“So many events to hate him for…my wife lives in splendor, as a lady’s maid…would have died in prison if it wasn’t’ for that rich bloke. How good to kill Anthony’s, wife. Easy to knock her off her horse. While she gasped for breath, I spread her milky white thighs and pounded my quid into her, savoring the screams of that whore of a wife of his…would have liked to extend my time, but that rich bloke got tired of watching…ordered me to break her neck to look like a fall from a horse. Crack. How easy to snap. That rich bastard didn’t want any Rutland seed to flourish.”
His companions laughed.
Cuthbert stroked his chin. “I see his lordship has an attachment to the Colonial? My quid throbs with a million things to do to her. Damn. Why do I have to follow that rich bloke’s rules?”
Scar joined him at the window. “I’d like a turn with her. What the boss don’t know, won’t hurt him.”
The rich bloke was a scary bastard and it took a lot for Cuthbert Noot to be scared of anyone. “I like playing games with Lord Anthony. Sent him a warning with the urn. Loved seein’ his face when he found his dead assistant.”
Cuthbert pressed his face against the glass to catch a final glimpse of the object of his hatred. “Feel safe with your Yank, Lord Anthony. Joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you’ll know the debt is paid.”
Chapter Eight
Anthony raked his fingers through his hair. Weeks had melded into two months and nothing. Stimulants madly indulged his mind…electricity…and Rachel Thorne.
“Our errors are a result of simple bad luck.” She placed glass tubes in a rack, running her fingers down their glistening length.
His mouth went dry. How erotic. What would she taste like? Cinnamon? Spice? Lemon? “I do not believe in luck. Everything I do is designed to eliminate randomness and eradicate chance. To deduce every possibility, predict every response, and mold experimentation toward a desired outcome.”
“I want to know your thoughts on the Leyden jar.” He watched her walk across the lab to retrieve another flask, her hips swung with the practiced ease of a courtesan, except she was no courtesan. She was tall, inches shorter than his six foot two frame with padding in all the right places, undeniably the right places.
Anthony said nothing. He was good at saying nothing. He could say nothing for the rest of his life and be content. He should waltz her out of his lab, lock the door and stay inside for the rest of his life. Yes, he could do it. And he could hurl the Thames River back to its source.
While Aunt Margaret snored in the corner, Rachel turned to him, with concentration. After a long silence elapsed, her brow furrowed, expectant of him to fill the void with what he was thinking.
Anthony scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Why he was no different than a useless dog, panting outside the butcher’s shop?
“The Leyden jar has an alternating current that flows and bangs, pumping and thrusting, sliding and straining violently along a course.” Had he just said that?
Thank the higher powers she was immersed in pouring a saline solution over the brass and nickel discs that she did not hear him.
Anthony held his breath and attached the wires. A small burst of electrical fire, and then nothing. He cursed beneath his breath.
Rachel knitted her brow in a way that gave Anthony the sense she was trying to figure out how best to say, I told you so.
“My miscalculations have brought a tempest of unforeseen challenges. We will use your sulfuric acid suggestion tomorrow.”
She beamed her approval. Why did her happiness mean so much to him?
Aunt Margaret quit snoring, sat up and blinked at the clock. “Heavens, it is well past the time to leave, Miss Thorne.”
Anthony scowled. “Where are you going? I cannot work without you.”
“A ball followed by entertainment. Do you want to join us?” Rachel licked her lips with cautious hope.
“Absolutely not. The most illogical convention known to mankind.”
“Sometimes it is good to be illogical,” she chastised him. “Lady Imogene Brougham is going to sing. They say she is a sensation.”
“Her singing presents the same sensation as barnacles scraped off the bottom of a ship, except the hull of the ship remains safe and sound. The damage to your ears is catastrophic.”
“So you’ll come?” Rachel reached up and smoothed his hair back, jolted him. He tamped down his reaction, told himself her touch was the same given to her brother.
