Chase Family Collection: Limited Christmas Edition

by Lauren Royal

  She walked along the pens that crowded a corner of the barn, stopping where a spotted fawn nuzzled her with his nose. “Meet Timothy—”

  “Timothy?”

  “He looks like a Timothy, doesn’t he? He lost his mother.” Feeding the baby deer a handful of grass, she leaned to the neighboring pen to lift the cloth draping a deep basket. “And here’s a rat—”

  “A rat?” He stared at the creature in question, a fat, furry brown rodent that never failed to make her smile. “You would save a rat?”

  “Randolph was hurt. But he’s recovered quite nicely. I may set him free later today.”

  “To be eaten by a cat, no doubt.”

  “Not my cats. My cats are his friends. Besides, it would be cruel to keep him confined when he’s well enough to roam.” Timothy had finished his treat, so she wiped her hand on her skirts and moved to the next enclosure. “Over here I have a badger, but he’s sleeping.” She indicated a black-and-white snout poking out from a pile of old blankets. “They’re nocturnal, you may know. And little Harold here is sleeping, too.”

  “A hedgehog?” Rand’s eyes radiated amusement.

  At the other end of the barn, a door opened. Lily’s brother started in, then spotted them and began backing out.

  “I’m finished, Rowan,” she called. “You can come play with the animals.”

  “Maybe later.” He slammed the door shut.

  Rose laid a possessive hand on Rand’s arm. “Shall we go see the gardens now?” she asked sweetly.

  “Your father’s gardens are quite extensive, aren’t they? I really must be getting to Ford’s house. I promised him help. If I might borrow a mount—”

  “Of course,” Rose said with a smile. “Our stables are much more impressive than this old barn. And I shall ride with you to show you the way.”

  “I think I can find Lakefield on my own.”

  No doubt he could, since Lakefield’s lands bordered Trentingham, accessible by both the road and the river. But Rose wouldn’t be deterred. “I should like to come along. Perhaps I can help Violet. Twins are a handful.”

  Lily suppressed a laugh. The twins had two nursemaids, and Rose had never shown interest in helping Violet before. But it was good, she decided, for Rose to appear parental. A man looking for a wife would also be thinking in terms of a mother for his children.

  “Well, then,” Rand said easily, “we shall have a nice ride. You’ll join us, Lily, won’t you?”

  “I—what?” she asked, taken off guard.

  “Lily has yet to eat breakfast,” Rose pointed out, having doubtless noticed her absence at the morning meal. She did, at least, tactfully forgo mentioning that Lily wasn’t properly groomed for a visit, either. “She can join us later.”

  “Nonsense,” Rand returned. “We’ll wait. In the meantime, you wanted to show me the gardens?”

  A smile lit Rose’s eyes. Lily followed them out of the barn, turning toward the house while her sister led Rand in the other direction.

  Mere seconds later, her sister’s voice stopped her in her tracks. “Rowan Ashcroft, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  Rose sounded very parental. Lily hurried around the back of the barn, arriving just in time to see her brother tug a thin wooden stick through a fold of paper, the friction producing a hiss. As the wood burst into flame, he looked up and gave a grinning answer to Rose’s question. “I’m making fire.”

  The grin vanished as the sliver of wood burned close to his fingers. He dropped it with a yelp.

  Rand strode forward to stamp it out. “What is it you have there?”

  Rose brushed at her red satin skirts. “It doesn’t matter,” she said even more parentally. “He’s well aware that he isn’t allowed to play with fire.”

  Too parentally, Lily decided. It was one thing to display a love of children by offering to help Violet, quite another to scold like a shrew. Especially considering Rowan was Rose’s younger brother, not her child.

  “But what is it?” Rand bent closer.

  Rowan handed him the paper. “It has phosphorus on it.” If Rand looked surprised at hearing a boy of eleven use such a word, Lily wasn’t. Rowan spent hours every week in Ford’s laboratory. “And this,” he said, pulling another of the slim wooden sticks from his pocket, “has sulfur on one end. Ford’s friend, a man named Robert Boyle, has discovered that the two together make fire. Phosphorus has a very low burning point,” he added importantly.

