Most Eagerly Yours
Page 35
At mention of Cambridge, home of one of Europe’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, all of Ivy’s senses came alive with interest. What she wouldn’t give to be allowed to attend lectures in those celebrated halls. The word scientist, too, had captured her attention. But she hadn’t at all liked Victoria’s one quick reference to the man’s disposition.
“Mad?”
After a brief hesitation, Victoria admitted, “Some call him the Mad Marquess of Harrow, but I’m sure it’s merely collegiate fraternity nonsense. He maintains close ties with the university. That is where you will find him, Ivy, and perhaps the stone as well.”
“I see,” Ivy said when, in fact, she did not. “Then I am to appeal to him for the return of the stone.”
“Goodness, no!” Alarm pinched Victoria’s features. “He may not be mad, but neither is he known for being a reasonable man. He disowned his sister, didn’t he?”
“Then . . . ?”
“You must earn his trust. It so happens he is presently searching for an assistant for his experiments. If you could manage to win the position, you would gain access to his private laboratory, where you could then steal back what is rightfully mine.”
The outrageous proposal sent a chuckle bubbling in Ivy’s throat, one quickly coughed away when Her Majesty’s expression failed to convey even the faintest trace of humor.
This, apparently, was no jest, but a true call to Her Majesty’s service, one that left Ivy more than a little perplexed. “How on earth shall I, a woman, track down a man in an academic setting? I wouldn’t gain admittance through the front gates, much less the lecture halls.”
Victoria smacked her lips together. “I have a plan for that, though admittedly a shocking one. More shocking, even, than when I asked Laurel to pose as a widow last spring and work her charms on my inebriate, adulterous cousin.”
More shocking than that? Ivy dreaded to ask, but ask she did. And the answer she received stunned her more than anything she had ever heard in all her twenty-two years on this earth.