CHAPTER 22 #2
The earl’s words caused a spasm of surprise to flit over Thornton’s face, and then he nodded. “Yes, I was trying to understand just what they were looking for.” A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched. “And the conclusion I came to makes my blood run cold.”
* * *
Charlotte took a seat at her worktable and placed a blank sheet of drawing paper next to her palette.
It was late and she was exhausted, but her mind was spinning with too many thoughts for sleep to come.
Picking up her pen, she dipped it into the inkwell and .
. . simply stared at the pristine white surface.
For all the twists and turns the murder investigation had taken, the truth had remained maddeningly elusive. Try as she might, she simply couldn’t picture how all the clues fit together.
Charlotte closed her eyes for an instant. “Do I dare use my art to try to smoke out the murderer?”
A provocative headline might stir up enough questions among the public and government to prod the murderer into making a fatal mistake.
And she could envision the perfect one: THERE’S AN ELECTRICITY CRACKLING THROUGH THE HALLOWED HALLS OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION AS NEW QUESTIONS SWIRL AROUND THE MURDER OF LORD CHITTENDEN!
By the grace of God, the strategy had worked in the past, but it was a dangerous move, one that could do great harm if her intuition was wrong.
Science was still looked on by many with great suspicion—a witch’s brew of frightening theories and incomprehensible experiments that challenged the familiar beliefs of the past.
Wrexford would not thank her for throwing oil on the fires of fear that burned deep in the hearts of conventional thinkers.
Choices, choices.
It was one thing to be willing to sacrifice her own future in the battle to save Nicholas from the gallows. But did she have a moral right to blacken the reputation of London’s most august scientific institution by making scandalous innuendoes?
Backing off from the idea—at least for the moment—Charlotte wiped her pen clean and retreated to a safer subject for the drawing she owed to Mr. Fores.
A hint that her cousin had an alibi for the night of the murder might provoke public opinion to wonder whether the evidence was strong enough for the judges at the Old Bailey to convict him.
It was the sort of titillating speculation to set all of London’s tongues to wagging, from the stinking slums to the glittering mansions—
“Oiy, you ought te be sleeping.”
Raven’s chiding drew her out of her brooding. She looked around to see him standing in the doorway. “So should you.”
He cocked a saucy grin. “Me ’n Hawk ain’t fancy ladies who need hours abed and a jar of Olympian Dew to preserve the delicate bloom of our complexions.”
She laughed in spite of her troubled mood.
Several weeks ago, she had done a satire on the sudden popularity of highly dubious—and highly expensive—facial potions that had taken hold with the ladies of the beau monde.
“No, your secret is mud, which is likely as effective as Olympian Dew’s fiddle-faddle.
Perhaps we should take to selling ‘La Boue de St. Giles’ and become rich as Croesus. ”
“You’re not supposed to say ain’t,” counseled Hawk as he moved out from behind his brother. “It ain’t proper English.”
Raven made a rude sound.
Ignoring the teasing, Hawk hurried to where Charlotte was seated, a plume of steam fuzzing his face as he held up her favorite mug. “We thought you might like some tea.”
Her throat tightened on seeing the uncertainty in Hawk’s eyes. With the murder and the topsy-turvy changes in her own life, she felt a stab of guilt over how little attention she had paid to the boys lately.
Charlotte took the mug from his hands and set it on the tabletop. “Thank you,” she murmured as she enfolded him in a fierce hug. “Forgive me. I . . . haven’t been myself lately.” Perhaps because she was struggling to sort out just who Lady Charlotte Sloane was.
“S’all right,” said Raven as he shuffled over to her worktable. “We know you’re worried about your cousin.”
“And yer wery busy being a fancy lady,” piped up Hawk. His pronunciation tended to lapse when he was worried about something.
“To the devil with being a fancy lady,” she replied, ruffling his hair. “I must on occasion wrap myself in silks and satins, but I promise you, that will never change who I am . . .” She blinked back a tear. “Or what is most precious to me.”
Raven was watching her intently. “You ain’t gonna faint again, are ye?” It was said lightly, but she could tell that for all his nonchalance, he, too, was looking for reassurance that their cobbled-together family was not in danger of breaking apart.
