Her late husband had complained that Violet had no interest in any man who could not match her intellect. He said her failure as a hostess was because she didn’t appreciate the company of those who preferred dancing to distillation.
Untrue. She enjoyed speaking with anyone who had a passion for what they did, whether a master carpenter or a member of Parliament.
Arthur Kneland was good at what he did, and she found it fascinating. She found him fascinating—every single bit of him. Nothing piqued Violet’s interest more than a mystery, and this man’s enigmatic demeanor hinted at secrets long buried.
“So if anyone were to wander through the club, it would appear to be a mirror image of a men’s club,” he said.
“Exactly. We present a benign facade to London. Instead of a billiards room, we have a stillroom. Instead of a cardroom, we have a crafting room,” she said. “Even without revealing the depth of our secret scientific endeavors, the general public has become fascinated with us, and the press has seized hold of the idea. This is why Letty and Phoebe conceived the idea of an evening’s entertainment. Society can come and see for themselves we do nothing out of the ordinary. Hopefully, we’ll be left alone after that.”
Arthur agreed. “Yes,” he said, “it would be for the best if society lost interest in this place.”
His dismissal disappointed her. Then again, why would this man be sympathetic to their work? Violet smoothed her skirts to hide her dismay.
Baskets heaped with dried petals stood to one side and the powdery scent of lavender filled the space between them.
“The fewer people aware of the club, the safer you’ll be,” he continued.
Last night, Violet had deliberated long and hard about Arthur’s abrupt distancing in the hallway—truthfully, she’d deliberated about the long and hard of him. It took her ages to fall asleep.
What he’d said gave her pause. In his line of work, diversion from duty could get someone killed.
Was it not the same for her, in less dramatic terms? Athena’s Retreat served as a sanctuary for its members. If her focus wavered, what would become of them?
Violet resolved to ignore Arthur’s appeal and turn her mind to proper, ladylike concerns. There were refreshments to order and activities to plan—no time for speculation about the man standing so close in the dark.
“There are any number of stories about your club in the broadsheets,” he said.
“Ah, yes. We wish to corrupt women by encouraging radical ideas.” Violet began ticking off the most popular rumors. “Learning outside the home arts is dangerous to our fragile minds, leading us to contemplate even more disturbing subjects, such as politics or, even worse, suffrage. Also, we are unattractive and unmarriageable and must seek out one another’s company to commiserate.”
There were other stories out there, far more risqué, and even cruel. Violet assumed he’d heard them as well, but he gave no sign. “Why do men find the idea of our club so objectionable?” she asked.
“Men get nervous when women enjoy themselves without their company. You might discover that we are of limited use.” Arthur answered in a dry tone, arms crossed over his chest.
“Oh, men have their uses,” she said without thinking.
The constant roving of his gaze stilled.
For the love of . . . Violet had to stop saying things like that. How was she to convince society that Athena’s Retreat was respectable if she couldn’t tame her tongue?
“I meant to say there is more than one use for a man.”
Wait. That didn’t sound right, either.
He took pity on her and changed the subject. “Do the rumors make you angry?” he asked.
Was that a note of sympathy in his voice?
Violet searched his face for a hint of why he might have asked her such an odd question. He gave her nothing but the slightest tilt of his head, as if asking why she wouldn’t answer.
Difficult to read a man like Arthur Kneland in the dark.
Difficult to read him anytime.
“Ladies don’t get angry,” she explained, Daniel’s voice echoing behind the words. “We might, on occasion, be out of sorts, but only behind closed doors.”
Her attempt at lightheartedness sounded flat and tinny in the small space, and Arthur nodded as if he hadn’t heard the lie.
“Shall we continue our tour?” she asked.
As she passed, he stilled her with the touch of his fingertips. It had the force of a grip, so attuned was she to his body.
“Yes?” she asked, amazed she could even push the words past her lips.
“You are correct,” he said in a low voice.
“About what?”
Sidling closer, the slow glide of a wolf across the darkness of the forest floor, he bent his head to murmur in her ear. “Us men, we do have our uses.”
Violet’s rock-solid resolve to remain unaffected melted into a puddle as Arthur preceded her out the door.
4
WHAT IF WE had a replica of Mount Vesuvius instead of a punch bowl,” Violet said, “and the punch flows up from the bottom via a hidden pump?”
A volley of nos came hurtling toward her from different corners of the room with such emphasis that if words were stones, she’d have been black-and-blue.
“We’re trying to keep our experiments secret,” Phoebe declared, “including any recent discoveries in mechanical engineering. No pumps.”
“That makes sense,” Violet said with forced cheer.
Six women sat in the club’s small meeting room and bent their heads together, continuing their discussion of decorations for the upcoming event, Milly and Willy among them. Violet perched on a chair to one side of the circle, eager to be included. Entertaining might never have been her forte, but the success of the evening mattered so much to the women of the club that she wanted to contribute something.
“We’ve heard back from a number of ladies’ journals,” Letty announced. “Three of them have agreed to print articles on the many charitable works our club members engage in, and—”
“We do charitable works?” Willy inquired of no one in particular.
