by Lauren Royal
She turned, blinking when she saw Lord Lakefield. Silver braid gleamed on his deep gray velvet suit, rather fancy for an afternoon at home. But she had to admit he looked divine.
Feeling underdressed in her plain russet gown, she licked her suddenly dry lips. “Good afternoon, my lord.”
“Please, just call me Ford,” he said with a smile.
That was so improper, she wasn’t sure what to say in return. Should she ask him to call her Violet? Would doing so invite too much familiarity? The oldest of four, she knew how to deal with children, but men remained a mystery. Especially eligible, handsome men—and Viscount Lakefield was by far the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
His smile faded. “Violet?”
Egad, he was calling her Violet already. Perhaps she should just try his name in her head. Ford. It seemed to fit. But when she opened her mouth, it felt entirely too scandalous to say aloud. She seemed to have lost her tongue.
This was ridiculous.
Evidently her silence had stretched long enough. “I’m just going to call you Violet,” he said blithely. “We’re neighbors, after all. Rowan, my man, what have you there?”
“A cup and ball.” Bang, bang. “Lady Jewel gave it to me.”
“Did she? I wonder where she got that old thing?”
Violet tore her gaze from the viscount—Ford—and glanced at the toy. “It does look rather used,” she said, finally finding her voice. “Ancient, actually.”
“Harry gave it to me,” Jewel said.
Ford nodded. “My equally ancient houseman.”
His housekeeper walked in and set a pitcher of ale on the table. “Is that what my husband was doing with you? I was wondering what you two were up to this morning. That toy once belonged to our son—did Harry tell you that?”
Jewel nodded, then her voice took on that flirting quality. “Isn’t Rowan good at it?”
“Very,” Ford said, sharing a smile with Violet that caught her by surprise. Clearly he was on to his niece’s ploys. He waved Violet toward a chair. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I’ll be back,” Hilda said, “after I get my tart out of the oven.”
Seating himself beside Violet, Ford reached for the ale and her cup. At Trentingham Manor, servants did the serving. For a nobleman, he didn’t seem to have very many. “How was your afternoon?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said, watching him pour. He had very nice hands, long fingers and square nails. She wracked her brain for a topic of conversation. “I’m reading a book by Francis Bacon.”
He filled the children’s cups, adding water to both. “Philosophy?” he asked, his tone cool but courteous.
“Yes.”
“Of course. You did mention you study philosophy.” He poured himself some ale, then drank like he needed it. “And what does Francis Bacon have to say?”
She sipped while she thought of a reply, wondering why she cared so much that he liked her. “He believes in liberty of speech.”
“That’s admirable.” He drained his cup.
“He thinks knowledge and human power are synonymous.”
He smiled vaguely as he refilled it.
“Do you agree?” she asked, feeling more awkward by the moment.
“Oh, yes. Yes, I do.”
She sighed with relief when Hilda waddled in with four plates and started setting one in front of each of them. A welcome distraction. Steam from the plain apple tart wafted to Violet’s nose, smelling delicious. She lifted her spoon.
“I don’t like apples,” Rowan said. “Do you have cherry tart?”
“Do you have manners?” Hilda retorted with a glare. Muttering to herself, she left the room.
Violet wanted to slip beneath the table. “Francis Bacon says,” she rushed out, “that if a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”
Ford finally looked interested. “That sounds very much like the new science. One puts forth an assumption and then endeavors to prove it.”
“So then,” she said, warming to the subject, “perhaps philosophy and science are compatible.”
“Perhaps they are.”
He looked surprised or dubious; she wasn’t sure which. She wished she could see him clearer.
“You know,” he said, “some philosophers belong to the Royal Society.”
Bang, bang.
“Rowan,” she said quietly. “We’re trying to talk.”
For once in her life, she was enjoying a conversation with a man.
Bang.
“Rowan!” Her voice was sharper than she’d intended, and her brother looked up in midtoss, the toy flying out of his hand. It hit the wall with a thwack, and she grimaced.
“Sorry,” Rowan muttered.
