by Betina Krahn
Aunt Flora stepped forward, her wrists folded over each other as she gave Graham a long, searching look. Then she turned a chiding expression on Mimi. "You gave him some of my special stock to smell, didn't you?"
"I'm sorry, Aunt Flora." Mimi's cheeks flamed. "But he was being so disagreeable about it all…"
"I understand, Mimi, dear. But in future you really ought to be more careful." Aunt Flora sighed and gazed at Graham, shaking her head. "Some men just can't hold their perfumes."
But when Shaddar and Mimi were well up the stairs and out of earshot, Caroline and Flora joined hands and tottered around, giggling like schoolgirls and chanting: "He kissed her… he kissed her!"
Chapter Four
Later that evening Graham came downstairs for dinner, walking as if he was afraid his head might topple from his shoulders at any minute. His eyes were tight with suppressed pain, and his expression was stern and forbidding. He would scarcely look at Mimi, and her inexperience with the vagaries of male pride made her see disgust and blame in his avoidance of her. But in truth, it was his own behavior that placed the grim lines at the corners of his mouth and stiffened his spine and his verbal responses.
Never in his life—well, not since he was seven years old—had he abandoned all restraint, as he had that afternoon with Mimi. With his tutors, in his Uncle Throckmorton's staid household, at his public school, and certainly in his university days, he had always comported himself with the utmost gravity and restraint. Even in the occasional lapses of youth—his first drinking rout and his first experience with a woman—he managed to retain both his consciousness and something of his dignity. He had never completely lost control—until he smelled Mimi Edgethorn's irresistible scent and saw her standing there with her eyes and lips so soft, just begging to be kissed.
The worst of it was: he wanted to do it again, this minute! He had the most appalling urge to vault across the damn dinner table, pull her into his arms, and kiss her breathless… right under the eyes of her three conniving old aunts. That compelling desire for her and all the pleasure she represented shocked him to the very bottom of his logical and orderly soul. She was his client; he was supposed to be protecting her and her interests, not making mad, passionate love to her! He clamped a ruthless hand on his undignified stirrings and scowled a bit more fiercely.
Mimi sat across the dinner table, wearing her blue velvet gown with the scooped neck and fashionable demi-bustle, looking quite ladylike and feeling quite confused. She was scarcely able to take her eyes from him. Her lips were burning, remembering the heat of his against them, and as she reached for her goblet, her fingers grew sensitive, recalling the slide of his hair through them. She had meant to teach him a lesson that afternoon, to defy that smug male certainty that he carried about him like a cloak. Instead, she'd gotten a lesson of her own, in the pleasures of men and passion and her vulnerability to them. She was supposed to be protecting her old aunts from his wretched accusations, not relishing his every look and longing for his kisses. She felt her aunts' eyes on her and lowered her own eyes to her untouched plate of food. Nothing would come of such longings anyway. He was obviously mortified by what had happened between them. The most she could hope for now was that he would pack up his groundless suspicions and carry them straight back to London with him. But increasingly, that particular prospect filled her with an even greater sense of dread.
"How is your head, Mister Hamilton?" Caroline asked solicitously, after an embarrassing lull in the stilted conversation.
Graham's hand went to the knot on the back of his head before he realized it. "Fine, really." He stiffened. "No cause for concern."
"How careless of me to leave things out in my laboratory so that others trip on them." Flora graciously offered him an excuse, which he accepted with a pained look and a nod.
"Perhaps I'd better have a look at that lump on your head… just to make sure you're all right," Phoebe declared with a determined squint. She was on her feet in an instant and had her fingers on the back of his head before he could react.
"Thank you, no!" He jerked back and glowered at her. "I shall be fine."
Phoebe could do nothing but resume her seat with a red face and an air of injury. Within minutes, Graham excused himself for a walk in the evening air, and Mimi excused herself to the study, to tidy her record books a bit more. Caroline and Flora turned to Phoebe.
"Well, you tried," Caroline said with a taunting smile.
