10. In Which All Good Credit Evaporates in the Night

May 14, 1822

3 days to the opening

Despite having fallen asleep at the table, then been awakened none too gently by Aunt Amelia and ushered out of the library, Grace felt better the next morning. Her head was clear. Her neck no longer ached. She managed nearly six hours’ sleep once she crawled into her bed.

Everyone, it seemed, had gotten a much-needed bit of rest, judging by the brighter eyes in the breakfast room. Grace, hovering in the doorway, watched the scientists chatting as they served themselves eggs, toast, and kippers at the buffet table. I wonder if someone reached between their legs to relieve the tension. The idea of it made her giggle out loud.

“Did I miss a joke?” Luke, fresh shaven, curly hair damp, arrived beside her in the doorway. She was assaulted by the clean morning scent of him, and it made her wish to bury her nose in his neck.

As casually as she could, she took a small step away.

She saw how things could take a terrible turn now. She could allow what had happened to soften her ... and that would put her in his power. He could be kind or cruel.

“I need no reason to giggle—surely you’ve learned that by now. It’s a vastly irritating tic of mine, the laugh,” she said.

His brow raised. “Did all my good credit evaporate in the night, Chetwood?”

She gave him a puzzled look, as though she had no notion at all to what he referred, and glided away, to the buffet table.

Grace sat with her plate beside her aunt. Luke, she knew, would sit at the other end of the table, with the earl.

He instead took the empty seat at Grace’s other side, with a respectful nod to her aunt.

“I won’t trouble you, Miss Chetwood, as I know you wish to eat quickly and go to your work—”

“Very true,” she murmured lightly.

“—but I felt it would be wrong of me not to ask: how fares the head this morning?” He was smiling a friendly, impersonal smile.

“Very well, thank you,” Grace replied, and, seeing her aunt’s curious expression, told her, “Poor Mr. Ashburton was subject to my complaints last evening. I’d been staring too long at the numbers, and my head began to pain me.”

“But you awoke today refreshed?” he inquired politely, neatly cracking the top off a soft-boiled egg.

“Wonderfully so,” she said. So convincing was her nonchalant delivery that Amelia lost interest, and turned her attention toward the conversation on the other end of the table.

Luke dipped a point of toast into his egg, crunched a bite, washed it down with a sip of coffee.

You silly dandelion. Stop watching him , Grace scolded herself.

“The neck as well? Better?” Luke asked, his attention on his food.

“Worlds better, yes.”

He examined a bit of kipper on his fork. “And the tension?”

Don’t play with him. You both agreed it never happened.

But another impulse fought that one. She had a genuine curiosity about him, after the events of last night.

The curiosity won. “Funny you should ask. My improved temperament—and I do feel much improved—has caused me some concern.”

He raised a brow in question.

“For you, Mr. Ashburton. It occurred to me, in considering how effervescent I feel this morning, that you might not be able to say the same.” She fixed him with a sympathetic look. “I imagine that the tasks to which you applied yourself might have increased your own stress.”

Was he fighting a smile? “Oh, they did. Enormously.”

“I am sorry to hear you found the work so provoking.”

“Kind of you. But once I left the library, I was able to relax. I am well-practiced in relieving the tensions of a life dedicated to scientific inquiry.” He nodded to a footman to top up his coffee, continuing, “I found myself unusually inspired by my work last night. Recalling it later, in detail, brought me no small measure of satisfaction.”

Grace giggled, then barely managed to turn in time as Amelia looked their way at the sound. She pretended to busy herself with her tea; she could only assume that her cheeks were so alarmingly red that they might raise her aunt’s suspicions. Thankfully, the older woman quickly turned away to continue conversing with the scientists.

Luke met Grace’s eyes, and she could discern humor sparkling in his. “I am pleased to hear you were satisfied, Mr. Ashburton,” Grace said, all politeness.

“I feel as though I ought to thank you,” he said, leaning back in his chair, draping one arm over the brocade-upholstered back. “For helping me achieve it.”

“Oh, any aid I provided was indirect at best—”

“You’re wrong,” he said, nonchalant. “You helped quite directly.”

He opened the hand draped over the chair, allowing what was held inside it to dangle by one corner. A white handkerchief.

