“Don’t mention it. Come and sit before you fall down.” In waistcoat and shirtsleeves, the earl sipped from the snifter he held. An open decanter sat on the table before him. One look at the liquor’s velvety hue assured Simon that Barensforth had chosen the very best of Alistair’s stores. But then, Alistair would no longer be needing his brandy, finest or otherwise. Nor anything else, for that matter.
Yes,
matter
. Alistair’s was. . . . Simon pushed off the doorframe and, with some degree of difficulty, shuffled into the room. He couldn’t exactly say what form Alistair’s physical matter had taken. The energy stream had ripped clear through him and torn him apart.
Simon didn’t believe energy could be obliterated. Transformed, transported, rearranged, yes. So where did that leave the man he had known all of his life, who at times had been—or seemed—like a second father to him? Had he become part of this very house, his essence blended with the spirits of the monks who first dredged the stones from the earth to transform them into a sanctified fortress?
He would never know.
Using his good hand, he pulled out the chair nearest to the head of the table and sank into it. Without a word the earl abruptly stood and walked down the length of the room to the adjoining butler’s chamber. When he returned, he set a second snifter down in front of Simon and splashed a generous measure of brandy into it. “You look like you could use it,” he said as he resumed his seat.
Gratefully Simon tipped back half the contents. Then he relaxed and took a smaller sip. “Have the others accepted our story?” he asked once the liquor had sent its bracing fire through his veins.
He alluded to the explanation he, Errol, Ben, and Colin had hastened to devise yesterday to deflect curiosity away from the truth—a truth he simply was not ready to share with the scientific world. Electroportation had proved too dangerous to risk allowing another scientist to take up where he had left off with his experiments.
Barensforth nodded. “Everyone believes that your electromagnets were designed for the purpose of transferring electrical currents from one location to another without the use of wires.”
“Good. And Alistair’s death?”
“They believe the current incinerated him.” Barensforth shuddered and drank some of his brandy.
“That isn’t far from the truth. Or perhaps it is the truth. Victoria’s stone amplified beyond calculation the power of an already volatile process. We’re lucky no one else died.” Simon raised his glass in a salute. “Thank you, Barensforth. I’m grateful for everything you did.”
Barensforth chuckled wryly. “I only did it because I didn’t trust you. That’s what sent me up to the attic. I figured you were plotting your escape, and that Ivy might be foolish enough to help you.” He tugged at his neckcloth. “Women in love can be . . . intractable.”
Women in love . . .
Did she love him? His chest tightened around the notion. After yesterday, how could he ever doubt it, or deny that he returned her feelings? Galileo’s teeth, yes—he loved her. Loved her from his deepest core outward, with the essence of his most vital elements, and with every particle that made him a man, made him who he was. He loved her so much more than he’d ever believed he could love again.
A slight queasiness came over him. The future would have been so much easier if he didn’t love her. Oh, he had every intention of doing the right thing, what decency dictated. Ivy had declined his offer once, but surely she realized now that after their weeks together, and most especially their nights, they must marry, and as soon as possible. What he didn’t know, what utterly eluded him and sent his world sliding out from beneath him, was what he would do if he was ever faced with the pain of losing her.
That ill sensation persisted. He had almost lost her yesterday; they had very nearly lost each other. She had stood so bravely and faithfully by him through everything, had fought Alistair with such stubborn courage. Physically, Ivy was everything Aurelia hadn’t been—tall and lithe and agile and strong. But in their heart of hearts, the two women were cut from the same sturdy, magnificent cloth.
No wonder Simon couldn’t help loving Ivy, despite all his determination not to. He might as well admit that from that very first day, when she had defied him by raising her hand to ask a forbidden question, he had been ensnared. He might not have suspected her gender then, but his heart had seen the truth.
A truth that left him terrified.
“How’s the shoulder?” Barensforth asked softly. Simon realized the earl had been watching him, closely, perhaps closely enough to guess at the train of his thoughts.
