“Depending on the amount inhaled,” Arthur said, “the effects range from disorientation and nausea to severe damage to the eyes and lungs. Two constables went in hospital after the attack with damaged lungs and partial blindness. Last night, one of them died.”
Lady Phoebe covered her mouth in sympathy.
“Why didn’t the rioters get sick as well?” Letty asked.
“At the top is a siphon,” Grey explained, “like the one created by Antoine Perpigna for carbonated water. The rioters aimed the siphons directly at the constabulary.”
“I’ve figured out the composition of their poison,” said Lady Greycliff. “Right now, the constables can use masks for protection, but the gas lingers. Any unlucky bystander could be affected. I have been developing a compound that neutralizes the gas in the air, but even with your help, it has been slow going.”
“The Omnis are waging a futile campaign.” Miss Fenley shook her head in resignation. “Violence won’t force the peerage to find their conscience. An attack on their wealth would have more of an impact.”
Grey peered down his nose at Miss Fenley. “Until you manage to unseat us amoral peers and upend centuries of political tradition, I’d like to prevent anyone else from suffering.”
Turning his back on her scowl, he addressed Lady Greycliff. “There are thirty or so members of Athena’s Retreat. All of them have family, friends, and even servants who might know of the club’s existence. Any of them might be behind the explosion.”
As her friends argued the impossibility of such a scenario, Lady Greycliff examined the glowing embers of the dying fire. An angry red scrape stood out against the ivory skin of her cheek. Arthur doubted she’d had time to clean it between fetching tea for the watch and soothing the frightened bystanders. She’d seen everyone off with words of comfort and promises that all would be as new by the end of the week.
If Arthur felt sorry for her, he’d break his cardinal rule: Never feel anything for his assignments.
That was all this beautiful woman should be to him.
An assignment.
“While Lady Greycliff develops an antidote,” Arthur said, “I will protect both her and the formula. I shall pose as the club’s majordomo, hired for extra security in light of the events of this evening.”
He turned his focus to the women seated before him.
In his training many years ago, he’d learned that any object could be a weapon.
A chair leg could double as a club or a sword. A hat could suffocate someone. A hairpin could deliver a lethal dose of poison to someone’s heart.
These three ladies could be turned to his advantage in this mission. The key was to think of them as objects, like anyone else who came into his life.
Merely a means to an end.
3
VIOLET SAID GOODBYE to Grey one last time, closed the door, and slumped against the wall. A pair of sinumbra lamps stood on either side of a large mirror in the foyer, their glass shades casting an eerie orange light across the black-and-white tiled floor.
When Violet’s husband was very ill, she would wander the house at night in between bouts of nursing him, hammering out the details of complex formulas in her head as death hovered in the background. Here in Beacon House, the night was never silent, and she was intimately familiar with the origin of every click and squeak.
Therefore, she addressed her remarks to the large shadow in a corner without having to see him.
“You are awfully quiet for such a large man. How do you do it?”
Arthur emerged from a shallow indentation beneath the staircase. Flickering light brushed the hollows of his sun-browned cheeks.
“I have had twenty years of practice,” he answered. “It pays to be quiet when one is a counterassassin. Even when hired at a discount.”
Violet chuckled. “I don’t expect you bargained for the three of us when Grey approached you,” she said. “He calls us ‘the coven,’ you know. Did they scare you?”
“Yes,” he said dryly.
Violet laughed in appreciation, happy a real person resided within the stoic figure. “Grey described the nature of your service before he left. He said the Queen offered you a medal ceremony after you saved Lord Dickerson, yet you refused.”
Appearing unimpressed by the Queen’s gesture, he moved away from the wall. Although his gaze remained fixed on her, Violet wouldn’t have been surprised if he had memorized the exact position of the cut-glass bowl on the entry table and how many sconces were attached to the wall behind him.
They regarded each other in the dim hallway without awkwardness, an odd familiarity between them after the strange events of the night. She’d learned the shape of him before she’d even learned his name.
“Although he failed to warn me of your friends,” Arthur said, “Grey did say you have a habit of collecting ladies under your wing.”
“Letty and Phoebe are founding members of Athena’s Retreat, not wounded birds. Although he complains when they are around, he misses them when they are not.” She leaned toward Arthur with a conspiratorial air. “He’ll never admit to it, however.”
“You care for Grey.”
“Yes,” she said.
Ah. With his tone, Arthur had asked a question without asking the question—an estimable talent.
“Grey’s father, Daniel, swept me off my feet the first month of my debut season.” A familiar ache began in the pit of her stomach as she explained. “He was the epitome of sophistication and romance. He made every other man seem slow and callow in comparison, despite his age.”
The low light kept Arthur’s reaction to this confession a mystery—if he had one.
“Grey mentioned his father was charismatic,” he said.
Violet tilted her head as she considered the word. “He projected such certainty—as if he had the answer to everything. As a young woman whose brain was filled with nothing but questions, I found this quality incredibly compelling.”
So compelling she’d ignored the concerns of her family and the tiny warnings in her own head and rushed into marriage. Daniel had been just as hasty. Worried about Grey’s health, he had believed a young wife would guarantee a chance at another child. He’d been enamored as well of the chance to mold a young woman with the promise of brilliance.
