Chase Family Collection: Limited Christmas Edition

by Lauren Royal

  Until now, she’d focused on the excitement of meeting members of the Royal Society. Yet, for part of the evening at least, she and Ford would be alone. Really alone, not just sort of alone for a minute while the children’s backs were turned.

  She could hardly believe Mum had condoned it. More than condoned it—pushed it, in fact. But of course that was only because Mum knew how much she wanted to attend a Royal Society function.

  Mum would never expect anything untoward to happen. Not to Violet. Plain Violet. Violet, who would just as soon remain invisible.

  If only Mum knew that Ford had already kissed her. Five times. Five glorious times.

  As she’d done hundreds of times already, Violet couldn’t help but replay those kisses now in her memory. And even though she hadn’t eaten any hard salt things or spices today—hadn’t eaten much of anything, as a matter of fact—her desire to carnal embraces seemed almost insuperable.

  This promised to be a marvelous night.

  For just this night, she wouldn’t care that Ford showed interest in her for all the wrong reasons. For just this night, she’d put her heart into living each moment. For just this night, she’d allow herself to revel in this dream come true of mingling with England’s most eminent intellectuals…in the company of a man who made her heart flutter with the merest touch or look.

  Rose barged back in. “He’s waiting, Violet. I think you should keep him waiting a little bit longer.”

  “No.” She wasn’t calculating like her sister. “I’m ready.” As ready as she’d ever be.

  Although the Ashcrofts’ town house in St. James’s Square wasn’t nearly as massive as Trentingham, it was richly decorated and boasted a grand marble staircase. Violet’s new red-heeled shoes clicked as she walked down it.

  When Ford glanced up, a thunderstruck expression froze his features. His jaw went slack; his eyes widened. “You look…” he began, then seemed at a loss for words.

  Moving closer, she smiled to herself. “Different?” she supplied, gliding to a stop in front of him.

  “Um…yes.” As that incredible blue gaze raked her from head to toe, a devilish grin slowly spread on his face. “And beautiful.”

  It had taken him too long to add that last bit, and she wouldn’t have believed it, in any case. But it was nice to hear, even if it was only a polite fib. For just this night, she would pretend it was true. She’d never expected to hear a compliment like that from a man.

  And most especially from such an attractive one. Judging from his normal attire, she’d suspected Ford enjoyed dressing up a bit. She hadn’t been wrong.

  He looked magnificent. His brilliant blue suit made his eyes appear even bluer. Yards of lace dripped from the cuffs. A diamond pin winked from the folds of a snow-white cravat. The buttons on his velvet surcoat looked to be of real gold, and when he swept off his wide-brimmed hat to make her a solemn bow, a jeweled hatband sparkled in the light of the entry’s chandelier.

  Mum had loaned her the Trentingham diamonds, but she still felt dull and unadorned in comparison.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  From out of nowhere, it seemed, her mother appeared and kissed her on the cheek. “Have a lovely time, dear.”

  “I will, Mum.” As Violet took Ford’s arm, she decided it might well be the loveliest evening of her life.

  After he’d handed her into his carriage, she was no longer so sure.

  Egad, she was alone with a man.

  She settled herself across from him, fluffing her skirts and offering him a stiff smile. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “The pleasure is mine.” His own smile looked amused. As the carriage began moving, he patted the seat beside him. “Come here, Violet.”

  “I’m comfortable over here, thank you.”

  “I promise I won’t bite you. At least, not until later.” At her gasp, he laughed. “I was only fooling. I won’t even kiss you, I promise. Just come and sit by me. Please.”

  She did, and he kept his promise not to kiss her, which she found rather disappointing. Especially after he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and swept aside her curls to nuzzle her neck.

  “You smell good,” he murmured. “Your hair, your skin…”

  “So do you,” she said breathlessly. He did. There was that hint of patchouli soap again, tonight overlaid by some exotic, very masculine perfume. She wondered if her mother could match the scent, so she could inhale it and remember this evening.