He tried to school his features to reveal no further clues into the state of his heart. With his good shoulder, he shrugged. “Hurts like the devil. The physician determined that there’s been a good deal of muscle damage.” He shook his head and voiced what he had yet to fully accept. “It’ll likely never be the same.”
Even as he spoke, he couldn’t quite believe it. Somehow, there had to be a way to regenerate the nerves. As soon as he arrived home, he would review his notes on the artificial hand; now he would have real flesh and blood on which to experiment.
“And Ivy?” Barensforth pinned Simon with a glare as prickly as a surging current. “She’ll never be the same, either, will she? I mean, as she was before she . . . met you.”
Simon heard the emphasis the man placed on the word
met
, and comprehended all it meant, all he had taken from Ivy. “No need for euphemisms, Barensforth. I assure you I’ll—”
The earl had been about to pour more brandy into his snifter; instead he banged the decanter down, sending up a spray that dotted the tabletop. “If not for euphemisms, my lord, I might find it necessary to break your neck.”
Despite Simon’s superior rank and slightly superior height and build, he found himself taken aback and not entirely undaunted. As the earl glowered at him, Simon sat up straighter, stiffer, sending sharp pains into his shoulder. He could only concede that Barensforth had every right to be incensed—every right, even, to do as he threatened.
With a measure of relief he watched the tension drain from the earl’s posture. Barensforth once more lifted the decanter. “You’ll make an honest woman of her?”
“At the earliest possible date.”
“Is that so?” The defiant query and the sudden halting of footsteps in the doorway made Simon twist around without thinking, sending a fresh wave of agony through his shoulder.
Worse than that, though, was the sight of Ivy standing with her hands on her hips, her chin in the air, and a scowl on her face.
“Sorry about that, old chap. I say, Ivers, what’s wrong?”
When Ivy stopped short, Jasper, walking directly behind her, bumped her spine and stepped on the heel of her boot. Now he moved beside her and glanced back and forth between her and the two men in the dining hall presently planning the course of her life.
She cleared her throat and turned to her friend. “Jasper, would you excuse us, please?”
His hand started toward the bandage still wrapped around his head. Then he gave a nod of compliance and strode off. Ivy stepped over the threshold and closed the double doors behind her.
“Simon, it is wonderful to see you up and about. Truly. But how
dare
you?”
“How dare I what?”
Simon and Aidan had both pulled back as if she’d poked them with an electrified wire. Their expressions turned equally mystified, as if she must have taken leave of her senses.
And perhaps she had. Not taken leave, exactly, but consciously cast off every so-called bit of
sense
that dictated that ladies did not attend university, did not pursue intellectual matters, did not aspire to goals other than marriage and children, did not have adventures, did not fend for themselves. . . .
She could go on and on naming all the things ladies must not and did not do, yet which she had done these past weeks, and successfully, too. Yet for all her pains,
this
was the result: lack of acknowledgment, lack of respect, lack of
consultation
.
“How dare you two think you can plan out my life without so much as a by-your-leave?”
Aidan gave a maddening, condescending shrug. “Ivy, there is nothing to ask, nothing to discuss. You have been compromised. Marriage is the only solution.”
“And I am fully willing—”
“Willing?” Her gaze snapped to Simon. “How magnanimous of you, sir. However, your services in that department are not required. It so happens I’ve a plan of my own.”
“What plan?” Aidan’s dubious chuckle made her clench her fists at her sides.
She steeled herself to remain calm and give them no reason to call her erratic or hysterical or any other adjective men used when women voiced opinions of their own. “Have you forgotten my connection to the queen? I have recovered her stone, a bit chipped but thankfully not shattered despite your violent efforts to dislodge it from the generator’s coils.”
“I couldn’t think of any other way,” Aidan murmured.
“Be that as it may. Her Majesty will no doubt be grateful, and she will wish to reward me as she rewarded all of us after Laurel returned from Bath.”