Grace blushed so furiously, she imagined she might immolate.

Luke folded the kerchief, unhurried. As he moved to tuck it back into his pocket, he met her gaze, deadpan. Noted her blush, and seemed pleased that he’d manage to tie her tongue.

Then, polite as ever, he turned to speak with the others at the table.

Grace had, once the impulse to throw them across the room passed, organized the mathematics volumes methodically, stopping anywhere Charlie had written a note in a margin, dog-eared a page, or any time a problem looked particularly tricky or elegant. She’d fallen into a rhythm of creating keys based on each potential clue, and was able to churn them out faster and faster.

To keep the blood moving through her body, she moved her work every hour or two, from the table to the fireplace to her favorite spot on the floor under the orange tree in the entrance hall, book in her lap, trunk against her back, the taxidermied tiger a calm, solid presence.

She’d encountered a promising page, and was moving through the equation in her head with her eyes closed. But then, she got the sense she was being watched, so she opened her eyes.

It was Lord Spencer-Beckett , skinny and angular in his black jacket, eyes bloodshot as usual. He was holding a cup of tea, watching her curiously.

“Pardon me,” she said, straightening. “I was resting my eyes a moment.”

She expected him to say something sardonic. Her sense was that he lived in a state of a low-grade irritation, soothed only by drink, which made him doubly irritable the following morning.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked. “Fresh made.”

Of all the Oxford men, he was the one she’d spoken with least. He’d certainly never brought her anything before.

“How kind,” she said.

He bent to hand it to her. “You know, I’ve never met a female mathematician. I do know many males, largely because they’re terrible miscreants after dark.” He grinned at her giggle. “None of them dress nearly as alluringly as you do, of that I can assure you.”

She accepted the compliment with a nod, took a sip of the tea—and was startled to discover it tasted of whiskey.

He laughed. “I admit I made the cup for myself. But when I saw you there, I thought you might need it more.”

She took another sip. “Not terrible.”

“You really are a mathematician.”

Now they were both laughing. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen the man laugh before. Unexpectedly, it lifted her spirits.

In that moment, Grace realized a man was crossing the entrance hall, behind her. She looked over her shoulder to see Luke, carrying a stack of biology texts.

He was watching her with Spencer-Beckett , and he wore a look she hadn’t seen since the night she slapped him.

A look that said he knew what she was about, and he found it disappointing, but he could not say that he was surprised.

A swell rose fast inside Grace. Fury . She wanted very badly to follow Luke so that she could throw the cup of tea directly into his superior face.

She took a sip to buy herself a moment to calm down. Then gave Spencer-Beckett a grateful smile. “Thank you for cheering me on. And for the tea, though I ought to stop drinking it.” She rose as gracefully as she could manage. “I should return to my work.”

But back in the library, Grace couldn’t concentrate. Livid, she forced herself to focus on the page in front of her.

To hell with Luke Ashburton’s judgment. Devil take his arrogant face.

In the exhibition hall, work seemed to have gotten taxing, fussy, and difficult for everyone. Certainly, Luke was struggling. He mounted a rare beetle for display ... and pressed slightly too hard, causing it to crumble in his hands.

For a moment, he couldn’t believe it. What the devil is wrong with you?

It wasn’t much of a mystery. His mind was under that orange tree. It was on the look on Spencer-Beckett ’s face as he conversed with Grace. Interested. Bordering upon rapt.

And then there was the look on Grace’s face, when she caught Luke watching them. The instantaneous wariness. The bitterness. She expected him to judge her. She expected that despite their small steps toward reconciliation—never mind what happened last night, under that table—they would fall right back into the worst moments of their worst night.

Her eyes said that she believed that night was the truth. That the man she’d seen when she’d overheard him speaking of her with vile relish was the truth. The slap was the truth.

The night of the Dawnridge ball, standing in that parlor, surrounded by an audience of posh, ape-drunk idiots, Luke had felt a certain dark pleasure in tearing Grace Chetwood down. But as they all continued to discuss her with brute delight, nauseated guilt began to turn his stomach.

