Page 21 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

21

The object of chemistry is to obtain a knowledge of the intimate nature of bodies, and of their mutual action on each other. You find therefore…that this is no narrow or confined science, which comprehends every thing material within our sphere.

—Mrs. Jane Marcet

“Well. My sisters should keep Letty and Grey out of the way for a while and, oh, look—a bed.”

Sam hadn’t expected Phoebe to tear off her clothes and jump on the mattress, but a man can dream.

“Mr. Fenley,” she began.

He’d shaken her formidable defenses, and because Phoebe had grown up amid war, her defenses were as vital as her lungs, as her heart.

Easy to ruin everything with one bad joke, one missed clue. If he made a misstep, it would kill anything between them and might sour Phoebe on taking a chance with any man.

They stood facing each other behind the sheet he’d slung across the room. To their right was a small dormer window, well glazed, no hint of the cold that turned the skies outside to the color of wet paper and smoke.

What a delightful change from her haunted manor.

Sam considered giving way to Phoebe’s prodding and letting his temper flare—he’d remind her what they’d done was much more than sex, but it would send her only further into retreat.

He could be patient in pursuit of a goal.

“As I said…” Sam gestured to the other side of the sheet. “There’s a bed here. I haven’t slept in two days. Unless you have an urge to converse …” He waggled his eyebrows and leered.

“Shut up,” she said without inflection. Phoebe’s eyes went to the bed now, her jaw moving back and forth, perhaps biting down a yawn.

“We’ll spar later, Phoebe,” he allowed. “When we wake, we’ll figure out what happens next.”

The bed was not big enough for them both. It said much about how tired Phoebe truly was that she turned her back without comment. Sam removed her pelisse and unbuttoned her dress, then loosened her corset. Her only objection when he took a pillow and blanket from the bed and lay down on the floor was that he’d left her with a pillow in a case with blue flowers when she preferred his, with yellow flowers.

They traded pillows and Sam lay on his back, staring at the humps of plaster on the ceiling, inhaling the scent of linseed oil and rosewater.

“Sam.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“When Letty heard I was back in Britain, did she…did she ask after me?”

Sam rolled over onto his side and stared at the bed where Phoebe lay like a queen on a bier, her face too pale, wrists nothing but skin and bone.

He wanted to feed this woman. He wanted to take a bite of her as well.

“She asked how you seemed, yes.”

A slight hum in the air told Sam that Phoebe was thinking. Quiet and sleek, not like the nearly audible whirring and sparking of Violet Kneland’s brain, nor the measured certainty of Margaret when she took on a project.

Having spent years in the company of women scientists, Sam recognized they worked their problems in a different manner. Some of the scientists, like Lady Potts, moved their lips as they worked. Others, like Letty, sat motionless, eyes vague and fingers still. Sam imagined Phoebe’s brain worked like a clothes press, taking an unruly equation and smoothing it out until not a wrinkle remained.

“Did you miss her?” he asked, more out of a desire to keep her talking than true curiosity.

“She knew,” Phoebe said.

It took him a moment to place her words into a context. They were tired, too tired to make good decisions. Sam would have to rely on his sisters for help.

“She knew…what your father did to you?” he clarified.

Phoebe’s fingers twitched.

Ah, well. He would have wound up under her anyway. Sam stood, scooped Phoebe in his arms, sat back on the bed, and plopped her on top of him.

Delightful.

“Sam,” she hissed, outraged. “We are not going to engage in…in…”

“Lovemaking,” he supplied while pushing her hair from her face.

“ That , in your sister’s bed,” she finished.

“You smell like marble.”

Sam was many things, but a man who tupped a woman in his sister’s bed was not one of them.

One of his sisters was lecturing someone. Letty would be in the kitchen with his mam and the babes. You couldn’t hear anything in the kitchen from Sarah’s room. You couldn’t even smell the nice smells, either, because of the mix of turpentine, linseed oil, and paint in here.

“I listen better when I’m not on the floor,” he said. “Don’t worry, I am going to keep my hands above your clothing.”

Phoebe made a hmm ing sound of disbelief, but after a moment she continued.

“I tried to make light of it, but Letty looked at me in such a way I thought she might pity me.”

Sam imagined this would send Phoebe off into a fit.

“Didn’t like to be pitied?” he asked, stroking her cheek. What he wanted to do was put his thumb in her mouth and watch her suck it between her plum-colored lips, but he refrained from doing anything more than he did now.

Gods be damned, but he’d turned into a saint while freezing his bollocks off in Cumbria. The one probably having much to do with the other.

“I didn’t know why,” Phoebe said. “You see, I had imagined this house, this family, the emporium…differently. I thought she was delusional to prefer her life to mine.”

Oh, but the irony in her voice. Phoebe Hunt was many things, but dishonest about herself, she was not.

“Because living in a haunted house with a madman and a mother who would rather be anywhere else—that is so wonderful a life you cannot imagine anyone else’s coming close?” he asked, chuckling.