She noticed that as she spoke, Simon’s frown deepened. But he said nothing, merely sat there with a look of pain that renewed her worry over the state of his shoulder. The physician had clucked his tongue over the damage, making Ivy fearful that Simon might never regain the full function of his left arm.
Oh, she would much rather be comforting him, fussing over him, telling him how brave he had been, how splendid. That was what had brought her here in the first place, after she had caught sight of him from outside the open front door.
But hearing the men discuss her in such an objective manner, as if she were not a human being but some difficult calculation that required immediate solving, heated her blood to boiling. No matter what had occurred these past weeks, she would not marry for convenience’ sake because . . .
Because she loved him too, too much, and couldn’t bear becoming his wife for any other reason. Convenience, honor, obligation—each notion lodged like a cold stone in the pit of her stomach. No, she had rather die an old maid and remember her days with Simon as the most fulfilling and passionate of her life than marry him for propriety’s sake and watch those glorious memories fade within a loveless marriage.
For surely if he could say such things as
I am willing
—as one was willing to sweep a floor or travel in the rain when one must—then he simply could not feel for her what she felt for him.
She blinked again, this time not to clear away her anger but to hold her tears in check. Her eyes burned and her throat ached. But she pushed out the necessary words. “I will appeal to the queen to request a place for me at a university, perhaps King’s College in London. Oh, I’ve no illusions that I’ll be accepted as an official student, or that I will be afforded a degree. I should be satisfied to attend classes and have use of the library, perhaps occasionally even a laboratory. And I shall continue to sell books at the Emporium with my sisters. It may seem a paltry plan, but it is my plan and what I wish to do.”
“Ivy ...” A plea to be reasonable clung to Simon’s murmur. He exchanged a glance with Aidan, the two of them sitting there like coconspirators against her army of one. Her defenses fast threatened to dissolve into a pool of tears.
She didn’t wish to be reasonable. She wished only to be loved. If she couldn’t have that . . .
“I will not expect either of you to understand. You were both raised on certain codes and expectations, but if my experiences have taught me anything, it is that great things happen only when one is brave enough to step beyond what is established and accepted. Now, if you will both excuse me, I will take up Jasper on his offer to ride back to Cambridge with him.”
She was already out the door when Simon’s exclamation of “The hell you will” reached her ears.
She didn’t hesitate, but strode, almost ran, into the bustling activity that filled the hallway and spilled out the front door. She let the tide carry her down the steps and onto the drive. Countless carriages lined the way; it seemed as if every vehicle from the village of Madingley had been commissioned to convey the consortium members away.
Near one particularly battered curricle, she spotted Jasper’s head of wavy hair encircled by the conspicuous bandage. He saw her and gestured her over. Without further encouragement and without glancing back at the house to see if Simon had followed her, she sprinted across the gravel driveway.
“You’re coming back to Cambridge with me, then,” Jasper said as she reached him.
Before she could reply, a voice from behind her roared, “Like hell she is.”
“
She ...?
What the . . . ? Lord Harrow? Ned?” Jasper’s baffled gaze darted back and forth between Ivy and Simon. He ducked his head and lowered his voice. “What
does
he mean?”
His confusion was the last thing filling Ivy’s vision as Simon linked his good arm through hers and half dragged her, half walked her off the drive and onto the lawn. They walked and walked, Ivy occasionally glancing over her shoulder at a clearly startled Jasper. The young man took a few steps, then stopped, then started and stopped again, vacillating between remaining where he was and taking off after them. When Ivy finally turned to see where Simon was bringing her, she found herself near Windgate Priory’s encircling moat with its mock battlements and landscaped gatehouse.
Simon pulled her inside a stone gazebo ringed with evergreen hedges and draped with vines. From within the fringe of autumn-bare branches, Jasper, the carriages, and the departing scientists seemed far away, their clamor muted by the stirring breezes and the chatter of birds.
Simon released her, and alarm shot through her. His pallor had whitened, and his eyes were fever bright. A fine sweat beaded his brow, and as he clutched his left arm to anchor it to his body, pain pinched his features even tighter than before.