12. In Which Nature Holds a Clue

May 15, 1822

2 days to the opening

Luke slept fitfully. He woke before dawn, every bit as tense as he expected.

He wasn’t certain why it felt so deeply unwise to allow Grace to touch him. To do to him the things he’d done to her. She wanted to—her curiosity glinted like high sun off a ruby. It drove him nearly mad to think of all that enthusiasm, that quickness, applied to his body for the purposes of pleasure.

But it felt dangerous. Under the scratchy, insistent need. Under the burning interest in what those soft hands, that mouth , would feel like around his cock. Christ . . .

He’d brought himself to release twice just to get to sleep, and now he found himself doing it again before getting out of bed this morning. It was necessary, and it wasn’t going to help nearly enough.

It wasn’t the transgression of it stopping him. Yes, he would ask Miss Worthing for her hand in a matter of days. But evidently, he was deeply amoral, because no part of him felt guilt, or shame, or anything but the urgency of it, the beauty and power of it, when he put his tongue in Grace’s rosy cunt. It would have felt wrong, bizarre, not to bring her to ecstasy.

His resistance to it, to her , felt deeper. Felt existential. The need was a snake in his gut, but the fear was in his ribs, and it was delicate as wings.

The opening was two days away. He would need to work for the next fourteen hours to have any hope of staying on schedule. And if Grace did not provide the translated journals, none of his work was going to make a damned spit of sense to the viewing public.

He could not distract her from her task.

And so he rose, threw on clothes and a coat, and walked across the misty, dark grounds of the estate toward the butterfly vivarium. Bexley had gone there every morning to write in his personal journal. It felt good to Luke to take up the practice, to greet the sunrise with a quill in hand and butterflies in the air all around him. He’d been doing it since the day after the fire. The combination of sitting in the vivarium’s tropical heat and making an attempt to organize his thoughts on paper had proved therapeutic. He tended to emerge more centered, with a jotted list of the day’s tasks.

It was why Luke managed to enter the breakfast room calm. And meet Grace’s eyes, calm. She was sitting at an untouched plate, looking thoughtful and distant, as she did when she sat in the library, doing mathematics in her head. When she saw him, she smiled uncertainly. He gave a nod, trying to reassure her that he was not here to vex her, nor to tempt her—nor to deny that it had happened, or what it meant to him.

She cannot read all of that in a look. Some sentiments require actual language, you coward.

He filled his plate. He was ravenous.

He sat between Fitz and the earl. He commented dryly on their conversation without really tracking it. He ate food without tasting it. Denton knew of his morning visits to the vivarium, and when he asked a question about the Lepidoptera, whatever Luke answered was witty enough that the whole table laughed. He smiled, sipped his coffee. Pretended he was fine. Pretended the winged thing didn’t stir every time she looked at him.

He needed this over. One way or another. He needed the museum to open or not, open properly or disastrously. He needed to be finished with Grace Chetwood.

In the meantime, he pictured the iron box in his chest. He tossed in as much as he could. And locked it.

Sexual climax, Grace mused, was a marvel.

Her thoughts, of course, were a din of worry over the cipher and distraction over the man whose mouth had been quite between her legs not twelve hours earlier.

But her body felt refreshed despite its abbreviated sleep, and her mind, for all its tumult, felt razor sharp and ready.

They should advertise it as medicine, she thought.

Well. She would put her dose to good use. She would have a breakthrough, or perish in the attempt.

She watched Luke through lowered lashes. He lifted his cup to his mouth—Mother Mary, that mouth— with convincing placidity. There was no evidence of the agitation with which he’d left last night.

He must have taken care of it , she thought with a smirk.

He glanced her way, stopped, taking in her expression.

She let her eyes glide over him, making it clear that she was making a study of his calm demeanor.

He ticked a shoulder, as if to say did what I had to.

A giggle burst from Grace, and she covered her mouth, and set down her tea before she spilled it.

“Something amusing?” asked Professor Mangrove.

“Oh, everything, in the end,” Grace said.

Philip gave a snort, not looking up from the letter he was reading as he ate, one that detailed what looked like a long list of expenses.

Philip looked rough. He’d drunk even more than usual last night, Grace knew. And the week was wearing on him in ways he managed to disguise when he was the sparkling center of a conversation. But once no one was looking at him ... Lord mercy, the man looked drained.

What Grace saw then was so subtle, she would have missed it had she not been surreptitiously studying Philip at that precise moment. And she was only doing that because she was working so hard not to look at Luke.

Philip flipped to the back of the page. As he did, he seemed to be seized with a pain in his hand—the unbandaged one. He grimaced, and shook the hand out, massaging it, obviously trying to erase any sign of discomfort from his expression. He was blinking, trying not to make a sound, though he looked to be suffering considerably. And briefly, his face winced in a way that seemed more than just a pained expression. It seemed like an odd involuntary spasm.

Philip covered smoothly, picking up his fork. Grace had looked away quickly enough that he had not caught her. As far as she could tell, no one else had seen it.

Something is wrong with him.

Philip Denton was her friend Arabella’s favorite cousin. He’d been kind to Grace all her life. He was as strong as he was charming. He moved through the world as if nothing could hurt him.

Dread, deep in her belly. She couldn’t eat a bite, now.

Philip looked to Grace, and smiled. That smile was so familiar to her. It told her nothing was wrong.

The gray parlor was mostly used during house parties, for games and smoking. But during the push to complete the museum, Philip had adopted it as his office, a place to sit with the ledgers and keep up with correspondence.

He’d been occupied all day. He would not like an intrusion from Grace, and he certainly would n ot like it if she intruded into his space in order to intrude upon his privacy.