"He landed smack on the back of his head," Phoebe said, coming out of her huddled posture to announce her discovery. "And he's all swelled up in his 'amativeness.' "
After a long, restless night, Graham awakened to discover his clothing once more freshened and pressed and laid out neatly on the end of his bed. He donned them, thinking that if he caught the slightest whiff of a flower or a hint of sweet spice at breakfast, he wasn't setting foot anywhere near Mimi Edgethorn for the rest of the day. Fortified by determination and a good stiff collar, he made his way down to the family dining room.
The old ladies were there, heads nodding, eyes closed, basking like aged salamanders in the strong morning sun. When they roused and greeted him with genuine pleasure, he felt a momentary twinge and amended his thought: very hospitable and accommodating old salamanders. He sniffed covertly, all the way to his chair, and detected nothing out of the ordinary. Then, halfway through his griddlecakes and sausages, Mimi arrived, and he swallowed with a gulp and pushed to his feet, bracing for an olfactory assault.
None came. He did feel an odd, momentary tingle race across his shoulders and plunge down his arms as she swept by him on her way around the table. But the sensation was so fleeting and he was so relieved that she seemed not to be wearing that perfume that had sent his rational faculties into total decline yesterday, that he dismissed it altogether. When Shaddar seated her she looked up, and he was caught staring at her as if she were a honey-glazed bun.
He tucked his chin and stuffed a huge slice of griddlecake into his mouth, chewing doggedly. It was a moment before he realized that one of the old ladies had spoken to him and looked up. "Pardon? I don't mean to be rude… it's just that these cakes are perfectly beautiful." He colored at his choice of words. "Delicious, they're delicious."
"Why, thank you," Aunt Flora said sweetly. "Shaddar always does such a fine job on our cook's day off." She nodded at the capable manservant, and he nodded back. "But tell us, Mister Hamilton, about your family. Where do they live?"
Graham stayed his next bite of food and shifted restively in his chair. "I… have no family, to speak of. My parents died when I was quite young, and I was raised by my uncle, Throckmorton Hamilton. He died just more than a year ago."
"No family." Flora smiled sympathetically. "What a coincidence. It appears that both you and our Mimi were orphaned young."
"Undoubtedly that was what prompted you to take such a keen interest in our Mimi's welfare," Caroline observed sagely.
"The similarity of your circumstance," Phoebe clarified.
The old ladies looked at one another and nodded, then returned to their teacups and scones and marmalade, while he sat in complete bewilderment. They had easily put into words what he hadn't managed to admit, even to himself: from the first he had felt some sort of link to Mimi because of their similar loss and the subsequent circumstances of their lives. Both had been orphaned while they were young, and both were sent to live with elderly relations. But there, he thought sternly, all similarity ended.
The table was plunged into awkward silence as they all watched the troubling of his features. Mimi had the most compelling urge to touch him just then, to reassure him somehow. But a moment later her compassionate impulse mystified her. If there was anyone in the whole world who didn't need concern and understanding, it was the solicitor who had come to prove her aunts were frauds and thieves… and probably witches as well. But all the same, she wanted to reach for his hand, to invade that grave and somber countenance, to coax a smile from him, to hear his deep
, rolling laughter again. Feeling more than a little disturbed by her thoughts, she pushed her chair back and rose, excusing herself to the study.
Graham dawdled over a second, then a third cup of tea, dreading being closeted in that small room with Mimi after the perfect fool he'd made of himself yesterday. But when his old hostesses left the table, he had no choice but to leave as well and make his way to the study.
"Let's get started straightaway," he declared as he forged into the room. She was seated at the desk, wearing a most fashionable coral-colored challis—and a corset that enhanced her elegant curves. Her auburn curls were bathed in sunbeams, and when she looked up, her face ringed by a halo of red-gold light, he completely lost his train of thought. "I… we… the…" He swallowed desperately. "The records I had with me were lost when that wretched horse bolted and left me stranded," he said, recovering. "But I believe I can recall most of the dates of the withdrawals. They were usually made at the start of a quarter. If you will locate such entries in the ledgers, Miss Edge-thorn, it will speed the process enormously."
