Chase Family Collection: Limited Christmas Edition

by Lauren Royal

  Icy fear gripped Ford’s heart. Boots and all, he made a running dive into the river.

  But the splashes were playful ones—on Rowan’s part, at least. And if Jewel’s shrieks weren’t exactly in fun, they weren’t a harbinger of death, either. It was immediately apparent both children knew how to swim.

  The shock of cold water helped Ford regain his equilibrium as he gathered them close, one in each arm. He should have given his niece more credit. She was much too bright to jump to her death. And if she was less than happy with the outcome of her prank, perhaps it would be a lesson learned.

  Mere moments later he’d hauled them ashore, no harm done. Back on the barge and sailing for home, he couldn’t imagine why Violet was so hysterical.

  “We shouldn’t have left them!” she lamented, wringing her hands. He’d never seen a woman wring her hands. Not in real life. He’d thought people only wrung their hands in plays.

  And they hadn’t left the children—they’d been watching them the entire time. There had never been a true risk of drowning, he told himself, struggling to hold on to his logic in the face of hysteria. He’d been there within seconds. His racing heart was beating only double-time now. He knew how to deal with an emergency.

  “All’s well that ends well,” he told Violet philosophically, wondering if a philosopher had actually said that. But if she knew, she was in no state to inform him.

  Jewel was hysterical, too. “There were fish in there!” Her entire body shuddered, and not from the wet and cold. “Fish! Slimy fish!”

  Rowan was hysterically laughing at Jewel, and Ford…well, if he’d thought hysterics would have mitigated matters, he’d have been hysterical along with the rest of them.

  “Of course there were fish,” Rowan crowed between snorts. “You goose,” he added with undisguised glee.

  Ford suspected he’d been waiting to call Jewel a goose since she’d called him one on the swings. Pouring water from one of his boots, he rather sympathized with the boy.

  Women could be so irrational. They puzzled him in general, and Violet was no exception. Take their conversation at the inn, for example. They’d been discussing their dreams, nice as anything, then suddenly she was declaring she’d never get married. Or at least not to anyone who had the nerve to be interested in her money.

  Where the devil had all that come from?

  As they neared Trentingham’s dock, he sighed and tipped his second boot. Water ran out, along with a tiny sliver of silver.

  “Another fish!” Jewel screamed.

  Rowan snickered.

  Violet moaned.

  And Ford knew he wasn’t going to get an answer to his question.

  Twenty-Three

  THE NEXT DAY, Ford paced Trentingham’s library. He still had no idea where he stood with Violet following that confusing, interrupted discussion. He’d tried to talk to her before coming upstairs, but here at the Manor there always seemed to be a sister or two around.

  Turning the old book in his hands, he sighed, supposing the conversation probably hadn’t meant all that much, anyway. Violet seemed to have recovered from yesterday’s hysteria, at least, and her family had allowed him in the house, so apparently they didn’t hold him responsible for the young heir’s soaking.

  A good sign. He’d hate to think Jewel might lose her playmate.

  “Lord Lakefield?” Jarring him out of his thoughts, Rose sauntered into the room with Violet, fluttering her seventeen-year-old lashes. “My sister said you wanted to see me?”

  He stifled a laugh, then fastened his gaze on those bold dark eyes and tried his famous smile on her—the one that seduced all the ladies. “Violet tells me you’ve a special expertise in languages.”

  Looking a bit off her stride, she leaned a hand on one of the library’s two impressive globes, then jumped when it spun beneath her fingers. “Not truly,” she said, glaring at Violet as she brushed the front of her magenta skirts. “I know only a little.”

  “More than a little,” Violet argued. “You know French and Spanish, German, Welsh, some Gaelic—”

  “Would you know this one?” Ford interrupted, struggling for patience. So far as he could tell, the book was none of the tongues Violet had mentioned or anything related. He walked to a round wooden table and opened the book on its surface. “Does this language look familiar?”

  When Rose didn’t make a move, he sent a pleading look to her sister.

