Throughout the meeting, Morgan’s eyes continually returned to that short, peculiar man as he tried to name what about him irked Morgan to such an extent. More wonders were revealed, though not the parcel the young man had tucked under his arm. At long last, the meeting disbanded. Out the window, the twilight had deepened into full, inky night.
As Morgan predicted, Marchwood and Folkestone immediately swooped on the man designing the flying machine. Various others jockeyed around the inventors. The noise in the room swelled to a roar as everyone tried to speak at once. In the chaos, Morgan was hard-put to keep his eyes on the groups, searching for anything that exchanged hands.
As he stood, stretching his legs, he found himself near the short young man with the queue and the impish smile, along with that man’s lanky relative. The shorter man all but jogged through the room to reach the door.
“Phil—” The taller man brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, looking harried.
“I’ll meet you down by the carriage in twenty minutes. I need to take care of something first.”
As the shorter man slipped through the door, his companion clenched his fist at his side. He lingered in the room, staring at the open door with hostility. Something was about to happen, and the lanky young man, about eighteen or twenty at most, would miss it at this rate.
Morgan made no such mistake. Squaring his shoulders, he slipped through the door. His instincts had been clamoring all night, and they were about to be confirmed.
This had to be the spy meeting he’d been waiting for.
2
Miss Philomena St. Gobain lengthened her stride as she slipped into the corridor. The herd of inventors would be on her heels in minutes. If she wanted to escape the deluge without being delayed, she had to complete this meeting quickly. She’d slipped an invitation to her “cousin’s” upcoming soiree in two days into the hands of every peer crowded around the table. To the men of the Society for the Advancement of Science, she was Phil, the bright cousin of a brilliant but eccentric heiress. Men were fickle. She was certain more than half of her patrons suspected that Phil and Miss St. Gobain were one and the same, but so long as she didn’t flaunt her gender during the meetings, they were content not to say a word against her. A word in the wrong ear could bring censure down upon her and lose business.
The money was the bottom line. As a woman, she only served as her brother’s regent—the inheritance was his, not hers. Without her clientele among the peerage, she would have nothing. Not that Jared would turn her out, but he might at some point marry and encourage her to do the same. Tie herself to a man who would curtail her freedom and her creativity? That, she would never do.
Her only recourse was to squirrel away money against that eventuality. For that, she plied the interest and curiosity of rich peers with an interest in science. When they turned up at her townhouse on Monday evening, she would use the cover of the ball to arrange for a private tour of her invention room and, with luck, earn herself a few more commissions. Perhaps not Folkestone and Marchwood, who seemed enamored with the thought of racing to their deaths in midair, but several others had probed her for information as to what her “cousin” was currently working on.
The goggles dug through her jacket, waistcoat, and shirt and into her side. With just one small adjustment, she should be able to make them work. She’d painstakingly replicated every single component of the original light-enhancement goggles, or LEGs as she liked to call them. Left to her by her father, their creator, upon his death, they were one of the many mysteries she had sought in the past four and a half years to recreate. Now, she was so close to success she could taste it.
Crossing the fern-patterned runner to the staircase, she descended one floor to a dimly lit hallway. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the faint light as she followed the T corridor by rote, pausing near the junction as she spotted a man’s silhouette. He was stocky in the shoulders and chest, only a hand taller than her with a plump face that seemed to dwarf his nose.
Squaring her shoulders, she infused her stance with confidence. She didn’t much like dealing with him, but since the pieces she needed to complete her invention had been created in France, she had no choice. Without that particular cut and material of prism, her LEGs wouldn’t amplify the ambient light properly—which made them no better than a bizarre fashion choice.
As she stepped abreast of his form, tightening her hold on the package beneath her arm, the stocky man blurted, “Do you have the money?” There was a slight twist to his words, the hint of a French accent.
For a moment, it conjured the image of her father, explaining how one of his fantastical devices would one day change the world—and her life.
She shut her eyes, banishing the image. When she opened them again, she squinted to see her contact, Mr. Lefevre. The light drifting from the rest of the manor was dim. “I do. One moment.”
Taking a step back, she reached up to the light in the sconce on the wall. It had been devised by the Society’s chairman. A thin cylinder on the side served as a switch. When she rolled it between her fingers as quick as a snap, the inner workings struck the flint and steel together and ignited the small flame. The lamp’s angled mirrors did the rest of the work by amplifying the light, much like her LEGs—albeit the LEGs turned the light in toward the eye, whereas the lamp turned it outward and took up a much larger space to do it. The mirrors stretched almost a foot long in places, scalloped like a seashell.
As the light bloomed, Lefevre scowled. His mop of blond hair fell onto his wide forehead. He didn’t bother brushing it away.
Phil juggled the parcel under her arm, pulling on the twine that held it closed. The brown paper crinkled as she peeled it away from its contents—not only the goggles, but also a fat purse. It clinked as she handed it to Lefevre. At his insistence, she had brought coins, not a banknote. As she rewrapped the paper around the goggles to keep them from accidentally slipping to the ground, the Frenchman pulled the drawstring on the purse to peek inside.
Phil scowled. “It’s all there, like you asked. I trust you have the product?”