“What was that?” Hilda asked, hurrying in to investigate the noise.
“A mistake.” Rowan rose to go fetch the toy—or rather, he attempted to. How odd. From where Violet sat, her brother seemed unable to rise. His feet didn’t reach the floor, but he put his hands on the seat and pushed, his face turning red with strain.
Jewel burst out laughing.
“Jewel,” Ford murmured. “You didn’t.”
“Oh-oh-oh, yes, I did,” she chortled. “D-don’t you th-think he deserved it?”
“Deserved what?” Violet asked. “What did you do to him?”
“She stuck me,” Rowan said, and for a moment, Violet thought he meant with a pin. But he wasn’t crying—in fact, he didn’t even look angry. He didn’t look happy, either. He just looked blank. “She stuck me to the chair.”
“With what?” she asked, aghast.
“Harry,” Hilda muttered dangerously, bustling from the room. “I’ll kill the man.”
“I stuck him with glue,” Jewel explained proudly between giggles. “And mud to make it brown so he wouldn’t see it on the chair. And the toy was to make him sit down without noticing.”
Violet felt as blank as Rowan looked. Her mouth hung open. When Ford reached over and pushed up on her chin to close it, she hadn’t enough wits about her to even chide him for touching her. “What—how—why—” she stammered.
“It was a jest,” he clarified. “A practical joke.”
“A jest,” she murmured.
“A Chase family tradition.” He turned to his niece with a grin. “Most especially Jewel’s father’s tradition.”
Jewel hiccupped. “Tell me again about Papa’s pranks. One from long ago.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment, deep in memory. “Once, when I was young, Colin tied me to a chair while I was sitting there reading a book.” He leaned back, lifting his ale. “In some way or other—to this day I haven’t figured out how—he managed to get the rope around my body but not my arms or hands, so I didn’t notice.”
For some reason, Violet found it all too easy to picture him not noticing.
Rowan stopped kicking. “What happened?”
“He left.” Ford paused for a sip. “The knots were behind the chair, so even after I did notice, I couldn’t reach them. I yelled for help, but the only response was the sound of his laughter.”
Envisioning that, too, Violet’s lips twitched. “Did he rescue you?”
“Hours later. I’d nearly finished the book.”
“You just kept reading?” she asked with a barely suppressed smile. Faith, even she wouldn’t read under those circumstances.
“What else could I do?” he said dismissively. “At least Rowan here won’t have to wait so long.” Setting down his ale, he rose. “Let me free you, my man,” he said, lifting Rowan into his arms, chair and all.
Suddenly, seeing her brother hanging in midair stuck to a chair, and visualizing a bookish young Ford the same way, the smile that had been threatening broke free on Violet’s face. Jewel was right. Given Rowan’s petulance, he deserved the jest, and a rollicking good one it was, too.
“More stories,” Jewel said.
“Later, baby.�
� Carrying Rowan out the door, Ford flashed his niece a grin. “Colin will be proud of you when he hears this one.”
And Violet had thought the Ashcrofts were eccentric.
Ten
“ALL RIGHT, ROWAN. Let’s see what we can do here.” Ford set the chair down in his laboratory and turned away to locate a beaker.
“Holy Hades,” Rowan said.
Shocked at the youngster’s language, Ford swiveled back and stared.
“Pardon.” But the lad didn’t look sorry. “What are all these things?”
Ford let his gaze wander the chamber’s contents, trying to see it through the boy’s eyes. A full quarter of the huge attic space was filled with ovens and bellows, a furnace, cistern, and a still. Mismatched shelves held scales, drills, and funnels. Magnets, air pumps, dissecting knives, a pendulum, and numerous bottles of chemicals sat haphazardly on several tables. More things were shoved into half-opened chests of drawers. A larger table beneath the window—Ford’s workbench—was littered with the inner workings of several dismantled watches.
It was Ford’s playroom, and he was happier here than anywhere else. “Scientific instruments, mostly.” He grabbed a beaker. “That’s a microscope,” he added, waving behind him.