“Putting up with your explosions is charitable on my part,” Phoebe muttered.
“As I was saying”—Letty’s voice rose—“our respectability cannot be in doubt if the public is to accept Athena’s Retreat. Now, does anyone else have suggestions?”
A cheerful fire crackled in counterpoint to soft, cultured voices as members finalized details. Each of Violet’s suggestions met with pained looks and murmured declinations. Even Milly’s ludicrous desire to serve lemonade made from dried, powdered, and then reconstituted lemons received more consideration than Violet’s ideas. She’d discovered the meeting by accident when she caught sight of Phoebe’s cloak over Winthram’s arm and went in search of her.
A more suspicious woman would think her friends were trying to exclude her.
Letty leaned over and patted Violet’s knee, speaking in a quiet voice. “I’m certain we can put your proposals into use at another event. We’ve already decided on a presentation of household innovations, a quick lecture and, finally, a few sets of country dancing.”
The plans made sense. Violet sat back in her chair without interrupting again. Examining a row of stitches coming undone on her glove, she ignored the sting of hurt at the wariness with which the ladies regarded her—as though she were a maddened horse that might bolt.
The door opened, and a new servant entered, making his way over to Arthur, who’d been observing the meeting for the past hour. Arms crossed, mouth stern, he resembled a menhir, one of the old standing stones in the north. Vigilant and unmoving.
The servant’s name was Thomas. Although Violet liked him, it irked her that, without any discussion, Arthur had supplemented her staff with people of his choosing. The result was that she was never m
ore than a few steps away from him or someone he had trained. Such scrutiny made her uncomfortable and added to the nervousness she suffered as the night of the event drew near.
“You cannot be parsimonious with candles,” Phoebe chastised. “These are the upper tiers of society. The rooms will reek of tallow.”
Letty crossed her arms and sniffed. “We are paying for candles out of club funds. The high cost of beeswax may not have occurred to you, Lady Phoebe. Every extra expense diverts money from purchasing instruments and materials for the members’ work.”
Over the past few months, Violet’s friends had been clashing more often.
They’d always been an unlikely trio.
“Brains, brass, and beauty,” Phoebe had quipped about the three of them during their first planning meeting.
They’d met a few years before Daniel died. At a particularly boring ball hosted by Phoebe’s father, the Marquess of Larkbrough, Violet had snuck off to the library and, to her great delight, found a copy of Avogadro’s seminal work on the relative masses of elementary molecules. She’d been lost in the familiar pages when the door to the library flew open.
Backlit from the hallway, a tall figure posed at the entrance, wearing a diamond-and-emerald-encrusted tiara, which shimmered outrageously. Much like its owner.
“Excuse me. You must find somewhere else to cower. I am in anticipation of a fumbling yet amusing attempt at seduction in the next five minutes, and my would-be lothario has no taste for public approbation.”
“I beg your pardon,” Violet apologized, impressed by the young woman’s aplomb, not to mention her vocabulary. She marked the page with her thumb. “I will absent myself at once.”
The stranger held up a hand clad in an elbow-length velvet glove. “One moment.” She strode to the center of the room and pointed at the book in Violet’s hands. “Is that the work of Amedeo Avogadro? Where do you stand on his theory of equal volumes of gas containing equal volumes of elementary molecules?”
Violet’s mouth dropped open in surprise at this exquisitely coiffed noblewoman’s familiarity with the Piedmontese scientist and his controversial theory. Although many women of the aristocracy were well educated, it had become unfashionable to flaunt such knowledge.
“Is he the fellow who posited that the pressure of a gas of fixed mass and volume is proportional to the gas’s temperature?” a third woman asked as she hurried into the library, squinting in the dim light, first at Violet, then at Phoebe. “Or was that Gay-Lussac?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Resting her fists on her narrow hips, the tiny woman cocked her head, examining Violet with interest.
“You’re Lady Greycliff,” the woman said to her. “You have a reputation as an eccentric.” Her gaze swung around to Phoebe. “And you have a reputation as well, Lady Phoebe. My brother, Sam, was supposed to be escorting me tonight. I’m desperate to leave, but he’s gone and disappeared on me.” The interloper inspected the noblewoman with suspicion. “You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“But . . . but . . .” Violet clasped the book to her chest, buoyed with excitement. “How do you know Avogadro?” she asked the tall beauty. “And what do you know of Gay-Lussac?” she asked the petite blonde.
Thus began the first of many nights spent arguing, laughing, and drinking purloined port while the rest of London danced around them.
Rare as it was for a woman as wellborn as Phoebe to be engaged in science, Letty’s education was even more extraordinary, considering her humble background. Despite their differences in class and temperament, Letty and Phoebe worked hand in glove to bring their dream of a haven for like-minded women into fruition. These days, the club ran smoothly, but their disparities frequently came to the fore. Letty had less patience with Phoebe’s deliberate provocations, and Phoebe itched beneath Letty’s scolds.
Violet loved them both. She admired their courage and outspokenness but wished that sometimes, such as right now, they were more like her: able to quash her anger, clench her teeth, and paste over everything with a placid expression.