She rose, and as she approached he felt the most unnerving tingling sensations radiating from his neck out along his shoulders and down his arms. The sensations intensified with each step she took toward him, and by the time she reached the table in the center of the room, even his fingers were tingling wildly. He stood bolted to the floor, his face rigid with horror. What the devil was happening to him?
She selected a ledger, opened and perused it. Then as she rounded the table to hand it to him, the skin of his belly began to hum. Another step closer, and it was positively rippling with an excitement that was spreading all the way down into his… Oh, Lord!
He flamed and jolted back a few steps, and it faded to a light, ticklish sensation… which he grew progressively more desperate to scratch. Her frown of confusion halted his retreat, and he lurched forward just long enough to snatch the ledger from her hands, then withdrew hastily to the same chair where he'd taken refuge yesterday.
"Do have a seat, Miss Edgethorn," he said gruffly, holding the ledger stiffly before him and trying to maintain a semblance of dignity as he sent his hand beneath his coat to give his belly a frantic scratching. Then he flung a tingling finger toward the chair by the desk, insisting, "Over there, if you please." She stood for one defiant moment, staring at him, then complied. And in that short time he felt those shocking excitations trickling down the backs of his legs and collecting in his toes. When she turned away, he curled his toes inside his boots and writhed in silent agony as he collapsed onto the chair. His whole body was aquiver with the impact of her presence, and it took every ounce of his self-control to keep from either pouncing on her or running from the room in sheer panic.
"I feel I really must protest," Mimi said from her perch on the edge of the desk chair. She felt like a child who was being scolded and set in a chair for correction, and she hadn't the faintest idea what she'd done to deserve such treatment. She was "Miss Edgethorn" again, and that thought produced a spreading emptiness in her chest. "I really don't care how much money my aunts have withdrawn from my trust. In fact, I would give it all to them, if I could."
The slight waver in her voice made him look at her. She was sitting with her hand clasped over her heart. Her golden-hazel eyes were large and luminous, so warm and sincere and generous. She was a woman who would give everything she had, everything she was, to those she really loved. That realization sent an ache searing through him, from his crowded chest all the way to his restive loins. In a pure panic, he sat straighter in his chair.
"Fortunately, your sentimental feelings have little to do with it," he said thickly. "Right is right, Miss Edgethorn."
He tore his gaze from her and buried it in the ledger again, squinting and scowling as he struggled to make sense of the writing on the page. It was hopeless. He scrutinized the same column of figures five times, seeing none of it. He kept getting lost in the orderliness of the columns, the neatness of her feminine script, and the round prettiness of her numbers. Sighing heavily, he flicked a glance at the bundles of receipts on the table, all neatly stacked, their ribbons tied just so. Astonishing, he thought, that she'd been able to organize it all without even a clerk of some sort to guide her. He ran a square fingertip around and around over her numbers, admiring them, wishing he could tell her how much he admired her. For he truly did admire her…
When his eyes refocused, he realized he was staring at an astronomical number on the page before him. He choked, blinked, and shot to his feet.
"What in the devil is this?" He pounded a finger into the open ledger. "Two thousand bloody pounds for 'custom metallurgy'? What in creation do you need with metallurgy in the first place… much less the custom variety?" he blustered.
She sprang to her feet with a surprised and irritable look. "My aunts have rather unusual interests, Mister Hamilton," she started to explain.
"So I've gathered," he responded through clenched teeth. That unholy tingling and tickling was suddenly back… and this time there was an alarming prickling running up the back of his neck and racing up the insides of his thighs, headed straight for his… Oh, God! He clamped his legs together, but it did no good. His eyes widened in horror.
"Aunt Caroline was a student of Franz Anton Mesmer, and she conducts scientific research into the medical and hygienic uses of electricity and—" She halted, aghast at the way his eyes crossed and he shuddered visibly. How dare he make fun of Aunt Caroline like this, in front of her! "Very well then," she declared angrily, jerking the ledger from his hands and slamming it down on the table. "Come and see for yourself!" She seized him by the sleeve and pulled his balky frame out the door.
