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 silence 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.
Just as she retrieved the clothbound tome she’d taken from the library, the office door swung open.
“Who’s there?” a male voice demanded. A blinding burst of lantern light filled the room.
Ivy froze. Heart pounding in her throat, she blinked to make out the identity of the tall figure filling the doorway, though she knew from the owner’s light tenor that it could not be Lord Harrow. Her shaking fingers held the book up like a shield against her breast. In another defensive gesture, she folded her shoulders inward, for though she wore her gentlemen’s clothes and the bindings beneath, she had shed her coat to maneuver more freely during her search. The lack of that protective layer of wool left her feeling vulnerable.
The lantern picked out glints of gold on a tailored sleeve, and she recognized the footman who had carried her trunk into the house that morning.
“Oh, Daniel, it’s you,” she said on a sigh of relief.
“Mr. Ivers, is it?” When Ivy nodded, the servant stepped into the room and lowered the lantern. He eyed her up and down, not in the way she was used to, as male customers sometimes assessed her from over the counter at the Readers’ Emporium, but in that competitive, mildly hostile manner young men reserved for one another, and which she had encountered once or twice during her brief stay at the university. “What are you doing in his lordship’s office?” he accused more than asked.
Ivy raised her eyebrows. “Is this Lord Harrow’s office? I fear I’ll never learn the lay of the house.” She held out her book and silently thanked the foresight that had prompted her to bring it with her from the other room. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought a bit of reading might help. Would you be a good fellow and point me toward the stairs?”
The suspicion not quite leaving his smooth features, Daniel stepped aside and gestured with his free hand. “This way, sir.”
Ivy spent the next several days becoming familiar with Lord Harrow’s laboratory and learning to use the equipment. He taught her how to construct the voltaic cells, how to produce a continuous current, how to direct it, and how to strengthen or weaken its voltage. They experimented with chemical compounds, separating elements as he had done during his challenge, though to much less dramatic effect with fewer sparks and no shattering glass.
With each procedure, he allowed her greater independence until, after issuing a few basic instructions, he stepped back and merely observed. One afternoon he spread sheets of calculations across his worktable. Together they pored over the equations, double-checking his original work and making adjustments. The sums and quotients represented vast amounts of energy, leading Ivy to ponder whether she and Lord Harrow were dealing with theoretical possibilities, or if the figures pertained to his mysterious generator.
“Would not this amount of amperes exceed the resistance of a current and cause an overload, thus culminating in an explosion?” she asked of one equation in particular.
Lord Harrow had pushed his spectacles higher on his nose and peered over her shoulder, only to snatch the paper out from under her hand. “Great bloody heavens, Ned, you’re right. How
could
I have missed this?”
He had slapped the page back down, whipped off his spectacles, and seized her shoulders. His beaming face pulled close, so close Ivy braced for the press of his lips against hers. As on their first day together, his eyes widened and he stopped short, but his broad smile didn’t lessen. “You have more than earned your keep, dear boy.”
The praise had filled her with pride and a secret longing to cast off her gentlemen’s clothes, however briefly, and bring that almost kiss to fruition.
It might have been easy, during those wondrous days, to forget the mission that had brought her to Harrowood. Oh, but she hadn’t forgotten, and she continued her midnight forays through the house, once having to hide behind a potted palm for a quarter hour to avoid an apparently insomniac Mrs. Walsh. Ivy’s own dearth of sleep was beginning to show in the smudges beneath her eyes. But so far she had turned up no evidence of Lord Harrow’s sister having been to the estate, with or without the stone.
Once she ventured into a bedchamber that could only have been Lady Gwendolyn’s, judging by the initials on the bed pillows. A quick look around suggested that no one but the upstairs maid had entered the room in many months. Ivy stole toward the dressing room, but before she could so much as open a wardrobe door or peek inside a drawer, the housekeeper appeared in the doorway.
“Did Lord Harrow send you in here?” the woman demanded.
Was the woman trailing her, night and day? Ivy quickly arranged her startled features into a moue of innocence. “No, ma’am. I fear I am lost again. A confoundedly enormous house, this.”
“And apparently you’ve no sense of direction.” The housekeeper’s brow wrinkled with distrust. “Your chamber is in quite the opposite direction, young man. In the east wing. Now get along with you.”
Ivy decided it was time to try another tack. As casually as she could, she asked Lord Harrow about his family. He spoke of Lady Gwendolyn only briefly.
“I have a sister, presently in London in service to the queen,” he said, and to Ivy’s offhand query as to whether she would have the privilege of making the young lady’s acquaintance, he replied, “I don’t expect her home any time soon.”
The terse finality in his tone had ended the discussion, leaving Ivy to wonder. She believed him to be a man of honor who would never steal outright or be a willing party to theft. But was he protecting his sister until he discovered a discreet and tactful means of rectifying matters? Or . . . Ivy couldn’t discount the possibility that he might be stalling for time to conduct experiments on the stone before returning it to its rightful owner.
Could she blame him? If Victoria were not her friend, and if Ivy had not pledged her service to her queen, she might be tempted to do the same.
In the evenings, she and Lord Harrow walked in the garden and discussed what she had learned, or they climbed into their respective saddles and took off through the forest at a pace Ivy found manageable enough. She rode Lady Gwendolyn’s mare, an even-tempered, sure-footed mount that didn’t seem the least put off by Ivy’s awkward seat or inadvertent tugs on the reins.