Chapter 10
At three o’clock the following afternoon, Felicia was seated at the far end of the south lawn in one of the cane armchairs from the terrace; her back was to the house, and her parasol was raised, artfully shading her face.
Before her, Clive Mayhew sat behind his easel, his entire focus on the sketch he was creating with swift, sure strokes.
Felicia wasn’t even sure he saw her as an animate entity.
It had taken a good few minutes for him to direct her into the correct pose. She’d been sitting with her shoes flat on the grass, her head raised a fraction and tilted to her left, with the parasol riding over her left shoulder for the last thirty minutes.
About them, the summer afternoon stretched, somnolent and lazy.
The air was weighted with the smell of freshly cut hay, the sweet scent wafting under the hand of an oh-so-gentle breeze.
Insects—bees in the kitchen garden, perhaps—droned in the distance, while nearer to hand, the occasional bird chirped in the thick undergrowth beneath the wood’s trees.
Felicia stifled a sigh. She was already well and truly bored.
Before she’d struck her pose, she’d glimpsed Rand in the dappled shadows of the wood—not behind Mayhew but to her left.
The last glimpse she’d had of him, he’d been leaning with one shoulder propped against a bole, arms crossed, his gaze undeviatingly fixed on her and Mayhew.
For his part, Mayhew had been so focused on the view he’d intended to sketch, he’d spared not a glance for the woods; she would wager her mother’s pearls he was utterly oblivious to their watcher beneath the trees.
Even if Mayhew did look searchingly around, she doubted he would spot Rand; that helpful bole would largely screen him from Mayhew’s sight.
Without shifting position, she studied Mayhew.
He was seated on his folding stool, his attention wholly on his sketch.
He was using several pencils, one, then another, gripping those not in use in his left hand while his right hand moved swiftly across the paper.
He didn’t seem to even look to decide which pencil was which; his fingers seemed to know them by feel.
Again, the proof that Mayhew truly was an artist was displayed for anyone to see.
Felicia inwardly sighed and started composing a suitable incidental comment with which to allude to inventions and inventors.
She’d almost crafted a workable sentence when a massive bang! exploded from the house—from the workshop.
She managed not to react—to turn and stare—but Mayhew had blinked and was now staring at the house.
“It’s just another pipe.” It wasn’t—this time it is was something even more troublesome than a valve. Mayhew glanced at her, and she waved dismissively. “The staff will take care of it.”
Mayhew hesitated, then settled to his sketching again, although Felicia noted he glanced toward the house—toward its rear—more frequently than before.
She could only pray that the workshop door hadn’t blown open and that clouds of steam weren’t gushing forth.
That morning, she’d worked with William John to solve what they had hoped was the last little glitch that had kept the engine from running perfectly; they’d been so pleased and heartened—buoyed by a sense of impending success. Now…
Damn it! We haven’t all that many days left.
Mayhew looked at her sharply. Briefly, she smiled, erasing her frown, and schooled her features back into her pose of bucolic serenity.
Rand was steadily and stealthily making his way back toward the house. Mayhew was all artist, at least at that moment, and given how near to completion the engine was and how close the exhibition, Rand felt compelled to see what had gone wrong—what had blown now.
This time, it hadn’t been anything he and William John had arranged.
As Rand retreated, he glanced back frequently, but Mayhew and Felicia remained seated as they had been, at the far end of the lawn.
From all Rand had seen, he suspected Felicia would, indeed, need to tempt Mayhew to test the man’s interest in the engine.
Rand had to admit he was increasingly feeling his and her suspicions regarding Mayhew owed more to paranoia than reality.
He was still some way from the house, following a deer trail through the wood, when, after checking on Mayhew and Felicia yet again, he noticed Flora, who in her role as chaperon had been seated prominently on the terrace, had quit her post and, presumably, gone into the house.
That suggested the explosion was serious.
His heart sinking, Rand increased his pace.
He plotted his course. He would make for the part of the wood nearest the kitchen garden, then risk crossing the lawn to the wall; the wall was taller than he was and would allow him to reach the workshop with little chance of Mayhew spotting him.
Again, he glanced back. Mayhew was still sketching, and Felicia was still posing; neither had altered their position.
Rand faced forward, lengthened his stride, and headed for the workshop.