With a sneer twisting his plump cheeks, Lefevre thrust his hand into his pocket. He emerged with two identical, intricately-cut transparent rings of glass. His disdainful expression falling from his face, he thrust them into her hand and strode toward the window at the end of the hall.
Her mouth dropped open as she juggled the thick jewels, trying not to drop them. Her parcel slipped from beneath her arm instead. She dove to catch it, fumbling and thrusting her hands beneath just in time to cushion the impact. She winced.
Please don’t break. She ran her hands over the parcel, but it felt intact. Quickly, she stuffed the prisms into her pocket. She turned her attention to the window in time to see Lefevre slip onto the sill and grasp the rickety trellis.
What the devil had gotten into him?
The vibration along the floor hailing the approach of footsteps gave her the answer. She tilted her face up to spot who had intruded upon the transaction. Her breath fled as the light illuminated a face she hadn’t thought ever to see this close.
The Duke of Tenwick. She’d interacted with his youngest brother, Lord Gideon Graylocke, enough times to recognize the family resemblance. When had he arrived—why? He’d never attended any other meeting. Ordinarily, she might try to interest him in her inventions, but the forbidding set of his sensual mouth warned her that he wasn’t in an investing mood. His gray eyes pierced the air like silver bullets.
If his mouth wasn’t set in a scowl, he would have been handsome. Devastatingly handsome, in fact. Ebony locks of hair swept over his forehead, punctuated by a vivid white streak at his right temple. His chiseled jaw held the barest kiss of stubble, a shadow framing his mouth and chin. Phil curled her fist, fighting the urge to touch him and feel the rasp beneath her palm. His wide shoulders filled out his dove-gray jacket to distraction. The color seemed to make his eyes gleam—or maybe that was a trick of the light.
Her heart galloped as he neared. Hastily, she sprang to her feet, hoping to meet him on equal footing. It was in vain. He loomed over her, towering even taller than her brother. Her nose scarcely reached his chest. Even if he believed her a man, it was clear from his imperious expression that they were far from equal.
She clutched her parcel to her chest. A glance behind her showed the window ajar, a breeze of cool night air gusting through. Climbing down the trellis was starting to look very appealing.
He’s only a man. Titles meant little to her. Her family might not have one anymore, but thanks to her inventions and ingenuity, she was richer than most peers.
Still, as he raked that shiver-inducing gray gaze over her, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to flee or press closer.
“Is there a second meeting down this hall that I am unaware of?”
Phil shifted in place. The duke’s deep voice was as sinfully sexy as he was. It swept through her like a warm gulp of brandy.
Did he notice her reaction to him? If he did, he would surely guess at her gender. She bit the inside of her cheek as she schooled her expression to a blank mask.
Deepening her voice, she answered, “No, your grace. I was just saying goodbye to a friend.” A friend who slipped out the window. “If you’ll excuse me…”
She almost curtseyed before she caught herself. How bacon-brained was she? She used the bend in her knees to slip around his form. She arrowed for the staircase at the end of the hall. The bright light cast a long shadow ahead of her, like a pointing finger aiming away from danger.
The duke caught her by the arm before she took more than two steps. His large hand easily wrapped around her bicep. His grip was inescapable, but not punishing. It burned through her clothing, seeming to brand the shape of him into her flesh. Her breath caught. A strange ache blossomed in her gut.
“What do you have there?” His voice was pitched low, intimate. It was the kind of voice that convinced women to strip themselves bare.
Pretend you aren’t a woman. Usually, she had no difficulty keeping up the pretense. Society meetings were a time to discuss science, when it was her mind that mattered, not her body.
Her heart stuttered as his gaze dipped from her eyes to her bosom. Did it show? She glanced down, but the paper-wrapped parcel covered her. On a normal night, she might eagerly show it to him, but tonight she clutched it closer. It wasn’t complete.
“I’m not at liberty to show it to you. Perhaps at next month’s meeting.”
His eyebrows swooped down over his eyes like birds of prey, hailing the same predatory mood. “I insist, Mr…?”
Her heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t give him her name!
The stampede of boots on the stairs interrupted the tense moment. The duke retracted his hand immediately, fisting it at his side. Glimpses of the other members came into view.
Phil darted into their midst. She elbowed the lead man aside as she slid into position in front of him. As she escaped down the staircase, the rest of the grumbling line shielding her from her pursuer, she glanced up toward the second floor. His piercing eyes snapping with irritation, the Duke of Tenwick stared after her, mute and motionless. Unable to help herself, she waggled her fingers at him in a little wave a moment before she stepped out of sight.
She didn’t know why the duke had singled her out, nor why he was so avid to peek into her parcel, but at the very least, he could pursue her no more. Her life would return to normal, and she would never have to see him again.
3
Phil’s heart hammered so fiercely, it was a wonder it didn’t carve its way out of her chest. Frantically, she turned the pockets of her men’s jacket inside out. Her waistcoat earned the same treatment. A single prism bit into her bare palm; she couldn’t find the mate.
Canting her head, she hollered, “Meg!”