  “Rose…” Violet said. It was a single word, but uttered in a tone he hoped never to hear directed at himself.

  “Oh, very well.” Rose unriveted herself from the floor and came to lean over the table. She frowned at the book, reaching to gingerly turn a page, then another. The brittle paper crackled in the silence of the richly paneled library.

  “No,” she said at last. “I’ve never seen this language. It may be obsolete.” When she looked up, her dark eyes were apologetic. “I know only modern languages, my lord.” Her false pretense of empty-headedness gone, she closed the book respectfully and slid it across the table.

  Disappointment formed a weight in his gut. Reaching for the book, he sat himself on one of the table’s four straight-backed chairs. Violet surprised him by sitting beside him. After yesterday, he didn’t know what to expect from her.

  “How about the title?” he asked, not quite ready to give up. He reopened the book. No author had signed it, but there, right on the first page, was the alchemical symbol for gold. Of course, the symbol was just a plain circle with a dot in the center, so it could mean something else. Or nothing at all—in a handwritten book, such a mark could be a decoration or a doodle. But the sight of that symbol had set Ford’s heart to pounding in John Young’s shop.

  The title alone could confirm whether or not he’d found the right book. He pushed it back toward Rose. “Can you puzzle out a single word of the title, even?”

  “I can try.” Rose’s reluctance disappeared as she took a seat on his other side and drew the book closer. Clearly warming to the challenge, she ran a tapered finger across the handwritten text. “There are five words.”

  “Yes.” But were they the right words? “Can you read any of them?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I think not.” She flipped back to the center of the book. “Some pages are stuck together.”

  “It’s old,” he said with a shrug. He’d peeled a couple of them apart and found nothing of interest, just more of the same. And he’d ripped one of the pages in the process. “I hesitate to start tearing at it, when I don’t even know—”

  “This is strange.”

  “What?” Violet asked.

  “Well, I can read this one word here. Argento. It means silver in Italian.”

  Silver. Ford’s hopes took an incautious leap. A book that mentioned silver might also mention gold. And Raymond Lully had lived in Italy for years.

  Violet reached across Ford to lay a hand over her sister’s. “Are you sure? I never knew you could read Italian.”

  “I’m sure.” A hot blush touched the girl’s lovely cheeks.

  Rose resembled Violet, but her features had a glossy perfection that was missing from her sister’s. Tabitha had been like that, too. They were too perfect, Ford thought. Violet’s looks were friendlier, more comfortable.

  He could touch her without worrying about messing her up.

  “I found an Italian book,” Rose explained, gesturing to the shelves that stretched to the high, geometric-patterned ceiling. “It wasn’t too difficult to teach myself. The language shares much with Spanish.”

  Nodding, Violet sat back. A pity—he’d rather enjoyed having her hang over his lap. She’d smelled like flowers. Probably violets, he imagined.

  Rose looked back down to his book. “Of course, some languages share the same words with different meanings. For example, in French four means oven, but in English it’s a number. So just because argento means silver in Italian doesn’t mean it couldn’t mean something else in another tongue.” Carefully, sh
e flipped another page. Scanning it, she hummed under her breath.

  “What is it?” Violet asked.

  “It’s odd, that’s all. That one word appeared to be Italian, but others aren’t. There are letters here that are foreign to me, and here”—she looked up—“look at this line, here.”

  Both Ford and Violet scooted closer, their chair legs rasping on the carpet. “Yes?” Ford prompted.

  “This line is written backwards. Even the letters are backwards, like in a mirror. And then this line here”—she drew a graceful finger along some text—“has no strange letters at all.” In her enthusiasm, her voice had lost its deliberate seductive quality. “The writing is a bit faded and more than a bit smeared, but all readable, you see?”

  Violet shook her head. “I cannot read it.”

  “You cannot comprehend it,” Rose corrected. “But you recognize the letters, don’t you?”

  “It may be a code,” Ford realized suddenly.