  Although the way it seemed to make her senses swirl, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a good idea.

  As the carriage lurched through the streets, his lips teased the sensitive hollow behind her ear, and his fingers traced a light, shivery pattern on her shoulder. Her flesh prickled, and a hot ache began to spread in her middle.

  Like the Master-piece had promised, her body was becoming more and more heated.

  “Oh my,” she said—the only words she could manage at the moment.

  “Shall I stop?” he asked, his breath warm against her throat. The carriage bounced in and out of a rut, his mouth bouncing along with it, landing damp against her skin. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

  Rough and raspy, his voice gave her another little thrill. She didn’t tell him to stop. Scandalously, his fingers trailed down, brushing the bareness revealed by her low neckline.

  He might have kissed her five times, but he’d never touched her there. No man had touched her there.

  Feeling weak, she slumped on the brown leather seat. The carriage’s wheels bumped over the cobblestones, the springs squeaked through the traffic-clogged streets—and her labored breathing sounded louder than all of it.

  They jarred to a stop, and through her thin satin bodice, Ford’s hand grazed her breast.

  Then returned and stayed there, lightly caressing.

  “Faith,” she breathed, feeling the crest swell and tighten in response. Her eyes drifted shut as a corresponding response shot through her body.

  Her desire to carnal embraces was very, very great.

  The carriage door was jerked open, and she bolted upright, her eyes wide. They’d arrived, and she’d learned that Ford was a man of his word.

  He hadn’t kissed her.

  He’d done something more scandalous—and far more dangerous.

  Thirty-Two

  VIOLET HAD always thought of scientific men as serious and staid, but there was an air of giddy excitement at Gresham College tonight.

  Not to mention she was still excited from what had happened in the carriage.

  Following Ford through the narrow gatehouse off Bishopsgate Street, she carefully tugged up on her bodice. Surreptitiously, she hoped. She wasn’t sure which was worse: being seen in such an immodest gown, or having someone see her adjust it.

  “This was once the home of Sir Thomas Gresham,” Ford said as proudly as if the mansion belonged to him. “Founder of the college.”

  Hand in hand, they crossed a simple courtyard toward the house, Violet’s knees feeling embarrassingly weak. Wishing she could switch off her feelings as easily as he apparently could, she tried to concentrate on what he was telling her. After all, this was a place she’d always wanted to visit.

  “When did the college open?” she asked.

  “At the end of the last century, following Gresham’s death and that of his wife. He had no living heirs, you see, so he gifted his home to the people of London. He wished to make scholarship available free to every adult citizen.” Pushing open a heavy oak door, he guided her into a large chamber that looked medieval. “Here is the Reading Hall, where the lectures are given.”

  “Oh, I wish I knew Latin so I could attend them.” Beneath a lofty scissor-beam ceiling painted in dazzling hues of red and gold, rows of wooden benches faced a lectern, behind which rose an exquisite oriel window. “What a lovely place to learn.”

  “I imagine when the Greshams lived here, this would have been their great hall.” Ford walked her through the soaring chamber, their f
ootsteps echoing on the well-worn stone floor. “The college’s seven professors have lodgings here at Gresham and are each required to give one public lecture a week.”

  Whom might she meet here tonight? Breathless with anticipation, she peeked into some adjoining rooms, a bit disappointed when she found them unoccupied. “It just looks like a big, old house.”

  “It was, remember. But you will see in a moment that although his family lived here for years, and his widow afterwards, Gresham had a college in mind when he built it.”

  Another small courtyard lay outside the Reading Hall, leading to an arched passage that opened into a massive, grassy square with colonnaded buildings on all four sides.

  “See?” Ford said. “It’s essentially a college quadrangle.”

  Flaming torches bathed the space in a warm glow. Musicians were tuning up in one corner. Talking animatedly in small groups, guests dressed in every color of the rainbow crowded the enclosure, their chatter filling the air.

