6. In Which Philip Denton Checks on the Flowers

Distracting, to think of Grace Chetwood there now, in the next room, hating him so very loudly. So Luke decided to take a quick walk around the grounds, to clear his head.

“Ashburton!” A voice called, and Luke saw that Philip Denton was hurrying to catch up with him. “Come with me to the greenhouse, won’t you?”

Denton was ostensibly checking on the plants, but his primary focus was drinking. He pulled a decanter of bourbon from behind a tree, then a cut-crystal glass from the pocket of his jacket, and poured.

Denton handed Luke the glass with his bandaged hand. “Sorry, only brought the one.”

Denton moved between rows of plants, inspecting. Luke could see that he was immensely tired, and carrying a bone-deep sadness.

Luke was never sure how to do it—ask after a man’s emotions. They all spent so much of their lives pretending not to have them. But observation bore out that men were, if anything, more full of feeling than women. The excess doubtless came from the decades of repressing. Luke had long since learned to see past men’s stoical exteriors to the turmoil beneath. They certainly weren’t any more difficult to read than horses or dogs.

For a long moment, they stood passing the glass back and forth, looking at the plants, hearing the chatter of the small birds nesting inside the greenhouse.

“Did I embarrass you?” Denton asked. “Regarding Miss Worthing? Not my intent.”

“Not at all. I’ve written to her father, who is amenable to the match.”

“Ah. Will she come to the opening?” Luke nodded. “What a perfect backdrop against which to ask for your beloved’s hand. Deeply romantic. I think I might be jealous.”

De nton and his wife Catherine were childhood friends. Luke had no idea if they’d ever felt love in a passionate sense. “ Do you believe it crucial in life? Romance and so forth?”

Denton swallowed a sip. “We need many things. Food, society, whiskey. It could be argued that we need gifted scientists, so it would be wrong not to marry a woman whose father’s patronage would enable their work to continue.” Denton could see that Luke was taken aback by his blunt assessment, and shrugged. “I hardly think it a crime to put that first. In fact, I think it might be your responsibi lity to the world.” He gave a chuckle. “As I have no particul ar genius, my considerations were simpler. More bourbon?”

Luke accepted the glass, drank, and watched Denton’s expression grow somber. “Bexley would bellow that we’re both wrong. ‘ Passion or nothing. ’” He shook his head, wistful. “And so, for him, nothing. Which seems yet sadder to me now.” He snapped a yellowing leaf off an orchid. “Love more or less pressed him into solitude, in my view. There was someone, at a point. Did you know? But—already married.”

“He never spoke of it,” Luke said.

Denton took the glass. “Love ought to make one’s life ... more. Not less.”

Luke thought of Miss Worthing, the last time he’d seen her. They’d walked together. The talk flowed easily. She caught his eye, then looked away, sweetly shy under his gaze.

He’d felt nothing.

It was so baffling that he’d wondered if he might be unwell. Why didn’t he want to kiss her?

Thinking of it now made Luke uneasy. Cora Worthing was perfect. In fact, given her family’s fortune and his lack of a title, she’d have been far above his reach, had her father not been a man who attended scientific symposia and moved in precisely the circles most likely to laud Luke’s books. And Denton had it right—she was the key to continuing his ambitious expeditions now that the earl was gone.

“I ought to get back to it,” Luke said.

Denton raised his glass in ironic salute. “You grew up a decent man, Ash. Bit touchy, when you were a boy. The level of self-seriousness was rather off-putting in one so young.”

“Well. I’m not planning to enter politics, so I don’t need everyone to like me.”

“Tragic news, I think you grew into someone people do like. Well, mostly.” He sipped with an expression of amusement. “It’s a puzzle to me. Our dear Grace finds something to love in everyone. Except, I’ve come to learn, you . Did you do something rash?”

Yes.

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Yet you are as irritated by her as she is by you.”

“We ... began on the wrong foot.”

“Wasn’t that an awfully long time ago? You’ve been traveling for what—the better part of two years?”

Luke shrugged. “Sometimes, character does not mesh with character.”

Denton raised a brow. “Well. I must admit, it’s entertaining to see two such reasonable people long so very badly to throw one another in the sea.”

He could see that? After all the work Luke was doing to try to remain neutral?

“I do hope your bile doesn’t distract her from her work. She seems very cheery, I know. But she’s suffered a loss, just as we have.”

“Of course, you’re right.”

“Then why do you look as though I’ve told you to go eat a live shark?”

“Because I have that sort of face.”

Denton held up his glass. “To your face. Wait—” Denton picked up a pink orchid in a clay pot and placed it in Luke’s hands. “Please deliver this to Miss Chetwood, would you?”

Grace Chetwood was engrossed in her work when Luke returned, bearing the orchid. He had the thought that if he walked quietly enough, he could set it down and walk past without her notice.

But as soon as he walked into the library, she looked up. Her eyes narrowed as he approached. She eyed the orchid in his hands with deep suspicion.

What exactly did she think he would do? Poison the thing? Craft a tiny explosive device that could be hidden in the bloom? It was a bloody flower.

He arranged his face into mildness, as though he were viewing a leaf under a magnifying lens. He walked up to the table, and set down the pot. By then, her cheeks held two hot red spots of color, and she looked vastly irritated with how long it was taking him to open his mouth and explain.

“A gift,” he said, after indulging in one last pause. “From Denton.”

She pulled the pot closer, peered at the pink bloom. He could see the precise moment her eyes lit up. And then, she put her hand to her mouth, just in time to catch the giggle that escaped her.

