“First time, sir.” Concentrating on configuring the coil and needle as he instructed, she turned her head only slightly as she replied, but even that small shift brought her mouth perilously close to his. As though generating a thermodynamic attraction, the heat of his lips pulled her closer still. At the last moment Ivy gasped and froze, and Lord Harrow pulled back with a start.
Chapter 6
“Sorry, sir!”
“No, Ned, my fault.” Retreating to the other side of the laboratory table, Simon seized the first voltaic cell with which his hands came in contact, while the near collision of his lips against hers continued to heat his loins and propel his heart against his chest wall.
He hadn’t been that close to a woman since . . . since Aurelia. And the pleasurable sensations that traveled through him felt like a betrayal of her memory. Not enough time had passed, perhaps never would. She had been infinitely more than just his wife, at least in the sense that most men thought of their wives. She had been his partner, his equal, his lover. When she died, he lost everything . . . everything.
Except his work, continued in her memory.
After adding the necessary acid to the cell, he lingered long enough to harness his pulse before returning to his equally unsettled assistant, if her crimson cheeks were any indication. Even without the loss he had suffered at Aurelia’s death, how could he have forgotten himself so entirely that he’d come within a fiery hairsbreadth of kissing someone he was pretending to believe was a boy?
“I, ah, had merely been about to point out that your thread had slipped off center of the needle. See there.” He pointed, relieved to discover that the thread had indeed slipped a fraction; not enough to skew the measurement, but enough to convince young Ned that he had entered into the employ of an exacting taskmaster.
“Oh, yes, I see. Thank you, sir.”
Keeping a good yard or so of space and cool air between them, Simon placed the cell beside the galvanometer she had constructed. “Now we’ll measure the current and see how accurate your indicator is.”
As she hooked up the wires to connect the cell to the meter, he watched, not her progress, but her. The deft movements of her small hands, the adorable crease of concentration above her nose, the secret softness of a body hidden beneath men’s clothing, all captured his gaze and his approval. Ah, yes, he approved.
“This way, sir?” She threaded the connecting wire through the coil.
He briefly shifted his focus. “That’s correct, Ned. You’re almost done.”
Galileo’s teeth, but he had never encountered a woman like her. Bluestockings and academic-minded suffragists, yes, those he had experienced aplenty. They were usually bespectacled, prudish spinsters who hung about the university gates engaging anyone who would listen in a debate about the importance of women gaining access to formal education and higher learning.
Over the years, a few had even forced their way into the lecture halls, and it was not unheard of for the more insistent of their set to don britches and a coat in the attempt to fool the registrar’s office—just as this woman had done.
Some of their antics bordered on the absurd, but Simon sympathized with their plight; theirs was not an unreasonable argument. His mother had been well educated. Aurelia, too. Even Gwendolyn, before her descent into impulsive, self-destructive behavior, had shown aptitude for her studies.
“Ready to make the final connection, my lord.”
“Go ahead.” He found himself drawing closer to her again, not to assist in the procedure, but to inhale the scent of her cropped curls, to visually caress the creamy curve of her nape exposed above her collar.
This would never do. He had tried telling himself he tolerated her charade only because he championed her desire to explore the field they both loved so well. No one could fake the kind of knowledge she possessed, and no one but the truly passionate could wade through the often dry exposition covering the past several centuries of research.
There were those words again: desire and passion. When it came to “Ned,” he seemed unable to govern his impulses or depend upon his common sense.
“It’s working!” A vivid flush suffused her cheeks. “Look, sir, the needle is moving in a perfect perpendicular pattern to the current.”
Her joy was infectious, so much so that Simon very nearly caught her up in his arms and spun her about. He stopped himself just in time, answering her enthusiasm with an approving if sedate, “So it is, Ned. Well-done.”
“Thank you, sir.” She jotted down the numbers on the dial indicated by the needle. Her excitement might have been measured on that galvanometer as well; elation lit up in her features and added a tremor to her voice. “What next?”
“I have a store of chemicals and compounds I’d like you to catalogue.”
Her enthusiasm dimmed, and he fought back a grin. Who wouldn’t rather engage in hands-on experimentation than take up pen and notepaper and sort through a musty storage cupboard? He’d certainly endured his share of tedium as a younger man, but he had learned from it as well, as this student would do.
“Tell me, Ned. How old are you?”
After pausing a beat, she said, “Eighteen, sir.”
He wondered how close to her true age that was. If he were to judge her features by male standards, she looked about the age she claimed, if not younger. But in comparing her with other females he knew, his sister included, he guessed her age to be closer to twenty, perhaps even a year or two older than that. For no reason he cared to acknowledge, he hoped she was above twenty, making her more his contemporary and so much less a child.
“You’ve your whole life ahead of you,” he mused aloud. “What would you most like to do with it?”
Her answer came without an instant’s delay. “This. I don’t believe I realized how much before today . . . before I stepped through that doorway. I feel at home surrounded by this equipment, in a way I’ve never done elsewhere.”