  “Different languages and patterns. You may be right.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes excited rather than coquettish. “Violet said this could be an important book. Was the book you’re looking for written in code?”

  “I never considered it before, but it could have been.” The book had been rumored to be difficult to read. If he were recording priceless secrets, he’d be tempted to do so in code.

  And he knew someone who was very good at cracking codes.

  “If it’s a code,” Violet asked her sister, “do you think you could puzzle it out?”

  Rose shook her head regretfully. “I’m afraid not. There are too few words I recognize.”

  “And none in the title?” Violet pushed.

  “None.” Rose looked to Ford. “I’m sorry.”

  She looked sincere and intelligent, and although she didn’t interest him like her sister did, he liked her much more than he’d thought. “That’s quite all right,” he told her, offering her a smile. “You’ve actually helped a lot—”

  “Where is Jewel?” Rowan interrupted, running into the room.

  “At home,” Ford said. “With her new friend Harry.”

  “I’m her new friend.” Jewel would positively preen if she saw Rowan’s pout. “Is she in your laboratory?”

  “She’d better not be.”

  “You said we could go into the laboratory today. You promised.”

  “Rowan—” Violet started.

  “He’s right,” Ford cut in.

  He had promised. And at Lakefield, he might find an opportunity to get Violet alone.

  He wondered if she’d let him kiss her again.

  Rising, he closed the small leather book. “I did promise,” he reminded her. “And a Chase promise is not given lightly. You’ll come along, won’t you?”

  Her hesitation wasn’t heartening.

  “Lord Lakefield…” Rose’s voice was back to its practiced purr. “What is your laboratory like?”

  “Messy,” he said shortly. He knew she was angling for an invitation, but he wasn’t at all tempted to offer one. Then he noticed Violet was scowling at her sister.

  That was much more heartening.

  He graced Rose with his famous smile, adding, “Perhaps sometime I’ll show you.”

  “I’ll come along,” Violet blurted.

  Very heartening, indeed.

  Twenty-Four

  “IT’S UP HERE, Violet.”

  “I’m coming.” Violet followed her brother up the dark, square staircase and then up some more, the old wood creaking all the way to the attic.

  They walked through a corridor lined with books—not the handsome leather-bound volumes that filled the Ashcrofts’ impressive library, but books that were clearly well read, jumbled haphazardly on plain shelves. Science books, she assumed.

  From what she had seen, which granted was only part of the ground floor and now this attic, it seemed Lakefield didn’t boast a proper library. If she were mistress here, she would remedy that.

  But of course that was never to be. Just being in this place reminded her of how much money Ford needed to fix it. He was going to have to marry for money, and she would never let that happen to her.

  At the end of the corridor, Rowan stepped into a room. As Jewel scampered in past him, he waved an expansive arm in a very grown-up way. “Look.”

  The single word was uttered in an awed tone. Entering the laboratory, Violet could see why.

  Housed in a gigantic open space, Ford’s workroom was a boy’s dream come true. Beneath a steeply pitched ceiling of raw beams that exposed the stone-tiled roof above, a profusion of paraphernalia lived in charming confusion. Under the single shuttered window, a jumble of gears and other parts sat among an army of watches and clocks. Their ill-timed ticks filled the air, sounding like hundreds of scampering mice.

  “Incredible,” she said. There was no other word to describe it.

  Ford opened a drawer and took out a shallow pan. “It’s nothing compared to my laboratory at Cainewood. Or Charles’s laboratory—the man has at least six of everything.”

  She didn’t doubt it. King Charles was known to take his scientific pursuits very seriously and indeed had chartered the Royal Society. She’d heard he attended the regular meetings.

  Just then, the clocks started chiming, as badly timed as their ticks, and she burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all. How anyone could accomplish anything in this chaos was beyond her comprehension.

  “Look at this,” Rowan said, pulling a heavy red book off a shelf. He shoved aside a mortar and pestle to set the book on a table, then opened it with great ceremony. Flipping several pages, he stopped on one and unfolded a large diagram.