She smiled then, the kind of smile that started the phase transition of ice to water to evaporation. All day long he had watched her as she moved about his lab, imagining the incredibly long legs under her skirts. Even the way she consumed those wretched cream puffs drove him mad, entering between her full lips, licking the cream from the side of her mouth with the right amount of seductiveness. It was best she left with Aunt Margaret to tea. At least he’d be able to breathe again.
When they were gone, he stared at the back of the door and a hushed void filled the laboratory. He sat in her vacated chair with nothing but silent air and the lavender and lemon scent from her body. Like long sharp needles, roots of loneliness crept through his insides. Anthony looked out the window, across the row of newly planted arborvitae and where a splattering of snow lay over a field of brown grasses. A frigid mist skirted the dark, grey woods. Ice covered gorse surrounded a lake’s edge, adding to the surrealness of the landscape and all at once, a flash of memory assailed him…
“I’m going out riding.” Celeste slapped her gloves across her hands with a youthful pout.
“Again? You are gone every day.” She was so young, seventeen summers and had hounded him with her peach-colored skin and bright violet eyes, and hair, the red-gold of amber.
Celeste trilled. “My Lord, you are busy in your lab and will not miss me. Besides, I love to ride.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. The only intimacy she allowed.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
She pursed her lips. “And take you away from your experiments? Wouldn’t think of it.”
Anthony shook his head sharply, straining to wipe away the unsettling memories. God, would it constantly be like this? Four long years had eclipsed, and still he was tormented by his inadequacy into looking after her, the past entombing him beneath a shadowy shroud.
Would he ever be free of Celeste? Would he have loved her if given more time? Was he capable of love? To experience a love like his mother and father who adored each other…a grab for the farthest reaches of the universe?
Hadn’t Celeste pursued him, treating Anthony with golden deference and worshipping everything he said? Smiles and warm charm, she had everyone convinced of her value. His mother had died in childbirth and Celeste had charmed the Duke from his melancholies.
“A good match…you are well past the time to marry, Anthony…”
If only he’d not been driven by his father into the fatal words, “I do.” To experience a new Celeste, remote and distant, faultfinding and disdaining while keeping up a public persona that said otherwise.
Independent of his father, Anthony had accrued a huge estate from his patents and investments. When Celeste discovered his assets, she spent huge amounts on her wardrobe, demonstrating a self-absorbed nature that Anthony credited to her immaturity. Since he was busy with his scientific pursuits, he allowed her childish behavior until she adjusted to married life.
Since Anthony’s father was a powerful duke and cousin to the King, she enjoyed and took full advantage of the prestige that gained her access to the best of England’s families. At first, Anthony attributed her insistence to attend every social occasion without him as part of her youthful zeal to experience life. Now as he thought back to that time, he had the distinct feeling, Celeste didn’t desire to be encumbered by a husband, she considered boring.
Whatever Anthony’s feelings were toward Celeste he did not live up to the principles ingrained in him since birth—to protect those for whom he
was responsible. His shameful neglect left him flawed and undeserving. If only he’d been insistent on accompanying Celeste. He could have prevented her death, and been less likely to endure disconnect from his family and the rest of society.
*
Anthony stalked through the heated press of guests dressed in pretentious silks and satins, jewels dripping from their necks. His mind directed on one objective, his icy gaze parted the crowd. If Rachel was to find a suitable husband, then by God he would make sure her prospects were the finest. Even if it meant his presence at a social entertainment he loathed. Aunt Margaret sat with two old harridans, chatting up a storm. “Where is she?”
His aunt drew herself up, then lifted that dratted ear horn in his face. He repeated his question, and then realized his aunt was going to launch a monologue dating back to the eleventh century’s William the Conqueror.
The orchestra stopped for a recess. Anthony wrinkled his nose from the overheated bodies and shrill laughter. A feverish murmur swept through the ballroom. He pivoted and followed their gazes to find her moving through the crowd.
The first time he laid eyes on Rachel in his laboratory, Anthony could barely get over her beauty. But this—this was beyond perfection. Both hypnotizing and enchanting, her refinement challenged ordinary souls. Didn’t the insinuation of defiance in her unflinching eyes afford her to be that much more bewitching?
