by Lauren Royal
“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 af
ternoon. 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 motherin-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 wander 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 Masterpiece?”
“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 Masterpiece 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.
Still, dragging the Masterpiece back out wasn’t what she had in mind. “I just thought…I thought it would be nice to talk.”
“Bang!” Nicky sailed his ship closer to Rose’s. Beatrix’s small head whipped back and forth, following the battle. “Bang, bang!”
“Quieter,” Violet cautioned. “Your sister’s sleeping.”
Rebecca had nodded off in Lily’s arms. Violet gazed at her daughter tenderly. “Of course I’ll come sleep at Trentingham. Someday soon. It will be great fun.” Though she sounded enthusiastic, her brown eyes were filled with concern. “Is there something in particular you’d like to talk about?”
“Nothing special. Just…life.”
Rose aimed a tiny Dutch cannon. “I want to talk about Lord Randal.”
The one thing Lily didn’t want to talk about. Despite her promise, she felt she’d heard her sister gush over the man quite enough. Especially because, regardless of all their plotting, Rose seemed to be making no headway.
“How many times,” she said, more peevishly than was her nature, “do you suppose he’s asked you to call him Rand?”
“Oh, about a million,” Rose answered gaily. “But I like to think of him as a lord. My lord.”
Lily feared Rand would never be Rose’s lord. He’d made it clear, with words and a kiss, which sister he preferred. And while she had no intention of going back on her word by allowing him to get closer, she’d seen nothing to make her believe he’d turn to Rose instead.
She met Violet’s gaze, sending her a silent message.
“Has he shown interest?” Violet asked Rose carefully.
Their sister’s lovely nose went into the air. “He walked with me in the garden today. He’s been very kind.”
“Bang, bang!” Nicky yelled. “Auntie Rose, you’re not watching. You’re going to sink!”
“Quieter,” Violet repeated—rather patiently, Lily thought, considering she’d probably heard her sister utter that word a thousand times or more.
Lily lowered herself to a chair, being careful not to wake the baby. “Rand is kind,” she said, more dreamily than she’d intended.
Beatrix started hiccuping.
“That silly cat.” Rose stood, abandoning her ship to the mercy of the English. She narrowed her eyes at Lily. “You made a promise. Are you intending to break it?”
Violet looked between them curiously. “What promise?”
“Well…” Lily began.
“She promised,” Rose finished for her, “to stay away from Lord Randal.” Her gaze whipped back to Lily. “And to help me win him.”
Lily swallowed hard. She’d been helping her, hadn’t she? Every way she knew how. “Have you ever known me to break a promise?”
Rose appeared to give that some thought. “No,” she said at last. “You always do the right thing.”
She said it as though always doing the right thing were a character flaw, which Lily was beginning to think might be true.
And how absurd was that?
FOURTEEN
LATER THAT afternoon, the notes wafting from the harpsichord did their magic as always, transporting Lily from her family’s cream-and-gold-toned drawing room to a much more peaceful place.
At the moment Trentingham was far from peaceful. The drive
was crammed with carriages waiting to take friends and family home. Uncles and cousins were busy seeing that their things were properly packed and loaded onto the correct vehicles. Children ran through the corridors, their feet pounding on the planked floor as they chased one another in last-minute games.
Lily knew she should join everyone and say good-bye. And she would, after a few more minutes of playing behind the drawing room’s thick oak doors. The music was too soothing to resist. Her fingers glided over the keys, picking out a tune of her own creation, one that matched her mood.
Pensive. Confused. Longing—although for what, she wasn’t sure.
The door opened, and her mother slid gracefully into the chamber. Chrystabel waited for her to finish. “Dear,” she started as the last note faded, “that was lovely, but you really should be—”
“I know, Mum.” Lily rose, forcing her lips to curve in a smile. “I’ll go make my farewells.”
“That’s my Lily.” Mum smiled in return. “Aunt Cecily could use some help bringing Lucy and Penelope downstairs.” Lucy and Penelope were Lily’s small cousins, aged two and three. “I’m afraid all our servants are engaged with the luggage.”
“Of course I’ll help.” With one last wistful look at the harpsichord, Lily quit the room and followed her mother upstairs, looking forward to kissing the two girls good-bye.
But the nursery was empty. “Oh, well,” Mum said cheerfully. “Aunt Cecily must have managed to wrestle the little rapscallions downstairs by herself. Come along, then.” She turned back to the corridor.
Feeling like one of King Charles’s tennis balls being batted back and forth, Lily followed. Then nearly bumped into her mother when she stopped before a door—the door to the room that had been assigned to Rand.
If Lily hadn’t already known that, she would have figured it out on hearing the humming that drifted from inside.
