Tomorrow she would hunt up Rupert and ask him if he’d ever consulted Debrett’s to unearth his connection to Victor. Perhaps she should just consult it herself. The subscription library might have a copy.
By the time she reached home, she was so exhausted she could do little more than fall into bed. And when Betsy came to wake her the next morning, she had to drag herself from the bed to perform her ablutions, dress, and have a cup of chocolate before heading off to the shop.
But as she rode toward town, sore in every muscle, she couldn’t help but smile. It had been a long time since her body had been so well used, but she couldn’t regret it. Last night had been even more amazing than she remembered. Hard to believe that Victor could have become even better at lovemaking.
Unless . . .
She frowned. He’d never said whether he’d been faithful. Had he sought companionship in some other woman’s bed? For all she knew, his connection to Lady Lochlaw was an intimate one.
No, she wouldn’t make herself frantic over such thoughts. She had to focus on the important things—what he meant to do and how she was going to deal with it. So she was glad that no one else was there when she let herself into the shop, an hour before they usually opened. She could use some time to prepare herself in case Victor did seek her out today.
She needed to work. It was her salvation for any of her troubles—nothing settled her more than manipulating softened gold or creating strass or losing herself in the planes of a beautiful uncut diamond.
She headed into the area behind the shop, then sat herself at her worktable and took out a bowl for mixing up the metal salts she needed for painting on the back of her paste. As she stirred, her mind sifted through all that had happened.
What was she going to do about Victor’s determination to seek vengeance against her family? The situation was more complicated than he would admit. Somehow she had to make him understand the consequences of what he planned.
After a while, she heard Mr. Gordon enter the shop out front. As usual, he busied himself with preparing for opening and didn’t venture into the back to greet her. He knew she preferred solitude in the early mornings, needing the time to create while business was lighter.
As she continued the monotonous task of mixing salts, her mind fixed on Victor once more. It would help if she knew what he’d gone through in Amsterdam after she and her family had fled. But how was she to learn that if he wouldn’t tell her?
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been working and fretting when a ruckus out front dragged her from her thoughts.
“So ye’re back, are you?” Mr. Gordon’s accent thickened as his voice rose. “Ye’re nay welcome here. I willna have you bothering Mrs. Franke!”
She shot up and hurried through the door into the shop. “It’s all right, Mr. Gordon. I don’t mind speaking with Mr. Cale.”
“You see?” Victor said to her partner, though his unreadable gaze was on her. “Mrs. Franke knows I’m no threat to her.”
Mr. Gordon snorted, and Isa nearly did, too.
“I’m in the middle of a complicated task,” she lied for the benefit of Mr. Gordon. “Why don’t you join me in the workshop, Mr. Cale? We can talk while I work.”
Victor lifted an eyebrow but gave her a terse nod and walked toward her.
“Are you sure about this, Mrs. Franke?” Mr. Gordon asked as he followed Victor. “I dinna like this fellow troubling you.”
“It’s no trouble. I have a few things to say to him, that’s all.”
Her crisp tone must have conveyed to Mr. Gordon that she wanted privacy for the conversation, for the man halted. He glanced from her to Victor, then nodded. “If you need me—”
“I’m not going to ravish the woman, for God’s sake,” Victor muttered, making Mr. Gordon bristle and start forward again.
“Of course not,” she said with a warning look for her partner. “This way, Mr. Cale. You might find it interesting to watch me work.”
“I might indeed,” he drawled and followed her into the workshop, closing the door behind him. They had only gone a few steps when he added in a low voice, “You have a bad habit of vanishing in the middle of the night, Isa.”
As heat rose in her cheeks, she drew him to the very back of the workshop. “You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Liar,” he murmured. Then he dragged her into his arms and began kissing her with a hard passion that sent her senses spinning.
For a few moments, she indulged herself in the sweet, hot pleasure and wanting that swirled between them. Then she forced her mouth from his. “Not here.” She pushed him away. “Anyone might see us.”
His eyes glittered darkly. “I woke to find you gone, and even Jenkins couldn’t tell me where. I thought . . . I was sure . . .”
“That I had fled town?” She ventured a smile. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
Hunger flared in his eyes, and he reached for her again, but she darted away. “Not. Here,” she repeated as she put a table between them.
“Fine,” he said with a sigh, then glanced about. “So this is where the straw is turned into gold, is it?”
She chuckled. “How I wish that would work. I would never have to deal with the gold merchants again.” Seating herself at the worktable nearest the back, where they couldn’t easily be overheard, she began to insert a small imitation topaz into the last setting of a ring she was designing.
Victor came up to stand before the table, and she slanted a glance at him. Today he wore a velvet frock coat and trousers of Egyptian brown, along with a waistcoat of white figured silk, and she wondered yet again how he could afford such costly attire. What had he been doing all these years?
But before she could ask, he said, “Tell the truth. Why did you leave me last night?”
“You know why. Because we both needed time to think about what we’re going to do.”
“I know what I’m going to do,” he said softly. “I’m going to take back my wife.”
Ignoring the thrill that his words sent coursing through her, she fought to concentrate on her task. “Beyond that. We both need to decide how we mean to go on.” And how far we can trust each other with our lives after so many years apart.
