Tempting The Rival (Scandals and Spies Book 3)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Then again, given the amount the duke had agreed to pay her, she might not have to worry about a lean winter again for a long time.

  “I’m tired, that’s all. I didn’t sleep well at the inn.”

  Lucy made a face. “Yes, their mattresses did leave something to be desired.”

  It hadn’t been the mattress that had kept Felicia tossing and turning all night, but the man in the room adjoining hers. She pressed her lips together to keep from sprouting such a confession.

  When she rustled her fingers, Chubs lifted his ears. He padded a step or two closer. “Come now, Chubs. Let’s return to our room. I’m sure the storm won’t last long and you can go back out to the wagon before long.”

  He cocked his head to the side with one of his pathetic looks, as if he knew what she was saying. When he glanced behind him, the other two women cooed.

  “He doesn’t want to be left alone, do you boy?” Charlie said. She balanced the candlestick in one hand while she reached out to try to coax him nearer.

  Lucy added, “You can keep him inside. The wagon is safe here.”

  Felicia nodded, reluctant. “If you’re sure your mother won’t mind.”

  Lucy waved her hand. “She loves animals. I’m sure she’d be delighted.”

  Although Felicia was less sure, she hadn’t slept without Chubs for years, barring last night. She didn’t want to relegate him to the increasingly cold nights while she lounged in luxury.

  When she turned, the two women hurried to catch up and direct her back to the guest chambers. Felicia had taken care to memorize the path, but they still had to correct her once. When she reached her door, she thanked them both and slipped inside. Lucy promised to send up a tray and a bowl of chopped meat for Chubs. Felicia couldn’t turn away the prospect of food.

  Inside, she found a candle burning low on the vanity. Her small trunk had been deposited at the foot of the bed. She unlocked it with a key from her reticule and neatly put away her dresses and underclothes into the wardrobe. Four dresses, two sets of underclothes, and two nightgowns. That was everything she owned. Lucy, no doubt, would be appalled. Even if Felicia longed for a larger wardrobe—which she did not, as hers served her well—she wouldn’t have the space to cart around so many clothes. The sort of people she usually cavorted with didn’t mind if she wore the same dress twice in one week.

  By the time she finished putting away her belongings, a knock at the door signaled the arrival of the promised tray. Felicia accepted it with thanks, doled out her pet’s dish, and ate while sitting at the vanity, next to the sputtering candle. The patter of rain and Chubs’ snorts were the only sounds to keep her company. As directed, she left her tray and the dog’s bowl outside her door for removal.

  The near silence closed in around her as she shut the door once more. Slowly, she undressed and washed using the basin hidden behind the dressing screen. She donned her nightgown. When she snuffed the flame, darkness pressed against her eyes. Evening blanketed the world beyond the abbey. Leaving the drapes wide, she climbed into bed, her eyes adjusting enough to see the contours of the furniture.

  The ropes holding the mattress in place were firm. The mattress felt as soft as a cloud. As Felicia sank onto it, she couldn’t believe that she was here, being treated like a queen. She curled her bare toes against the smooth bedsheets. Her pillow cradled her neck, lulling her to sleep. Although she shut her eyes, it didn’t come.

  The abbey was too quiet. She was used to the bustle and vigor of a city or marketplace. Even at night, the stamps and protests of animals filled the silence. Here, she had only her thoughts to keep her company.

  Living like a queen was lonely.

  Chubs whined somewhere in the vicinity of her feet. When she shifted, he stood and rested his chin on the bed, over her foot.

  “Oh, very well. We won’t tell.” She patted the empty space next to her, big enough to fit two more people.

  Chubs jumped up. He curled around and flopped onto the bed in a ball with his bottom in her face.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” She shoved at his rump until he turned around. With a sigh, he curled up with his head on the pillow next to her. She draped her arm across his warm middle and rested her cheek on his shoulder.

  She fell asleep to the strong sound of his heartbeat.

