Page 7 of A Daring Pursuit (The Clandestine Sapphire Society #2)

“W hat exactly is it you believe my father stole?” Mr. Oshea spoke slowly, carefully. There was no defensive stance or immediate denial that his father had indeed stolen anything. And he had. Geneva was certain of it.

A sudden current cut across the cliff, knocking Geneva off her feet. Her arms flailed and for a second, she was horrifyingly airborne. Then her feet were back on solid soil and her arm scorching where Mr. Oshea still held her in an iron grip, dragging her from the edge where she’d stood. “Are you all right?” His words came out in a rush of fearsome brutality.

Her hand splayed her chest. Her heart pounded through the layers of her frock, her cloak, her gloves. She feared the blasted organ would fly from her body if she removed her hand. “Yes. Yes, I-I think so.” She’d never been so frightened in her life. Not since she’d taken up the carving knife against Papa’s threat all those years ago. She shut out the memories and moved a few more steps from the cliff’s edge, hugging herself.

Perhaps Mr. Oshea wished her ill.

She cut her gaze to him. “We should head back.” Damn, the tremor in her voice. Showing weakness was not her forte and certainly not in her best interest. A sharp gasp escaped her—perhaps he wished to keep her locket for himself.

“What’s wrong?” His words came out amid abrasive, pointed breaths.

Notably, he didn’t re-ask his question on what his father had stolen. A question she wasn’t inclined to answer. Not yet. Not until she learned if her legacy had indeed been confiscated by Lord Pender. Those memories in her past—her five-year-old self—were so vague and obscured by that sweltering greatcoat that had seemed so ominous at the time, hovered over her, and felt as intensive as to bury her alive.

In silent, mutual consent, they turned as one to the front of the castle. They rounded the corner and Mr. Oshea let out a gurgled sound. “Damnation.” The low growl whispered over her skin, raising bumps.

Geneva stopped beside Mr. Oshea and lifted her glance from the path. Abra remained near the bench, standing halfway between the front entrance and the corner where Mr. Oshea and Geneva now stood. Her gaze moved to the shiny carriage she’d pulled behind that morning. Mr. Oshea’s words from the hall that morning pushed Abra’s presence from her mind. “Isn’t that Miss Hale’s rig?”

“Er, yes. It is.” He edged back from the line of sight.

The action touched Geneva with amusement. “You don’t wish to see her again?”

Other carriages began lining the drive.

“She’s considered family and has the devil of a temper. Storming out in a huff is hardly unusual for her. I just don’t wish to deal with her at the moment. That’s all.” Now that sounded defensive.

Geneva hid a smile that tipped quickly into a frown. “Are you in love with her?” The instant the words left her mouth, she wished to snatch them back. But there they were, floating on the breeze.

He didn’t answer right away. Perhaps the words had been carried out to sea and he hadn’t heard them. His eyes were stormier than the crashing waves with which she’d nearly experienced an intimate proximity.

An unlikely scenario, however, watching from the corner of her eye as he shoved a hand through his dark hair.

“Forgive me. I tend to be a bit too forthright,” she said.

His grunt came out sarcastic. Yes. She was absolutely positively certain she’d heard sarcasm.

His lack of verbal response prompted her further. “It’s especially annoying when improper things emerge with no thought on my part.”

He cleared his throat. “Think nothing of it.” His unreadable tone said it all. She’d overstepped common propriety. As usual.

Gads, it was the story of her irregular life.

“It appears the viewing of my father’s body is underway,” he said with a resigned sigh that tugged at her sympathies, surprising her.

Geneva straightened her spine and firmed her resolve. She hadn’t made the trek to Northumberland only to get distracted by the intricacies of the remaining Oshea clan. “I’d best check on Abra. She’s really quite introverted, you know. Thank you for the tour. Oh. And for saving my life.”

He inclined his head with a cool smile. “It was the least I could do.”

“Of course. An accident while walking might do harm to the family name and all that rot,” she muttered, marching away. She started in Abra’s direction and stopped. Her friend had moved and was disappearing through the front door among those emerging from carriages. One in particular—shiny, black, outrageously costly—Martindale. Quickly, Geneva turned back to her host. “Is there, um, another entrance? I prefer not”— facing— “fighting the crowd.”

