her, "I was at that very corner in my search not ten minutes ago."
"Right," she exhaled, "You're absolutely right."
She continued down the staircase, the bill of sale within view in the rapidly dimming firelight. The floor creaked under her feet as she walked to the desk. She grasped the document tightly, as if a gust of wind might come along, and tucked it into her pelisse - but it was the document beneath that caught her attention. She picked it up. "Eliza, you fool," she whispered as the floor creaked again. "Arthur... was that you?" And again.
She spun around, looking up into the wide-eyed gaze of her companion, still as a statue upon the balcony. Footsteps, just outside. She motioned to Arthur, then made for the spiral staircase. The doorknob rattled.
With a huff, the light of the candle was extinguished. A single line of smoke billowed up to the ceiling above the balcony, and just then, the door to Mr Campion's study clicked open.