Luke wanted very badly to know what had put that sort of sparkle in her eyes. Was there a way to ask such a question that wouldn’t immediately cause them to fight?

She was looking at him now, impatient. “Something else, Mr. Ashburton?”

And, it was already too late. He felt unaccountably deflated.

“No,” he said. Then felt the need to soften it. “How go the wars?” He asked, nodding to the page, and hoping his tone sounded less cold. Especially since, as Denton had pointed out, his face was probably not helping matters.

“Swimmingly, thank you.” She returned to her work, done speaking with him.

Feeling suddenly, searingly awkward, he walked away.

Grace watched Luke go. She had many feelings in the man’s presence, all unpleasant. But right now, her overwhelming concern was that things were not, by any stretch, going swimmingly. The only impressive thing she’d done was generate a long list of things the cipher was not.

Grace felt certain that a singular key fit this lock. Something clever that spoke to Charlie’s taste, perhaps his sense of humor. Something ... orchid-ish ?

Grace needed a shift in perspective. So she slid out of her chair and down to the floor under the table. If her aunt spotted her here, she’d surely scold her. But right now, Grace could not afford to be a lady. She needed her blasted mind to work.

Funny, how they don’t really finish the bottom of a table, no matter how fancy the top. It was the same with the table in her father’s library at home—massive, polished, but underneath, the wood was raw, even a bit splintery. She’d discovered that t he same way, lying under it in frustration because she couldn’t figure out a letter Charlie had sent, until . . .

Oh.

Well, this might be something.

That letter had been particularly difficult to unwind. She’d gone into her father’s study because there was more room to pace. The scroll Charlie had sent bore only the word Whitehead. She’d been to a Whitehead Manor, but could recall nothing helpful. There was a place called Whitehead in Ireland, but a map yielded no insight.

Then Grace turned her head, and because she was on the ground, noticed a pile of books beneath her father’s desk. Christmas gifts, from Charlie.

One was written by a Theophilus Whitehead.

It was a treatise on the connection between algebra and God, and contained a section with mathematics problems. On page 86 ... the page number was very lightly circled in pencil.

The problem on that page was annoyingly elaborate. But she saw immediately that it would give her what she needed. She was solving for “A.”

When she finally got it, she used the number to create a Caesar key.

Dearest Grace,

You truly are the cleverest girl in the realm. Do not let yourself fall into evil hands. Weather here abominable. Food passable. Drink necessary. I caught a butterfly the exact colors of the sunset. If it turns out to be a new species, I shall name it for you, on account of all the red.

Yrs,

Charlie

Now, in the library, Grace sat up slowly so she would not hit her head on the table. She knew what she needed.

By the time Grace entered the exhibition hall, she was vibrating with frustration. She’d scoured the spines of hundreds—no, thousands of books.

The hall was empty but for deuced Luke Ashburton, leaning over a tray, using a magnifying glass, swab and tweezers to clean a moth’s furred body and align its paper-thin wings. He looked up, blinked, and registered the frustration on her face.

He said nothing. She’d have wagered every fiber of clothing on her body that he was doing it to vex her.

“Where,” she asked, slowly, so as to make it clear that she was not in the mood for nonsense, “is the bloody maths section?”

His brow raised at the curse. “You seem tense.”

“I cannot see how that is in even the slightest way your business.”

“Well. We labor over the same bloody project, Miss Chetwood,” he pointed out. “I might be forgiven for friendly concern over your state of mind.”

She inhaled deeply. It was that or slap his face clear to the Americas. “Don’t trouble yourself. I simply need every book of mathematics belonging to the late earl.”

“Every one?” He echoed, as though the request was excessive.

“Allow me to congratulate you on your sharp hearing, sir.”

“I have them,” he said.

“Every one?” she asked, mimicking his tone.

He shrugged. “I had the thought, a few days past, that perhaps there was something in them that might apply to the cipher.”

“I suspect you are correct.”

That gave him pause, as he tried to determine whether she had delivered some form of insult.

“Well? Where are they? The books?”

“In my room.”

A beat, as he looked at her.

Mary Mother of Christ. “Get them,” she finally said, tightly.

He nodded to his hands, still holding a moth wing with forceps. As if to point out that any idiot should be able to discern that he was occupied.

She dropped into the nearest chair. “At your leisure. I’m given to understand there is little comparative urgency to my work.”

He threw her a look that told her he was immune to her pressure, and resumed his careful work. He did not rush. His fingers moved with infinite delicacy.

For some reason, she felt it in her belly. She looked away.

“There are thirty-seven ,” he murmured as he worked. “Books.”

“I’d say you could help me look through them, but as laying a single moth wing requires decades, I wouldn’t dare drag you away.”

He set down the forceps with an implacable patience engineered to irk her. “Would you like to wait for me here or accompany me?”

“To get the books?” He nodded. “In your room?” He shrugged. She gave him a look that she hoped clearly communicated the depth of his madness. “As I am disinterested in following a man into his room, unaccompanied, I believe I shall wait here.”

“Of course,” he said, silkily. “I’d hate to impugn the purity with which you entered your recent betrothal.”

Demon.

She leaned toward him in her seat. “While you’re fetching the books, Mr. Ashburton, do please consider going directly to the devil.”

That, to her surprise, quirked the corners of his mouth into a smile. He fought them down. “As you wish. I’ll return as quickly as I’m able. Very much depends on how thoroughly he defiles me while I’m down there, I suppose.”

“If the punishment fits the crime, you’ll be kept busy for some time. Godspeed.”

A flash of a grin, and he swiftly exited. Leaving Grace to sit there, confused by the turn in their conversation. And deeply irritated by how much she enjoyed it.