  12

  Chubs snored. When he was stretched out, he took up half the bed, but that wasn’t enough for him. He had to have the center half of the bed. Felicia woke quite early to find that she had no more than a foot of space on the end. With a colossal grunt, Chubs rolled over and braced his passive paws against her side. When he stretched out, he nearly thrust her off the bed.

  Felicia tried to adjust her position, but the mastiff was as moveable as a boulder. With a sigh, she slid out of bed.

  The storm had passed sometime during the night, leaving an almost deathly quiet on the abbey. The sun hadn’t yet separated from the horizon, but the sky was a light gray. The ambient light streamed in through the glass window, outlining the silhouettes of the furniture. A brisk morning chill permeated the air, raising goose bumps over the exposed skin of her neck. She danced from foot to foot on the cold floorboards.

  Trying to bare her skin for as small a time as possible, she exchanged her nightgown for a pair of woolen stockings and chemise. She covered it with the first dress she found in the wardrobe. By the time she was finished, Chubs continued to snore. She snapped her fingers.

  “Chubs. Do you want to go outside?”

  Usually the O-word perked him up immediately. This morning, he was dead to the world. She only intended to go to the orangery for an hour at most. She would return for her dog afterward.

  Tenwick Abbey wasn’t as silent as it seemed from the guest wing. As she meandered down to the ground floor, she started to encounter servants. They stepped aside, tugging on their forelocks or giving her a brief curtsey. After trying to correct the first two or three, she gave up the effort. Word had spread that she was a guest of the Graylockes. Nothing she said made an impact on the servants, even if she pretended otherwise.

  She hurried through the abbey to the corridor where the tour had ended the day before. As she spied the orangery, a still silhouette against the grounds, she paused to test every doorway leading off the corridor. At last, she found the one leading to that long walkway.

  Light glimmered along the horizon, filtering through the row of glassed-in arches along the east wall. The western wall and floor consisted of symmetrical marble bricks fitted tightly together. The light reflected off the smooth surfaces, creating a sheen. The sunrise created the illusion of walking along a diamond-crusted walkway. It was beautiful and forbidding all at once. The heels of her slippers clicked as she quickened her step, leaving behind the illusion.

  At the end of the corridor was a foggy glass door. It opened easily and she slipped into the hot interior of the orangery. It smelled sweet, the perfume of flowers mixed with a hint of citrus. The thick moisture in the air made her hair start to curl. She brushed it away from her face as she surveyed the interior. The light of the sunrise barely peeked through the foggy glass walls. By the time it reached the ground, it was no more substantial than mist. She should have brought a candle.

  Rows of dirt were interspersed by a narrow stone walkway leading to a work bench in the center of the room that was covered with potted plants. At the end of the long, narrow table, Felicia found a lantern. She used a tinderbox sitting next to it to light the wick. When the light flared to life, she lifted the lantern to study the orangery in more detail.

  Plants spilled in every direction. Given Gideon’s preoccupation with botany, it came as no great surprise. The variety inside the orangery stole her breath. Her knowledge of botany couldn’t hope to match his, but her gaze fell on several specimens that must have come from the very edges of the earth, given that she didn’t recognize the species. It was one more reminder that the Graylocke family had the money to buy the earth, if they so pleased—or, at the ver
y least, to fund an expedition. What must it be like for Gideon to have everything he needed to pursue his passion at the tips of his fingers?

  Pushing away the resentment that surged at the thought, Felicia shut her eyes. She breathed the soothing, floral scent. The trickle of water met her ears, but when she opened her eyes, she couldn’t find the source.

  On the other side of the work bench, after a row of neat pots that appeared to be newly tended, either with new seedlings or with fresh cuttings, was another long, narrow work bench identical to the first. It had been cleared of everything, but several unopened crates cluttered the foot. Felicia smiled. Gideon had made her a space in his abode, as promised.