The rich, auburn of her hair had been swept up in a gentle swirl, anchored by tiny diamonds. A mass of curls escaped, accentuating her shining blue eyes and arched sable brows. Her willowy figure well-served by a tight-waisted gown, the bodice boasting a row of diamante, plunging low to enhance the deep valley of her swelling breasts. Her pale throat was adorned with a string of diamonds that his father had lent her from the Rutland collection to add sparkle to the deep emerald green of her satin gown.
The sight of her arrested him as well as every hot-blooded man in the room. Delivered to his aunt’s side by Sir Martin, Rachel was quickly surrounded by a knot of men. His blood rose in temperature. Two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit, the exact temperature of boiling liquids.
From her clamoring legion of admirers, an older man and his son leaned into her, garnering her attentionoverlongin deep conversation that Anthony doubted had any intellectual acuity. She lifted her chin, and her smile brightened. Anthony viewed the scene through a red haze, and watched as she turned her attentions from one male to another, always smiling and nodding.
She caught sight of him and waved, a daring and refreshing vision of nature and empirical science. She moved to him then, and like a parting of the sea, her demanding admirers, protested the loss of their queen as she left them behind.
“Do you like my new dress?” she whispered.
Damn. His mind went awry, his tongue trussed in knots. His body temp scorched a few degrees higher. He could say imposing or stately beauty, no. Goddess-like, yes. Ravishing came to mind. Maybe breathtaking too, because he forgot to breathe for a few moments.
He cleared his throat. “Are you hinting for compliments, Miss Thorne?”
“Would you give me any? No, because you have an economy on words, Lord Anthony. However, I have had so many compliments tonight it would be silly to expect more.”
Touché. Miss Thorne didn’t just nip; she took a chunk out of him.
Aunt Margaret stood on her cane. “I was remarking on Miss Thorne’s popularity. So many gentlemen have promised to call on her. Don’t you think she is a grand success, Anthony?”
Like pouring vinegar in a cut.
“Here comes your good friend Lord Ward, and what a colorful spectacle. I am blinded by his scarlet velvet coat and yellow breeches,” said Aunt Margaret.
Lord Ward hosted a palette of hues more dazzling than a rainbow. Anthony analyzed the likelihood that Ward’s father mated with a peacock.
Although, in deep discussion with another scientist, Ward paused before them, feigning surprise at Anthony’s presence. “Oh, Lord Anthonyand the Patriot.”
“Good God, a Patriot?” said Ward’s companion, Sir Burns, insinuating the Rutland’s had invited a pack of rats.
Aunt Margaret glowered. “Her family are loyalists. At no time have they favored measures looking to forcible resistance and independence despite the British government’s impolitic and harsh actions disposed on the Colonies,” said Aunt Margaret daring Lord Ward and his friend to speak one more insult, she’d shoot them dead.
Regardless of the falsehood, Anthony marveled at his aunt’s eloquent support of Rachel and marveled at her sudden ability to hear so well. She fended off a catastrophe.
“My pardon, Lady Margaret,” said Lord Ward, “But I was caught in mid-discussion of a scientific matter and made an erroneous slip.”
Aunt Margaret projected her horn like a weapon. “Make sure you do not have a slip again. I know your grandmother very well. She would have an opinion.”
Lord Ward paled. Aunt Margaret didn’t just trump Ward, she kicked him in the throat.
“This is serious business,” interrupted Ward’s partner, Sir Burns, measuring up to the same vanity and buffoonery as Lord Ward. His allusion to Rachel as something nefarious raised the hackles on Anthony’s neck.
“I cannot possibly come to a conclusion without supportive corroboration,” said Burns.
Anthony scoffed. “Try an educated guess.”
Sir Burns gave Anthony a withering stare. “I have degrees from Oxford and Cambridge.”