  She blinked. “What is that?”

  “A spider,” he said gleefully. “Like the one we scared you with.”

  Jewel snickered and moved close.

  Violet slanted her brother a dubious glance. “That doesn’t look like any spider I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s as seen under a microscope.” He pointed to an instrument across the room, a handsome specimen of chased brass. “The book is called Micrographia.” Pronouncing the word carefully, he turned to a random page, and the children leaned over the sketches.

  They all stared at the patterns of tiny squares and holes. Jewel scratched her head. “What is it?”

  “‘Cork and other such frothy bodies,’” Violet read. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” Even more fascinating than the pictures was her brother’s animated face. He treated lessons as a chore; she’d never seen him so interested in anything academic.

  “Look at this,” he said, unfolding another large drawing. “Snowflakes.”

  “No, they’re not,” she said, hiding a grin. “Read it.”

  He focused on the page. “‘Several observables,’” he enunciated slowly, “‘in the six-branched figures form’d on the surface of urine by freezing.’”

  “Ewww.” Jewel made a face.

  But Rowan was unruffled. “Can we buy one of these books, Violet? Please?”

  “I have no idea where to get one.”

  “London,” Ford said, polishing a small rectangle of mirror on his breeches. “Check the title page.”

  She turned to it and read. “‘Printed by Joseph Martyn and James Allestry, Printers to the Royal Society, and sold at their shop at the Bell in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’ Hmm.” She looked up at Rowan. “I’ll talk to Father about it when next we go to the City.”

  Ford ripped a piece of white paper from a page of scribbled notes. “When will that be?”

  “When Parliament is in session.”

  “I’ll see if we can get one for him sooner.” He turned to his niece. “Would you and Rowan do me a favor? Run downstairs, will you, and ask Hilda for a pitcher of water.”

  While Jewel hurried Rowan from the room, sending a pendulum swinging as they went, Ford walked to the single window and threw the wooden shutters open wide. “Three o’clock on a clear and sunny day,” he said. “The sun should be just a
bout right.”

  “For what?”

  “Our experiment. I promised you a rainbow, remember?”

  Baffled, she decided to take a wait-and-see attitude. “I’m sorry Rose couldn’t help you,” she said.

  “But she did. Without her observations, I may never have realized the book might be in code. Or in a language so old it’s obsolete.” He set the paper by the mirror and pan. “I have a friend from my Oxford days, now an expert in ancient linguistics. And codes.” He laughed at some age-old memory. “Rand used to infuriate his brother by deciphering his secret journals. I’m going to send for him tomorrow.”

  “So you do have a friend.”

  A faint glint of humor lit his eyes. “I have many friends.”

  “I’m sure you do.” More than she had, she’d wager. “I just meant I’d thought you’d invented that friend as a story to tell Mr. Young. The bookseller.”

  “Well, I didn’t buy the book for Rand, so that much was a falsity. But he does exist. And I’d trust him with my life, although I’ll admit I hesitate to let that book out of my sight.” His half-smile was one of self-amusement. “I expect that’s why I didn’t think to call on Rand in the first place. Foolish of me—if I’d summoned him yesterday, I might know what I have already. But it never even occurred to me until Rose brought up the inconsistencies.”

  “You’re just focused,” she said. “On other things.”

  “You’re right, you know.” He moved closer. Very close. “I’ve always had that annoying trait. When I concentrate on one thing, I cannot think of another.”

  Finding herself backed into a table, she put her hands behind her and knocked over a flask. She whirled to right it. “My father is like that,” she said while still turned away. “He focuses on his flowers.”

  “My problem is,” Ford said softly, “I’ve been focusing on you.” Settling his hands on her shoulders, he gently maneuvered her to face him. “Thank you,” he said, more softly still.

  “F-for what?” Even through her gown, her skin tingled under his fingers. Her senses whirled and skidded—she couldn’t think straight when he was so close. When he was touching her, when she could smell him, when she could feel his warm breath on her face.