  Although Lily wasn’t at all sure what that had to do with making fire, Rand nodded thoughtfully. “Brilliant. May I try?”

  “Boys will be boys. And apparently men will be boys, too,” Rose said in a tone Lily thought unwise for a woman hoping to marry one.

  Lily shot her a warning glance, then turned to her brother. “Did Ford give you these things?”

  His face reddened. “He showed them to me. Mr. Boyle is thinking about selling them. It’s a good idea, isn’t it? I’m thinking he could make a lot of money.”

  “I’m thinking Ford would be unhappy if he knew you’d taken such dangerous things home.” Her brother shuffled his feet. “I’m thinking,” she added softly, “that Ford would feel terrible if you burned yourself because he made the mistake of showing you something interesting, believing you were old enough to know better than to play with it.”

  “I guess I should give the things back,” Rowan muttered.

  Rand drew the wooden sliver against the paper, smiling as it sparked. “I’ll return them.” He reached out a hand. “Have you any more of the sticks?”

  Rowan dug in his pocket, handed over a few more slivers, then turned and ran for the house.

  Eleven

  AN HOUR LATER, Rose banged on Lily’s door. “Lily? Lord Randal wants to leave.”

  Lord Randal again. Excusing her maid, Lily went to admit her sister. “May I suggest, Rose, if you wish to win the man, you might call him by the name he prefers?”

  Rose shrugged. “I think Lord Randal has a nice ring to it. But I know you’re trying to help, Lily, and I do appreciate it.”

  Lily wished her sister’s words sounded more convincing.

  “Are you ready?” Rose added.

  “Nearly.” Beatrix at her heels, Lily went back to her dressing table to fetch the hat that matched her smart blue riding habit. “Aren’t you going to change?” she asked, eyeing her sister’s low-cut, bright red gown.

  “I like this dress. I told Lord Randal I’d prefer to take the carriage.”

  “Oh.” Lily set down the hat. “Shall I change, then?”

  “Good God, why should it matter what you wear? I told you, he’s growing impatient. Now, you must let him climb in first—”

  “He’s the man. He’s going to hand us in.”

  “Just leave it to me. Then you must allow me to enter next so that I can sit beside him. You’ll sit across.”

  “You’re trying too hard.” Beatrix jumped up onto the dressing table, and Lily stroked her fur. “Just be your usual beautiful, charming self—”

  “I cannot leave this to chance,” Rose interrupted. “Lord Randal is the only man I’ve ever truly loved.”

  From where Lily was standing, her sister’s emotions ran more to desperation than love—with perhaps a little lust thrown in for good measure. But she did allow that with all the two had in common, true love was likely to develop, given time.

  “Whatever you say, Rose,” she said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  Beatrix went with them and was first into the carriage. Rand, of course, insisted the ladies get in next. He settled himself beside Lily, and for a few awkward minutes, Rose alternately glared at her and aimed flirty smiles at him.

  Rand appeared to be avoiding Rose’s heated gaze, staring out the window instead. He hummed the same tune Lily remembered from the night before, perhaps in an attempt to fill the silence.

  Suddenly Rose sniffed the air. “Sulfur,” she said disapprovingly. Parentally. True, she was displaying her intelligence by
recognizing the chemical, but hadn’t she said men didn’t care to be mothered?

  Lily nudged her with a foot and gave a little shake of her head.

  Perhaps getting the message, Rose looked to Rand with indulged amusement. “While you were waiting for us, did you play with the fire-making things? After you told Rowan you’d return them? Did you use them all up?”

  Rand appeared anything but chastised. “What does Ford need with a scrap of paper and a few bits of wood? I’m sure he has more, and I think young Rowan has learned his lesson.”

  Boys would be boys, Lily thought, then rushed to change the subject before her sister made the mistake of saying that again out loud. “How is it that a marquess’s son became an Oxford professor?”

  “Yes,” Rose put in, “how on earth did that happen?” Her tone implied that, regardless of how it had happened, she was hoping he’d go back to being plain Lord Randal, not a professor of anything.