“Watch your tongue, Weasel,” she retorted, choosing to mimic Wrexford’s caustic chiding of the boys. “And stop mangling the King’s English, or no jam tarts for a week.”
They exchanged horrified grimaces, but their eyes lit with laughter.
Charlotte kept her arms around Hawk, savoring his warmth and all the familiar little knobs and juts of his skinny body. All too soon, he would too big to cuddle in her lap.
Shifting his stance, Raven picked up one of her pencils and twirled it between his fingers. “You should show her the drawing you did today,” he said to his brother. “Mr. Linsley was very impressed, m’lady.”
“I would very much like to see it!” she exclaimed.
Hawk pulled a small notebook from his pocket—she had recently purchased it for him, along with several miniature sticks of artist’s graphite—and shyly thumbed through the pages.
“It’s just a plain gillyflower that I saw in Covent Garden Market on the way to our lessons. I had to rush so I wouldn’t be late.”
Finding the sketch, he flattened the spine and handed her the book.
“Why, it’s . . .” Charlotte’s voice trailed off. The lines were quickly drawn and yet they deftly captured the exuberant curls of the petals and delicate arch of the spikey leaves.
“It’s magnificent,” she murmured. “You’ve made it come to life.”
The praise brought a flush of pink to his cheeks.
Choices, choices. In that instant, Charlotte snapped the book closed, her mind made up. Yes, the dark shadow of Death was taunting them at every turn—but that was all the more reason to celebrate the bright flickers of Life.
“Come morning, I shall make arrangements for us to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for the day after tomorrow, so you can see the exotic specimen collection brought back to Britain by Sir Joseph Banks.”
“The Botanic Gardens!” Hawk’s eyes widened and a note of wonder fluttered in his voice.
“Yes. And we’ll have McClellan pack a picnic and accompany us.” She turned to Raven. “Will you come along, too?”
He shook his head. “The new lenses for His Lordship’s microscopes will be arriving from Holland that day, and Mr. Tyler said I could assist him with polishing them.
And we expect to get the results back on the snuff sample he took to the botanist at the Royal Society.
So he might need my help in preparing the slides, if he needs to have another look at it. ”
Mention of the snuff reminded her of the exotic cards and the book explaining how to work with them, which she had received from Lady Julianna.
Given Raven’s skill with mathematics, she had considered showing them to him.
But after reading the first few pages, Charlotte had decided against it.
Had it merely been about numbers, she would have seen no harm in it.
However, she found its logic . . . impenetrable.
Raven, for all his cleverness and knowledge of life’s grim realities, was still a child. Perhaps she was simply being na?ve, but she wished to shield him from its talk of Good versus Evil, and the elemental struggle between them to rule the universe.
“That sounds very important,” she replied. “It appears you are finding the work with Mr. Tyler interesting.”
“Yeah, I am.” For Raven, that was a rare show of his feelings.
Yet another debt of thanks she owed to Wrexford. For a man who claimed to have no tender sensibilities, he had quickly recognized the boy’s curiosity and taken pains to encourage it.
“I can take your drawing to Mr. Fores when you’re done,” offered Raven. “I promised to assist Mr. Tyler in making an inventory of the chemicals, first thing in the morning.”
“But it will be hours before he is ready for you.”
He grinned. “Oiy, but I’m teaching the bootboy how to play dice, and after that, Cook will feed me a very nice breakfast.”
The boys, she knew, were friendly with all the servants who worked for the earl.
“And then I can tidy up the laboratory and check over the monthly entry in the accounting ledger for any errors until he comes.” A pause. “Mr. Tyler sometimes makes mistakes in his addition and subtraction. But I fix them before His Lordship reviews the numbers.”
Charlotte held back a smile. “That’s very loyal of you.”
“Lord Wrexford says loyalty to friends and family is very important.”
“He’s right.” Charlotte regarded their faces, aware that she couldn’t imagine her life without them. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she looked back to her drawing. “You two scamper up to your aerie while I finish my work. Tomorrow promises to be a busy day.”