Where was her maid? Maybe Phil was searching the wrong jacket. If Meg had washed it in the two days since the Society meeting, she might have put the other prism somewhere else. After calling her maid’s name again, Phil searched the drawers of her vanity, thinking that it might have been misplaced in there.
“Phil?”
The call was thin and weak; Phil barely heard it.
“I’m in the bedchamber,” she yelled back. “Come here a moment!”
The noise that followed sounded uncannily closer to bird wings than it did to the slap of slippers on the wood floor. The sound ceased as abruptly as it began. Phil turned toward the open doorway, but no one appeared. She exhaled sharply with irritation. “Me—”
She scarcely began her maid’s name before a sing-song voice pierced the air. It did not at all resemble that of her maid.
“You’re…in…a…pickle!” The words dragged through the air, stretched to their limit until, at the last, the parrot thrust his head through the top frame of the door, where he must have perched on the other side. The bird’s beak was parted in his version of a grin.
Phil shook her head, unable to keep from smiling. “Indeed I am, Pickle. Which is why I called for Meg and not you. You’re no help at all in a crisis.”
Taking no offense, the bird spread his scarlet wings and soared into the room. For a moment, as he crossed the velvet drapes shielding the bed, he camouflaged so well that the indigo and emerald feathers in his wingtips and tail seemed to move independently. Stirring the air with his vigorous wingbeats, he settled onto the broad perch next to the vanity, installed for his use. Phil had others like it in every room in the manor. The window, facing west, poured in a vibrant orange light that made Pickle look as though he was aflame.
“Have you seen Meg?” Phil lifted her forest green, silk skirt above her ankles as she slipped her feet into the thickly-embroidered slippers resting on the Oriental rug. She crossed to the doorway, her heels clicking as she passed on to the wood floor. A few servants passed through the halls, the footman in the olive-and-white St. Gobain livery, but none resembled her mousy young maid. Phil called her name again, to no avail.
When she turned, she found Pickle examining the prism she had set on the vanity for a moment. He grasped it in his beak, running his tongue across it.
“No, Pickle, drop that at once! It wouldn’t make a very good meal.” She dashed across the length of the lavish room, startling her pet into flight. He flew over her head and dove out of her bedchamber and into the corridor.
Hiking her skirt to her knees, Phil raced after him. “Pickle, give that back. I need it for a very important project.”
One of the most important projects that she’d ever worked on. Upon her father’s death, she’d discovered that all the designs for his inventions had been contained in his mind. He hadn’t entrusted anything to paper. All she had left of the mind she’d adored so much were the remnants of his past inventions—at least, the ones he hadn’t taken with him that fateful day he’d gone to demonstrate his talent. The handful that remained proved an enigma to her as she puzzled out their construction. With the LEGs, she was on the cusp of success.
If she could find the second prism, and if Pickle didn’t accidentally break the one he carried.
Flapping his wings, spanning over three feet from tip to tip, Pickle soared down the hall and smoothly turned through another open door. Phil skidded in after him a second later.
He’d taken refuge in her secret invention room. The door—an archway with a section of the wall that flipped open upon the press of a hidden switch—had been left open when she’d rushed to retrieve the prisms. Devoid of windows, the secret room was lit entirely by small, glass-paned lanterns to prevent their falling and wreaking havoc on the inventions. Even so, they were placed at intervals well out of reach of the rolled parchments she kept on one side of her work table along the wall. Instead, she placed them on the rare empty shelf in the jumble of machinery, glass, metal, wood, and other materials. Most of the materials were being used for one device or another. The inventions, in various stages of completion, some her own design and some an attempt to
replicate one of her father’s, were strewn across the room in a jumble of organized chaos, one that Meg often chided was decipherable only to Phil. In the center of the room, a wide perch with a basin beneath—Meg’s attempt to confine Pickle’s droppings—served as the parrot’s throne.
However, instead of sitting his rump on that, he flew to the wide work table. Dropping beside the brown paper-wrapped parcel she’d set there, he abandoned the prism in favor of chewing on the twine. She snatched up the prism, turning it over in her hand to verify that it hadn’t chipped. Either Pickle had been unusually delicate in his handling, or the glass was much less fragile than Phil feared.
With her free hand, she shooed the bird away from the parcel. “Stop that, you. That’s delicate.”
Cocking his head in indignation, the bird spread his wings and glided to the stand in the middle of the room. As he got there, he told her, “Your feet smell like…pickles.”
“I certainly hope not.”
Cackling, the parrot bobbed his head in circles, repeating the word pickles all the while.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s a lucky thing I’m wearing shoes and no one can smell my feet, you big turkey.”
“You’re a turkey.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not very original now, is it?”
“You’re original.”
“Why, thank you. I do try.” Pursing her lips, she turned to the parcel. “You did have a good idea, for once. Maybe I stuffed one of the prisms in with the LEGs.”
“You’re a leg.”
With a wry look at the bird, who was now grooming his wing, she informed him, “No, my dear. I have legs.”
He twisted his head to study her with one golden eye. “I have legs.” As if to demonstrate, he lifted one of them and curled his claws into his belly.
Deceiving The Duke (Scandals and Spies Book 2) Page 2