“What does it do?”
“It magnifies. You can put something beneath the lens and see it up close.” Forgetting the task at hand, Ford reached to a table for a book. “Here, look at this. Micrographia. It was written by a man named Robert Hooke.” Opening the red leather cover, he set the book in Rowan’s lap.
Rowan looked down at the title page. “‘Some Phys-phys—’”
“Physiological,” Ford said.
“That’s a big word.” The boy read the next words slowly and carefully. “‘…Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Mag—’”
“Magnifying.”
“‘Magnifying Glasses with…’”
“‘Observations and Inquiries Thereupon,’” Ford finished for him. “The book is drawings of things seen under a microscope.”
Unlike Jewel, Rowan apparently didn’t mind help. Nodding, he turned to a random page and gawked. “Whatever is this?”
“One of the pictures Hooke drew. Of a feather. That’s what it looks like very close up.”
“Zounds.” Rowan stared for a moment, then flipped the page. “What is this?”
“A louse.” Ford unfolded the large illustration, revealing the insect in all its horrible glory. The creature was oddly shaped, with a conical head and big goggling eyes.
Goggling himself, Rowan lifted a hand to his hair. “That’s what lice look like?”
“Up close, bigger than the eye can see alone.” Pleased that Rowan was interested, Ford teased him with an expression of horror. “You don’t have any lice, do you?”
“I hope not. I don’t think so. Not now.” Tugging his fingers from his hair, the boy turned to another drawing. “This is a spider?”
Filling the beaker from the cistern, he glanced over. “A shepherd spider.”
“It’s particularly ugly,” Rowan said, his tone one of fascinated glee.
Remembering the glue, and his guest waiting downstairs, Ford rescued the book. “This is in the way.”
As he set Micrographia on a table, Rowan’s eyes followed it covetously. “May I take it home?”
“No.” Ford sensed an opportunity. “But you can look at it whenever you’re here.”
“When may I come back?”
“To play with Jewel?” He knelt by the lad’s chair and, after removing his shoes, poured the water over his lap.
“Zounds, that’s cold!”
“It’ll dissolve the glue.” Standing, he attempted to pull the boy off the chair by gripping him under the armpits. “I thought you didn’t like Jewel.”
At that, Rowan squirmed.
“Hold still, will you?” Ford put a foot on the chair’s lower rung to keep it on the floor. “You’ve certainly seemed to do your best to avoid her so far. And after this trick—”
“It was clever,” the boy admitted.
“Yes, it was.”
“Lady Jewel is…different,” Rowan said. “I’ve never met a girl who would plan what she did. My sisters sure would never. Lily cares only for her animals, and Rose only wants to go to balls. And Violet…Violet always has to learn new things. Can you imagine a girl liking to study?”
Yes, Ford agreed silently, Violet was the oddest of the bunch. Certainly nothing like the type of woman he’d be looking for if he hadn’t sworn off women altogether.
While he mused on that, Rowan’s breeches finally came unstuck with an impressive sucking sound. Ford knelt to unlace them and began to pull them down.
“No!” The lad’s hands clenched on Ford’s shoulders. “I’ll be arse-naked.”
“Well, you can’t sit or lean on anything wearing those.” Ford sighed. “I’ll go find you some clean breeches. Stay where you are,” he added before taking himself off. “And don’t touch anything.”
When he returned a few minutes later, Rowan waved a hand at some bottles of chemicals. “What are those for?”
“Alchemy.” Ford made a show of shutting the door behind him. “There. You’re safe from prying eyes.”
The boy pulled off his breeches and hurried to put Ford’s on. “What’s alchemy?” he asked, gazing down at the gaping waistband with dismay.
“Alchemy is a science.” Ford leaned to tug the laces tighter, but it was hopeless. He scanned the tables and shelves, searching for twine, silently cursing himself for the room’s usual state of disarray. “We alchemists—King Charles is one, too—are working to find the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Rowan clutched the brown breeches with both hands. “Violet likes philosophy.”
