Page 7 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

His chances of success were low; he was well aware of that. But for the moment he wasn’t going to think about that fact. He was going to let himself dream. He would concentrate on the thought that he’d see her again in only a few days.

He couldn’t retrieve his coat, which he had left in the workshop, now locked for the night, so he went straight to the laboratory. It was located in the basement of a building, reached by a set of stairs leading down from the street.

Inside the laboratory the light was low, having only the two high windows aboveground, and the rough stone walls of the narrow room were old and often damp. But it was well-equipped and spacious, being long as well as narrow, and none of the men who worked there noticed the musty smell or the lack of a view.

Desmond opened the door to find Professor Gordon and the other workers clustered together in the wide space between the worktables and the professor’s desk, all talking in excited tones. His mentor looked over at him first and said, “Desmond. There you are. You’re rather late this evening.”

“Yes, I went to a lecture after we closed.” He was reluctant to say anything about Miss Moreland. There was no reason to keep it a secret, but still, he’d rather keep it close to him, savor it, for the moment. “What’s happened? You look—”

“Excited? That’s because we are, my boy.” Gordon beamed, his round face flushed. He gestured to Desmond. “Come here, come here, and see. I received a letter from Mr. Wallace. It’s the most wonderful news.”

“More money?” Desmond guessed, walking over. The room was warm from the Franklin stove, thank goodness, and he was starting to have feeling in his fingers again.

“Better than that.” Gordon’s eyes twinkled.

Whatever it was, Desmond was glad to see his mentor in such good spirits. More and more these days he seemed sunken in gloom; the damage to his reputation weighed on him. Years ago, when Desmond first came to London, Gordon had been one of the leading lights of science in the city, his opinion sought after. Desmond had deemed himself fortunate indeed that Gordon was a friend of the vicar and had, as the vicar asked, taken Desmond under his wing. But now, having attached himself to the search for proof of the existence of the spirit after death, Gordon was ridiculed by his peers. It pained Desmond to see him grow more and more despondent.

“What’s the news?” Desmond smiled, glancing around at the others. “Tell me.”

“Mr. Wallace has located the Eye of Annie Blue,” Gordon said triumphantly.

“What?” Desmond’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Yes!”

“See, I told you Anne Ballew was real,” Carson said in his careless way, leaning back, elbows propped on the high laboratory table, his mouth curved in a lazy smile. Carson never used the nickname given to the woman by the crowds.

“I knew she was real. And that she was burned at the stake as a heretic.” Desmond had dug up all the history he could find on the woman—though at the time he had been trying to disprove his aunt’s wild stories about her. “I will even accept that she made an instrument called the Eye. But I’ve never seen any evidence that it actually worked. Or that it survived her downfall. There’s been no sign of the Eye since Anne Ballew. There were rumors it was burned.”

“And there were rumors that it was saved from the fire,” Carson pointed out.

“But we have proof of it now.” Gordon waved the paper in his hand. “Mr. Wallace is certain he’s found it.”

Desmond made no comment. He would never dispute his mentor, but Gordon had more faith in his patron’s expertise than Desmond did. Mr. Wallace was no scientist or scholar, but a wealthy man who was immensely eager to prove that ghosts existed. And as Thisbe had pointed out a few minutes ago, it was very easy to believe in something when one wanted to badly enough.

“Right here, you see.” Gordon tapped the paper and began to read. “‘I have seen with my own eyes a letter from a man named Henry Caulfield, written in 1692. In the letter, Mr. Caulfield describes a visit to the home of one Arbuthnot Gray, in which he states that Gray showed him Annie Blue’s “devilish instrument.”’”

“So Mr. Wallace now plans to track down what happened to the Eye after that?”

“No.” Gordon fairly vibrated with excitement. “Mr. Wallace already knows where it is. He is convinced it remained in the possession of the Gray family, passed down from generation to generation. There is a will, written by this Arbuthnot’s granddaughter, in which she bequeaths to her daughter ‘the collection of antiquities, oddities and mystical curiosities given to me by my mother.’ They’re clearly family heirlooms—they would keep them even if they shut them away in a trunk somewhere. That’s how the aristocracy is. Mr. Wallace is certain that it is now in the possession of her descendant, the Dowager Duchess of Broughton.”

Despite his doubts, Desmond could not help but feel a thrill of excitement. “Does Mr. Wallace intend to purchase it?”

Gordon’s face fell. “He’s tried. He said he has written three letters to her and received no reply. He hoped to actually have it in his possession before he told me of it, but he is at such an impasse, he felt he had to let me know. Perhaps he hoped we would have some idea how to obtain the Eye. Though I’m at a bit of a loss to see how I could persuade a duchess when he could not.”

“Steal it,” Carson suggested lightly.

Desmond rolled his eyes. “Don’t be daft.”

“I’m serious,” Carson protested. “Mr. Wallace seems to think there is no hope of getting the thing from this woman.”

“Yes, he did explain that the duchess is odd and difficult to deal with. Apparently she is an avid collector. Never gets rid of anything.”

“Then she won’t even notice it’s gone,” Carson said. “It’s easy.”

“It’s illegal,” Desmond responded.

“Well, if you think about it, it doesn’t really belong to this duchess now, does it?” Benjamin Cooper said from his perch on a stool behind Gordon. “I mean, Anne Ballew was the true owner—she created it. It was undoubtedly stolen from her when they hauled her off to jail.”