But, after laboring in the library for several hours, she could not shake the foreboding in her gut. Finally, despite the urgency of her work, she found herself unable to continue.

The door was slightly ajar, but Grace knocked, waited. When no one answered, she assumed he must have left the house, but she pushed the door open to be sure.

Philip was on the floor. His face was very red. He was propped up on his arms, straining. His legs were stretched on the ground in front of him, and it seemed they were dead weight. Immovable.

“Philip—” She ran to him.

Philip scowled. “I’m fine. Leave me— Grace , leave me be.”

The vehemence of his tone stopped her. She realized he was deeply embarrassed, and near panic at the thought of someone walking by and seeing him like this. She hurriedly closed and locked the door before kneeling beside him.

“Did you fall?” She kept her voice low. “Did you hurt your leg?”

Philip gave a deep sigh. “Grace ... ”

“Let me help you. Tell me what’s happened.”

He looked resigned, now. He was still flushed, and appeared to be in discomfort. But he managed to wave to the desk in a nonchalant way. “Fetch me the glass?”

Bourbon. Grace brought it to Philip, who had dragged himself to lean against the sofa. “Medicine,” he said. And drank. Then, he blew out a long breath. “I’m all right, darling. It’s passing. It will pass.”

“Then why are you still on the floor?” She was fighting tears, because she was scared, and also because she did not want to upset him by crying, which was making it that much harder not to cry.

“My legs decided to stop working for a moment. They’ll remember their job soon enough, don’t fret.”

“But ... why?”

Philip shrugged. “Because I’m dying.”

“ What?” The tears were flowing now, and there was nothing Grace could do about it but let them, and try not to dissolve into sobbing.

“Forgive me, I put that rather too dramatically. Indulging in moments of self-pity is one of my small solaces with it. I’m not dying today, or even this year. Just, perhaps, a bit sooner than you will.”

“What is it , Philip?”

“First, promise me it stays in this room.”

Grace thought of Arabella. How badly she would want to know that her cousin was unwell. How angry she would be if she discovered Grace had kept the information from her.

“Including Arabella,” Philip added.

Grace winced. But nodded. “You may rely upon me.”

Philip patted her cheek, an affectionate gesture he’d made since she was a little girl. Now, his palm was clammy.

He made a dismissive wave, as if he were about to tell her something boring and unimportant. “It does not have a name, strictly speaking. Or rather it has many, some to do with humors, hyper-reaction to this and that, a thickness or thinness of the blood, et cetera, ad infinitum. It manifests in various ways. Tremors, pains, the disobedience of my limbs. It is not, strictly speaking, the finest thing that has ever happened to me.”

“And what is the cure?”

He just looked at her.

“No,” she snapped. “Surely there’s something—”

“Grace. Be an adult. Of course there is not, or I’d have done it, and you wouldn’t have found me moaning on the bloody floor.”

“How long—”

“Three years now. That’s the good of it: it progresses slowly. But it does progress. Eventually I won’t be able to hide it.” He fixed her with a pointed look. “But I would very much like to hide it until I absolutely can’t.”

“Who knows?”

“My father. My doctor. Catherine, but ... I’ve told her it is a temporary affliction. I cannot abide forcing her to contemplate the truth.”

“Is it painful?”

“The attacks are. The rest of the time, the agony is purely spiritual.”

“Can I do anything to help you?”

“You can translate his deuced journals. You can help me open the museum, so I feel like one thing in my life hasn’t fallen completely apart in my hands. Please stop crying,” he added. “I promise I shall be absolutely fine in a moment. You’re making me feel deeply guilty.”

“It’s only salt water. It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, wiping her face with her wrist.

“Here’s what you might keep in mind, darling,” he told her, gentler. “Even as I’ve been moping about, contemplating the tragedy, all the people I will leave behind, utterly bereft, rending their clothes and hair in grief of me, one would hope ... ”

Grace giggled through her tears. He smiled at the sound, but when he continued, he was somber. “Even then, Bexley walked into that building and simply dropped dead.” He met Grace’s eyes. “We do not know. Almost anything, really. But certainly, how long we have. I may well outlive all of you.”

“Well. Ideally, we shall all live a very long time,” she said. “But I do receive your meaning.”

They sat on the floor, Philip sipping his drink. Eventually, he began to flex his feet and bend his knees—it seemed that the episode had passed. Finally, he rose without assistance and moved to the sofa, assuring her that after a bit more rest, he’d be right as nails. He encouraged her to return to her work. But before she went, she might be a dear and top up his glass.

Grace took the decanter from the desk, and as she did, she noticed a small object sitting atop a pile of papers. It was a linen bag. Identical to the kind Bexley used to send with clues.

“Philip ... ” She turned, showed him the bag. “Is this from Bexley?”

He shrugged an affirmative, and she stared, flabbergasted. “Then why didn’t you give it to me?”

“Look for yourself.”

She opened the bag. There was no scroll inside. Instead, there was a small pine cone, a nautilus shell, and a dried, flaking stalk of green fern. She stared at the items, puzzled.

“He used to scoop things up from the ground when he walked,” Philip explained. “Trinkets, he called them. His drive as a collector was fairly constant.”

“Where was this bag?”

“In the box, with the journals. Only a souvenir, alas.”

Grace nodded, disappointed. She examined the objects. They were each, in their way, lovely. The elegant way the fern curled upon itself. The spiked pattern of the pine cone. She flipped the shell in her hand, and saw that it had been bisected to show its inner chambers.

And in a flash, she knew.

Grace felt weightless as she crossed the room to hand Philip his glass. “I’ll check in on you soon,” she said.

“No hurry, please. You have work to do.”

She nodded, as though she hadn’t just solved the cipher.