Chapter 4 #3
Once she’d looked her fill, Felicia glanced up and, across the table, met Mayhew’s eyes. “These are exquisite. You are, indeed, very talented.”
Somewhat to her surprise, Mayhew didn’t smile but lightly raised one shoulder, as if he remained unsure of his skill or was, for some reason, uncomfortable acknowledging it.
Looking again at the sketches, Felicia felt vindicated in having agreed to allow him to sketch the Hall; such an opportunity, dropped into her lap by Fate, shouldn’t be lightly passed up, and if it helped Mayhew continue and gain more confidence in his work, well and good.
“I admit,” she said, raising her gaze once more to Mayhew’s face, “to being intrigued to see what you make of the Hall, sir. It was a lucky chance that sent you our way.”
Flora added her compliments, too.
Mayhew blushed anew and, yet again, disclaimed—although with the evidence of his talent lying before Felicia and Flora, he might as well have saved his breath. Then, with all three of them transparently pleased with the outcome of Mayhew’s visit, they settled to finish their tea.
From the shadows of the woodland bordering the south lawn, Rand watched the trio on the terrace as they laughed, smiled, and chatted.
It wasn’t difficult to assess how Felicia—and Flora, who Rand considered a sensible and supportive lady—viewed Mayhew. They’d both relaxed and were smiling with genuine delight upon the supposed artist.
Although Rand had retreated to the workshop with William John after luncheon, he’d set Shields on guard by the stable. Shields had hurried around to the workshop to warn Rand that Mayhew had arrived, riding a rather poor-quality nag—Shields being the sort to notice such things.
Leaving William John muttering at his engine, Rand had climbed the stairs and confirmed that the door at the top was firmly shut. He’d waited behind the panel and had heard Mayhew arrive and speak with Johnson, then Felicia had come and taken Mayhew outside.
Rand had descended to the workshop and, assisted by Shields, had closed the large double doors.
William John had noticed the light dimming.
He’d blinked, then crossed to the wall and fiddled with a knob, setting the gaslights in the gantry above his workbench blazing.
Then he’d returned to his invention, ignoring Rand and Shields and all else about him.
Rand had dismissed Shields, who had clattered back up the stairs and out via the front hall. Rand had counseled himself to patience, but hadn’t been able to squash the impulse to ease one of the big workshop doors open a fraction—just enough to peer out.
He’d glimpsed Felicia and the artist walking through the roses, then had watched Felicia lead the man down the lawn, until the pair had passed out of sight behind the kitchen garden.
That had given Rand an idea. He’d confirmed that William John had no intention of emerging from the workshop before the gong rang for dinner.
With Felicia and Mayhew still screened by the walls of the kitchen garden, Rand had slipped out through the double doors.
He’d shut them behind him, then swiftly circled the kitchen garden to the corner where he could see Felicia and Mayhew walking down the south lawn, their backs to him.
He’d walked quickly across the lawn and into the woodland that so helpfully surrounded the house.
From the cover of the trees, he’d watched Felicia and the artist stroll the lawns, eventually fetching up at a spot almost directly across from where Rand had been standing. After some discussion, apparently pleasing to both, they’d repaired to the terrace, where Flora was waiting with the teacups.
Mayhew had shown them some papers—presumably some of his sketches. Rand hadn’t been able to get a clear view of Felicia’s face, but from the expression on Flora’s, Mayhew’s sketches were very definitely worthy of admiration.
As the trio consumed their tea and cakes and conversed in pleasant vein, Rand shifted in the shadows and wondered if he was being overly paranoid. Or overly something else.
Could Mayhew simply be what he purported to be? A sketch artist whose works were published in the London News and who was eager to find new vistas to draw?
Certainly, Mayhew had shown no interest in the workshop doors, although given their location, they could easily be taken to be doors to a cellar for storing produce from the kitchen garden.
Yet Rand wasn’t even sure Mayhew had noticed the doors; he’d seemed more interested in Felicia and, later, in the long views of the house.
As Rand watched, Mayhew made some comment, then collected his sketches. Felicia rose and went indoors; a moment later, she returned and resumed her seat. Presumably, Mayhew was leaving, and Felicia had gone to ask for his horse to be brought around.
Rand shifted, uncertain and faintly irritated. He tried to get a better sense of—a clearer insight into—the instincts that were so firmly insisting that Mayhew was a threat. Which instincts? And a threat to what?
Given his focus on the invention, he’d assumed the prickling tension had to do with that, warning him he should see Mayhew as a threat to the Throgmorton engine.
But what if it wasn’t that? What if his instincts were bristling because they saw Mayhew as a threat in another sense?
As a threat to Rand because of his fascination with Felicia Throgmorton.
Cloaked in the trees’ shadows, he wrestled with the realization that—almost without him being aware of it—that second option had become a possibility.
Just because he’d decided he wouldn’t think of finding a wife until after he’d established his position in the investing world didn’t mean Fate would fall in with his plans.
Concealed in the wood’s gloom, he watched as Mayhew rose, and Felicia got to her feet. With smiles and bows, Mayhew took his leave of the ladies, then walked back along the terrace and around the corner of the house to where his horse would be waiting in the forecourt.
Rand studied Felicia as she remained by the table, watching Mayhew depart; he couldn’t see her face.
Rand’s lips twisted, then he shook his head, made his way out of the trees, and strode for the workshop doors.
He could pretend all he liked, but the truth was that, regardless of whether Mayhew had any interest in the Throgmorton steam engine, Rand and his prickling instincts would still see the artist as a threat.
A different type of threat, yet a threat nonetheless.
As for which type of threat Mayhew actually represented…at that point, Rand didn’t know. He couldn’t even make an educated guess.