He’d felt puzzled and a bit alarmed by his own behavior. He’d gone too far, in criticizing her attire, her appearance, her laugh—he liked all those things about her. Until he’d seen what he’d seen of her with those men. Incredible, how neatly jealousy had turned him vicious.

In the end, everything he’d said had only made him feel worse than before he opened his bloody mouth.

The library was at the end of the hall, and he’d gone there to collect himself. He entered quietly ... and stopped. There was a woman with red hair standing at the fireplace.

Before he could leave, she turned and saw him. “Miss Chetwood,” he’d said quickly. “Good evening. That is—pardon me. I did not mean to intrude.”

“I don’t own the library.” She touched her hair, her cheeks, making sure all was in order. “I ought to get back.”

At that moment, Luke had realized that ironically, this was precisely the chance he’d wanted all this time, at all these wretched balls. To speak with her.

“Of course, as ought I,” Luke replied. “Though—I must confess, since you are here ...” She was watching him, unsmiling—wary, he thought. So he took a step back, to communicate that he had no improper intent. “I’ve longed to converse with you since the night we met.” His voice sounded calm, friendly, even causal to his own ears. Which surprised him, because the sentiment felt oddly vulnerable.

“Have you?” She sounded dubious.

This was certainly not the tack she took with lords in alcoves. She hadn’t giggled once since he entered the room. “Perhaps,” he said, slowly, “I was alone in that wish.”

“No. I very much wished to talk with you.” Her tone was slightly at odds with the words—there was an edge he didn’t understand. “I hoped you might find me at the Marwells’, or at the next ball. Or at this one. I had thought you might approach me.”

“I was remiss in not making a stronger effort to do so.”

“Perhaps.” She was holding his gaze, and there was something sad in hers. He wanted to ask, but could not think how to formulate the question. What’s the matter? Seemed unforgivably blunt.

“On the other hand,” she continued, voice sweet, “perhaps you were spared.”

A subtle cold swept him then, at the odd coincidence of her choice of words.

“I cannot imagine that,” he said. “I’m delighted to be speaking with you now—”

“You ought to run, Mr. Ashburton.” Her tone was positively dripping honey, now. “Before I dash you on my rocks.”

She’d heard. Somehow, she’d heard everything.

She did laugh now, high, airy. She stepped closer—close enough that he could see the tiny glass beads sewn across the top of her bodice to catch the light. See each freckle on her cheeks, on her arms above her pink satin gloves. The scent of her assailed him, sweet flowers, warmth, a faint note of something luscious and tart.

He took a step back. The intensity of his body’s reaction unnerving him. And what he should be doing at that moment was apologizing.

“Whatever is the matter, Mr. Ashburton? Repulsed by my vulgarity?”

“Miss Chetwood—”

She didn’t give him time. “You know, there are things you were right about.”

“I—”

“Please. Do not apologize for having the insight that a lady at a ball attended by all the ton would have interest in seeking to a man able to provide a bare minimum of comfort.”

She let her eyes drop to take in his mouth, the set of his shoulders, his clothing, his body, indicating that she was impressed with none of it. “Obviously,” she said, lilting, “I could never seriously entertain a man like you. Your funds wouldn’t keep me in slippers. You’re very observant , surely you’ve observed that in a room of genuinely eligible gentlemen, you aren’t near up to snuff—”

“Oh, I observed,” he said, and that his tone was unrushed and cool was not a choice, but a sort of automatic result of the twist in his gut, strangling his previous contrition. “I’m not certain I saw you with every peer of the realm you’ve kissed of late, but enough to consider the emerging pattern.”

She flushed scarlet. “Pattern,” she echoed, her voice laced with stunned fury.

“Yes, you only kiss, and et cetera, men set to inherit particularly impressive titles. Took me quite out of the queue. Or do I have it wrong?”

Her eyes were full of more contempt than he’d ever seen in a woman’s gaze. “You have it insultingly wrong, in calling it a queue, and yet stunningly right, in that I would rather die than touch a man like you.”

The darkest part of him hissed how dare she. “A pity,” he said coldly. “As it’s all you were born for.”

It was simply the worst thing he could think to say, the thing that would upset her the most. If he’d paused for even a second, he might have had the sense to keep his mouth closed. But he’d said it.