A marvelous idea popped into her head, and Violet leaned forward in excitement. “I’ve a letter from a friend in Guernsey. She has an acquaintance, Mr. Warren De la Rue, who has been experimenting with electricity and a way to use it indoors to provide lighting. What if we lit the dance floor . . . ?”
Her words trailed off at the sight of Letty trying to rearrange her features from horrified to interested, eyeballs bulging as if she’d swallowed a twist of peppercorns. All the women in the room wore the same expression, except for Phoebe.
“Darling,” Phoebe drawled. “You are the most brilliant woman I know, aside from myself, but conducting electricity inside of a crowded ballroom? We don’t want another Saga of the Sagging Spoons or the Attack of the Lurid Langoustines.”
A few women laughed, and Letty scowled so fiercely in their direction they developed hiccups.
Violet summoned her composure. “I was eighteen when that happened.”
“You were the most infamous hostess in London,” Phoebe reminded her. “We want to lull this crowd into believing we are a group of boring bluestockings who are fascinated by the cleaning properties of lemon juice and the life cycle of asters.”
One of the older members, Lady Potts, shifted in her chair and sent a withering glance in Phoebe’s direction.
“If you wish to lull anyone into thinking you are harmless, Lady Phoebe, stop challenging young men to duels during dinner parties,” she admonished.
“Pfft.” Phoebe waved away the warning. “Any man who tries to put their hands where they don’t belong should know I will call them out.”
Anxious to continue, Letty raised her voice over the laughter. “It would be too dangerous to have anyone question how we managed to install electrical lighting without burning down the club.”
“Maisy White could have figured that out,” said Milly wistfully. The room fell silent at the name, and Violet pressed a hand to her stomach. Even Phoebe’s smirk fell away.
A deep voice cut across their chatter. “There will be no Evening of Edification—”
“Elucidation,” piped Willy.
“. . . if we don’t repair the damages caused by the unfortunate explosion of the other night,” Arthur said from behind Violet’s chair. She hadn’t even heard his approach. “Lady Greycliff, have you a moment to spare to advise me on how you would like the work to be carried out?”
Letty frowned. She’d complained more than once in the past week about Arthur’s constant presence. Phoebe, keen to stir the pot, took the opposite position. “How titillating, Violet, if you showed Mr. Kneland the site of your almost-demise.”
“Why bother Lady Greycliff with such an errand?” Letty objected. “She can send for Winthram.”
No longer able to tolerate their squabbling, Violet stood. “Excellent idea, Mr. Kneland. I should take stock of what might be salvageable. We’ll need to watch our shillings if Phoebe has her way.”
Arthur said nothing as he followed her toward the unobtrusive doorway that closed off the hidden parts of the club from the public areas.
She heard him anyway.
“I understand why they declined my offers of help,” she said as if to herself. “Most of my domestic experiments were dramatic failures. The story of the langoustines is infamous.” Stopping at the door, she peered back over her shoulder at him.
He held her stare, the familiar intensity tempered with a softer emotion. Sympathy? He seemed too hard a man to condone such feelings.
Shrugging off the urge to defend herself, Violet walked up the stairs toward the smoke-stained room, stopping when she spied the door to a chemistry lab left ajar.
“That door is supposed to be cl—”
Before she could finish her sentence, he’d pulled her behind him. Pressed against his back, she couldn’t see a thing over his broad shoulders so Viol
et leaned in and sniffed the delicious aroma of male and soap. When he stepped into the lab, she almost fell forward.
“Stay,” he ordered. The command set off a tiny wave of excitement. A strange, tickling awareness in her body woke at the dark rumble of his voice.
After a moment, he appeared at the door and allowed her inside. Someone had been careless. A cupboard stood open, exposing chemicals to the light.
“These are volatile,” she explained as she cleared up. “This laboratory and the storage cabinet upstairs are designed specially in case of fires.” She pointed to buckets of sand in the corner of the room. “With certain chemicals, water will make a fire worse.”
Arthur inspected the buckets while Violet gave a brief explanation of combustion, then he wandered over to the washbasin. Turning a spigot, he nodded in approval when water streamed into the basin, then through a strainer into another pipe. “I saw something similar in a home when I was in America,” said Arthur. “There, the pipes were hidden.”
“America.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Is it as exciting as I imagine?”
Arthur grimaced. “I’d prefer being hit over the head with a dozen flying armchairs than going back to America. The people are loud, everything is needlessly outsized, and you cannot find a decent biscuit.”
He surveyed the room, taking in the details of the work space. “I’ve never seen anything like this place. From the facade of the public rooms to the details of the laboratories, your club is an incredible accomplishment.”
The compliment’s matter-of-fact delivery shook her. Arthur spoke so rarely each of his words carried the weight of truth, as though he could not spare the energy to tell a lie. Happy warmth shot to her toes.
“An odd endeavor for a widow,” he continued. No censure laced his words. “Was this a legacy of Grey’s father? If he’d lived, would you have built this together?”
A Lady's Formula for Love Page 4