Page 94 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

“There are those who can,” she said darkly. She paused as they neared the stairs and turned to him. “Seven Sisters tomorrow?”

He nodded. “It seems the likeliest place for Gordon to go. With their mutual interest in Anne Ballew, they’re likely to be friends. If we’re lucky, he’s staying with Mr. Symington.”

“Or Mr. Symington knows where he went or what he’s planning to do.” Thisbe fell silent. She wished Desmond would stay, but she couldn’t think of anything to delay his leaving. “I—I appreciate your help with this.”

“I will always help you. You must know that.” His eyes were dark and warm. He leaned forward, his hand coming up, and Thisbe thought breathlessly that he was about to kiss her. But he drew back a step, his hand dropping. “Besides, I am to blame for it going missing. I should have realized what Professor Gordon might do. Stopped him.”

“How could you have done that? Perhaps it’s time we stop casting blame—ourselves and each other. I—” Impulsively, she stretched up to kiss him, her lips light and soft on his. She heard his quick intake of breath, and his hands went to her waist.

“Thisbe...” His fingers tightened, his eyes going to her mouth. “You don’t know how much I want to kiss you right now.”

“Perhaps you should show me.” Her lips curved up.

At that moment there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. For one of the few times in her life, Thisbe wished everyone in her family was far away. Desmond stepped back, letting his breath out in a whoosh, and turned toward the stairs just as Olivia came into view.

“Oh.” She stopped, her eyes going apologetically to Thisbe. “I, um, think I forgot something.” She began to turn back.

But Desmond was already greeting her sister, the moment gone. “Hallo, Livvy.” To Thisbe, he said, “Tomorrow morning, then.”

Thisbe nodded, and Olivia added, “Come for breakfast. Grandmother never comes down that early.”

Desmond chuckled. “Ha. With my luck she’ll make an exception.” He gave Olivia’s braid a playful tug and trotted down the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course not. You didn’t do anything wrong. Desmond was about to leave, anyway.”

“Yes, but... I don’t know... You looked as if maybe you aren’t mad at him anymore.”

“Maybe I’m not.” Thisbe grinned. “We’ll see what happens.”

She went to her bedroom and pulled out Mr. Symington’s book, turning to his biography of Anne Ballew. The familiar face gazed out at her. There was pride in the look, even a touch of arrogance. Had she thought her intelligence would keep her safe? Allow her to succeed where most women would not even dare to go? If so, she had certainly paid for not recognizing the strength of inbred prejudices against women and class, indeed, against any ideas that challenged accepted beliefs.

What was the meaning of her dreams? Why did this woman’s vision populate them? However nonsensical it seemed to place any value in dreams or to see them as signs or portents, Thisbe could not dismiss her experiences. She was not, after all, a woman given to flights of fantasy nor one easily influenced. There must be some reason she continued to have these vivid nightmares.

Thisbe decided to approach the matter scientifically. The dreams must come from one of two sources. They were either imaginings that sprang from her own thoughts and feelings, or they came from outside herself, which meant that someone or something was capable of invading her sleeping mind, an idea that was frankly horrifying.

Thisbe decided to concentrate on the first possibility. What could be lodged in her brain that came out only in this form of expression? Picking up a pencil and piece of paper, she sat down at her desk and began to make a list. What had been in the dreams? Fire, a woman who might or might not be Anne Ballew, pain, fear.

Her image of Anne wanted her to save someone. Her child? She had said something like that. That last dream, she had said Thisbe owed her and that Thisbe was hers.

The idea that Thisbe belonged to her was the most easily explained; her grandmother claimed they were Anne Ballew’s descendants. But what did Thisbe owe Anne Ballew? Finding the Eye? Perhaps what had to be saved was not someone but something—the Eye. This interpretation made sense. The Eye had been greatly on Thisbe’s mind the past fortnight. It wasn’t unusual to have nightmares about something that worried one. So she’d dreamed about Anne Ballew begging her to save the Eye.

The problem with that was that Thisbe had dreamed about Anne before she even knew the Eye existed. Before she knew Anne Ballew existed. She had dreamed of fire before she knew the woman was burned at the stake.

Thisbe tossed down the pencil on the desk in disgust. So much for reason and the idea that the dreams came from her own worries. That left the alternative: the long-dead Anne Ballew had come back to haunt Thisbe’s dreams because she wanted Thisbe to recover Anne’s invention.

It struck Thisbe that she had not had the dream until her grandmother had come to visit. Could it be that the Eye was somehow causing her dreams? She wasn’t sure whether it was more frightening to think that Anne Ballew’s spirit was invading her dreams, or that the Eye itself was capable of doing so. Frankly, both seemed ludicrous.

She considered her grandmother’s statement this morning that Desmond was also somehow connected to the Eye. Thisbe couldn’t hold back a shiver at the memory of the dowager duchess’s words: “One of his kind will kill one of ours. He is bound by it, just as you are bound.”

What was his “kind”? What was hers? Why were they both bound? In her last dream, Anne had said, “I bind thee,” which fit her grandmother’s statement. But bind her to what? How?

Desmond had said his aunt believed he was descended from Anne Ballew. It seemed to Thisbe that being from Dorset was exceedingly thin proof that Anne was his ancestor. But then, there was no proof that Thisbe and her grandmother were Anne’s descendants, either, other than that they possessed the Eye.

Perhaps Desmond was the one who was Anne’s offspring and Thisbe was not. Perhaps they were both her descendants, cousins in the eighteenth degree or some such thing. Or perhaps neither of them were descended from Anne Ballew, and this was all utter lunacy.

With an impatient shake of her head, Thisbe stood up and left her room. Enough of this. She was going down to have supper with her family...who, in comparison to these thoughts, seemed remarkably sane.