Her eyes had grown huge.

And she’d slapped him across the face.

He’d never been slapped before. She was good at it. It hurt quite a bit.

“Mr. Ashburton,” she said, her voice cracked and tight. “You sad, slight approximation of a man. Do go to hell.”

She turned and walked out of the room.

As soon as she moved away—taking her rage and her scent with her—Luke saw the scene with horrible lucidity.

He sunk into a chair. His cheek smarted. He’d never liked himself less than at that moment.

Luke continued not to like himself very much as he labored over specimens, trying not to destroy anything else.

The exhibition hall was almost eerily silent, everyone’s head down as they worked. They were all working through a crate that had been very badly damaged, and so their work this afternoon brought mostly disappointment and frustration.

The earl chose that moment to visit. He made a slow tour of the workstations, and the empty display cases and tables now arranged throughout the room, awaiting their specimens.

When he told Luke that he sensed a troubling dip in morale, Luke assured the earl that what he sensed was focus, perhaps mixed with the grief that pervaded the endeavor.

The earl understood, and would handle it exactly as his brother would have. “He would see to it that dinner was particularly sumptuous, and the wine would pour aggressively.” Sensing Luke’s hesitation, he added, “Your work is immaculate, and Miss Chetwood is working so quickly in the library, watching her makes me dizzy. I choose to feel every confidence we will meet our goal. My brother would insist we pause to drink his favorite wine.”

And so dinner was exceptional, course after course of fresh, succulent food, and more wine than was strictly wise. Denton was in fine form, relaxed, garrulous, regaling the table with fond, mildly inappropriate memories of Bexley. Soon, even Mrs. Wilmington was laughing so hard she had to wipe away a tear.

Grace was smiling too, and she’d handily won a dessert-course debate with the moderately inebriated Professors Mangrove and Wallace by casually referencing Immanuel Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism. He’d seen a glimmer of engagement in her while the points and counterpoints were flying, but she seemed relieved when her aunt took up her side of the argument, allowing her to retreat into her mind.

Luke could see the tension in her then. The distraction. She barely sipped from her glass. And she would not look at him.

Luke decided to control what he could: his mood, via dulling its deeps and edges with copious drink. His head might bother him come morning, but at least soaking it in wine would temporarily stop its obsessing over about the mash he’d once again made of things with Grace.

Grace was glad to hear so much laughter at the dinner table. But could not find her way into the spirit of it. The success of their endeavor depended on her, and she was no closer to an answer.

And then there was Luke Ashburton, all the way at the other end of the table. Watching the proceedings with an expression that belonged indexed in an official reference textbook on aloofness .

When the earl invited the party to join him in the blue parlor for after-dinner drinks, Philip and Aunt Amelia were deep in conversation. Grace let her aunt know she was retiring early, and encouraged her to enjoy her evening.

As she rose from the table, Grace could feel Luke watching her, unsmiling.

She did go up to her room. She even looked at the bed. She should sleep.

Then she took her wool shawl from the chair, wrapped it around her shoulders, and exited the house.

The museum felt bigger in the dark. More isolated. Profoundly quiet, but for the whisper of breeze in the trees. Bexley Hall and its inhabitants felt miles and miles away. Grace liked this. Liked the feeling of entering her own little world, seen and heard and glared at by absolutely no one. She carried a lamp with her through the entrance hall, the tree casting lacy shadows on the wall. She entered the library, placed the lamp on the table, and resumed her work.

There was one good aspect to all of this. She never felt more at home than when sitting in a library, working, her only company the fire crackling low and thousands and thousands of books.

The very opposite of men, books. Men wanted things from you, then judged you instead of themselves for it. All books desired was to freely provide all that they held. They didn’t care if you’d kissed two or eight or twenty-six different men at balls, or if you smiled at a pale, skinny scientist who offered you tea with whiskey, or if rumor held that a future viscount was only marrying you because you’d lain with him.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been working when she heard footsteps.

She knew exactly who had walked most of a mile in the dark to find her here. Her stomach tightened.

What she did not expect was that he’d be carrying his jacket in one hand, uncaring that he was crushing it, or that his gait would be loose and slightly wandering. His hair was in a more pronounced than usual state of disarray.