“Well, the Philosopher’s Stone has little to do with philosophy. It’s a name for a secret—a way to turn other metals into pure gold.”
“Holy Ha—” The boy caught himself this time. “I mean…can you do that?”
“No. Or not yet—no one can. But many are trying. It’s said that in days past, men have accomplished it more than once, but the secret has always been lost.” Finally spotting the twine, he walked over to fetch it.
“Why didn’t the men write it down?”
“At least one did, in a book—a very ancient book called Secrets of the Emerald Tablet. But the book is lost, too.”
“Are you looking for it?”
“No. It’s been lost for a very long time. Nearly three centuries.” He knelt by the boy. “After all that time, perhaps lost isn’t the right word. I suspect it was probably destroyed.”
“Maybe in a fire,” Rowan suggested, sounding fascinated at the prospect.
“Maybe.” Making a mental note to keep the lad far from combustibles, Ford bunched the breeches around his waist and circled it with the twine. “But if the secret has been figured out before, it stands to reason we should be able to repeat that success, doesn’t it? That’s what half of this equipment is for,” he concluded, knotting the twine tightly. “Alchemy.”
The crotch of the breeches hung to the boy’s knees, and the kneebands to his ankles, but he didn’t seem to notice. Evidently relieved to be decently covered at last, he smiled happily and lifted a bottle of bright yellow fluid.
His eyes gleamed when he looked back to Ford. “Can I help you find the philosophy rock?”
“Philosopher’s Stone.” Ford considered. He could turn this interest to his advantage. “Maybe. Maybe you and Jewel together can help me.”
Rowan set down the bottle. “Maybe she’ll teach me some practical jokes.”
“I’m sure your mother would love that,” Ford said dryly. But his heart took flight. Finally, Lady Trentingham’s plan seemed to be working—thanks to Jewel’s prank.
Whoever would have thought?
“Let’s go down,” he said. “Hilda will be mighty vexed if we don’t finish her tart.”
As Ford led him from the room, Rowan gave a wistful sigh. “What
other science do you do?”
“Astronomy, mathematics, physics, physiology…”
The boy jumped down the staircase one step at a time. Clunk. A step. “I hate mathematics.” Clunk. Another step.
“But mathematics can be fascinating. Like a puzzle.”
Clunk. “Not when Mr. Baxter teaches it.”
“Mr. Baxter?”
“My tutor.” Clunk. Clunk. “He’s boring.” Around they went, past the middle level to the ground floor, Rowan clunking all the long way. “Jewel said you can show me the stars.”
“Indeed. If you’re here of an evening.”
“Really?” At the bottom, Rowan pushed past him and ran straight into the dining room. “Violet!”
Arriving in the chamber, Ford saw her gaze sweep the boy from head to toe. She bit her lip—to keep from laughing, he was sure—but her eyes danced with humor as she looked pointedly to Jewel.
“I’m sorry about your clothes,” Jewel told Rowan obediently, if not quite sincerely. Clearly Violet had had a talk with her in the men’s absence.
Rowan shrugged. “That’s all right.” Hitching up Ford’s too-long breeches, he turned to his sister. “Lord Lakefield says if I play with Jewel, he’ll show me science. And the stars. Will you bring me?”
“You’re willing to play with Jewel?” A note of incredulity tinged Violet’s voice. “After what she did?”
“She’s not like other girls. Will you bring me again tonight? To see the stars?”
She looked hesitant, but perhaps intrigued as well.
“You’re certainly welcome,” Ford rushed to tell her. “It looks to be a clear night.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
Ford mentally crossed his fingers. If Rowan could persuade her to bring him back, surely he’d tire of seeing “science” after a short while. Then Violet could take the children elsewhere, and he would be left to work in peace.
At this point, even a couple of hours sounded like heaven.
Eleven
“SHE WRECKED his breeches, Mum!” Violet paced her mother’s perfumery, skimming a finger along the neatly labeled vials. “It was amusing, I’ll admit, but I don’t think all that glue and mud will wash out.”