A magnetic, compelling, distracting beacon.
How long he stood and stared he couldn’t have said; footsteps approaching along the corridor had him shaking off the compulsion and turning to face the door.
After the briefest of taps, the door opened, and Shields—Rand’s groom, who, in a pinch, also served as his gentleman’s gentleman—came in.
“Ah—there you are.” Bearing an ewer, Shields nudged the door closed, then advanced to set the ewer on the dresser. “I’ve unpacked, and I brushed that blue coat of yours for the evening. If that’ll suit?”
Rand nodded. “Yes, that’s fine.”
“Are we staying for a while?” Shields asked.
Rand frowned. “A few days at least.”
Shields grunted. “Just as well we were on our way to Raventhorne, then. At least we’ve both got clothes enough for a stay.”
Putting his back to the view, Rand leant back against the windowsill. “What are your thoughts on the household here?”
“Despite what we saw when we drove up, it’s a well-run house. Calm and well-ordered, even if a mite eccentric. The staff are longtimers, all of them—and if they’re not that old, then their parents were here before them. Very settled, they are, and... I suppose you’d say they’re content.”
“The explosions don’t trouble them?”
“Seems they’re used to them—and apparently, there’s never been anyone hurt. Just lots of noise and nasty smoke.”
Rand nodded. A well-run household and contented staff were excellent indicators of the qualities of a house’s master. Or mistress, as the case might be.
He straightened from the sill and turned to look out of the window again.
“Country hours here, so dinner’s at six.” Shields retreated toward the door. “Do you need me for anything else?”
Rand shook his head. “Not today.” His gaze flicked to the stable. “How are the horses?” He’d purchased the pair only two months ago; they were young and still distinctly flighty.
“They didn’t approve of the bang and the smell, but the stable’s well away from the house, and they settled happily enough.”
“Good.” Rand paused, then said, “I doubt I’ll need the horses for the next few days at least. Other than keeping an eye on them, I won’t need you for much, but let me know if you see or hear anything that strikes you as odd.”
“Aye. I’ll do that. I’m off for my tea, then.”
Rand heard the door open and shut. His gaze had already found and refocused on Miss Throgmorton.
She was still attacking the roses.
Rand wavered, prodded by an impulse to go down and speak with her. About what, he wasn’t all that clear. Judging by the energy with which she was clipping, she was still distinctly exercised over what his arrival had revealed.
She’d had no inkling of Rand’s or the syndicate’s existence. More, Rand sensed her antipathy toward inventing—an attitude that had reached him perfectly clearly during their meeting in the drawing room—had a deeper source than mere female disapproval of such endeavors.
Yet her support would be vital in keeping her brother’s nose to the grindstone, and they all needed William John to finish the invention within the next three weeks.
Rand wasn’t sure how much he could actively help William John—that remained to be seen—but at the very least, he could ride rein on the younger man and ensure he remained focused on solving the issues bedeviling his father’s machine. William John had already shown strong signs of the absentminded mental meandering Rand had observed in many other inventors.
In his experience, time was the one dimension to which inventors rarely paid heed.
Yet in this case, time was very definitely of critical importance.
Rand refocused on Miss Throgmorton.
He drew out his fob watch and checked the face, then tucked the watch into his pocket and headed for the door.
He had time for a stroll before dinner.
* * *
In the rose garden, Felicia deadheaded roses with a vengeance. With her left hand, she gripped the next rose hip; with her right hand, she wielded the shears. Snip! She dropped the clipped hip into her basket and reached for the next.
She’d hoped the activity would allow her to release some of the emotions pent up inside her. And, in truth, simply being out of the house and breathing fresher air had eased the volcanic anger, fueled by hurt, that had welled within her on learning of her father’s and brother’s subterfuge.
Snip.
Her father was dead; she couldn’t berate him. As for her brother...while she could berate him, she and the household—not to mention the too-handsome-for-his-own-good Lord Cavanaugh and his syndicated investors—needed William John to keep his mind on his work. Berating him wouldn’t help.
Snip.
Besides, she knew her brother well enough to know he would feel no real remorse; encouraging her to believe that the funds she’d been drawing on to keep the household running had been royalties from previous inventions would have seemed to her father and William John to be the easiest path.
They wouldn’t have wanted her to worry over using money received from others for an invention they hadn’t yet got to work.
Their sleight of mind still hurt.
And she was now quite worried enough, and in that, she wasn’t alone. Even William John was uncertain. Unsure.
He’d been growing steadily more nervous over recent weeks—more nervous than she’d ever known him. She’d wondered why. Now, she knew.
This time, her father and brother had embarked on a gamble that might not pay off.
She nudged the basket along with her foot and reached for the next dead rose.
Unlike previous projects, where she’d insisted they worked only with capital they already possessed and also left untouched a cushion of funds on which the household could fall back on should the project fail, this time, there was no cushion. No funds to fall back on.
No way to keep going.
Snip.
