by Karen Ranney
Maybe she could be convinced to go and visit her mother in Paris for an extended time. She could flaunt her new title as he fixed the roof on the north wing, both of them getting what they’d earned.
What would marriage to Martha have been like? Now that was a surprising question. Why had he even contemplated it? He pushed away the thought, although it was difficult to do so.
“What a pity Martha isn’t as attractive as her sister. I have a feeling she probably won’t marry.” Reese shrugged. “Not that she needs to. Wealthy women don’t need husbands.”
“She’s attractive in her own way,” Jordan said, feeling a surge of unexpected irritation. “Her eyes are warm. Her face is a perfect shape and wonderfully expressive. Her hair is a soft cloud.”
His words faded away. How did he know her hair was soft? He could almost feel it curling around his fingers.
“It sounds like you should have offered for the older sister,” Reese said, and added to the remark by patting Jordan on the shoulder.
He heard the door close as Reese entered Sedgebrook. He stood where he was for too long, well after losing sight of the York carriage.
He couldn’t dismiss the thought—even though he tried—that Reese had just swerved into the truth.
Chapter 24
“A letter’s come for you, miss,” Sarah said.
Josephine handed the girl another stack of fabric swatches to carry before taking the letter from her.
According to her grandmother, she didn’t need her own maid until she had her season or was married. Consequently, she used the services of Martha’s maid, a silly girl who was forever smiling and giggling in an annoying way. She couldn’t do proper hair and she had no sense of style whatsoever. The only thing she did well was take things from one place to another. Oh, and tell stories, which made her halfway valuable.
Because of Sarah she knew what was going on at Griffin House, which wasn’t much, all in all. The tradesmen came when Gran summoned them. The church elders were always there with their hands out. The roof needed repairing; the altar should be refurbished. The organ required new pipes and the baptismal font had sprung a leak.
The church elders had better ensure her wedding ceremony was magnificent for all the money the Yorks had provided over the years.
She glanced at the letter, half expecting it to be from her mother. The letter to Maman informing her of her upcoming marriage had been one of the first ones she’d written.
Although Maman would be pleased she was marrying a duke, there was always a small possibility her mother would not return for the wedding. Josephine was under no illusions as to her mother’s maternal instincts. They’d always come behind Marie’s self-interest. She’d discovered that fact when she was nine years old and her birthday celebration had clashed with her mother’s wish to visit London.
To her surprise, the letter wasn’t from Maman. She frowned at it before telling Sarah to take the swatches to the parlor.
“The seamstress will be here any moment. Tell her I’ll be with her shortly.”
The maid nodded and took herself off, leaving her to open the letter from Reese.
How dare he have the temerity to write her? He was still at Sedgebrook and would remain there for a little while, but he would be attending her wedding.
Did she know of any advances her sister had made on her ship?
What did she care about that stupid ship?
Another blessed benefit of her wedding. She would never have to listen to anyone talk about vessels or ships or engines or navigational systems. If Jordan thought to fill her ears with such topics, she’d simply eat her meals in another room or take a tray in her own sitting room.
She had no intention whatsoever of sharing a suite with her new husband. Not as large as Sedgebrook was. The idea of doing so was, frankly, revolting.
She needn’t see Jordan much. Perhaps she would live in London. As a married woman, she could travel to Paris. She would finally have her own maid, a French girl. Maman always said the best servants came from France.
Martha had made it so easy for her. Josephine didn’t even have to bed the duke right away. Of course, there was every possibility he would insist upon it sooner or later. She would have to bury her aversion and go to his bed. After all, she would be responsible for producing the next duke.
“Motherhood will destroy a woman’s body if she allows it,” Maman had once said. They’d been talking about a neighbor, a woman who’d had four children and had a figure resembling a bag of flour with a sash around the middle.
She had no intention of letting her looks go.
Not like Martha. She could be quite attractive if she applied herself. However, Martha was more inclined to putter around the cottage than she was to address her hair or her wardrobe.
At least she didn’t have to see Martha often once she was married. She needn’t pretend any longer. Other than compulsory family gatherings, when to do otherwise would draw attention, she could simply ignore the York family.
For now, she dismissed any thought of Martha or Jordan or Reese in favor of meeting with the seamstress. After all, she had a trousseau to plan, garments appropriate for her new role as duchess.
Reese found himself missing Josephine. Damned if he wasn’t sorry to see the minx leave. She was one of those women who burrowed into your skin, made you want to scratch an itch.
She’d never be docile. You could never take her for granted. He wasn’t sure you could ever trust her completely, either. If he had any sense at all, he’d forget about her and concentrate on his mission. Later, he’d see if he could find himself a decent woman with a sense of morals and values he was sure Josephine didn’t possess.
He’d written her but he wasn’t surprised when she hadn’t answered. She probably thought herself safe with her ruse, being so close to her wedding.
In five days he’d accompany Jordan to Griffin House and watch his friend get married.