Her zeal raised an ache in his chest. He empathized with her dream, yet he also grieved that such a dream could never be, not for her. Her pretense could not continue indefinitely. At some point, probably not long hence, someone not as understanding as he would discover her deception, and there could be a lofty price to pay. The thought of the humiliation she would have to endure made him inwardly cringe.
Was he wrong to encourage her? Perhaps she’d be better off if he called her out now and sent her home where she belonged, where she’d come to no harm.
But now that he thought of it . . .
“Where are you from, Ned?”
“London, most recently, sir. I reside in a house my sisters and I inherited from our uncle.”
“I see.” He frowned as a vague memory prodded. Then he remembered what Bartram Hendslew had revealed about the “odd little chap,” information that contradicted the impression Ned had given so far of having been raised by an uncle. “What of your parents? Does not your father serve in Her Majesty’s government in some capacity?”
The quick lowering of her lashes failed to conceal a flicker of alarm. “That’s true, sir. He is an undersecretary to the chancellor of the exchequer.”
She had spoken those last words as if by rote, prompting Simon to entertain serious doubts about their truth. “Then this uncle of yours . . . ?”
“My mother’s brother. Mother passed away when we were all quite young, and we began spending a good deal of time with Uncle Edward. He was retired, you see, had time to devote to us while business kept Father from home.”
“That would explain your having such extensive access to your uncle’s library.”
“Yes, sir.” She compressed her lips and darted a glance around the laboratory. “The cataloguing, sir. I suppose I should be getting on with it. I assume the substances in question are kept in the armoire?”
He followed her gaze across to the oaken wardrobe whose doors he always kept tightly locked. “No, not in there. Follow me.”
He brought her to a bank of cupboards sta
cked two high. Upon his opening the first of the doors, a package of powdered resin tumbled out. She moved quickly, catching the bundle before it hit the floor.
“Rather untidy,” she commented brightly, without a hint of complaint. “Shall I restore order as I catalogue?”
“I would appreciate that, Ned. It’s something my wife used to do for me....”
He left the remainder of the thought unfinished, astonished that he had mentioned Aurelia at all. He rarely ever did, and then only in the company of friends who had known her, those whom he most trusted. The topic was still too raw, too painful for casual conversation.
With a nod, “Ned” went to work, leaving Simon with a keen sense of gratitude that she had neither probed him with questions nor bestowed upon him the pitying look he often encountered and so heartily loathed.
Across the room, he put on his spectacles and settled in to make some calculations, but his attention repeatedly wandered to the trim form of his assistant. He wished he knew her real name. Even if he couldn’t address her properly, he would have preferred to think of her in feminine terms, in honest terms.
He again considered whether it would be kinder and wiser to end her deception now. But he lacked the heart to crush her aspirations, especially before she had the chance to accomplish something extraordinary, something she could always look back upon with pride.
In a way, their alliance made perfect sense. Besides her remarkable abilities making her a top-rate assistant, there was also the matter of secrecy, a thing they had in common. Her own need for discretion guaranteed that she would safeguard any revelations he shared with her.
For the foreseeable future, then, he would allow her the benefit of her lie. He would call her Ned, think of her as Ned . . . and maintain a proper physical distance, just as he would if she truly had been Ned.
Coming upon an unlabeled bottle about the size of her smallest finger, Ivy plucked it from the shelf only to have it slip from her fingers. In a sudden panic she snatched at it with her other hand, but it bounced off her palm before her fingers closed around it. The vessel flipped upward, striking her shoulder and then plummeting. She dropped to her knees and somehow managed to capture the tiny bottle with both hands against her waistcoat.
A close call! The very last thing she needed was to be breaking things on her first day in the laboratory. Her fingers quivering, she set the container aside to be identified later, when Lord Harrow was no longer hunched so intently over his work.
Of course, her bout of clumsiness could be blamed directly on him, and on the heat of an almost kiss that had left her senses reeling, her lips tingling. Though she replayed the incident over and over in her mind, she could not quite fathom what had brought Lord Harrow leaning so close that their lips had all but touched.
Did he trust her so little with his precious equipment? She didn’t believe that was the case, for then why would he have her here at all? An unsettling thought sent her fingertips to her chin. Perhaps he had noticed the lack of coal dust? His suggestion yesterday that she should shave rather than attempt to grow whiskers had been all the encouragement she needed to discontinue smearing the grimy powder across her face. A mistake?
But no, if Lord Harrow suspected the truth of her gender, he would toss her out on her coattails, not kiss her.
Such a silly notion. Of course he had not meant to kiss her. He thought of her as a university student named Ned, and not as a young woman who . . .
Who could not stop wishing he had kissed her, whose lips burned with unquenchable curiosity at what his mouth would have felt like, tasted like. . . .
“Have you encountered a problem?”
With a startled glance over her shoulder she discovered Lord Harrow staring across the way at her from over a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched halfway down the strong line of his nose. She hadn’t seen him wear spectacles before, and found herself fascinated by the myriad contradictions they produced. He was at once scholarly and dashing, rakish and brilliant, a professor with the vigor and physique of a sportsman. . . .
