Just then, four spaniels came running over the lawn.
“I need to speak to his lordship about their stable boy,” Grayson said, sounding annoyed. “Either he’s in charge of these dogs or he’s not.”
She thought then, he would change the subject, but he added, “I have asked Lord Angsley about my sire, and he said my mother was about to give birth when she came here, directed to come by my father, as someone who knew the family would take her in and give her work. She said he was already dead.”
Eleanor gasped. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Not only did I think your father was a servant here, I thought your father died when you were young. I didn’t realize he passed before you were even born.”
Grayson shrugged. “I’ve been surrounded by love and acceptance all my life. And importantly, by great men who helped guide me, including both of the Angsley brothers, Beryl’s father, Harold, and Cam’s father, Gideon, before the earl passed. I don’t believe I have lacked for anything.”
She nodded. “I am glad. Your father was a good man to direct your mother here. This family is generous and welcoming. I’ve certainly experienced that.”
He fell silent and seemed thoughtful for a moment.
“Would you like to help me repay them in a small way?”
“Yes,” she said. “What do you intend?”
“Lord Angsley is secretly a bit of an amateur entomologist.”
“He likes bugs? I’ve never heard him mention it.”
“As I said, it’s a secret because Lady Angsley would not approve or appreciate it. In any case, there’s a beetle, native to England, said to be a beautiful golden color.”
“Gold?”
“Yes. You know how dragonflies are iridescent. Well, this beetle has a coating of such strange golden shine, it looks like actual gold. If we could find one, he would be most appreciative.”
Eleanor considered it. Hunting a gold bug would be like seeking treasure.
“I’ve seen shiny green beetles before. They do have a golden tinge sometimes. Would that do?” If Lord Angsley would be happy with such, she would be thrilled to provide it.
He nodded, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps it would. Maybe we can find one less green and more gold.”
“It would give us something productive to do, and we could be outdoors, which you know I enjoy. Moreover, I could bring my sketchbook.”
“But not a word to anyone,” Grayson insisted.
“All right. We shall keep our quest between the two of us,” she agreed, enjoying the idea of a shared secret. “How shall we begin?”
“Tomorrow morning, first thing. I’ll meet you in the library after breakfast. By then, I will have taken the liberty of drawing a picture—”
“I didn’t know you could sketch,” she interrupted him.
“Nothing like you, but I can probably draw a beetle so it doesn’t look like a cat.”
They laughed.
“This will be great fun,” she said.
He shot her an indecipherable look, making her insides tremble. Was he up to mischief?
“I’m sorry I raised my voice to you the other day,” Grayson confessed all of a sudden. “I don’t think you’re a selfish person at all.”
Eleanor shook her head. How could he still be thinking of such an insignificant incident?
“It was already forgotten and forgiven,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm.
“I was simply worried you would go to Turvey House against everyone’s wishes and fall ill.” After a brief pause, he added, “I couldn’t bear the thought.”
What could she say to that?
“Thank you.” She was more determined than ever to create a beautiful sketch for him. “Speaking of sketching, I’m going to do a little drawing while the light is good.”
“You won’t climb anything, will you?” he asked, and she feared he was going to stick close to her as if she were a toddlekins in leading strings.
“No, I’ll keep my feet on the ground.”
Or no higher than a fence railing, she thought, or maybe the ladder in the stables.
“Very well,” he agreed. “I have a few things to do, as well.”
He paused, and she had the insane notion he wished to kiss her farewell. They stared at each other, and she would have leaned toward him and let him, if they’d been in a secluded spot.
Then the moment filled with stirring anticipation passed, and they went their separate ways for the remainder of the afternoon.
Chapter Eight
Getting Eleanor to come to the library had been relatively easy. Now, Gray hoped he could pull off the trickery he’d learned from Poe. He’d easily procured a piece of vellum from Lord Angsley’s writing desk, and the night before, he had drawn everything he needed on one side. Yet, to the eye, it appeared blank.
He rubbed his hands together with glee, feeling like an excited child pulling off a particularly good prank. He was no scientist and hadn’t much of a clue what Poe was writing about in the lines from The Gold Bug, “Zaire, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water,” or “the regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre.”
Grayson only knew he needed to create invisible ink, which he did quite well with lemon juice as he had with Cam when they were boys, writing secret messages to each other for fun.
And now, he waited.
Eleanor entered looking lovely. Her own beauty was even more apparent for the lack of adornment or accessories on her plain gown of forest green.
Still, he couldn’t help thinking she would look better in nothing at all.
“I said good day,” came her voice, and he realized she must have spoken already, and like a buffoon, he had missed her greeting. His tongue was probably hanging out, as well.
“Sorry, I was thinking of the day ahead.”
“I’m eager to see your drawing of the gold bug.” She drew close and sat down opposite him.
“I decided to wait for you to help me draw it. And I found this natural history book on the shelf.”
He had it open to a page with beetles.
“This one is close enough, I think.” He lay his finger on the beetle that looked like a scarab.
“It’s not gold,” she pointed out. “Nor do I have a colored pencil that could realistically make it appear so.”