For the first time since she’d met Noah Oshea, genuine amusement glinted in his eyes, turning his irises from storm gray to something that hinted at dark steel. He took her arm and led her back around the fallen turret to another less visible door. “Right this way.”

*

Noah didn’t blame Miss Wimbley for wanting to avoid the throng at the entrance. He rather wished he could as well. After all, he’d been the one to issue the invitations for the service. But if she had aspirations in angling for a husband—

He barely restrained from dropping his head in his hands and groaning aloud. She’d told him why she’d shown up on his doorstep. The danger lay in him, not her. Besides, it was not as if they were likely to run into other guests in this portion of the castle.

With a sure hand on her arm, Noah led her through the rubble to the one door that led to his laboratory. Conundrum that she was, it would be fascinating to gauge her reaction to the various charts and skeletal bones lying about. He pulled the key from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked the door, and lit a candle from one of the sconces.

“What is this place?” Curiosity, not fear, shaded her voice. “It’s cold.”

“The stairs down lead to my laboratory,” he said, assessing her carefully.

To his surprise, her lips twitched. “Dr. Frankenstein?”

His response mirrored hers and then, he couldn’t refrain—he grinned outright. “Not quite.”

“I’ve never been in a laboratory. Might I see?”

The stairs were original to Stonemare. Concrete and cold. As a safety measure, he descended before her. “Take hold of the rail, please. The descent is treacherous.” His boots echoed compared to the scuff of her kid-leather-booted heels. She was light on her feet. That was a surprise because despite Miss Wimbley’s ethereal and waiflike appearance, her presence seemed larger than life. She did not present to him as someone prone to fading into unpainted wainscoting.

He opened the door then went about lighting the lamps within, feeling the heat of her gaze with his movements about. He never left candles burning, not a single one and not for a single moment. Too much could go wrong. He’d learned much from the turret distastefulness. The thought touched him with a wry smile. He returned near the door. “Do you wish to remove your cloak?”

In response, she slipped it off and handed it to him.

Noah hung it on a peg near the door, then slipped off his own. He leaned against the wall with one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded over his chest, and observed her. She kept her hands clasped at the lower back of the cheap, muslin frock she wore. Its dark-blue color matched her eyes to perfection. She moved around the chamber like a graceful woodland nymph, stopping and leaning in when he reached Isabelle’s infamous—among family only , of course—Bug Board. Frankly, some of the species sent shivers up his spine.

“This area seems different,” she said.

“Isabelle’s interests lean toward entomology.” He smiled. “I gave her an entire corner.”

“Unusual for normal girls.”

The truth had finally revealed itself. Disappointment crashed over him. “She is a normal girl,” he ground out.

Her face raised, her eyes darting to his. Her brows lifted, her expression questioning, before her eyes widened and then narrowed on him. “You misunderstand me, sir. I attended school with a group of young, overprivileged women whose only accomplishments were stitching a straight line in their embroidery or painting a presentable landscape. Neither of which I ever perfected.”

“Oh.”

Her boldness would drive him mad, he decided, if he dissected every statement uttered from her. With a deep breath he let out slowly, vowing to listen and to restrain his assumptions. She was different. He just had to work out the rhythms and directness rather than assigning subtext to her. “Isabelle wishes to become a doctor.”

A soft smile tilted her full lips. The sight blasted him with unbridled desire. “I have no doubt she shall succeed. It’s a daunting path she is choosing for herself. Dorothea Erxleben is the only woman physician I’ve heard of and she hailed from Quedlinburg of the Holy Roman Empire. And that was years ago. She received her medical degree in 1754.”

“My, you are a fount of knowledge,” he murmured, stunned.

She flashed him a quick grin. “I remember because it was the same year Lord Hardwicke’s Act was enacted. You know, the one where a marriage was not allowed unless parental consent had been obtained for anyone under the age of twenty-one? Since Scotland did not adopt that law, a man could hie off with an heiress and force her to marry him. Hence, Gretna Green.” She wrinkled her nose and went back to her perfusing. “As I said, ’tis a difficult path that lay ahead. I, however, greatly admire such aspirations.” The genuineness coming from her set forth a rush of something ancient in his blood.

