2. In Which Grace Chetwood Arrives to Help

May 10, 1822

7 days to the opening

Grac e Chetwood had always been good at mathematics. So she knew: putting off a problem was not t he sa me as solving it. Nevertheless, her body felt weightless wit h relief as the carriage pulled away from her family’s Mayf air home and onto the road to Bexley Hall.

It was not a happy trip, certainly. Receiving the news that her friend was dead had shocked Grace to her core. She’d sobbed nearly to the point of hyperventilation. She could not believe he was gone.

She’d received correspondence from Charles Calthorpe, Earl of Bexley—Charlie, to her, in his letters—only last month. He told her of his plan to open his museum upon his return to England. You must attend the opening, dear Grace. It will be the proudest day of my life.

The letter had been encoded using an Atbash Cipher—it took her some time to realize it, b ecause the cipher was so simple that she’d skipped right past it in favor of more complex solutions. All one had to do to make the key was to write the alphabet down the page, then write it again, backward, from Z to A, in a second column. As a child, Atbash had been one of her favorites—it amused her to play with a cipher so old it was utilized in the Bible. Perhaps he’d revisited it out of nostalgia. Difficult not to see a certain tender, tragic prescience in that.

Charlie’s letters were a glimmering highlig h t of Grace’s youth. Strangely-marked envelopes, stuffed full of exotic trinkets and enciphered correspondence. They would arrive with a linen bag not much bigger than a shilling, holding a tiny scroll containing some clue. A hint tha t pointed her toward a substitution pattern, or to one inspired by, say, the rhyme scheme of a sonnet, or the length of a lunar cycle, or to the enervating realization that the cipher was simple, but the ensuing letter would then need to be translated from the Portuguese.

Thinking of Charlie now, his endless energy, his off-color wit, his fascination with the most delightfully eclectic range of subjects—insects, stones, Greek mythology, the oeuvre of Johann Sebastian Bach, foreign alphabets read from right to left or north to south—brought tears i nto her eyes, for the ten thousandth time in the past two days.

Grace cried easily enough that she treated tears as a minor inconvenience. Emotion was like that—a wave that seemed to swallow everything, but passed quickly enough if only you let yourself feel it. And Grace did, as a personal philosophy, prefer to feel everything. Still, her companion for this journey, her widowed aunt Mrs. Amelia Wilmington, very much resembled Grace’s mother in that she had a low tolerance for dramatics of any kind. So Grace turned her head away, pretending to gaze out the window as she dashed the tears away with her gloves.

Aunt Amelia huffed as she turned the page in the book she was reading. The Philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Within their family, the cultivation of knowledge in members of the fairer sex was expected, though always with the caveat that one must never show off about it.

Despite her aptitudes, Grace was by and large regarded by her family as its least serious member. Her bubbly enthusiasm, equally bestowed on matters erudite and frivolous, cast her as less than discerning. Grace’s father found it charming, but her mother met her “promiscuous joie de vivre ” with pointed tolerance. And certainly, Aunt Amelia made no mystery of her disdain for Grace’s love of the latest fashion, and gossip, and novels, and sweet desserts. And for her overemotional demeanor.

It was fortunate, then, that Aunt Amelia admired dear Charlie, and had read all of his books. So she was willing to accompany her niece as chaperone during her time among the entirely male coterie working on the museum.

“A pity, the timing of this trip,” Aunt Amelia murmured, and Grace looked over to see that the small woman was now regarding her with sharp blue eyes. “On the heels of your betrothal. It is fortunate that Lord St. George was so understanding.”

“Well. It’s done, after all, and the wedding will take place well after I return.”

Amelia was unaware that Grace had begged her father to allow her to go. She’d pressed his every compassionate vulnerability. Because the truth was, there had been discussion of obtaining a special license immediately.

And then, the very next day, word came of Bexley’s death and the urgent need of Grace’s expertise.

“Papa. Please ,” Grace had implored him. “I will never forgive myself if the earl’s work is destroyed because I was not able to give some small assistance for just a few days. It can wait.”

“It cannot,” he said, quietly.

“It can, it’s really very simple,” she said, making her voice cheerful and persuasive. She had two brothers and three sisters, and she was, she knew, her father’s favorite. He was generally inclined to indulge her. “As you know, I am two things. A fine mathematician and a terrible gossip. I am the very first to peer at a calendar when a new marriage produces happy news. If, when I return in one tiny week, the necessity of haste remains, it won’t have been so long that tongues would wag later if… if .” He winced. She could not blame him. But she forged on. “I assure you, we will be safely within the bounds.”

Well, close enough. If her monthly courses did not arrive by midweek, they would officially be late. But what did fudging this fact by four or five days matter, in the grand scheme?

Grace’s father considered it. He was, she could see, disappointed in her. He loved her enough that the crux of it was less her scandalous behavior—though he wasn’t strictly thrilled by what she’d done—and more that, despite the fact that St. George would one day be Viscount of Penray, he was not the husband Mr. Chetwood envisioned for his daughter. He’d wanted someone as wealthy, as noble. . . but just a bit more of an intellectual.