“That’s fine. We’ll just sketch out a beetle and take it with us.”
“But I know what a beetle looks like,” she protested.
“They come in all shapes and sizes.” He pushed the book toward her. At the same time, he slid his paper out from under it. “We’re not looking for a wasp beetle or a ladybird. Only this type, perhaps. See, the flower chafer comes in gold, but only very rarely.”
Then he flipped the paper over so she could see there was no writing on either side, flipping it again, tapping his pencil from his pocket on the paper, drawing her attention to the blankness of its entirety.
Then, he began to draw, making sure he was on the truly clean side of the paper, drawing in the spot he’d already determined mimicked the image he’d drawn on the other side. In a few moments, he’d sketched a crude beetle with little antennae and an exaggerated shape to its body.
“The beetle we’re looking for looks like—”
“A skull,” she interrupted.
Goodness, she caught on quickly.
“Yes,” he said, as if only just noticing. “I suppose, except for the appendages, it does.”
“Maybe I should have drawn it.” Then Eleanor chuckled. “I mean no disrespect to your sketching abilities.”
“None taken.”
Now came the tricky part. Just then, as planned, one of the maids brought in a tray of piping hot coffee, with the pot set on a metal trivet.
“I recalled you like coffee sometimes.” And without waiting for a reply, he lifted the pot, poured them each a cup, and instead of replacing the pot on the trivet, he set it elsewhere on the silver tray. Then he picked up the paper, pretending to
study it, and in a moment, set it down on the iron trivet.
Hopefully, it would be hot enough to activate the lemon juice with which he’d written his secret message on the back side of the seemingly blank paper.
“Let’s see if there is another book on the shelf with bugs. I didn’t look all that thoroughly. Perhaps if we know the habitat, it will be easier to find. For instance, does it live on flowers or deep in the forest on rotten wood? Or do we need to dig in the dirt or perhaps go to a cave?”
“Indeed,” she said. “That would be good to know.”
For a few minutes, they looked for natural history books, found one or two, discounted their usefulness, and then finally gave up.
“We should drink the coffee before it grows cold,” he said, waiting for her to pick up her cup.
Leaning over the table, she gasped, and Grayson felt a surge of triumph as she reached out slowly and took hold of the paper. He could even see it was shaking slightly in her grasp, which meant her hand was trembling.
“What on earth?” she asked.
“What?” He had taken hold of his coffee cup and feigned ignorance.
“Do you not see what I see?” she demanded.
“Are you going to make fun of my beetle drawing again?”
“No, Grayson, look.” And Eleanor stuck the vellum under his nose.
“By God, you were right, my beetle does look exactly like a skull, more so than I would have thought.”
“I don’t think that is your beetle,” she said, her voice breathy with wonder. “And look, there are other markings on the paper.”
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “What is all that?”
Setting down his cup, he snatched the paper from her and examined it.
Instead of merely his ugly beetle, which was visible on the other side, there was now a drawing of a skull, a “death head” as Poe had described it in his tale, sketched in a murky brown ink.
“And what is that?” He pointed diagonally to the other edge in case she hadn’t noticed it.
“It looks like a goat,” she said.
“But so small,” he pointed out. “Like a baby goat, or a kid, don’t you think?” He had certainly tried to evoke a kid, at any rate. “And then, what is all that gibberish in between?”
She took it back from him, then she walked to the window. Today was another overcast day, yet still, there was a bright steely light.
“You’re right. There are lines of nonsense text between the goat—”
“Kid,” he interrupted.
“And the skull,” she said. “I can make neither heads nor tails of it.”
He walked to her side and studied it with her, able to sniff the delightful floral scent of her eau de toilette.
He thought he’d done a rather good job. For clearly, though faintly, he could see four lines of numbers and symbols, starting with “53 + + ! 3 0 5 ) ) 6 * ; 4 8 2 6 ) 4 + . ) 4 + ) ; 8.”
“Whatever can it mean?” she mused. “It must be a puzzle, don’t you think?”
She looked up at him, and they were so close, he could see the reflection of the clouds in her brown eyes.
He nodded. He would have agreed with whatever words came out of her luscious mouth at that moment.
She flipped the paper over, and there was his beetle.
“How strange! It looks so much like the skull, as if you invoked the image on the other side by drawing your ugly bug.”
He couldn’t help smiling at her assessment of his beetle.
“How can one invoke something onto paper?” he teased. “By magic?”
“It would seem so. I saw the paper a few minutes ago, and it was blank except for your drawing. Where did this come from? It’s giving me goosebumps.”
He glanced at her arm. It looked perfectly smooth to him.
“Where did you get this sheet of paper?” she asked.
“That is a good question. I didn’t have a sketchpad at my disposal as you do, so I hunted around in here. I was about to ask Lord Angsley when I saw a book sticking out a little farther than the others on the shelf. I was only going to push it back in, but instead, I pulled it out because of the title.”
He went to the shelf and from amongst a number of large, thick volumes whose spines were nearly identical, he drew the one he’d found the night before and held it before her.