  Setting the lantern on the bench where she wouldn’t accidentally knock it over, she got to work unpacking the chemicals. These were only the ones that had been shipped from London; she had others in her wagon to add to the bunch, not to mention the specimens of the plant they would be using to create the serum. She unpacked the bottles of liquids and powders one by one, mentally crossing off ingredients in her head, and was astounded to find that the Duke of Tenwick had procured every item on her list save for the brugmansia plant itself. Even the ingredients she’d added to the bottom, in case the theory she’d long ruminated about proved wrong and she needed to start from scratch. Did Britain have a secret chemistry laboratory she didn’t know about? It wouldn’t surprise her to learn that they did. She could think of no other way the duke could have filled the entire list of ingredients she’d requested.

  Once she lined them up, she retrieved Chubs from her room and strolled with him to the wagon. After he did his morning business and she fed him a snack, she left him to guard the wagon—or in his case, lounge on his back in the dew and early morning sunshine with all four paws in the air—while she carried the rest of the supplies she would need for the project into the orangery.

  She trekked across the open ground, cutting through the garden. This late in the year, precious little foliage remained to line the paths. Although the plants were neatly tended and pruned, with the frost over the past week, many plants had died. Others had already entered the dormant stage of their cycles. The gravel crunched beneath her shoes as she carried the crate containing her supplies to the glass-encased orangery.

  The heat and humidity in the orangery chased away the autumn chill the moment she stepped inside. Since she entered by means of the glass door on the far wall of the hothouse, the source of the heat and trickling water was immediately apparent. In the wall next to the brick-enclosed walkway, she spotted a contraption that looked a bit like a kiln. A vent attached the kiln to the wall of the orangery, built into the brick side around the door. Once inside, her gaze flew to that portion of the wall to find the vent emitting the hot steam that filled the orangery.

  Next to the door leading onto the grass, on the opposite side of the orangery from the vent, was a small man-made pond. The trickle of water was a combination of a small fountain circulating the water and the percolation of the moisture that gathered at the top of the orangery and trickled along a set of half-pipes down the wall. The pipes were intricately set like veins along the wall. When she set down the crate for a moment to dip her fingers into the pond, she found the liquid pleasantly lukewarm. Only aquatic flora populated the pond, no fauna.

  Humming under her breath, Felicia carried her box to her workbench. She unloaded it with care, starting with the vials and containers encircling the pot housing one of two brugmansia plants she had in her possession. Both were relatively young specimens grown from cuttings. Without a hothouse like this one, her plants had difficulty surviving the winter, even when she tried to keep them indoors. Housing the angel’s trumpets in ceramic pots rather than planting them in the ground stunted their growth as well, but she hoped—for the good of the nation—that it hadn’t impacted the potency of the plant’s side effects. Namely, the tendency to inebriate anyone who consumed it and cause memory loss. In combination with some of the ingredients she’d requested, she hoped the natural side effects could be amplified and directed to more specific purpose.

  As she lifted the pot from the crate, a shadow in the garden caught her eye. She lifted her head, blinking in the direct sunlight spilling over the tree line. No one was there. She must have been mistaken. Returning to her task, she inspected and watered the plant. Would it thrive in the orangery? The atmosphere in here was much closer to the plant’s natural habitat.

  The door to the abbey opened. A figure stopped short. Felicia raised her gaze to meet Gideon’s. A tingle swept through her, one she struggled to suppress. So he, like her, tended to rise early rather than lay abed. She shouldn’t be surprised. It wasn’t the only thing they had in common.

  This early in the morning, he presented a tidy appearance. His hair was neatly combed, his shirt buttoned to his chin, and his cravat was on straight. He carried a dove gray jacket. As he beheld her, he lifted his arm, holding the garment between them like a shield.

  Felicia smirked. Her amusement faded as she squashed the urge to flirt and make him uncomfortable. She knew she could invoke that sentiment in him, but ever since the revelation yesterday she didn’t want to.

  She gestured to the pot holding her plant. “This is the brugmansia specimen we’ll be using for our project. I’ve distilled some oils from the plant and dried out the leaves, stem, and roots—” She pointed to each container in turn.