Once she accepted Sam would not be fondling her (yet) Phoebe relented and stretched herself like a cat, then nestled herself against him. The bed was too narrow for them to lie side by side, but exactly right for him to hold her above him and cuddle her.

Cuddle. Phoebe Hunt.

More than a few people’s brains would struggle with that equation.

“Although it was…uncomfortable to live with my father, he was the last in a line stretching back to the defeat of the Roman Empire. A marquess. When he criticized the temerity of the lower classes to want to educate their children, the ridiculousness of letting uneducated rabble have the vote, I knew he was wrong. Yet…”

Sam understood.

This entire escapade had begun with Sam’s desire to expand, gain influence, and add to his fortune, but Da’s reservations still tapped away in the back of his head.

Why not be content with what is in front of you?

More isn’t always better.

Mind your place.

Don’t make a fuss.

Some of this was no doubt due to a scandal Letty had weathered years ago and the effect it had on his other sisters’ marriage chances. Only now that Letty had been married a few years—married to a viscount, no less—and had babies were the boys coming to call for his sisters again.

“He was your father. There was no one telling you not to believe him,” Sam said.

“No matter how hard I tried, I could not stop repeating some of the things he said,” Phoebe confessed. “Not stop wondering if perhaps he had it right and everything I believed was nonsense.”

Sam squeezed Phoebe tight. This brought her delightful body much closer than he’d meant, but it seemed necessary. Right. That he comfort her with his arms and his slight, soft kisses on the forehead as well as his words.

“I said unkind things to Letty,” Phoebe whispered.

Sam waited.

Phoebe raised her head and looked at him.

“I was cutting and dismissive,” she told him.

He nodded and set one arm behind his head, looking back at her without hurting his neck.

“Aren’t you going to say something?” Those purple eyes narrowed, and a thrill went up his spine.

“Phoebe. I have been in your company for almost a month now,” Sam said, displaying a heroic amount of patience with this new Phoebe. This tentative Phoebe.

She wouldn’t last long. As soon as the bliss of lovemaking wore off, her special suit of armor would be back.

“You create your place in the world by carving out space. If you were a man, you’d most likely have done it with a knife. Seeing as you’re a girl…”

“Woman,” she growled, and poked at his chest.

“Woman,” he repeated dutifully. “You did it with your words. Does that sound right?”

Phoebe dropped her head back down on his chest. “I admired your sister more than she knew. More than I could unbend enough to tell her. I regret that.”

When Sam chuckled, Phoebe turned her face; her lips met the skin at his collar where he’d left off his cravat.

Evil woman. How was he to resist her?

“Well, I suppose you could tell her yourself, now you’re back?”

Phoebe yawned and he reciprocated. What he wouldn’t give for them to be lying side by side.

“Would she listen to me?” Phoebe asked.

“Oh, certainly,” Sam assured her. “Imagine the novelty of hearing a villainess of majestic proportions say she is sorry.”

“Sam, we can’t—

Another yawn cut off whatever Phoebe was going to say. Sam reached over and pulled the blanket off the floor, then covered them both.

“Go ahead and argue with me for as long as you like,” he said, “but let me shut my eyes for a few seconds first.”

Her response was a small snore, but Sam lay awake for a while longer, examining the ceiling and cataloging the ways this woman could break his heart.

···

“You look beautiful, Letty.”

Letty Fenley gaped at the compliment.

A hot knot of shame pulsed in Phoebe’s chest. She didn’t remember the last time she’d complimented her friend without attaching a barb in the years before she left.

“Motherhood suits you,” she continued.

The child at Letty’s breast moved beneath the blanket Letty wore over her shoulder to cover her naked chest from anyone who might walk into the kitchen on their way to the privy.

As Phoebe had done.

Having drunk half a pot of tea, she’d dozed for only a few minutes when she woke having to visit the necessary.

She had carefully pushed herself off Sam, but he slept soundly and didn’t move. Tiptoeing across the room, Phoebe had listened with one ear at the door. Casting a last glance to be certain Sam still slept, Phoebe’s heart skipped a beat, a stutter powerful enough to knock her off-balance, and she leaned against the wall to stay upright.

Good God, Sam Fenley smiled in his sleep. An unadulterated, childlike grin made him look years younger and desperately beautiful. It hurt to look on him. Pain was a familiar sensation, however; Phoebe grabbed hold of it and squeezed.

Painful to look on him not because he was too good to be true. Sam was canny with a brilliant mind for business, but he was also a terrible liar, like his sister. He had never pretended to be anything other than himself: a compassionate, genuine soul in a tenuous relationship with gravity.

He wasn’t too good to be true—he was too good to be hers.

So, although she tiptoed down the stairs, Phoebe didn’t think twice about opening the door to the kitchen, for in her experience, the only people one would find there would be servants.

