Page 74 of How to Fall for a Scoundrel
Still, she needed to eliminate all doubt. “I wonder if you can help us, sir? I don’t suppose your father, or even your grandfather, also practiced from this location? We’re looking for the Dr. Emberton who published a paper on the human eye for the Royal Society.”
“Ah. That would be my father.”
“Could we speak with him?”
“Sadly not; he passed away last summer.”
Disappointment flooded her. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she murmured automatically.
The young man nodded to accept her condolences.
“I don’t suppose you still have his notes, do you?” Daisy asked. “Harry here was the subject of that paper.”
The doctor gave a visible start. He twirled toward Harry and stared intently at his face. “You’rethe one!” His tone was one of awed wonder. “At last! I can’t believe it! Please, come closer so I can see your eyes.”
Harry did so, turning to the light that streamed in through the shop windows, as the doctor peered closely at his irises.
“My father spoke of you quite often,” Emberton said, his voice rising in excitement. “He was intrigued by your case. I always hoped you’d come back one day so I could see you for myself.”
He was staring at Harry with fascinated delight, as if Harry were a strange creature in a circus. Ellie felt oddly protective of him.
“His notes?” she prompted.
The doctor turned from his inspection of Harry and heaved a deep sigh. “Ah. Now there’s a little problem there, I’m afraid. In the last few years of his life my father became a little… erratic.” He made a pained face. “His mind began to wander, and he became convinced that there were secrets and conspiracies around every corner.”
“What do you mean?” Harry asked.
Emberton gave a sad little laugh. “Well, he thought our neighbor, old Mrs. Brown, was secretly a witch who could turn into a black cat. And he thought thatyou, sir, had been kidnapped!”
Harry blinked, then let out a bark of incredulous laughter. “Me? Kidnapped? Why?”
“You disappeared,” Emberton said, his face serious.“Father kept trying to find you, to do a follow-up to his paper, to see if your eyes had changed over time, but Harry Brooke, son of the Earl of Cobham, had vanished without a trace!”
He shook his head. “I told him he was being ridiculous, imagining things. But he was right.”
“Not entirely,” Harry said. “I left England, but I wasn’t kidnapped. I went to Italy with my uncle, after my parents died.”
An embarrassed flush stained Emberton’s cheeks. “I knew there would be a reasonable explanation. Still, Father became convinced that there had been foul play. People began talking about the ‘Lost Earl,’ and his mind spun all manner of elaborate fantasies. He was sure that if you were still alive, and somehow managed to escape your captors, that you’d return to claim your rightful inheritance.”
“That’s not too far from the truth,” Daisy said. “We’re hoping to prove that Harry’s the Lost Earl.”
“Your father told you that the child he’d studied for the paper was Lord Cobham’s son?” Ellie pressed. “Because there was no mention of his name in the published paper.”
Emberton nodded. “Yes. It was written in his notes. There was a letter signed by Lord Cobham agreeing for the study to be published, and records of the payments made to my father for his services.”
Ellie’s heart gave an excited leap. This was exactly the kind of evidence they needed.
“Father was sure his notes would be important in helping you prove who you were,” Emberton said to Harry. “He wanted to store them ‘somewhere safe,’ but he refused to keep them here, or at our house in Chancery Lane. He didn’t trust sending them to Cobham Hall, or toyour house here in town, either, in case they fell into ‘the wrong hands.’”
He shook his head with a laugh that was filled with bleak humor. “I suggested a bank vault, but he pointed out that even if he left instructions for Henry Brooke, Earl of Cobham, to be permitted access to the contents, you wouldn’t be able toproveyou were him to get to them.”
“Like Plutarch’s riddle about the chicken and the egg,” Ellie murmured. “One has to come before the other.”
“Exactly!”
“So what did he do?”
“He said they needed to be kept somewhere safe and dry, but in a place that didn’t require any particular identification to visit. He considered hiding them somewhere in the British Museum, but in the end, he made me put them in the one place he considered the safest in England.”