“I imagine, as an ambassador for her queen, Lord Angsley had an interest in the subject,” he told her.
She glanced down at the massive book in his hands with a reddish-brown spine and a deep-green leather cover, and read the title, “A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
“Volume fourteen,” he added, because he’d memorized it.
She laughed. “Unquestionably, one of the longest titles I’ve ever seen.” Glancing up at him, she asked, “And it grabbed your interest enough to pull the book from the shelf among all the other volumes with the exact same title?”
Was she doubting his ridiculous story?
He shrugged. “It seemed to be calling to me by the fact of it being stuck out a little. It caught my shoulder as I went by.” In truth, he’d searched for an hour looking for a book that mentioned the pirate Captain Kidd, and this boring looking volume was the only one. In fact, stumbling upon Kidd in volume fourteen had been a godsend.
She frowned, then looked down at the book again. “I’ve been in a bookshop and felt as if a book were ‘calling’ to me, as you put it.”
Inside, he sighed with relief. The jig was not up yet!
“The blank paper was stuck in the book,” he told her. “Would you like to see where?”
She nodded, so he placed it upon the table. While she watched him flip it open to the table of contents, she laughed again.
“It has over thirteen hundred pages!”
“No, not really,” he told her. “Only half that. Each page has two columns and thus, two numbers. It is easier for the eye to read quickly down a column than to go all the way across a full page, especially of a book this tall and wide. I think that’s why it was printed in such a manner.”
“That makes good sense,” she agreed.
“The paper that has mysteriously shown a deathly skull image was here.” He ran his finger down the contents list and read aloud, “The Trial of Captain William Kidd, at the Old Bailey, for Murder and Piracy upon the High Seas.”
“Gracious! A pirate,” Eleanor said enthusiastically. “If only Philip were here to comment on our strange findings.”
Gray was glad Philip wasn’t there, for that would mean Beryl would be there, too. And as much as he adored the woman who was like a sister to him, if she’d been there, then he would definitely not have Eleanor all to himself.
“The paper was right there, sticking out a little higher than the book’s pages between columns 123/124 and 125/126. It was blank, or seemingly so, and I took it thinking no one would mind.”
“I suppose, since the book belongs to his lordship, we should ask him about it. Maybe he can—”
“That would only lead to questions, and before you know it, we would have to tell him about our quest,” Gray reminded her.
“I’m not entirely sure the initial quest is important anymore. Do you realize what this is?”
Gray had to hide the smile that threatened to overtake his expression. Trying to look unwitting, he widened his eyes.
“No, what?”
“I think it is a puzzle about Captain Kidd, and any puzzle about a pirate must lead to his treasure. I’ve read Robinson Crusoe!” she proclaimed.
Picking up the piece of paper, she studied it. “You must be correct. It is a baby goat, a kid, and the skull in the other corner is a seal, a pirate’s stamp, if you will.”
“You know, you might be right,” he said. “But what on earth are we to make of the nonsense lines?”
“I think they are in code.” Her voice took on a note of excitement. “Obviously, since Kidd was an Englishman—
”
“Actually, he was Scottish.”
She blinked at him, and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. His knowing too much about the pirate would assuredly tip her off that this wasn’t random and coincidental.
“Is that common knowledge?” she asked. Then she shook her head. “Never mind, the pun of the baby goat is in English, so we’ll assume the puzzle is in English, too.”
“Good idea,” he agreed, vowing to let her lead from now on and not ruin the game.
Suddenly, she squealed.
“What is it?” he asked, slightly alarmed. She sounded exactly like a youngster.
“It’s very exciting, that’s all.” And, to his surprise, she stretched up on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Nice, but not exactly satisfying.
Without thinking of anything except her nearness and her gorgeous eyes and lips, and her delightful scent, Gray drew her close and claimed her mouth under his.
If she wanted “very exciting,” then a peck on the cheek was not the right type of kiss.
Slanting his mouth, he tested her readiness for more by touching his tongue to her upper lip. He felt her body tense a moment before she relaxed against him and parted her lips, though he doubted she knew what he was about.
Gently, he slid his tongue inside her sweet mouth, and she gasped slightly, which only drew him in farther. Then, ever so slightly, she touched his tongue with her own.
“Mmm,” he murmured.
Next thing he knew, she’d reached her hands around the back of his neck and was holding him to her, with her fingers in his hair.
He grasped her waist, pulling her up against his body and, with their tongues dancing in earnest, he kissed her until every nerve in his body seemed to be burning.
Was it possible blood could run hot? He didn’t know, but it felt as though he was on fire for Eleanor Blackwood, and the only thing that could put it out was taking off all her clothes—and, of course, his own—and seeking relief by becoming one with her.
At the thought of her naked beneath him, her silky hair spread about her lovely face, her shoulders and breasts laid bare for him to nibble and suck, he could hardly breathe or hear anything but his own pounding heart.
His hands drifted from her waist to her bottom, squeezing gently, making her gasp again, even as he drew her up against his throbbing body.
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 60