  She was here. Finally, she was here. A serving maid handed her a goblet of canary, and she sipped the sweet wine, turning in a slow circle, imagining the area solemn, shut off from the hubbub of London by the buildings all around.

  “I can picture it quiet,” she said, “students leisurely crossing the grass, or perhaps hurrying if they’re late.”

  “Can you picture it paved over and crammed with shopping stalls?”

  She looked down at the fresh green grass beneath her feet. “Was it?”

  “Until recently. After the Great Fire, the whole administration of the City moved into the buildings, and the tenants of the Royal Exchange set up here in the quadrangle until it was rebuilt. A hundred small shops.”

  People strolled by, men alone and some couples, nodding acknowledgments without interrupting their conversation. “How long has the Royal Society been meeting here?” she asked.

  “Since 1660, save during the past seven years. We were incorporated under Royal charter in 1662. On the fifteenth of July. So something good happened that particular St. Swithin’s Day,” he mused. “It must not have rained.”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.” A faint smile curved his lips as he began walking her around the perimeter, pointing out all the professors’ lodgings. There were professors of music, physics, geometry, divinity, rhetoric, astronomy, and law—and by the time she heard about all of them, she was feeling dizzy with new information.

  Or maybe dizzy with something else. She tugged up on her bodice again, then dropped her hand when a spark of humor lit his eyes.

  “Do you like to dance?” he suddenly asked. The musicians had commenced playing. A lilting tune wafted over the quadrangle. A temporary floor of wood had been constructed over a patch of the new grass.

  Although she’d had lessons along with her sisters, Violet had never danced much. At the many balls her family had dragged her to, she’d always done her best to fade into the background.

  But this was a magical night—a night that called for her to rise above her normal fears. In her whole life, she might never see a night like this again, and she was determined to make it memorable.

  “I cannot say I have much experience,” she heard herself saying. “But I wouldn’t mind giving it a try.”

  Immediately she thought about taking back the words, but clamped her lips tight. Handing their goblets to a passing serving maid, Ford led her closer to the music.

  The tune ended and another began. A minuet. Taking her by both hands, he swept her onto the makeshift dance floor.

  She knew the steps, and for the first time in her memory, she didn’t worry about tripping. He danced with an uncommon grace for a man, and her feet seemed to know what to do. The music matched the staccato beat of her heart. She could scarcely believe she was here at Gresham College, dancing with the most handsome member of the Royal Society.

  Cool night air brushed along the skin that he’d heated in the carriage. She met his eyes, and her cheeks flushed at the boldness of his gaze. Here beneath the stars, he seemed different, in his element. Not that he was shy and retiring in any circumstances, but she’d expect a man of science to be more like her, preferring solitude to social occasions. Which just went to show how little she could trust her preconceived notions.

  They turned, and when his heady scent wafted to her nose, she found herself enjoying this particular social occasion more than she’d thought possible. For once, she had no desire to hide out, no wish to stay safely at home.

  They rose on their toes, and he pulled her closer. Closer than the dance required, close enough to make butterflies flutter in her stomach.

  He was touching her. Just his hands, but he was touching her. Even though this sort of touch wasn’t as intimate as his caresses in the carriage, she still felt that lurch of excitement. That frisson of awareness. That building heat in her middle that seemed to illogically weaken her knees.

  From just a touch. The Master-piece hadn’t prepared her for that.

  Men outnumbered women by double or more, and the dance floor was surrounded by clusters of them absorbed in conversation. More than a few glances were aimed her way. Violet suspected people were wondering what she was doing here with Ford.

  And wondering about her spectacles. No sooner had she and Ford made their way off the dance floor than they found themselves approached by curious men.

  “Trentingham’s eldest, are you not?” One of them offered her a courtly bow. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he added. “Christopher Wren.”

  Christopher Wren. Mathematician, scientist, architect…the man currently engaged in rebuilding all of the City’s churches that had burned in the Great Fire. She was surprised to find him no taller than she.

