Chapter Thirty-Six

The entrance to the Royal Society's rooms in Somerset House were guarded by a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, who glared in friendly rivalry across the shared vestibule at a bust of Michelangelo, placed before the Royal Academy's door. Harry laughed as he pointed out the perpetual standoff between the Arts and the Sciences.

Daisy and Tess had both returned to the office, so Ellie was once again alone with Harry. She'd already put on her spectacles to project a suitably serious, scholarly air, partly to appear more competent, but also to remind herself that she was there to work, and not merely flirt with Harry.

The gruff gentleman at the front desk frostily inquired if they were members, and she lied shamelessly to gain access.

"We are not, but my father, Lord Ellenborough, has tasked me with undertaking some research in your archives which he hopes will prove invaluable in cracking a case."

She didn't dare glance over at Harry, sure that his expression would make her blush guiltily.

The man's coldness evaporated. "It's for the Lord Chief Justice? Oh, well, in that case, of course. May I ask exactly what it is you'd like to see?"

Ellie pushed her spectacles higher on her nose, as if their admittance had never been in doubt, and inspected her notebook. "I believe the paper we're looking for would have been published in your yearly journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ."

"Do you know the name of the member who presented the article?"

"I'm afraid not, but it would have been in either 1791 or '92."

The man nodded, his long side-whiskers twitching. "Ah. This way."

Harry shot her a congratulatory glance as they followed the man into a huge two-level library, its floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with innumerable leather-bound tomes. A few desks with chairs for private study were dotted about, and Ellie received several raised eyebrows from their inhabitants at her feminine presence in such a male sanctum.

She raised her nose a little higher in the air. The only reason there were currently no female members of the Royal Society had absolutely nothing to do with the inferior ability of the female brain—as one obnoxious dinner companion had once suggested to her—but more to do with the fact that women were denied the same education as their male counterparts.

She considered mentioning it to Harry, but since idle talk seemed to be frowned upon in the library, she held her tongue.

The clerk led them to a section of shelving and pulled out two enormous leather-bound volumes, numbered 81 and 82, with the dates 1791 and 1792 detailed in gold on the spines. He placed them carefully on a nearby table.

"All the papers published by the society are in here. Do you know the subject, if not the author?"

"I think it's an article on the human eye or iris. Under the biological sciences."

The old man shrugged. "The articles aren't indexed, I'm afraid. You'll just have to look through each one and see if it's the one you're after."

Ellie sent him a grateful smile and sat in one of the hard wooden chairs. "Thank you."

The man left them, and Ellie pushed one of the enormous books across the desk toward Harry, who took a seat opposite.

He grimaced at the thickness of the books. "That is a lot of papers."

"It's for your own good," Ellie teased. "Get reading."

She opened her book, and spent the next half hour scanning through the most mind-boggling array of articles, with titles such as "Experiments on the analysis of the heavy inflammable air," and "An account of some extraordinary effects of lightning."

She glanced up at Harry. "Have you ever wondered about ‘The rate of traveling, as performed by camels, and its applications, as a scale, to the purposes of geography'?"

"Can't say that I have," he whispered back, his eyes flashing with amusement. "Have you lain awake at night pondering the ‘Astronomical observations on the Planets Venus and Mars, made with a view to determine the heliocentric longitude of their nodes'?"

"Regularly," Ellie murmured, trying to suppress a giggle. How was it that even the dullest task became fun in Harry's company?

They each returned to their books.

Finally, just when she thought she'd go cross-eyed with boredom, she found an article entitled "Observations on the natural variation of pigmentation in the human iris, including an unusual case of heteroglaucos," by Dr. William C. Emberton, F.R.S.

Her heart gave a triumphant leap and she glanced up at Harry.

"I've found it!"

Her loud squeak immediately earned her disapproving glares from several of the other library occupants, and a cacophony of shushes, and she sent them an apologetic wave.

"Sorry!"

She turned the book around on the desk to show Harry. There, on the page in front of him, was a printed illustration showing a pair of eyes, one with a distinct section of the iris segmented. Green and brown watercolor had been added over the black-and-white engraving, and the unique pattern of brown wedge and green flecks was an exact match for Harry's own eyes.

He stroked the paper with his finger and his face held an expression of delighted awe. "That's it! Those are my eyes!"

"Without doubt, but we still have a problem. Look." Ellie pointed to the words below the illustration. "Nowhere in this article does it say that those eyes belong to Henry Brooke, son of the Earl of Cobham. He only talks about ‘the patient,' or ‘the child in whom I observed this rarity.'"

Harry skimmed the document himself, then looked up with a shrug. "That's not the end of the world. All we have to do is find this Dr. Emberton and get him to confirm that I was the original patient. That should be more than enough to satisfy a judge that I am who I claim to be."

Ellie nodded.

Harry leaned closer, and her heart rate increased as the smell of his body enfolded her.

"So, are we going to steal this article?" he whispered. "The best way to remove a page from a book is to leave a wet piece of thin cotton thread closed inside, on the inner edge. It softens the paper so it tears neatly."

"How on earth do you know that?" Ellie whispered, appalled.

Harry grinned. "Learned it from a fence who used to deal in stolen maps in Milan. But you really need to leave it a day or two, to work properly."

Ellie shook her head.

"I suppose if you cough loudly," he continued, undeterred, "or pretend to sneeze at exactly the same moment as I rip the pages from the book, it should cover the sound."

"We are not stealing or defacing anything. Behave." She scribbled the name Emberton, and the title of the article, in her notebook. "We've got the doctor's name. Now we can go and look him up and find out where he practices."

She glanced up, and the sudden intense way Harry was looking at her sent a bolt of heat straight through her. He leaned even closer.

"Have you ever fantasized about making love in a place like this? Somewhere completely forbidden? Because I have." His gaze fell to her lips and she squirmed in her seat.

She'd be lying if she denied it. The thought of doing something so naughty made her almost quiver with excitement, and she could clearly imagine the thrill of trying to stay quiet while Harry's hands roved all over her.

"You'd have to be extremely quiet, of course," he whispered, a wicked twinkle in his eyes. "I might even have to put my hand over your mouth to stop you making any noise. I could press you against the shelves and lift your skirts." His pupils flared. "Or perhaps I'd spread you out on one of these library tables and lick your—"

A cough and the scrape of a chair made Ellie flush guiltily. Dear God, the man was a menace! He could reduce her to a puddle of lust right in the middle of a reading room.

She sent him a disapproving glare. " Not an appropriate way to celebrate our success."

He gave a playful pout. "A bit of rebellion is good for the soul. I'm determined to make you break a few rules, Miss Law. Even if it kills me."