“You should have consulted me first.” A cold wind pushed against his jacket, the kind that numbed the lips and froze the face. She automatically leaned into him, poaching his warmth. “This morning” he said. “I paid a visit to my assistant’s brother to confirm he had never returned home. I don’t have a good feeling, and worry that something nefarious has happened to George. I need him. Without another pair of hands, my work will be as slow as a broken-winded, hobbled mare.”
Drizzle fell sluggishly down, and the air felt cold and clammy. Rachel ducked further into her cape. “I’ll be your assistant.”
“You?”
Her breath came out in a puff of fog. “I’m more than qualified. I read at the age of three and have had a lifelong love of science.”
He heard the jingle of reins and a coachman’s sharp whistle to halt the carriage horses. “I suppose you are going to tell me you sat on the same rock as Dr. Franklin.”
She bobbed up on her toes, her eyes meeting his. “We are friends. When I was thirteen, I met him in Philadelphia. Ever since, I’ve been cursed with the love of electricity and its workings. We correspond regularly.”
“Then I shall require your help in the laboratory” Anthony might have been enraptured with the soft dreaminess in her blue eyes except three things happened in neat deadly preordained rhythm, as slow as the tick of a Huygens clock. The pendulum shortened, the swing of the arc reduced,one, and two, and three.A flash of light from a balcony up above, a harsh laugh, and a scraping of something heavy being moved.
Instinct or his systematic mind made him look up. Like a bullet, he grabbed Rachel and used his body to curl around her, pitching her over the steps and into the bushes. A concrete flower pot exploded on the top of the steps right where they had been standing. He had used his body to cushion the fall, Miss Thorne sprawled on top of him, her hat gone, her rich auburn hair unpinned and flowing over him. Besides the barberry thorns stuck into his back he warmed, very comfortable with her on top of him.
She curved her hand on the side of his face. “You saved my life.”
A whole world of complexities pulled his heart away from the gloom where he had not been able to save his wife’s life.You saved my life.Rachel’s words, thrown in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling him out of the quicksand, scooping him up from a place of drowning and into the wild richness of air. She was breathing hard. Anthony didn’t know whether to kiss her or expound on the gravitational pull and impact of a one hundred-pound mass on two biological bodies…and the likelihood of survival. The latter was safer.
“My hat.”
“We’ve averted near death and you are worried about your hat?”
She scrambled off him, stood on shaky limbs, then plunged through the shrubs. “Lord Rutland, there is a man. I think he is dead.”
Grooms quickly gathered from the carriages parked in the circular driveway. Anthony ordered the Rutland head coachman to hold up a lantern while he parted a bush. His breath hitched. George lay with a large bloody gash across his head and a pool of blood saturated the ground. A sudden coldness hit Anthony’s core. He reached to his assistant’s neck, felt for a pulse. Nothing. He was dead.
Anthony took off his coat and covered his assistant. His voice broke with the horrific death George had faced. “Get the authorities,” he ordered one of the grooms. George died because he worked for Anthony.
He turned to Miss Thorne, scrubbed a hand over his face. “My assistant, George. Whatever twisted mind did this, sent a message loud and clear. I will notify his family.”
Chapter Four
After spending half of the night at the Duke of Chelmsford’s with the authorities, Rachel now sat in the library of Anthony’s ancestral home for further examination of George’s terrible demise. Lady Ward had retired from all the excitement of the evening. Rachel had changed out of her silk gown and rested on a brocade chair opposite Anthony.
A fire crackled in the fireplace, warding off the damp winter chill and illuminating a vast number of leather bound books that populated the shelves from the floor to the gallery above. How she itched to read every tome and how lucky Anthony was to live in a scholarly paradise.
Anthony sans his frockcoat, leaned forward, rested his elbow on his knees, easy in his skin, yet attentive. His ebony hair, pulled back in a queue, fell over his snowy white shirt. Other than a tear in his stocking there was no evidence of their fall into the barberry bushes. Her face heated from the memory of that awkward position. She tilted her head to the ceiling of gilded stucco, that presented framed paintings of God, angels in war, and the seizure of earthly mortals from demons below.
Anthony caught her staring at the motif, his deep baritone voice infused with shades of deeper meaning. “The artist demonstrated the deadly poison of the serpent destroyed by joy that filled the souls of the vanquished and served the power of redemption.”
How wonderful he was to distract her for a moment from the night’s events. Not to be outdone, she said, “The artist has captured the iron hand of right and absolute, yielding a stronger force that defeats evil and allows us to move from darkness to light.” As she parlayed the response, a lightness tingled in her chest, enjoying the shared intellectual camaraderie.Touché, Lord Anthony.
Anthony pressed his lips together. “Or has the artist divined the experiences of our past are the architects of our present?”
She could not think of one thing to counter his debate, not when she swiped a tiny rapier and Lord Anthony served a blow with a battle-axe.I will win next time.Rachel smiled and for a moment, the embossed tomes, the beeswax candles sputtering in candelabras, and then the walls, melted away. The world, and all its inherent drama, vanished leaving only the two of them, and an intangible profoundness that left them intimately connected.
Catching her breath, Rachel ripped her stare from Anthony’s compelling regard, thankful for the interruption of Duke Richard Rutland’s entrance and trailed by a servant carrying tray of food. The servant poured tea and following the Duke’s nod, departed, closing the doors behind him with a light snap.
Duke Richard Rutland stared out the heavily draped windows. His silence loomed. He was a tall, handsome, imposing man, regal with dark hair greying at his temples, and smartly dressed despite the lateness of the hour. He did not have the thickening middle that a man his age would present. No. He was rather robust and appeared as one who rode horses for hours, and…he was forbidding. His staunch demeanor gave the appearance of someone you’d dare not cross.
The Duke sat behind his massive rosewood desk. “I wanted to talk to the two of you without the authorities. There is more to George’s death and the attempt on your lives this evening. We’ve been lax since Nicolas and Abby’s kidnapping a year ago. Again, we are being played upon by an unseen adversary.”
Anthony rubbed his thumb across his chiseled jaw. “I remember the whole situation as if it happened yesterday. During Abby’s betrothal party, both father and I had received a life and death summons to my laboratory.”
Duke Richard threaded his fingers through his hair. “Fortunately, my impatient nature saved us. For I believed a hoax had been played and we left, seconds before the lab exploded. During the chaos, Abby had been abducted by Percy Devol, a madman bent on revenge against the long deceased Duke of Rutland, Anthony’s grandfather, holding the insane and illogical belief that he was the rightful heir to the dukedom. His goal had been to eliminate all of the Rutlands.”
Anthony stood, strode to a sideboard and poured himself a drink. “Imprisoned aboard theCivis,Abby would have perished under the thumb of the ship’s Captain, a former slaver, and his dreadful crew if not for your cousin, Jacob Thorne. Fortunately, his privateering activities included capturing the merchantman in which Abby was held prisoner.”