  “Violet Ashcroft,” she returned. “I’m glad to make your acquaintance.”

  “Are those a new sort of spectacles?” he asked without further preliminaries. Not at all the serious, dour man she had imagined him to be, he seemed cheerful and open. She guessed him at a decade older than Ford. “May I see them?” Before she gave permission, he reached toward her eagerly.

  She slipped them off and handed them to him. “Lord Lakefield made them for me.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Wren turned them in his hands, then raised them to his own sparkling brown eyes and blinked. “Do they help you to see?”

  “Very much. They’ve changed my life.”

  Wren nodded thoughtfully, his wavy brown periwig moving along with his head. Beneath a patrician nose his mouth curved pleasantly, as though he smiled often.

  He turned to Ford. “This frame to hold them on the face, it’s brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it myself?”

  Ford laughed. “You’ve thought of plenty. Give another man a turn.”

  Someone else walked up. “What have you there?”

  “Spectacles,” Wren told him. “Designed by Lakefield here, with a clever frame to hold them on the face.” Leaning forward, he gently slid the eyeglasses back on Violet.

  “Lovely,” the newcomer said. “Both the spectacles and the lady.” A few years younger than Wren, the man topped him by but a couple of inches. His physique somehow looked crooked, his face twisted and much less than beautiful. But his large, pale head was crowned with a wig of dark brown curls so delicate they made Violet jealous.

  “Robert Hooke,” Ford introduced him. “May I present Lady Violet Ashcroft?”

  “I’ve read your book Micrographia,” Violet gushed, overwhelmed to find herself chatting with such a great intellect. “It’s marvelous.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” Hooke’s gray eyes smiled along with his thin mouth, but in contrast to Wren’s, his face crinkled in a way that made Violet think he rarely grinned. “The gardener’s eldest, are you not?”

  She couldn’t remember ever meeting these people, but they seemed to know her. That was what came of hiding in corners, she supposed. “Is my father’s hobby so well known, then?” she won
dered aloud.

  “Legendary.” Hooke shifted his awkward form, looking loath to say more. “Charming man, though,” he finally added.

  “Mr. Hooke is Gresham’s Professor of Geometry,” Ford told her. “He lives here, right under that new observatory they’re building.” He indicated a corner of the quadrangle, where a small, square tower poked up from the roofline, surrounded by scaffolding.

  “Convenient,” Hooke said. “If I fall down stumbling drunk, I’m close to my bed.”

  They all laughed.

  “How go the plans for St. Paul’s?” Ford asked.

  Hooke and Wren exchanged a glance, the kind shared by friends with secrets between them. Odd to think that a curmudgeonly man and such a cheerful one would be close.

  “I’m working on a model,” Wren said carefully.

  Hooke let out a snort. “Twelve carpenters are working on it, and he’s sunk five hundred pounds into it already. We can only pray the king likes it and the clergy give their approval.”

  “Approval for what?” someone asked in a voice with an Irish lilt. And before she knew it, Violet was introduced to Robert Boyle, a tall, thin man who also wanted a look at her spectacles.

  No sooner had he finished exclaiming over them than another man walked up. Boyle handed him the lenses, and without them on her face, all Violet could tell about the newcomer was he was short and a bit stout.

  “They belong to you, my lady?” he asked after examining them closely. He returned them with a bow. “Isaac Newton, at your service.”

  “Lady Violet Ashcroft,” Ford introduced her. “The Earl of Trentingham’s daughter.”

  With the spectacles safely back in place, Mr. Newton looked to be Ford’s age, or perhaps a year or two older. Although prematurely gray hair peeked out from beneath his wig, he was a handsome man. Beneath his broad forehead, brown eyes were set in a sharp-featured face with a square lower jaw.

  “We’re pleased you remembered to attend,” Boyle teased him.

  The men’s laughter confused her, and her expression must have shown it. “Mr. Newton is known to be a bit absentminded,” Ford explained.