He’d have a chance to see Josephine again before she became the Duchess of Roth. He hadn’t lied to her; he suspected she wouldn’t remain faithful after her marriage. A damn shame since Jordan wasn’t going to get the wife he probably deserved.
For that matter, he hadn’t gotten the friend he deserved, either.
Reese’s conscience was an annoying burden and one he tried hard to ignore most of the time. Lately, however, it was grating on him. Especially after witnessing how doggedly Jordan was trying to make a go of his torpedo ship.
Ever since the York women had left, he’d haunted the boathouse. When Reese went in search of him, it was the first place he looked.
This morning was no different.
“You might as well sleep here,” he said, seeing Jordan hunched over the workbench.
“There are two bedrooms upstairs,” Jordan said, without glancing at him. “I’ve used both of them from time to time. I’d recommend the east room. The mattress is firmer.”
He wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Jordan had used the boathouse as a hiding place, of sorts. He hadn’t gotten along well with his father, and there were enough years between him and Simon that they were almost strangers.
Jordan didn’t collect people like his older brother had. Nor did people want to surround Jordan the way they had the 10th Duke of Roth. He’d heard Jordan described as icy and aloof when the truth was that Jordan was bored by things that interested most people.
He had no interest in gambling, since one of the first discoveries after becoming the Duke of Roth was how much of the family fortune had been decimated over the past two decades. He wasn’t fond of horses, especially after his accident. He didn’t drink to excess. Cards didn’t interest him. Nor was he adept at social chatter. He didn’t give a flying farthing about the weather or the politics of the day.
Talk to him about the Crimean War, however, one of the things he’d studied in depth, and he could talk your ear off.
Moving to the workbench, Reese watched as Jordan fiddled with
a small flat object in the rear of the vessel that had recently been recovered from the bottom of the lake. Not only had the copper changed color, but there was a black sludge covering the interior mechanisms.
“How did Josephine do it?” Reese asked, his conscience rearing its ugly head again.
“Do what?”
“Convince you that you took advantage of her?”
Jordan didn’t say anything, only reached for another tool on the bench, adjusting what looked to be the controlling mechanism of the ship.
“You’re so damn honorable, Jordan. You’d do something wrong for the right reasons.”
Jordan still didn’t answer him.
If he was a true friend, he’d confess about Josephine. Instead, he managed to subdue his conscience after a moment or two. His mission for the War Office came before his friendship with Jordan.
He could always tell Jordan what they wanted, but to what end? The powers that be wanted to own the idea behind the torpedo ship, any patents, and all the inventions that had gone into making it work—if it could work. All without paying for the privilege, or being forced into negotiations and haggling.
Some people might think his mission was to cheat a fellow Englishman and friend out of a monetary reward for his efforts, but they’d be cynics. He chose to think of himself as a patriot, one whose mission was to procure a new weapon for his government with the least possible effort.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m adjusting the pendulum,” Jordan said. “I’ve been told it’s in the incorrect position.”
Reese bit back his smile. “Martha told you that? I’m glad to see your collaboration bore some fruit.”
Jordan nodded, put down his screwdriver and directed his attention toward Reese.
“Did you time your visit to be here when the Yorks arrived?”
Reese smiled. “I didn’t know they were coming,” he said. “Although, if I had, I might have planned to be here. If, for no other reason than to meet Josephine York and watch you make an idiot of yourself.”
Jordan looked past him to the door, almost as if he was willing Reese out of the boathouse. His next words proved that guess.
“I have no intention, either now or in the future, of discussing that night with you. Or with the War Office. You can go back to them and tell them I haven’t succeeded in making my torpedo ship work. Not yet, but I will.”
Surprise kept Reese silent for a moment.
“Did you know from the moment I arrived?” he finally asked.
Jordan had always been an intelligent man. Until, of course, he’d been outmaneuvered by a woman.
“That it wasn’t just a friendly visit? Or that you had an ulterior motive? We’re friends, Reese, but we worked for the same organization. Did you think I’d forget it?”
Reese didn’t have a comment. He couldn’t argue with the truth.
The two men remained silent, Reese watching as Jordan tightened the chain on the pendulum.
“Are you sure about that night?” he asked as he turned to leave. “You’re not yourself when you’ve taken the stuff. You’ve admitted as much to me. What if you didn’t take Josephine to your bed? Would you now be contemplating marriage to the woman?”
All it had taken was a little observation. Martha York had left Sedgebrook silent and obviously miserable. Had she been the one in Jordan’s bed? He was beginning to suspect she had. He knew damn well it wasn’t Josephine. Yet he didn’t understand why Martha had remained silent. Had Josephine blackmailed her somehow? Or had Martha been terrified of the potential scandal? That was something that hadn’t bothered Josephine. She was more than willing to trade her good name for becoming a duchess.
Maybe it was his conscience prompting him to say what he had. Or perhaps it was a sliver of altruism. At least he’d satisfied his conscience’s requirements by sowing a little doubt in Jordan’s mind.
The problem was Jordan’s sense of honor. Even if he remembered the night as it had been, would it be enough to get him to alter the course of his future?