He gestured to the table. “And this helps you to decide? Playing with gems in some musty workroom?”
She dared to tease him. “It’s better than playing with you in your bed.” Staring up at him, she smiled coyly. “You make it very hard for a woman to think.”
His eyes gleamed at her. “Good. I don’t want you thinking your way out of our marriage. I want you accepting that we belong together.” He reached across to chuck her under the chin. “Fate threw us back into each other’s laps for a reason, lieveke.”
“Fate?” she said with a lift of one brow. “Or something else you refuse to tell me about?”
He stiffened, then stared down at the table once more. “Are those gems real?”
Stifling a sigh, she returned to her work. He was the most stubborn, secretive fellow, and it was beginning to irritate her. “You and Lady Lochlaw have quite an obsession with what is real and what is not.”
“I’m just astonished that people will pay good money for fake gems.”
“I don’t know why that surprises you. You should know better than anyone that real gems are beyond the reach of the average tradesman. And this ring I’m creating for a merchant has seven such gems.”
“Seven? Then they have to be imitations.” He peered at the ring. “Why wouldn’t the man just buy one fine emerald or ruby instead of seven gems?”
“This is an acrostic ring,” she explained. “The initial letters of the gems spell out words. The merchant wants it for his wife’s birthday this week. In order for it to spell out ‘dearest,’ I need a diamond, an emerald, an amethyst, a ruby, another emerald, a sapphire, and a topaz.”
“Ah.” He watched in silence a moment as she gingerly closed the tines around the topaz. “Do you make many acrostic rin
gs?”
“We do, actually. Occasionally even with real gems. Acrostic jewelry is all the rage these days. We do bracelets, rings, brooches . . . whatever someone requests.”
She heard Mr. Gordon greeting Mary Grace out front. The young woman had been hanging about at the shop more and more lately. Apparently, despite her shyness, she preferred being with her great-uncle to dealing with her strident mother.
Neither Isa nor Mr. Gordon minded. She could be useful to have around when they needed someone to fetch them tea or help arrange the display cabinets.
“Looks like you’ve got everything but the diamond in the setting,” Victor said.
“Yes, the strass for the diamond is giving me trouble.” She pulled out a chunk of the glass. “It’s too milky. I don’t think it’s the pulverized rock crystal in the mix, although sometimes that can make the glass too white. I suspect that it’s the fault of the oxide of lead. If even a particle of tin gets into that, it ruins everything.”
“So how do you fix it?”
“Fixing it is impossible, I’m afraid. I’ll have to throw out the paste and start over. Which means my customer won’t be getting his ring for another day. The strass mix must be heated slowly over many hours to get the sort of glass I need.”
Taking out her special crucible, she measured more pulverized rock crystal into it, along with white lead, potass, and borax.
When she rose to put the new mix in the furnace, Victor said, “How on earth did you do this in Amsterdam, if it requires a special furnace and crucible and tools?”
She set the crucible into the unlit furnace. “We had all of that at Papa’s shop. You probably just never noticed.” After hunting through their wood to find the driest pieces, she started a blaze going beneath the crucible. “You tended to avoid Gerhart, if you’ll recall.”
Victor snorted. “I never liked him, I’ll admit. I like him even less now.”
“To be fair,” she said, meeting his gaze, “when he first came into our lives after Papa’s death, I was just happy we had someone to run things, someone who could keep a roof over our heads.”
“He did a damned poor job of it,” Victor growled.
“In the end, yes. He hadn’t been an apprentice long enough, I think, to realize how much work such a clockmaker’s shop requires.” Her tone turned cynical. “And Gerhart was never fond of hard work. Then, once he began to gamble . . .” She shrugged.
Returning to her table, she scored the milky strass so she could cut it. Victor moved around behind her to watch over her shoulder. She could feel the heat coming off of him, making her dizzy. Making her want to throw caution to the winds and announce to the world that he was her husband. Except that she dared not.
“I thought you said that the glass was no good,” Victor remarked.
“For diamonds, yes, but it’s all right for paste rubies. So I’m cutting a piece that will fit into one of my faceted gem molds.”
He leaned forward to look over her head at what she was doing, placing his hand on her shoulder as he did so. Like heat reaching the strass mix in the crucible, it set off a chemical reaction that had her blood rising and her skin growing warm.
“How does that work?” Victor asked.
My arousal? she nearly said, before she remembered what they’d been talking about. “The molds. Right. Well, I lay the chunk of strass into the mold and heat it just enough to melt it, so it can take the shape of a faceted gem. Then I remove the paste stone from the mold when it cools.”
“Where do you get the molds?”
“I make them from real faceted stones that pass through the shop.”
“Real stones,” he said with a sudden peculiar edge to his voice. “Like jewels that you’ve been asked to put into new settings, for example.”
“Exactly.” She tapped the tool she’d set into the grooved glass.
His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “Or ones that are being cleaned.”
“Sometimes,” she said, perplexed by his interest in her molds.
He was quiet a long moment, watching her break the glass into manageable pieces. Then he asked in a hard tone, “So tell me, Isa. Did you happen to make molds of the Lochlaw diamonds?”