What they found most attractive about each other, however, quickly drove them apart. Daniel’s certainty made him judgmental and controlling. Violet’s brilliance did not spill over into the areas of politics and social maneuvering, where Daniel’s interests lay.
“Folks with small minds enjoy pointing out that Grey is a few years older than me,” she acknowledged.
Grey’s childhood struggle with the falling sickness had isolated him as a child, although his seizures were rare by the time they met. In the early years of her marriage to his father, she’d researched cures and dispelled old-fashioned notions of cold baths and bloodletting as relief. They’d formed a friendship that grew closer as his father’s flaws revealed themselves, but he’d left for the army soon after and rarely returned home, even after Daniel grew ill.
When the flood of midnight memories threatened to drown her, Violet cleared her throat and forced brightness into her tone, returning to Arthur’s question. “Although he is not my natural son, Grey is my family.”
Arthur cocked his head, hearing what she was not saying. This conversation beneath the conversation worked both ways.
He stood so still. His peace amid the chaos was what first drew her attention. As though an invisible circle of calm surrounded him. She wanted to cup her hand and dip it into that pool of calm, pour it over her or drink deep, whatever method necessary to find her own peace.
“Do you truly believe I am under threat?” This man was not one to waste his time. She asked anyway, hoping for a different answer. “Couldn’t the second-floor explosion have been a coinc
idence?”
“Grey has a nose for danger. He wouldn’t have asked me to stay in London and pay me what he’s paying me if he didn’t think your talents have made you a target.”
Violet sighed. “I’m not as gifted as he thinks.”
Her new protector moved closer, until her skirts brushed his shoes. Heat raced up her neck when she remembered his hand clasping the back of her head, his hips resting against hers, and the certainty of safety in his arms.
Her gloves had been dirtied and torn when she fell to the ground earlier. She’d left them off, and he caught her bare hand in his. In his large hands, her hand seemed alien—delicate and feminine rather than chapped and ungainly.
There were tiny scars across the backs of her hands and the tips of her fingers.
“Here is evidence you’ve performed a great many experiments.” The matter-of-factness of his voice contrasted with the deliberate stroke of his thumb over the mound of her palm.
How long had it been since a man had touched Violet intimately? Excitement woke the nerves beneath her skin.
“Is Grey wrong? Are you the most accident-prone chemist in Europe, rather than the most brilliant?”
“He is . . .” Violet had to clear her throat for words to emerge. “He is overestimating my abilities.”
Once again, she pictured the ferocity of Arthur’s gaze on her face as the world had exploded around them.
“More important than my safety is the well-being of the women in the club next door. They already risk so much to come here night after night and do their work. Grey understands my devotion to the club, and I am grateful he sent you to us. Until he returns, please consider Beacon House your home.”
Surprised at his cynical expression, she squeezed his hand. “You might find us unconventional. I like to think we are nevertheless a happy household. You must call me Violet.”
His jaw tensed for one moment before his expression froze into a mask of indifference. “I am your bodyguard. Not your friend. Not a guest. Grey is paying me money to stay here and keep you safe.”
A chill prickled the exposed skin of her neck at his words.
Arthur dropped her hand. “My task is to keep you alive and unhurt, nothing more nor less.”
No frost chilled his voice, and no disdain crossed his face. Nothing in his tone or manner gave any hint to the feelings within, but in a blink, he stood two feet away, hands behind his back.
The loss of his touch left her light-headed. “I did not mean to offend,” she said. “I meant to make you welcome in my home while you carry out your duties.”
“Don’t.” The word dropped between them like a rock tossed into the water and cleared away the sensual haze as effectively as an icy splash. “Let me do my job. Anything more than that, and you become a distraction. Distraction leads to failure. In my line of work, if I’ve failed, it means you are dead.”
* * *
A PLATE OF kippers on the table in front of him beheld Arthur with more sympathy than the ladies of Athena’s Retreat had last night. Lucky for him, they hadn’t witnessed his manner toward Lady Greycliff afterward.
What had Miss Fenley said? A bullet travels eight hundred and thirty feet per second. In the time it takes to look away, an assassin could complete their mission.
He’d seen it happen. Twenty years ago, Arthur had lost sight of his mission, and a man had died.
Pushing Violet away made sense. Must have been a trick of the light that made her smile appear to quaver, and her lively eyes turn wary and sad—nothing to do with him.
Now, his first morning on the job, he held a staring contest with his breakfast at a long oak table in the kitchen of Beacon House, an array of covered dishes set down the center. Around the table sat household staff in small clusters, talking and joking as they broke their fast, the smells of tea, eggs, porridge with nutmeg and cinnamon, salted mackerel, and rolls filling the air.
Mrs. Sweet walked among them, urging some to refill their plates, conferring with others about the chores ahead. The housekeeper exuded an aura of competence and dynamism, her dark brown skin glowing in the morning light coming through the sparkling kitchen windows. Turning her wide amber-colored eyes toward Arthur, she made her way to his side.
The staff, who had been peeking at him with curiosity since he’d planted himself among them, now turned his way.