“It sounds as if you have a few aspirations of your own,” he said.

“Mmm,” was her only response before pausing near his microscope and examining the bottles of various chemicals. Miss Wimbley then moved on to the middle area before coming to an abrupt halt.

Her eyes flashed to him literally sparkling. “Tell me these bones are not human.”

“I guess I could tell you that,” he hedged.

“Oh, my,” she breathed. She brought up an index finger and traced the line of one of two talus bones that lay side by side. “What is it?”

His skin tingled, and he could swear he felt the heat of that breath from across the chamber. The very large chamber. “They are ankle bones.”

“May I hold one?”

In an instant, he was crossing the room. “No, er, I mean—”

“I’ll be gentle,” she said with a smile directed at the table, not at him, that nonetheless had the ability of stealing his breath.

With the forthright audacity she’d already exhibited on at least two previous occasions, she lifted one of his bones.

No one touched his bones. They were too difficult to obtain. Especially the one she currently held. He suppressed the urge to snatch it from her delicate fingers and forced himself to inhale. She ran a fingertip over an inverted rotation that raised bumps over him as if touching his person and not an inanimate object.

His skin quivered.

“This one is different from the other one. Why is that, do you suppose?”

With another deep breath, and an alert eye on her handling of his most prized possession, he answered slowly. “It’s a deformity—here, I’ll show you.” He took both taluses and moved down the table to where the tibia and fibula lay side by side. “These are the bones in your calves.” He watched her from the corner of his eye in a constant assessment, asking himself if her interest was genuine or artificial. “When I align the normal talus”—he held up one—“see this? How perfectly the pieces fit together. When I attempt to align the deformed bone, the discrepancy is quite obvious.”

She leaned close and he got a whiff of soft orange blossom. It was as if a burst of spring exploded over his senses. How the devil had he missed that before?

“Goodness,” she breathed. “I had no notion.”

“Not many do.” He ran his own fingers over the damaged talus. “This one grew inward. As such, it creates a misalignment that, depending on the severity, can impact an individual’s mobility and balance.”

Her eyes snapped to his. The intelligence he read there affected his own balance in that moment. “Miss Isabelle,” she whispered.

Noah frowned, damning himself for imparting so much information. The familiar tightness banded his chest and restricted his airflow. The recollections of that long-ago day crashed over him, stole the very breath from him in agonizing waves. His hands flattened on the table that weaved through a darkness he’d yet to completely conquer. That summer day when he’d taken his young cousin with him about the countryside. Ten years ago, when he’d been home from his studies and she’d surprised an adder sunning on a low rock. The recollections that still had occasion to haunt his nights.

What an idiot he’d been to invite Miss Wimbley into his private sanctuary. He didn’t even know this woman. Suddenly, the impropriety of this visit to his lab twisted parts of his body, low in his abdomen. Quickly but carefully, he gathered up the bones, moving them back to their initial places. He was infuriated with himself. “I fear I must return upstairs.” He spoke sharply enough to draw her steady contemplation, feeling as if he resided on one of his own glass slides for study beneath his own microscope. “Lucius will pummel me if I leave him to deal with the incoming visitors arriving to view our father alone.” He guided Miss Wimbley to the door then taking her cloak from the peg, he held it out.

Shockingly, she refrained from arguing with him as that was surely her nature. She nodded, throwing him soundly off-balance. “Of course. Thank you for allowing me in,” she said softly. “It’s truly fascinating.”

“Yes, well, I’ve come a long way from my chemistry experimental days. Too much volatility,” he muttered, taking up his own cloak.

Her head tilted to one side. “What of the lamps? Don’t you fear—”

Blast it . Red-hot embarrassment covered his body, tempting him to dash up the stairs and back out the door for a dive off the cliff into the cold water below. “Of course. I’ll be just a minute.” He went about snuffing out each and every flame before leading her out the door, shutting and locking it behind them, chastising himself for getting caught up by the distraction of… her .