12
WHEN ISA TENSED beneath his hand, Victor knew he’d gone too far. But damn it, what did she expect after she’d gone slinking off like some thief in the night while he was asleep? He’d awakened to an empty bed and a sinking fear that she’d left him again. That their entire night’s discussion had just been a way to lull him until she could escape.
Of course, once his reason had asserted itself, he’d realized that was absurd. If she hadn’t fled the first day he’d shown up in Edinburgh, she wasn’t likely to flee now. And she had been the one to hunt him down at the villa. That was hardly the behavior of a guilty woman.
But it still rankled that she could run away from him so easily. “Well?” he asked. “Did you make a mold of the Lochlaw diamonds?”
“I did,” she said in a clearly defensive tone. “There were several perfect gems in the necklace that I knew I could use copies of. It didn’t hurt the gemstones to take an impression, especially since I was going to be cleaning them. It’s not like they were . . .” She pivoted in her chair to glare at him. “Why should I explain this to you? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I never said you did.”
“No, you just gave me that accusing look of yours.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And how did you even hear about the Lochlaw diamonds, anyway?”
He pasted a bland expression onto his face. “Mr. Gordon mentioned them yesterday.”
Anger glinted in her eyes. “And then you assumed that I was plotting to steal them.”
Ah, she could read him so well. He hesitated, but opted for the truth. “Yes.” When she sucked in a shocked breath, he added, “At the time, I thought you were a jewel thief, remember?”
That seemed to mollify her only slightly. “So you decided that I had switched out the Lochlaw diamonds with imitations, is that it? That I had risked my livelihood and that of Mr. Gordon for a fortune in stolen jewels?”
“Not exactly.” He met her irate stare with an even one of his own, although her clear outrage began to make him uncomfortable. “I figured that you were going to switch them out at the house party. That way you wouldn’t be suspected if the change was ever discovered.”
She jumped up. “Verdomme, you were painting me to be quite the master criminal!” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Or perhaps you still think I’m a thief. Is that why you keep refusing to explain how you found me and why you’re here?”
“Of course not.” That was the absolute truth. It was just that her guarded behavior in running away while he slept had put him on edge. It meant she didn’t trust him enough to let him know where she lived. It made him want to poke at her until she gave up her secrets.
When she just kept staring expectantly at him, however, he softened his voice. “Forgive me, Isa. Until we spoke last night, the Lochlaw diamonds were the only explanation I could come up with for why you would get close to the baron.”
“Because it couldn’t be something as innocuous as an innocent friendship between two like-minded people interested in science,” she snapped. “Not in your suspicious eyes.”
“At the time, no. I know better now.”
She looked skeptical. “I didn’t set out to get close to Rupert, you know. He’s the one who became friendly with me.”
“Because he’s infatuated with you.”
Her chin lifted. “So you say.”
“You know it’s true.”
Resentment shone in her face. Then she sighed. “If you’re right—and I’m not saying that you are—it’s nothing I can help.”
“I know.”
“And it wasn’t as if I ever encouraged any infatuation. Rupert just kept coming to the shop and asking questions about the chemical aspects of my work, and I—”
“Took him on as a pet,” he said dryly.
“No!” When he arched an eyebrow, she muttered a Dutch oath. “All right, perhaps it was a bit like that. But I really did feel as if I was giving him something important—a friend who would neither berate him, like his mother, nor scoff at him behind his back, like everyone else. Rupert needs someone with whom he can discuss the subject he loves best—chemistry. And he really seems to enjoy watching me work. It’s rather . . . well . . .”
“Flattering?”
A rueful smile crossed her face. “Do you really think me that vain?”
“No. Just that lonely.” He understood loneliness very well. It was one reason he’d been willing to go along with Tristan when the man had suggested coming to England to look for Victor’s family.
She released a long breath. “Lonely. Yes. I enjoyed talking to someone close to my age who regards me well.” She gazed steadily at him. “But for me, Rupert has always been just a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. No matter what Mr. Gordon says about it.”
“I believe you.” The rational part of him did, anyway. The irrational part of him still growled every time the young baron began sniffing around her. “I believe that you consider him only a friend.”
“Good.” Then her expression turned mischievous. “So you thought I planned to steal the Lochlaw diamonds at the house party, did you?”
Beginning to wish he’d never brought it up, he muttered, “I told you, that was before I realized—”
“That I was not a master criminal?”
“I never said you were a master criminal.”
“No, indeed,” she said, eyes gleaming. “You merely said you thought me capable of making false keys and breaking into strongboxes and creeping into Lady Lochlaw’s bedchamber in the dark of night to unearth her diamonds.”
It sounded ludicrous when she put it like that. “You have to admit I had good reason to be suspicious.”
She conceded the point with a smile. “I suppose. Though you’ve developed quite the wild imagination in the years since I knew you. You see thievery everywhere you look.” Her voice turned mockingly dramatic. “And you seem to see me as some sly enchantress setting out to seduce young Rupert so I can get close to the Lochlaw diamonds.”
When the Rogue Returns Page 14