CHAPTER FIVE PRACTICE IN TEMPTATION #5
His expression altered. The desire remained, but something deeper joined it. Respect, perhaps. Or recognition. Eleanor looked away before she could give the feeling a more dangerous name. The carriage slowed. Gabriel straightened his coat and attempted to repair his hair with one hand.
“The next lesson,” he said, “will involve restraint.”
“I thought this one did.”
“For you, perhaps.”
Eleanor smiled. He looked pained again.
* * *
Calder House remained brightly lit despite the late hour.
A footman admitted them through a side entrance and led them to Julian’s study, where Beatrice sat beside the fire with a cup of chocolate and no visible concern regarding the fact that her friend had arrived with swollen lips and one loosened curl.
Julian stood behind his desk. Sir Malcolm Hargreaves occupied the chair opposite him.
The atmosphere erased the remaining warmth from the carriage.
Gabriel entered first, his public composure restored so completely that Eleanor might have imagined the previous half hour had his hair not remained slightly disordered near the temple. Hargreaves held a sheet of figures.
“We traced the payment,” he said without preliminary conversation.
Eleanor removed her cloak. “Which payment?”
“The transfer connected to the scholarly press.”
Julian looked toward her.
“It passed through two accounts managed by Mercury intermediaries and reached Mr. Harcourt, your father’s publisher.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened around the cloak.
“How much?”
“Seven hundred and fifty pounds.”
The figure struck with almost physical force. It was more than Eleanor had received from her father for every year of translation, correction and research combined.
“What was the payment described as?” Gabriel asked.
Hargreaves glanced down at the document.
“An academic commentary upon the Hymn to Hermes, including corrections to damaged passages and reconstruction of missing text.”
Eleanor knew the work. She had completed it two years earlier. Her father had called it an exercise.
“Who received the money?” she asked.
Hargreaves did not soften his answer.
“Dr. Finch.”
The room became silent. Beatrice set down her chocolate. Eleanor looked at the figures. The ink remained black and orderly, as though theft became less violent when recorded in a ledger.
“My name?”
“Does not appear.”
Gabriel moved closer but did not touch her. The restraint mattered. He had understood what she asked for in the carriage: choice before comfort, control before surrender. Eleanor met Julian’s gaze.
“Does the payment prove my father knew its source?”
“No,” Julian said. “Harcourt may have concealed the origin.”
“But my father received it.”
“Yes.”
“For my work.”
“Yes.”
Beatrice rose. “You do not need to return home tonight.”
Eleanor folded her cloak over one arm.
“If I do not, he may notice.”
“Let him.”
“No.”
Beatrice’s expression sharpened. “Eleanor—”
“I need to know what he keeps in his study.”
Gabriel spoke quietly. “Do not search it alone.”
She looked at him. He did not command. He merely held her gaze with the memory of their agreement between them. Eleanor inclined her head.
“I will not take unnecessary risks.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what I can promise tonight.”
Julian came around the desk. “We will place someone outside the house.”
“My father notices unfamiliar servants.”
“Sophia can arrange a delivery boy who belongs in the street.”
Eleanor accepted the compromise. Hargreaves gave her a copy of the payment record.
She folded it and placed it inside her reticule beside Carrow’s invitation.
The two pieces of paper seemed to weigh more than the bag could reasonably hold.
Gabriel escorted her to the carriage but did not attempt to enter.
Rain had softened to mist, silver beneath the lamps.
Eleanor placed one foot upon the carriage step, then turned.
He stood close enough that she could see the faint shadows beneath his eyes.
“Are you still angry about Carrow?” she asked.
Gabriel glanced toward the waiting coachman.
“No.”
“That is disappointing.”
“I have developed more serious concerns.”
“My father.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“You did not say you warned me.”
“I did not.”
“You could have.”
“I am occasionally capable of learning.”
The words recalled the carriage. Heat moved through her despite the cold air.
Gabriel’s gaze dropped briefly to her mouth.
Neither mentioned what had occurred. That silence no longer felt like avoidance.
It felt like a promise deferred. Eleanor entered the carriage.
Gabriel closed the door. As it moved away, she looked through the glass and saw him standing beneath the lamps until the street turned and he disappeared.
* * *
Dr. Finch had not yet returned when Eleanor reached home.
Her father’s valet informed her that he was dining with Professor Alderton and expected to remain out past midnight.
The servants had begun retiring, while the downstairs fire burned low enough to leave the corridors shadowed.
Eleanor waited in her chamber for twenty minutes.
Then she removed her opera gown, changed into a dark wrapper and took a candle downstairs.
Her father’s study occupied the rear of the house.
He locked it at night, though he had never suspected Eleanor knew where he kept the second key.
As a child, she had found it beneath the loose base of a bronze bust of Socrates.
Her father admired the hiding place because he believed no servant would willingly touch a philosopher.
Eleanor retrieved the key. The lock opened without sound.
She entered and closed the door behind her.
The study smelled of dust, tobacco and the lavender polish used upon the shelves.
Manuscripts lay in careful disorder across the large desk, while books occupied every wall except the one containing a locked cabinet.
Eleanor searched methodically. She began with the drawers, examining correspondence, receipts and notes without moving anything unnecessarily.
Most concerned lectures, subscriptions and requests from younger scholars seeking recommendations.
The lower right drawer was locked. The second key did not fit. Eleanor removed two hairpins and knelt.
Frances had taught the Society basic lock manipulation after declaring every woman should understand the deficiencies of masculine security.
Eleanor had considered the instruction unnecessarily theatrical.
She revised that judgement after four minutes when the lock clicked.
Inside lay a stack of bank papers, three letters from Harcourt and a velvet pouch containing two Mercury coins.
Eleanor’s pulse quickened. She set the coins aside and lifted the correspondence.
The first letter thanked Dr. Finch for approving alterations to the forthcoming private edition. The second referred to “the agreed compensation” and warned that original working notes must be surrendered after printing. The third contained only a date and the evening-star symbol.
Her father knew. Perhaps not everything.
Enough. Eleanor placed the letters back exactly as she found them.
Beneath the velvet pouch lay a folded programme for the Feast of Hermes.
She opened it. The printed quotation had been covered with handwritten corrections.
Notes crowded the margins, identifying line numbers, alternate verbs and possible meanings.
Eleanor stared. The handwriting was hers.
Not similar. Hers. The narrow angle of the Greek letters, the extended stroke upon certain consonants and the small mark she used to distinguish uncertain readings had all been reproduced perfectly. She had never seen the programme.
She had never written the notes. Someone had copied her hand. Eleanor lifted the page nearer the candle. One phrase had been added beneath the final line:
THE DAUGHTER WILL BE BELIEVED WHEN THE FATHER IS SILENT.
A floorboard creaked in the corridor. Eleanor extinguished the candle. The study fell into darkness as the handle began to turn.