This time, if the invention failed, they would have to sell the Hall and let the staff go. There’d been Throgmortons at the Hall for generations; everyone would be devastated. The loss of their home would hurt William John even more; without his laboratory-workshop, he would be rudderless. As for her...she had no idea what such a future would hold for her, other than that it would be bleak. She’d had her Season in London and hadn’t taken—and she hadn’t taken to life in the capital, either; it had been far too superficial for her taste. Now, at the age of twenty-four, the best she could hope for was a life as a paid companion or as an unpaid poor relative in one of her distant cousins’ households.
If she’d been a different sort of female, she might have given way to despair, but she didn’t have time for any such indulgence. As far as she could tell, there was one and only one way to avoid the abyss that had opened up before them—William John had to get the dratted modified steam engine to work.
Snip.
If she wanted to save the household, the Hall, William John, and herself, she needed to do all she could to keep her brother’s mind focused on that task and ensure that all possible burdens were lifted from his shoulders.
William John was a year older than she was, but it had long been she who managed everything around him.
A distant step on the gravel path circling the house had her raising her gaze. Lord Cavanaugh—he who, from her year’s experience of London society, she had instantly recognized as belonging to the too-handsome-for-his-own-good brigade—was crossing the lawn. He wasn’t out strolling; there was nothing idle about his stride. He’d seen her and, apparently, was intent on speaking with her.
While ostensibly clipping another dead rose, she watched him approach. Over six feet tall, with wide shoulders, a well-muscled chest, narrow hips, and long, stron
g legs, he cut a powerful figure, well-proportioned and rangy. Also distinctly mature; she judged him to be in his early thirties. He was still wearing the clothes he’d arrived in—a fashionably cut coat over a fine linen shirt, a neatly tied ivory cravat, tightly fitting buff breeches, and top boots. The subdued style, exquisite cut, and expensive fabrics marked him as a gentleman of the ton’s upper echelons, yet it was his features that had prompted her to give him the label she had; his dark, walnut-brown hair, the thick locks fashionably trimmed, framed a face of cool calculation tinged with the autocratic arrogance often found in those of the higher nobility.
He was a marquess’s son, after all.
The long planes of his face were spare, even austere, with sharp cheekbones on either side of a patrician nose, and firm, chiseled lips above a squarish chin. Straight dark-brown eyebrows and surprisingly thick dark lashes set off those eyes of molten caramel that she’d already discovered were unwarrantedly distracting.
Those eyes were currently trained on her. Trapped under his gaze, to her irritation, she felt her lungs contract until breathlessness threatened. And the closer he came, the worse the effect grew.
Her father’s cousin, Flora, who lived at the Hall and was nominally Felicia’s chaperon, had already been won over by Cavanaugh when, in the immediate aftermath of the recent explosion, he’d attentively assisted her to the bench by the front steps.
Flora had heard his name when he’d introduced himself; as soon as she’d caught her breath, rather than join Felicia, Cavanaugh, and William John in the drawing room, Flora had rushed upstairs and combed through her correspondence.
Flora’s correspondents numbered in the multiple dozens, all ladies like herself for whom keeping abreast of everything to do with the haut ton was a lifelong occupation.
Courtesy of Flora, Felicia now knew that Lord Randolph Cavanaugh was the second son of the late Marquess of Raventhorne and was wealthy and eligible in every way—no real surprise there—but to the consternation of the grandes dames, Lord Randolph tended to avoid the ballrooms and, consequently, was as yet unmarried. That, she had to admit, was surprising and had raised a question—purely a curious one—in her mind. What would it take in a lady to interest Lord Randolph Cavanaugh?
The object of her purely idle curiosity reached the entrance to the rose garden. From the corner of her eye, she watched as, his gaze fixed on her, he ducked beneath the archway and slowed to a prowl. He pretended to glance at the roses, then, as he halted a yard away, returned his gaze to her.
She really did not like the way her nerves were tightening in response to his focused look. Before he could speak, she briefly glanced his way. “We keep country hours. Dinner will be served at six o’clock.”
One of his dark brows faintly arched. “So I’ve been informed.”
His voice was deep, a purring rumble.
Lips and chin firming, she reached for another rose hip. Anything to force herself to look away from him—to give herself a reason for doing so. Admittedly, in the drawing room, he’d almost flabbergasted her by asking her opinion—asking for her agreement in forging on as they were—yet she wasn’t at all sure that had she disagreed, he wouldn’t simply have ignored her stance.
Gentlemen like him might well possess ingrained manners and act on them without thinking. That didn’t mean he’d actually cared about how she felt, and she would be a fool to further encourage him.
Snip.
“I saw you out here and thought I’d get some air—and kill two birds with one stone.”
Inside, she stiffened. Air she understood, but what else was he thinking to slay?
When he didn’t immediately offer up a clue, her wits—unaccountably skittering in myriad directions though they were—came up with the answer. She debated for only a second; better she keep the reins of any conversation in her hands, and she stood to learn as much about him from his questions as he stood to learn from any answers she deigned to give. Pausing in her pruning, she slanted him a glance. “What do you wish to know?”