She held up the rescued bottle. “An unidentified compound, sir.”
“No matter. Set it aside with any others you find and I’ll look at them later.”
She didn’t mention that she had already thought of that. Turning back to her task, she felt his gaze lingering upon her. She dipped her quill in preparation of jotting down the next item, pressed too hard on the paper, and broke the nib.
An hour later, her nerves settled thanks to the deadly dullness of her occupation, she stifled a sigh. She might as well have been home again, helping Mrs. Eddelson rearrange the pantry. The marquess’s endless supplies of minerals, oils, and resins could just as easily have been spices, sauces, and jellies, all strewn in together without rhyme or reason.
Surely these cupboards could not have been sorted in months, not since . . . Oh, yes, since his poor wife had passed away.
The more time she spent with Lord Harrow, the more absurd the rumors became. She perceived nothing at all “mad” about him. In fact, thus far she had detected none of the brusque ill humor he had exhibited during yesterday’s challenge. His seemed a generous if cautious nature, hardly the characteristic of someone conducting gruesome experiments on the sly.
If Ivy was to venture a guess, she’d suppose his behavior yesterday morning had been another bit of trickery designed to encourage those rumors and deter the more fainthearted of the applicants. He was good at disguises, good enough to give her pause. How much longer before he discovered hers?
A container at the back corner of the bottom shelf caught her attention, and Ivy bent over to retrieve it.
“It’s growing late,” Lord Harrow said suddenly and with an oddly husky rasp to his voice. Holding a vial, she turned in puzzlement. He removed his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes. “Finish with whatever you’ve got in your hand and then you may go.”
“Late, sir?” A glance out the window confirmed that the hour could hardly be approaching teatime. “And go where?”
Focusing on the papers fanned across his desk as if they required his utmost attention, he gave a shrug. “I suppose you could unpack. Do you care for riding? My groom could saddle a horse for you.”
Her eyebrows rose at a possibility she hadn’t considered. Victoria had supplied suitable riding clothes, but Ivy had assumed them to be standard attire for romping in the countryside with her fellow university students. A good number of years had passed since she had last ridden astride, and she had never quite taken to the saddle anyway, not like her much more athletic sister Holly. The prospect of negotiating woodland paths by herself was not a welcome one.
“Whatever you prefer,” Lord Harrow said, apparently perceiving her hesitation. “Though I thought perhaps we’d ride together in the evenings before supper.”
Together? That shed an entirely different light on the matter. Ivy delighted in the image forming in her mind, that of riding through the forest at Lord Harrow’s side, discussing the elements and fauna, gauging wind velocities—subjects that made her sisters roll their eyes. “I’d like that very much, sir. Though I must admit I’m not the most proficient of riders.”
He chuckled faintly. “Too much time spent at your books, Ned?”
“That’s it exactly, sir.”
“Did the other boys tease you for it, when you were younger?”
A taut silence grew as Ivy regretted the necessity of lying, and as a conviction came over her that Victoria must surely be wrong about him. His sister may have stolen the stone, but Ivy would all but stake her life that Lord Harrow knew nothing about it, and that if he did, he would insist Lady Gwendolyn return the queen’s property before another day dawned.
She offered him a sad little smile. “I suppose they did, sir.”
His nod conveyed the understanding of someone who had shared a similar experience. “Off with you, then. That’s enough for today.”
That night, Ivy stood with her ear to her door, waiting for sile
nce to descend over Harrowood. But no matter the hour, there would always be someone awake somewhere in the house—a footman or two, perhaps even a maid working late or getting an early start on the morrow’s chores. She must keep to the shadows, make nary a sound, and turn corners with the utmost care to avoid detection.
Noiselessly she slipped out of her room, careful to step over the bare floorboards and keep to the muffling hall runner. With only intermittent shafts of moonlight to guide her, she made her way through the darkened corridors to Lord Harrow’s library with its adjoining office. Outside, the wind wailed through the trees and battered a warning against the house. Goose bumps showered Ivy’s arms, but she ignored the discomfort, the wind, the little voice inside urging her back to the safety of her room.
Spindly shadows, cast through the library’s windows by the tangle of branches outside, danced on the walls and groped along the spines of the books lining the shelves. The ghostly sight drew a gasp from Ivy, but she bit it back and issued herself a stern admonishment to get to work. One by one she searched the desk, the long, low bank of cabinets, and then the tall cupboard with the gilded edges. Next she considered the bookcases. No single volume appeared thick enough to conceal Victoria’s stone, but before passing through to the office, she checked that the books sat well back on their shelves, and that nothing could have been hidden behind them.
A cautionary instinct prompted her to slide the nearest book off its shelf before she passed through to the office. A bout of conscience gripped her as she set the small book on the leather desktop, closed the door to the corridor, and once again rummaged through drawers and cabinets. With every pull of a knob, she expected to encounter resistance, but it seemed Lord Harrow saw no reason to lock away estate ledgers and files. No, it became apparent that any secrets he might possess were guarded in his laboratory . . . where she could not tread without his permission.
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