  Rand, however, just shrugged. “I’m a second son. An all-but-disowned second son.”

  “Surely not,” Lily said.

  “Perhaps not officially, but I might as well be. I couldn’t wait to get away from home, and once free, I never wanted to go back.”

  Even Rose looked genuinely concerned. “Did your parents mistreat you?”

  “From what little I can remember, my mother treated me wonderfully, but she died when I was six. My father, well…let me just say that his dogs received more of his attention than I did. He noticed me only when I was in trouble.”

  Lily imagined him young, fresh-faced, misbehaving. “Were you often in trouble?”

  “Mostly just when I tried to expose my older brother’s misdeeds. The exalted heir who could do no wrong. Or so my father was convinced. My attempts to prove otherwise were hopeless.”

  “What did your brother do?” Rose asked. “Was he naughty like Rowan?”

  “Rowan?” Rand’s expression was one of total disbelief. “Rowan is a saint compared to Alban. The man is downright cruel—or at least he was as a boy. As I haven’t been home in eight years, I don’t know what he’s like now. But though I know people can change, I don’t expect Alban has. He’s always hated me. He hates a lot of people. There’s something evil about my brother.”

  Eight years. Lily couldn’t fathom avoiding her family for eight years. She saw a loneliness in Rand, a loneliness in his eyes. A loneliness she yearned to help him heal.

  “Evil,” she mused. “Could it possibly have been your imagination? Jealousy on your part? After all, he’s the heir, and you were young. Perhaps if you go back—”

  “I have no desire to go back. I’m happy with my life as it is. And if you had read Alban’s diaries—”

  “You read his private diaries? No wonder he hated you!” Despite his distress, Lily was tempted to laugh. If she’d read her sisters’ diaries, or Rowan’s, they’d be out for her blood, no mercy. Not that any of them kept diaries, but that was beside the point.

  To Rand’s credit, he turned a dusky shade of red. “It was only because I was hoping to expose him—”

  Rose made a rude noise. “Hoping to get him in trouble, you mean.”

  “Well, he deserved it. And I didn’t precisely read them,” he said, a bit defensively. “I transcribed them.”

  Beatrix leapt onto Lily’s lap. “What do you mean?”

  “I decoded them. He wrote them in secret languages that he devised. Because they were so incriminating.”

  “And you broke the codes?”

  “Constantly. It infuriated him, of course. And I never managed to prove his guilt to my father’s satisfaction—he only punished me for invading Alban’s privacy. But it did reveal this skill I have for puzzling out languages. I’m sure the old man was as relieved as I was when he gained me early entrance to Oxford based on that talent.”

  Lily stroked the cat thoughtfully. “And you’ve stayed there ever since.”

  “It became my home. I eventually became a fellow and then a professor. I know my father looks upon my profession with disdain. A Nesbitt, working for a living. But I like my life. The university is orderly.”

  He looked out the window again, his eyes turning hazy.

  “At Oxford, the world makes sense.”

  Twelve

  NO SOONER HAD the carriage door opened than Ford whisked Rand upstairs to the attic. “How was your stay at Trentingham?”

  “Fine.” Rand looked around at the chaotic jumble of scientific instruments that littered Ford’s laboratory. “Is there nothing I can do downstairs, where the damage—”

  “It’s all being handled. I’m in the middle of something here—I’ll be with you in a minute.” Ford added a noxious-smelling substance to some cloudy fluid in a beaker. “Fine, was it?”

  “Actually,” Rand admitted, “it was damned awkward. Will the guest room be ready for me to sleep here tonight?”

  Ford stirred the mess with some sort of stick made of glass. “If you can live with a bare, damp floor.”

  “Bare and damp won’t deter me.”

  “Very well, then.” Ford nodded. “I’ll let this sit until tomorrow. Let me go get the book.”

  Rand plopped onto a chair and rubbed his face. In two short days, his placid life seemed to have become overly complicated. He felt absurdly relieved to be moving back here this afternoon. Trentingham Manor was a lovely home, but at Lakefield he ran less risk of finding himself alone with a certain lovely daughter.