A faint smile edged his lips—and her eyes and her senses found another point of distraction. Luckily, he’d relaxed somewhat and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he glanced down as if marshaling his words.
Rand had looked down to hide his satisfied smile. Her response to his vague allusion confirmed his initial assessment that Miss Throgmorton was a lady of uncommon intelligence. That was hardly surprising given she was William Throgmorton’s daughter, but it was one of the points he’d wanted to verify. Her being intelligent would make working alongside her in managing William John and the completion of the steam engine a great deal easier.
Regardless, he took a second or two to consider his next words. She was...prickly. Somewhat unaccountably, and the reason for that was a part of what he needed to learn. He drew breath and, without looking up, said, “Forgive me if I misread, but during our meeting in the drawing room earlier, I got the impression that you were...shall we say, opposed to inventions? Whether specifically your father’s and brother’s or in a more general sense, I couldn’t tell.” He looked up and met her green eyes—summer green, the soft green of summer grass. “However, given the present circumstances, I’m curious as to your attitude, and why you seem to have taken against inventions.”
And if, therefore, you’re going to get in my way. Mine, my investors’, and William John’s.
He didn’t say the words, but as her eyes narrowed on his, he felt confident she understood.
She stood with her shears held laxly in one gloved hand and stared into his eyes. Then her lips firmed, and she turned back to the rose bushes. “I am not against inventions.” She reached for a dead rose. “It’s inventors I have little sympathy or time for.”
She paused, the fingers of one hand cradling the withered bloom; her shears remained raised, but didn’t sweep in. He could almost hear her debating whether or not to explain her stance to him. He knew when she accepted that, given the circumstances, he had reason to ask and, possibly, a right to know.
“There’s a truth I learned long ago.” Her tone had hardened; her diction was clipped. “When it comes to anything that impacts on their inventing, inventors like my father and my brother are inherently, innately selfish. They live and breathe their work and are deaf and blind to all else about them—to house, estate, staff, friends, family. Everything. Were the house to literally crumble about them, they wouldn’t notice—would pay it no heed whatever—not unless and until it directly interfered with their work. Only then would an issue other than the invention itself become important—important enough for them to afford it an iota of their attention.”
Now that Felicia had finally faced the question no one before had ever thought to ask her, and had started to answer and, in doing so, had opened the box into which for so many years she’d stuffed all her resentments, she discovered that continuing was easier than curbing her tongue. “I saw what my father’s unswerving devotion to his inventions meant for my mother. She was a Walpole, higher born than Papa, but theirs was a love match—and of that I am sure, that there was love on both sides to the very end. Yet my father’s inventions always came first. Throughout all my mother’s life, Papa’s inventions kept eating up all their funds, leaving Mama cut off from society—even the small circle of local society. She couldn’t entertain, sometimes not for years. People were kind, but she wouldn’t attend dinners on her own, and Papa would never make the time to accompany her. For years, we lived under the most straitened circumstances, with Mama’s constant role being to pinch and scrape and eke out the funds left after Papa’s depredations, just to keep up appearances and make sure there was food on the table. Not that Papa or William John ever noticed what they were eating. Our staff, bless them, have stuck with us through thick and thin, but through most of my parents’ marriage, times were far more thin than thick.”
Cavanaugh shifted. “Your father is considere
d a very successful inventor. I know he had many successes.”
She made a scoffing sound. “He did, indeed, but, monetarily speaking, virtually all his successes were minor. All brought in some funds, but it was never enough to cover my father’s—and more recently, William John’s—hunger for the latest valve or piston or cylinder or gear. There’s always something they simply must have. The drain on our funds was—and still is—never ending.”
She sensed rather than saw him lift his head and glance around—at the well-maintained house, the grounds, the gardens.
“Yet you seem to have managed well enough.”
She laughed cynically. “Up to now.” She paused, then in a quieter tone went on, “I saw what inventions made of my mother’s life. I learned that the obsession with inventions isn’t something even love can triumph against. When she fell ill, at her request I took up the reins of managing the household. Unlike Mama, I have a good head for numbers—and I was more than up to the task of arguing and nagging my father until he agreed to set aside funds for keeping up the house. Mama died eight years ago. Papa’s successes mostly occurred after that, and I managed to cling to sufficient funds to keep the good ship Throgmorton on an even keel.” She paused, then snipped another dead rose. “At least, so I thought.”
After a moment, she turned, dropped the dead rose into her basket, then raised her gaze and met Cavanaugh’s eyes. “I might as well confess that I hold a deep and abiding antipathy toward inventing—the process. Had I known how matters stood, if it had been up to me, after Papa died, I would have drawn a line under the steam engine project and returned the unused funds to you and your syndicate.” She paused, then inclined her head and swung back and shifted to face the next rose bush. “That said, I know William John wouldn’t have agreed, and quite aside from being male, he’s also older than me.” She cut another dead rose and more evenly said, “In addition to the reasons he gave—of wanting to establish himself—I suspect he feels a certain filial obligation to get the engine working as my father envisaged as a form of tribute to Papa—a final triumph.”