“The instant I am able to solve the problem, I shall hurl myself into a carriage and make them gallop me all the way home.”

“No hurling,” her father said, mock-stern , much affection in his eyes. “No galloping.” She kissed her father’s cheeks in gratitude, until he told her to stop crying on him.

Her dispensation to go to the Bexley estate had not come without challenges, of course. Aunt Amelia had never cared for Grace. Now, she wrinkled her nose as she discussed the impropriety of Grace leaving so soon on the heels of her betrothal. “I still think we must get you home as quickly as possible. Your handsome fiancé is in London, surrounded by ambitious and unscrupulous females.”

“Oh, I trust him entirely,” Grace said. And sent up a brief prayer for the most unscrupulous females ever born to flock around Randolph St. George and tempt him to behave with scandalous dishonor before all the ton.

Barring that, for some chit to kidnap him, tie him to a chair, and force him to marry her instead.

But never mind that. First, Charlie. She was looking forward to his cipher. She’d always loved finding the little twist that broke them open. And these journals represented the last puzzle left by her friend. The occasion was mournful. But she would delight, at least, in getting to play with him one last time.

The weather in the countryside was warm and it seemed that every flower across the expansive Bexley estate had bloomed at once in tribute to the late earl. The setting sun was pinkening the sky as they approached Bexley Hall.

Grace was eighteen the last time she’d visited, for a grand ball. Her parents and aunt had been there, as had her friend Arabella, and Arabella’s dashing cousin Philip Denton, then two and thirty, arm in arm with his wife Catherine. Grace had always lived in comfort, but the opulence of the event had taken her breath away. As had the uniqueness of everything around her—statues of gods from faraway lands; framed tortoise shells where more conventional decor might feature a landscape; silk tapestries; sparkling geodes; whimsical taxidermy; powerful telescopes aimed at the sky in no fewer than three windows.

Grace always felt so much at home around the earl. She felt as though no amount of enthusiasm or emotion could ever be too much for him. She felt downright ordinary in contrast to the exotic sights of Charlie’s life.

It wasn’t that Grace’s appearance was so odd—she stood at an average height, and had the correct amounts of every appendage. But her very red hair, exceedingly ample curves, and the embarrassing abundance of freckles over her cheeks, her arms, her already-attention -subverting décolletage, made her feel slightly freakish in almost any gatherin g.

Her mother insisted she was perfectly pretty, and Arabella liked to say that her unusual features made her more lovely than the typical English roses surrounding her.

But Grace tended to think of herself as a walking caricature. A little too. Too voluptuous, too giggly, too spotted, too quick to speak, to cry, to gasp. Even more troubling to contemplate, the Grace she presented in public was, in fact, a slightly muffled iteration of her true self. If she weren’t aware that it could be perceived as grating, she’d laugh harder, quicker, more. She’d let herself shed tears whenever she heard a sad tale or beautiful music. She’d speak up when she knew the answer, rather than hold her tongue and allow another to speak first.

Nearly always a man, that other. She’d long ago discovered that her giggle might cause a few souls some irritation. But the quickness of her mind would make a great many men downright furious.

Luckily, Grace found it effortless to present herself as having naught between her ears. Something about large, soft breasts and round, excitable hazel-green eyes tended to do the trick. And the giggle, of course.

But Charlie. Charlie had seen straight through her girlishness and into her mind, recognizing a kindred spirit. And perhaps for him it had been trivial to send that loud little redheaded girl all those puzzles. But to her, it was confirmation that at least one powerful man in the wide world knew that she was special. And that her hair was the least of what made her so.

Philip Denton greeted Grace and Aunt Amelia, helping them down from the carriage.

“Mrs. Wilmington, striking as ever,” he said smoothly, bowing over Aunt Amelia’s hand. Despite herself, she smiled.

He turned to Grace with the same sly, avuncular smile he’d giv en since she was a rambunctious child of five. “And you. A vision. Have you been in touch with my cousin?”

“Arabella and her duke are well,” Grace assured him. “Her last letter was replete with hints that their family might soon expand.”

That drew a genuine, fond smile from the man. How long had it been since Grace saw Philip? Two years—Arabella’s betrothal dinner. He’d lost weight, Grace noticed, and, though clean and presentable, smelled just a bit of whiskey. One hand was bandaged from the fire; she wondered if it caused him pain.

“We’ll see you and your aunt settled in your rooms, and then I fear I must whisk you off to the library straightaway. Time is of the essence. The place is crawling with esteemed men of science, and every one of them is baffled.”

Grace nodded. Determined not to be intimidated.

“One is acquainted with you, by the way. So you’ll have a friendly face. Mr. Luke Ashburton,” Philip said. “You do know Ash, correct?”

Hell and damnation.

Grace’s serene smile took inordinate energy. It required everything she had to conceal how deeply she hated Luke Ashburton.