  He felt much safer here. More in control. Less likely to have stupid things come out of his mouth.

  I’ve thought about you for four years…

  “Here it is,” Ford said, setting the book on the table and taking a seat beside him.

  “It” was Secrets of the Emerald Tablet, a small, brown leather volume that appeared to be of little consequence. Ancient and handwritten in a cryptic code, it looked like a simple diary. But it was much more than that. It was purported to hold the key to the Philosopher’s Stone—the secret of how to make gold.

  Ford had found the book years earlier and brought it to Rand to translate. When the task had proved a difficult one, they’d set it aside for a time. Now Rand looked forward to the challenge.

  It would take his mind off another challenge that had much more personal repercussions.

  “Awkward,” Ford echoed thoughtfully, moving closer with a scrape of his chair. His laboratory was a homely space, huge but hardly luxurious, cluttered as it was with every toy a scientist and alchemist could desire. “My mother-in-law is generally good at setting her guests at ease.”

  “And her daughter is good at unsettling them.”

  “Rose?” Ford chuckled. “Although she can be rather forward, I assure you she’s an innocent at heart.”

  “Rather forward hardly begins to define Rose. But I meant Lily.”

  “Lily? Lily soothes those around her. Creatures as well as people. What could sweet Lily possibly do to discompose you?”

  Rand met his old school friend’s eyes. “She can look at me. That’s all it takes.”

  “Holy Hades,” Ford said, borrowing his father-in-law’s favorite phrase. “You’re falling for her.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Rand protested. It was a long way from lusting after a woman to falling for her, wasn’t it?

  His friend’s laughter was more irritating than supportive. With a huff, Rand opened the book.

  His feelings on the matter seemed to get more complicated by the minute. These cryptic writings would be a hell of a lot easier to figure out.

  Thirteen

  DOWNSTAIRS, LILY and Rose had joined their oldest sister in her cheerful, turquoise-toned drawing room. With the three of them together, it felt just like old times.

  Almost. Violet, of course, was married now, and a mother of three herself. Although she lived close by and they got together often, Lily did miss the nights when they’d all snuggled in one of their chambers, chatting and giggling away the hours.

  She watched Beatrix wand
er the room, poking her little black nose here and there as she searched for something familiar. Suddenly Lily wished for the old and familiar, too. “You should come home to sleep one night, Violet.”

  “At Trentingham?” Violet stopped pacing, which meant tiny Rebecca started snuffling. The baby seemed to prefer constant motion.

  “I’ll walk with her,” Lily offered. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on her niece.

  When Rebecca was settled in Lily’s arms, Violet dropped onto one of the turquoise velvet chairs. She lifted her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Why should I stay the night at Trentingham?”

  “A sleeping party. It would be like the old days.” As Lily walked back and forth cuddling Rebecca, her gaze swept over little Marc asleep in a cradle. She smiled to see Rose playing with Nicky on the floor, his miniature English warship in fierce conflict with her Dutch one. “I know you rarely let your children out of your sight, but you do have nursemaids. They could relieve you for one night, don’t you think?”

  Violet seemed to contemplate that odd idea for a moment before she grinned. “Perhaps I could find time to read a book.”

  “No,” Lily said, then reconsidered. If solitary time to read was what her sister needed, she wouldn’t deny her. “Of course you could read, if that’s what you want. But I was thinking we could spend the night together. The three of us, like we used to.”

  Rose looked up with a wicked smile. “And read Aristotle’s Master-piece?”

  “Not that,” Lily said quickly, remembering the hours they’d all spent together stealthily reading the scandalous marriage manual before Violet’s wedding.

  Lily had found Aristotle’s Master-piece an uncomfortable combination of intriguing and embarrassing, and she hadn’t been sad when the book moved to Lakefield along with her sister. But that had been years ago, when she was only sixteen. The mysteries of the bedchamber, which had seemed frightening and unimaginable then, were easier to imagine now.

  In fact, lately her imagination seemed to be working overtime.