Felicia remained all but boneless in the chair.
Her mind, however, was elsewhere, focused on the engine in the workshop.
Trying to imagine what had caused the noise, she turned her thoughts to the diagrams on the board.
What had she missed? Where among the pipes, pistons, and tubes could an excess of pressure have built up?
She was engrossed in reviewing the design of the engine when Mayhew looked at her, then rose from his stool.
Felicia blinked. Was it the shifting shadows of the oak beneath which he sat, or had his features hardened?
But then he smiled. “This is truly excellent. It’ll be one of my best works to date.
I just need you to hold that pose for a few minutes more.
” He stepped around the easel and, with one hand, indicated his satchel, which he’d left leaning against the rear corner of the armchair.
“I need a different pencil for the final strokes.”
Felicia faintly smiled and obediently held her pose, her chin at the required angle and her gaze on the trees at the end of the lawn to her left.
Mayhew approached and crouched down beside the chair. She heard him open the satchel, heard the rustle of paper as he searched inside.
After a moment, she sensed him straighten.
Still in the wood, Rand drew level with the wall enclosing the kitchen garden.
He pushed through the undergrowth to the edge of the lawn.
Pausing just inside the wood, before walking into the open and across to the screening wall, he looked down the lawn, intending to time his emergence to a moment when Mayhew looked down at his sketch—
The artist was no longer behind his easel.
Felicia wasn’t in the chair.
Her parasol lay to one side, discarded.
Rand swore. He burst from the undergrowth and raced onto the lawn. He ran full tilt down the slope and on, toward where Felicia had been.
His thoughts churned like a raging river, then abruptly cleared.
He and Felicia had been right—Mayhew was their villain.
Mayhew hadn’t seen any way of getting to the invention to sabotage it, so had taken Felicia instead.
Mayhew intended to use her as a hostage to ensure the Throgmorton engine never made it to the exhibition.
Rand swore between his teeth and ran faster.
For a host of desperate reasons—of which the invention was the least—he had to catch them.
He had to reach Felicia and seize her back.
Deep in the wood beyond the end of the south lawn, Felicia struggled and fought, but Mayhew’s hold seemed unbreakable.
Instead of fetching any pencil, he’d come up behind her, and before she’d had a chance to react—to turn her head and look at him—he’d clapped a hand over her mouth, seized her arm with his other hand, and hauled her out of the chair.
Then he’d propelled her straight into the wood—onto this path that led more or less directly away from the Hall.
He held her with her back to his chest, one hand still wrapped across her face, immobilizing her head and holding it hard against his shoulder. His other arm was cinched tightly across her waist, allowing him to force her to walk ahead of him, step after step.
She knew all the paths through these woods. This one eventually led to a track along which it was possible to drive a gig.
She’d been in the drawing room when Mayhew had arrived, but—now she thought of it—she hadn’t heard the sound of wheels on gravel; she would wager a considerable sum that his gig would be waiting on the track at the end of the path.
Frantically, she struggled against his hold, but he was far stronger than she and continued to force her along the path.
She’d agreed to sit for him to learn whether he was a saboteur or not, to prick him into revealing himself as either innocent artist or dangerous threat, but at no point had she imagined this. The damned villain was kidnapping her!
She locked her knees and tried to keep her feet from moving, to make every step a battle, yet no matter how she stumbled and staggered, he still succeeded in pushing her on.
“You blackguard!” Her imprecation was all but smothered behind his hand.
Being unable to scream only made her feel more helpless.
In mounting fury, she wrestled, tipping side to side, trying to overbalance him, but he only cursed and tightened his grip about her waist until she could barely breathe.
She desisted, hauled in as deep a breath as she could, and fought to focus her wits. She couldn’t win free of Mayhew by main force. She had to use her brains.
Rand would be coming…if that unplanned explosion hadn’t drawn him back to the house. Nothing had been happening with Mayhew, after all.
She knew Rand would follow as soon as he realized they’d gone, but until he saw they’d vanished…
Her lungs expanded as she drew in a huge breath. If she wanted to escape Mayhew, she would need to save herself.
Think!
She couldn’t believe this was happening—not to her.
A spurt of pure fury seared through her, and, lips and chin setting, she threw herself violently against Mayhew’s hold.