Reese hoped so, for his friend’s sake.
Josephine might be a fascinating woman, but he wouldn’t wish marriage to her on his worst enemy.
Martha slowly walked through the small building attached to her father’s cottage, inspecting the compressor as she’d been taught. The machine fueled the prototypes with compressed air, making it possible for each ship to be self-contained.
Once she was certain everything was in working order she returned to the cottage, sat at the table in the middle of the space, and wrote her findings in the journal. The tasks of inspecting the compressor and recording what she’d found were things she did every day, relaxing in their routine and repetition.
In a way, it was as if she kept alive all the various bits and pieces of her life with her father.
She could almost expect him to come walking in any moment, carrying a piece of toast in his right hand and his mug of tea in the other, pushing the door closed with his hip.
“It looks to be a bright and beautiful day, my dear Martha,” he’d say as he did every day, regardless of the weather.
Strangely, most of the days with her father were bright and beautiful. He had such a sunny personality it put everyone around him in a good mood.
The cottage had been built to specifically house Matthew York’s experiments and inventions, a two-room structure where he could tinker and test, then perhaps take a nap in the loft reached by a ladder in the corner. The second room was used for storage, the space nearly empty now that most of the inventions had been taken to Sedgebrook.
The cottage still smelled of his tobacco and she found it comforting. In the afternoon the sun streamed in through the windows on the west side, making her think she needed a cat like Hero to take advantage of the squares of light.
The whitewashed walls in this main room had once been adorned with plans and sketches, notes and reminders. She’d rolled up all the plans, copied what she wanted to save, and packed the originals up for the duke.
When her father was alive, the table where she sat had been strewed with drawings and occasionally metal fastenings and copper parts. Now the only thing on it was her journal and the Goldfish, the prototype she’d made using her father’s design.
Over the past weeks the Goldfish’s copper sheathing had changed color. Now it was a greenish hue, indicating corrosion. The final vessel, once she’d solved the problem of the steering, would have to be covered in another metal, something that wouldn’t add significantly to the weight yet keep the corrosion to a minimum.
She’d been studying the experiments Sir Humphry Davy had made on the degradation of copper by seawater and was leaning toward cast iron. The problem was it would have to be forged; she wouldn’t be able to simply pound or twist copper sheets into the final shape of the ship.
Today, however, she decided to put aside the problem of the corrosion and work on the steering mechanism again.
Few people came to the cottage, one of the reasons she’d been coming here every morning in the past weeks and staying until dark. She didn’t want to see Josephine. Nor could she talk to Gran.
Her father had the idea she and Jordan would suit. The thought made her both sad and happy. She wasn’t angry at Gran for trying to fulfill his wishes.
How, though, did she forgive Josephine? She was no closer to answering that question today than she’d been weeks ago when they’d left Sedgebrook.
Ever since then they’d spoken only a few words to each other and those said in Gran’s company and only for her benefit. Otherwise, she and Josephine avoided each other.
She didn’t want to hear about the wedding plans. She didn’t want to have to pretend any type of happiness for her sister. What Josephine had done was wrong, deceptive, and . . . her thoughts stumbled to a stop. She couldn’t call her sister evil, but she couldn’t help but think what Josephine had done was cold, calculating, and spiteful.
Only one other time in
her life had she felt more miserable than she did now—when she’d held her dying father’s hand and watched as he left her. She wanted to believe he’d seen her mother at the end, that their long-awaited reunion had been the reason for his smile.
This situation, the circumstance she found herself in, was not unlike those dark days. Eventually she would learn to live with missing her father, but how did she endure the pain of watching Josephine marry the Duke of Roth?
The upcoming wedding wouldn’t be the celebration of a union as much as a public announcement that Josephine York was becoming the Duchess of Roth.
Jordan was simply incidental to the process.
Even though Josephine would much rather the wedding take place at Sedgebrook’s baroque chapel, her grandmother had insisted it happen here.
Josephine acquiesced without much of a fuss. Marrying in the church they’d attended for years would mean everyone from the nearby villages would attend, in addition to their friends in London. Afterward, everyone would come to Griffin House for the enormous reception being planned.
Each day that passed Martha castigated herself for not saying anything. But it would have been pointless, wouldn’t it? She would have made the situation even worse. Two York sisters claiming the duke had taken their virginity and Jordan being unable to remember any of it.
What had Reese said? That Jordan was surfeited by honor. Well, he’d certainly acted with more honor than anyone else, offering to marry the woman who’d accused him.
What she couldn’t forget—or forgive—was Josephine’s triumphant smile.
The marriage was taking place in indecent haste. No doubt Josephine had given their grandmother some sort of excuse, or claimed that she might be with child.
At least that was one thing Martha didn’t have to worry about.
She put the journal back with the rest of them on the shelf above the table and retrieved the ship she’d made, the exact duplicate of the one she’d taken to Sedgebrook. The only difference was the name etched on the stern: the Goldfish. The ship looked exactly like a goldfish when it wiggled below the surface of the water.
