Page 38 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

“I doubt it. She’s... Well, she’s odd.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell his mentor what the woman had said to him today. “She’s antagonistic, even hostile. I gather from what the others say about her that everyone has difficulty dealing with her.”

“What am I going to tell Mr. Wallace?” Gordon moaned, shoving his hands back into his hair and beginning to pace.

The man looked so woebegone that Desmond offered what little bit of information he had gleaned. “She wears a belt, a chatelaine, around her waist with all sorts of things hanging from it. One of the things on a chain is a set of spectacles. I thought—I wondered if that could be the Eye. If perhaps the spectacles had some sort of unique lens.” Desmond tried to recall whether Thisbe’s grandmother had held the spectacles to her eyes when she made her prediction this afternoon. Could it be that she had used the Eye to view death hovering over him?

Gordon swung back around, looking hopeful again. “That could be it. You must get a look at those spectacles. Is it hung with a ribbon? You could snip it off.”

Desmond sighed. “I’m unlikely to be that close to the woman. But I will try to get a closer look. Sir, surely Mr. Wallace will not be unreasonable. He must realize what a difficult task this is. He tried to deal with the woman himself—he knows what she’s like. He is aware how little knowledge we have about the Eye. He can’t expect us to be able to find it.”

Gordon snorted. “Wealthy men don’t bother with the reasons—they want results. The dowager duchess has been here for over a week. He wants to know why we haven’t located it. I can only put him off with promises for so long.”

“You promised him you would get it?” Desmond’s eyebrows soared upward.

“He was demanding answers. I had to tell him something. Desmond, you must talk to her. Explain.”

“I cannot,” Desmond said flatly. “Sir, please don’t ask this of me.”

Gordon drew back, looking hurt. “I was certain you would help me. That you cared about...all this.” He swept his hand around the room.

“I do care. I’ve devoted a great deal of time to it, tried countless arrangements of lenses and mirrors, different crystals. I work on it every day. But this isn’t a matter of hard work.”

“No, it’s a matter of disloyalty,” Gordon snapped.

Desmond drew back as if he’d slapped him. “Sir. I have never been disloyal to you. I have always done my best to repay what you’ve done for me, to work the hardest and the longest, to be the most thorough.”

“What else would I call it when you refuse to do the one thing I desperately need? Wallace will leave me, take away all his funds. I’ll never be able to prove my theories. Without the Eye, I’m doomed.”

“Sir, I’m sure it’s not so dire a situation.” Desmond had never seen the man like this. “You’ll see.”

“No, I won’t see.” Gordon’s voice was stained with bitterness. He sighed and walked away, taking out his handkerchief to clean his spectacles.

Desmond watched him. What a tangle this all was. It was sheer happenstance, cosmic bad luck, that had landed the problem of the Eye in his lap at just the same moment he had met Thisbe. Perhaps his aunt was right, and he had been cursed from birth.

He had only made everything worse by not telling the whole story to Thisbe as soon as he realized who she was. Maybe she would have believed him if he told her that he had no idea of her identity. After all, she had concealed that from him—how was he to know?

But he had been so frantic to keep Thisbe from suspecting that he had deceived her that he had created even more deception. If she was to find out about the Eye now, after all this time had gone by without Desmond telling her, her reaction would be even worse. He had been in her home, met her family; he had kissed her, held her—all the while keeping this secret. What else could she think but that he had also been deceiving her from the first?

When she told him today about her fears that her grandmother would be taken advantage of, it had been like a knife to his ribs. She would despise him if he told her the truth now. He would lose her forever, and that was not a risk Desmond was willing to take.

AS SOON AS Desmond left, Thisbe herded the twins back inside despite their protests. In the twins’ rooms, she found one of the upstairs maids, looking glum. Clearly, she had been assigned the task of looking after the boys. Thisbe handed them over and went to her grandmother’s bedchamber. It wasn’t surprising to find the dowager issuing contradictory orders to her hapless maid as the unfortunate woman emptied the drawers and cabinets.

“Grandmother, what are you doing?” Thisbe was sure she knew the answer.

The duchess drew herself up to her fullest height, tilting her chin up, and proclaimed, “I am leaving this house, my home, as she wishes.”

It was never a good sign when Emmeline became “she.”

“I am sure Mother didn’t tell you to leave Broughton House.”

“I know when I am not welcome,” Cornelia replied darkly.

Thisbe turned to the duchess’s personal maid. “I’d like to talk to my grandmother alone, please.”

“Yes’m.” The woman bobbed a grateful curtsy and hurried out of the room before the dowager duchess could issue a countercommand.

“Really, Thisbe, you have no right to be ordering Goodwin about.”

“Yes, I know. But would you rather have the servants privy to our family disagreements?”