Somewhere in the center hall, he managed to disengage her hands from his sleeve and retrieved some measure of sanity, amid the burning in his fingertips and the unbearable itch that was twiddling beneath every square inch of his skin. He sucked a deep breath and stalked along after her, trying to understand what was happening to him. It had to do with her, he reasoned desperately. Whenever she came near, his nerves went haywire!
He tried to put more distance between them, but she grabbed his sleeve again and hauled him into a large chamber filled with wheels of all shapes and sizes, huge coils of wire and cable, workbenches littered with tools and drawings, and shelves stuffed with all manner of lamp globes, stones, and odd pieces of metal. She led him to the center of the room and turned on him with her fists jammed firmly at her waist.
"This is Aunt Caroline's workroom. This is all electrical and magnetic apparatus, much of it custom built to her specifications. That"—she pointed to a series of upright metal wheels attached to a wooden crank—"is a static electricity generator. And those are Aunt Caroline's 'voltaic piles.' " She pointed to a series of huge glass cylinders that contained metal plates. "They produce currents of electricity to power her experiments. That's where part of the money for custom metallurgy went. The other parts were her magnetizing table and her static cloud machine."
Graham staggered back against a bench, staring at the series of metal wheels and pointing a trembling finger at them. "Th-those… I saw those that night! Making lightning!"
"They were making electricity. That's a static generator," she declared firmly, stepping to the machine and seizing the handle to give it several energetic cranks. The wheels started to move, and a low hum filled the chamber… then a bright blue vein of miniature lightning jumped from the main wheel to a metal rod with a great pop. "You see?" she said with a bit of vengeful triumph in her smile. "No black magic, no witches. Just pure science, Mister Hamilton. But perhaps you need a bit more proof."
His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, and his skin was contracting, and his body hair was prickling wildly. Anxiety paralyzed him as she reached for his hand. His heart all but stopped as her fingers closed around his. Miraculously, the humming, the prickling, the agonizing itch subsided, dispelled by the touch of her hand. Surcease… sweet release! He stared at their joined han
ds, dumbfounded, as he lurched along behind her. That was all it took to end his peculiar, unearthly misery? Just the touch of Mimi's hand?
When he looked up, he found himself staring at a large metallic mushroom sort of contraption, which gave him a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. "This is a special sort of static generator, Aunt Caroline's own experimental design. Put your hand here," she said, laying his hand on the top of the rounded metal dome and removing hers from it. Instantly the tingling began to creep back under his skin, distracting him so that he could barely make out the words: "And whatever happens… don't take your hand away."
"No—wait—don't leave—" He managed a dry whisper that was lost in the sound of her movement.
She threw a small iron bar across some metal pegs, and he began to feel a strange hum, an exaggerated prickle all through his body. The hair on his head stood straight up on end, and he began to vibrate at a low frequency. His eyes were huge and terrified. It was exactly what he'd been feeling before—only more so! Then she smiled, swayed closer, and placed her hand on the contraption, too. Her curls began to rise from her shoulders, and her eyes sparkled with unmistakable mischief as his chin dropped. She giggled.
"How does it feel?"
His mouth worked, but no sound came out. After a mo-ment she slid her hand over his on the machine… and the tingling was replaced by a warm, saturating glow all over his body. He stared into her eyes, into the warmth of her impish smile, and saw salvation in it… and not just of the electrical variety. He was still staring, entranced, when she moved the lever back and ended the demonstration. Then she stepped away, and that bothersome buzz and tickle returned.
"Mimi!" He grabbed her wrist, and she turned to face him. He let go for an instant, testing it, and the hum and prickle returned. "Mimi, I'm still tingling." His eyes were dark and compelling. His voice dropped to a rough, velvety rasp. "Touch me, Mimi. It won't stop unless you touch me."