  Gideon interrupted her. “It’s dehydrated.”

  She scowled. He couldn’t possibly know that from across the room.

  His posture wasn’t accusing, but hesitant as he stepped forward. He laid his jacket on his work bench. “May I?” He didn’t take a single step closer. His eyes, shadowed in the mixed ambient light and glow from the lantern she had yet to douse, gave away none of his intentions.

  Of the pair of them, he was the botanist. She had to work with him if she was to prove her theory. Inwardly, she sighed. She stepped away from the potted plant. “By all means.”

  He didn’t wait for further invitation. The walkway between the bench and the nearest flora was narrow. Even when she stepped on the very edge of the stone, with the side of her shoe kissing the dirt, he still brushed against her when he slipped past. And again when he carried the plant to his side of the work benches. Her body reacted to his nearness, every one of her senses attuned to him. Could the perfume still be gripping her?

  The shrewd air Gideon cultivated during conversation dissipated as he attended to the plant. He seemed lost in his own world as he examined it from the roots—sticking his bare fingers in the soil—to the buds forming at the top of the plant. He pinched off several, tossing them to the ground.

  A lump formed in Felicia’s throat. She dashed closer. “Hey!” That was her plant, one she’d painstakingly grown hoping it would form those exact buds.

  “It isn’t healthy,” Gideon said, his voice absent. “If it expends energy on those buds, it will die and we’ll get nowhere.”

  She glared at his back and crouched to pick up the discarded buds. “At the very least, you shouldn’t throw them away. I can distill them for oil.”

  He shrugged. “Do what you want with them.” He continued to examine, prune, and water the plant.

  After she collected all the material he cut away, Felicia separated it into piles to either dry it or insert it into her portable distillery to extract the oils. Her distillery was in her wagon, so for now she carefully preserved the buds in one of her containers for easy transportation. When she moved to exit, Gideon raised his head, proving that he wasn’t as deaf to the world as she’d assumed.

  “Where are you going?” His voice was sharp.

  She fought not to frown. “My distillery is in my wagon. I won’t be able to extract the oils without it.” Not to mention, she should probably bring the second of her plants into the orangery for him to tend.

  “Must it be done immediately?”

  It must if you want the other plant. She pressed her lips together. “
No, but the more dry the buds become, the less I’ll be able to extract.”

  He waved his hand to indicate the orangery. “This room is kept in constant humidity. Your buds will survive the morning.”

  “I beg your pardon?” What was he talking about?

  He sighed. Running his fingers through his hair, he mussed it. “We don’t have the time.”

  “That plant will survive the hour it will take me to distill these oils. I may be a crackpot, but I’ve managed to keep it alive this long.” She planted her free hand on one hip, raising her eyebrows in silent challenge.

  He winced and tugged his cravat out of place. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have allowed my temper to run wild yesterday. You are, of course, entitled to do or sell anything that you want.”

  That was nothing that she hadn’t known already. Was she supposed to express her gratitude over earning his permission to do the very thing she would have done anyway? She pressed her lips together to keep from starting another argument.

  He added, “This will be a long and arduous assignment if we don’t come to some kind of truce. Can we agree to work together as best we can? Let’s not prolong this mission any longer than it needs to be.”

  He delivered the offer in a terse manner, his jaw clenched. His expression left no doubt that, given the choice, he wouldn’t work with her. Drawing herself up, Felicia matched his imperious expression. The sentiment was mutual. After all, why would she subject herself to the condemnation of an arrogant son of a duke if she didn’t have to?

  Lifting her chin to meet his gaze squarely, she held out her hand. “A truce. For the good of the nation.”

  His shrewd air returned as he fixed his measuring gaze on her. “Yes… for the nation.” He gripped her hand. His long fingers were gritty with dirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. His warm palm burned her as he gripped her hand firmly.

  She retracted her hand and dropped it to her side.

  Stepping back, he gestured toward the door. “Shall we? We won’t have much time to eat as it is.”