“You will be happy to learn that Lady Greycliff has added to the staff at the club next door,” Mrs. Sweet announced. “Mr. Kneland will be serving as the Retreat’s majordomo.”
Violet had revealed to the housekeeper Arthur’s real purpose here. She spoke of her staff with as much warmth and affection as some might speak of their family and insisted that keeping secrets from Mrs. Sweet was impossible. To the rest of the domestics, he was simply a new hire.
“Thank you, Mrs. Sweet,” he said. “It is obvious to me that you run this house with maximum efficiency and to great success. I see my role as taking the burdens off your shoulders, ensuring the security of Athena’s Retreat, and trying to keep the business of the club separate from what goes on in Beacon House.”
The staff approved. A few sighs of relief mingled in with their respectful nods.
Arthur wished the coven could take their lessons from the members of Lady Greycliff’s household. As Mrs. Sweet introduced each of them to Arthur, they pledged their enthusiastic participation in any changes he might soon make. By the end of the afternoon, Arthur had a thorough overview of daily life in Beacon House. The servants were happy, well paid, and devoted to Lady Greycliff.
This was a problem.
What he needed were a few broken windows that awaited repairs, unpaid coalmen, and anonymous late-night visitors who gained access from secret entrances.
“If they don’t pay the coalman, he has a grudge, alongside access to a house. It is the first place someone wanting to make mischief would enter and, therefore, the first place they would be caught,” Arthur explained later in Mrs. Sweet’s sitting room.
When he first called on her, he’d had a nasty shock. Shelves full of glass jars filled with various internal organs suspended in colored liquids ran up one wall. Opposite those shelves hung a fully articulated human skeleton.
When his gaze fell on a sheaf of paper illustrated with intricate anatomical drawings, he finally twigged to Mrs. Sweet’s identity.
“Is every woman in this house a scientist?” he’d asked. “Is little Alice an ornithologist? Cook, is she a mathematician?”
“Don’t be silly. Alice’s interests lie in celestial mechanics, not zoology. I am studying to be a physician,” Mrs. Sweet answered. “That is, I am conducting preliminary studies on my own until I find a medical college to accept me.”
Arthur sighed and took a seat. Mrs. Sweet hoped some medical college would take her? He’d never heard of a female doctor, let alone a Black female doctor.
Hope was a rare and precious commodity, especially in London. Around every corner stood an edifice to abandoned prospects and loss of faith. He said nothing, therefore, about her aspirations. It would do no good; dreams were sticky things, not easily banished.
He changed the subject to household scheduling while she laid out a tea tray. A plate of unappetizing biscuits lay between them—Mrs. Sweet did not approve of cakes—but the grassy peach smell of Darjeeling was pleasant enough.
“Too much sugar leads to a bilious liver,” she explained.
His mam’s kitchen was never without the scent of shortbread in the air. The silvery chime of his sister’s laugh sounded in his ears, and a stray memory of how few tarts arrived from the oven to the table caused his stomach to rumble at the same time his throat tightened with loss.
Memories of his wee sister had ambushed him since he’d returned to England. The smell of crushed gorse and treacle would stop him in his tracks, and more than once he’d turned at the sound of tiny
feet running behind him.
Hers wasn’t the only ghost to greet his homecoming, however.
“I suppose that makes sense.” Mrs. Sweet’s voice pulled him back to the present when she referred to his earlier observations regarding coalmen. “Our staff is devoted to Lady Greycliff. She is exceptionally kind to the staff and more than generous with workmen and shopkeepers,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean you have fewer people to worry about?”
“It makes my work more difficult,” he explained. “Say the lady received nighttime visitors. The maids wouldn’t tell me. They’d want to protect her reputation. That leaves me ignorant of whether someone from outside has easy access to her bedroom window. A vulnerable point that an assassin could exploit.”
Mrs. Sweet clucked in disdain. “I can assure you, Mr. Kneland, there are no sorts of immoral goings-on in this house. Lady Greycliff has had no visitors upstairs since her husband died.”
Arthur chose to ignore the treacherous rush of satisfaction at that statement and held up a hand to halt her scold. “I put forth a hypothetical scenario. I am certain Lady Greycliff is a model of respectability.” And loneliness? She was thirty years of age. With her beauty and good humor, why wasn’t she remarried? “I am simply pointing out that your happy household makes my task more difficult.”
Difficult or not, Arthur would treat this assignment like any other.
No matter how appealing his charge.
* * *
“AND THIS ROOM here functions as the club stillroom. As you can see, our herbs are labeled clearly. Saffron, sage, and so forth. You won’t see anything out of the ordinary, Arthur.”
Her bodyguard grimaced at the sound of his given name, but Violet refused to treat the man who might have to step between her and sudden death as though he were of no account.
Earlier today, she’d stopped in the kitchen and almost missed him sitting in a corner, chatting quietly to two of the footmen. Wearing black trousers and a dull grey coat, he resembled any other household servant. Shoulders stooped, weary feet propped on the bottom rung of another chair, he blended in with his surrounds, transformed from the vigilant and capable man she met the other night.
A Lady's Formula for Love Page 3