He walked to her. And stood there, saying nothing.

She took him in, then returned to her work. “Go away.”

He did not go away. He stood there, thinking at her.

She resolutely continued writing.

Finally, he spoke. “I have a question.”

She flicked him an irritated look. “Ask when you’re sober enough to grasp my meaning.”

“I am not as drunk as I appear,” he said. Then admitted, “But the wine was very good, tonight. I noticed you did not indulge.”

“I have work to do.”

“This question is simple enough. And then I will leave you alone.”

She hissed a sigh and set her quill down. “Be quick.”

“Of course.” And then he asked it. “Will you always hate me?”

She blinked. Unsure how to even begin answering.

“Is it the mean to which our equation must always return? You look at me as though you crave my head on a pike in the town square.”

“That does sound a pleasant sight,” she allowed.

“I thought we were getting along.”

“We were, and then you ruined it.”

“ I ruined it—in what way did I —”

“By burning me alive with your judgment, Ashburton.”

“I haven’t—”

All in a rush, she was so angry that she pushed her chair back from the table, just to get more distance from him. “You saw me chatting with Lord Spencer-Beckett , and you immediately proved me a fool for imagining you were anyone but the man I slapped that night at Dawnridge.”

“I—you thought I was judging you?”

“You were. God, what is the point of arguing about it? Your looks had the intended effect, I assure you—”

“And what effect was that?”

“To make me ashamed. To make me feel like a woman born for nothing more than base appeal to men. And to make me regret that I had softened in my opinion of you, that I’d thought for an instant that we could be friends.”

He was regarding her, his eyes thoughtful. “For a brilliant mathematical mind, you’re a bit of an idiot.”

She wanted to retort, but could only sputter.

“I wasn’t judging you, Chetwood. You’re quite right that I’ve done it in the past, obviously,” he said. “I was only ... angry.”

“Because you are always angry with me, because you do not like how I look, or how I dress, or how I talk, or laugh, never mind how I behave. You do not like me , and you never have.” When she’d started, she’d felt the power in calling him out for it. But by the end, her voice cracked.

He stared at her. He ran a hand through his hair, which only enhanced its shambolic state.

“That’s ridiculous. I enjoy at least three-quarters of the things you listed. And I don’t know where you got the notion I never liked you, when I—” He cut himself off, frustrated. He gave her a look that seemed to beg her to make this just a little easier for him. “I was angry with him . I’m angry with anyone who looks at you but does not see you.”

“What, pray, is that supposed to mean?”

“It means they are lucky to be near your mind, and they are too stupid about your nearness to know it. Alluring . That was the best the sapskull could do, while you sat under that tree with a volume of Leonhard Reuler he could not comprehend for all the gold in the Vatican?” He gave a derisive laugh. “I can’t blame them for wanting you, but not to try to understand anything under the surface is lazy and stupid and a waste of what is absolutely the most gorgeous part of all.” He seemed to have said more than he meant to. He shook his head, as if to reel the words back in. “Christ, you’re right, I drank too much. Christ.”

Her pulse was pounding, and she was confused, and didn’t trust anything he’d said or anything she felt.

“Never mind,” he said, seeming to regain control of his tone. “No, don’t, damn it, I meant it—” he sighed, frustrated. “Listen, Grace—”

“ Do not call me that,” she snapped, rising from her chair.

She’d had enough. It was too difficult to retain good sense when he ricocheted between insults and praise, when he seemed one moment to see her as an adversary and the next a colleague and the next a woman—a woman he’d pleasured in this room. “Your ten minutes passed a long time ago.”

Mentioning the ten minutes was a mistake. Because it arrested him, mid-thought .

And then his eyes moved to her mouth, and then lower, and lower still. As though he could see right through her dress. Exactly where he had touched her.

That gaze was so alarmingly direct that Grace sat back in the chair, and folded her hands in her lap.

“Please go now, Ashburton, this museum will never open on time if I murder you tonight.”

“I will go,” he said. “But first, I’d like to show you something. It will help your work. It’s quick.” She shot him a dark look. “Are you not the least curious?”

Damn him. Of course she was.

“Leave the lamp,” he said over his shoulder.