Tommy clutched her chest, mere seconds away from feigning an apoplexy in order to give Viv and Jacob a few more moments in the study before they were all evicted.
Apoplexy was a terrible plan. Viv hadtoldTommy it should be much further down the contingency list. A medical emergency meant every servant in earshot would come running. Doctors would be summoned, and soon the entire household would be crammed into the study, making it impossible to search for anything.
Jacob had the right idea with his mice. There’d been no way to predict that the maids would simply shrug rather than be scared off.
But that was why Viv had brought Sally.
Jacob noticed first. His eyes widened and he took an instinctive step toward Viv before cautiously freezing in place.
“Er…” He cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to alarm you…”
A string of garbled syllables tangled in Tommy’s throat. “I really am going to suffer an apoplexy, if someone doesn’t get that thing out of here!”
Most likely because Viv had failed to mention she’d brought Sally along for the ride.
If the contingency became necessary, she’d need everyone’s reactions to be genuine.
The youngest maid gasped and stumbled backward toward the door. “Whatisthat thing?”
“It’s crawling up her bodice,” the older maid whispered in obvious horror. She scrabbled to join the other maid in the relative safety of the corridor.
The hall boy’s face drained of color. “It’s… a furry… spider? The size of my fist!”
Small fists that were currently pale and trembling.
“Kill it!” called one of the maids from just out of sight.
“I can’t look,” moaned the other. “I’m going to have nightmares for years!”
The hall boy was still frozen in place.
Viv could fix that.
She feigned a panicked cry, bringing her arm up to her chest and flinging the enormous tarantula directly toward the hall boy’s shocked face.
He shrieked and dashed from the room before Sally even landed, slamming the study door shut behind him.
Viv leaped over her spider and bent her mouth to the keyhole. “Stay far away until we find it,” she called. “Save yourselves!”
“We will,” came the muffled reply.
Viv turned around and curtsied at Jacob and Tommy.
“What,” whispered Tommy, “was that?”
“Wolf spider,” Jacob answered. “Lycosa tarantula, native to southern Europe. Because of the madness its venom is said to cause, Italians invented a dance called the tarantella, designed to represent—”
“Let me interrupt this fascinating lecture to rephrase my question,”said Tommy. “What the devil was that eight-legged beast doing on Miss Henry’s bodice, and how do we keep it from killing us?”
Viv dropped to the floor, palm up on the carpet.
“Sally wouldn’t hurt a fly, would you, Sally?” she cooed. “Well, maybe a fly. You’d inject it with poison to dissolve its innards and swallow the remaining glop whole.”
Tommy gurgled wordlessly.
“Come on, sweetling,” coaxed Viv. “I’m sorry I tossed you at that nasty human, but you did the very right thing and scared him away. He doesn’t know that your venom is only capable of murdering small mammals, and that you rarely bite humans at all.”
“Rarely,” Tommy choked out. “Comforting.”