Anthony bowed. “Then try an educated guess, Sir Burns. But you can’t because your work is tantamount to a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. Everyone knows you are a neck stretcher, copying other students’ exams, tossed out of both schools and barely earning one degree.”
Sir Burns shook his fist in Anthony’s face ready to strike. “You can blow your trumpet all you like, Lord Anthony, but the Royal Society will never shine on your doorstep.”
Aunt Margaret leaned in, her ear horn extended between the two men. “Sir Burp, did I hear you say you are working on a strumpet?”
From Aunt Margaret’s miscomprehension, everything happened all at once. Face purpling, Sir Burns stalked off followed by Lord Ward. Rachel’s lips twitched. Anthony stared at his father’s sister.
“I have a practiced eye for concealed disasters.” Aunt Margaret repeated the words Anthony had spoken about her in the laboratory. “It’s the job of auntie’s to interfere and protect their nephews.”
Anthony narrowed his eyes. “Your mind is sharper than one hundred axes and your tongue twice as sharp, not to mention how your hearing is selective.”
She leaned to listen with her dreadful ox horn. How he’d like to toss the bizarre instrument out the window.
“I’m old. I’ve earned the privilege of saying whatever I think.”
Rachel touched his arm. “Aunt Margaret prevented a brawl.”
“My nephew seems to be getting himself in many altercations of late. So unlike you, Anthony. You are always so staid and unadventurous.”
Anthony grunted.
“With all humility, I must admit that I’m better than average at clever remarks and have a flair for getting people to dislike me,” said Aunt Margaret.
“Not to mention that you could have started a war with your insults to Sir Burp.” Anthony tugged at his waistcoat. “Now you have me mispronouncing his name. And with humility?” He choked on that notion.
“Those qualities must be hereditary, don’t you think, Miss Thorne?” Aunt Margaret pressed a hand to her chest, and then turned to engage with the older woman beside her. How good she was at chopping him into little pieces.
Rachel giggled. “She is a genius of a woman. Do you think she really needs the ear horn?”
He tipped his head back and downed his drink. “The thought has crossed my mind.”
“Captain Johnson, is coming toward us. He is the brother of the recluse whose abandoned home we rode by two weeks ago when you gave me a tour of the estate. He is one
of the interesting people I’ve met this evening. I’ll remind you to take care of your remarks. Every time you speak, your mind is on parade.”
The sea captain bowed and raised his head like an old turtle, lifting his head out of the sand. “So good to see you again, Miss Thorne, Lord Rutland and Lady Margaret.”
Rachel bobbed up on her toes. “I’ve had a lovely conversation with Captain Johnson this evening. He lives in the village and has invited Aunt Margaret and me to tea.”
Captain Johnson pointed with his clay pipe, the bowl of which was a carved caricature of a bearded, turbaned Indian. “Miss Thorne has been charming me with how much she knows of ships. Never met a more knowledgeable female. Interesting, her theories on bilge pumps. And her knowledge on sailing and the seas. Why she could be one of those infamous Colonial privateers.”
Anthony choked, thankful Captain Johnson was pulled into conversation by Aunt Margaret before any questions could be asked about Rachel’s lineage. An elderly gentleman stepped in front of them and bowed. The din of the crowd prevented Anthony from catching his name.
“Miss Thorne, I have a question on our earlier discussion on some of the plants you described in the New World. Slippery Elm, Witch Hazel and Skull Cap. What again were their medicinal uses?”
Rachel warmed to the topic. “A tea of Slippery Elm is used for intestinal disorders, sore throat, gout and arthritis, we boil the stems of Witch Hazel to treat bruises, swelling and to stop bleeding. Skull Cap is a tonic for the kidney and female complaints.”
Anthony looked heavenward. She was an expert in botany?
“Miss Thorne absolutely bewitches me with her knowledge of plants and their medicinal uses. Fascinating, isn’t she?”
For the life of him, Anthony couldn’t remember who the gentleman was despite his nagging familiarity.
Rachel protested. “I cannot lay claim to the knowledge. Many of the treatments from these plants we learned from the Indians, Mr. Banks.”
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