Or her former friend Letty Fenley, now Lady Leticia Greycliff.

“Phoebe,” Letty said now, her mouth still agape with shock but her astonishing brain already working, as evidenced by the glance she cast at the ceiling, then back at Phoebe.

“You must—” Whatever Letty meant to say was cut short by the wail of a child. Phoebe gasped when Letty moved a cradle at her side with one foot, both hands being occupied with holding the baby at her breast.

“Two of them?” Phoebe said. “Sam never said. My goodness, where did you put them in that little body of yours?”

Letty’s foot moved faster as the baby’s cries intensified. “Oh, Phoebe, don’t even ask. It will put you off children forever, just…”

Gently, she pulled the blanket back and put her finger in the suckling baby’s mouth in a hooklike motion. Pulling her chemise up to cover herself, she set the child over her shoulder and patted. An enormous burp issued from the one baby as the other one thrust its arms in the air and screamed.

“Hold Wilhelm while I feed Millicent, please,” Letty said, holding out the child toward Phoebe.

The scent of cinnamon mixed with the smell of sweat and milk. A terrible longing rushed through Phoebe’s body, thickening her blood, blurring her vision. Not longing for a child. Longing for what Letty and Sam had experienced; a mother who baked for them, a safe home, a security with themselves and the world like that which allowed Letty to hand her baby or Sam his trust over to a woman who could hurt them badly.

She took the baby from Letty’s hands and stared down at him, rocking back and forth on her feet as she’d seen women do with their infants.

“You named them after Milly and Willy?” Phoebe asked.

Millicent and Wilhelmina were the oldest members of Athena’s Retreat. The last time Phoebe was in England, they’d been experimenting with pyroglycerin and nearly blown the building to bits.

They were also steadfastly in love and had made a life together in a society unwilling to acknowledge that love.

The wailing ceased when the second baby, Millicent, began sucking furiously, her arms still waving, her feet churning like an eggbeater.

“Well, Will is a boy, so we had to compromise, but yes.” Letty tried to hook her foot onto a small stool, and Phoebe nudged it closer. Letty put her feet up and sighed.

Will’s eyes were gray, like his father’s, and sported one patch of cornsilk-colored hair at the top of his head. He was in fact a beautiful baby. Phoebe held him close to her nose and inhaled. A pain similar to the one that took her breath away watching Sam while he slept twisted her lungs.

Letty pulled the blanket back over Millie. Her lovely blond hair sat in a soft bun and the curls at her temple were damp with sweat. The brittle edges she’d honed during her years as a social outcast had softened, premature wrinkles at the corner of her mouth were smoothed, and her gaunt cheeks were rounded.

“Greycliff will be back soon. He took Laura and Mam to a doctor’s appointment in the carriage. He accompanied them more to avoid Lucy’s speechifying than because he thought they needed escort.”

Phoebe settled herself in a chair opposite the kitchen table from Letty and rested the baby against her chest, sniffing every now and then. He smelled like peach tarts.

“You are happy? I didn’t think you even liked Greycliff.”

Letty smiled. “He was besotted, so I took pity on him.”

“You Fenleys have the same humor,” Phoebe said.

The baby beneath the blanket detached herself with a loud smacking noise and began mewling imperiously. Letty switched sides.

“About Sam…”

Phoebe shook her head. “I won’t hurt him, I promise.”

Letty sighed. “There are different sorts of hurt, Phoebe.”

The baby in her arms stirred and Phoebe rocked in her seat, staring down at the huge eyes set in the tiny face.

“You mean the hurt of having been betrayed by your friend who stole a member’s work, used it to create a weapon, and planned on selling that weapon to the highest bidder?” Phoebe asked, keeping her eyes on Will.

“That is nothing compared to the hurt of knowing your friend was in pain and not being allowed to help her,” Letty replied.

Ridiculous.

“What could you have done?” Phoebe gently traced the line of Will’s nose from top to end while he gazed at her with guileless eyes. “Single-handedly dismantled a patriarchal aristocracy so I wouldn’t have anyone to rage against?”

Letty sniffed. “That is the dream, isn’t it?”

When Phoebe chuckled in surprise, Will’s mouth puckered into a rosebud.

“Instead of asking for help,” Letty continued, “you kept your anger leashed and pretended not to care about anyone or anything—”

“I don’t,” Phoebe snapped. “I don’t care about anyone, and you have no call to be sympathetic. You are like Sam with your ridiculous optimism and foolish trust in a person’s better nature.”

Damn.

“Sorry,” said Phoebe. “I’m sorry, Letty.”

A door opened, and the sound of laughter filtered back to the kitchen. Letty pulled the blanket from her shoulder and dislodged Millie with the same efficiency she had Will.

“She looks drunk,” Phoebe said, momentarily distracted by the baby’s gaping mouth and lolling head.

“I’ve a mind to give up mathematics and study biology instead,” Letty confessed as she set the baby over her shoulder and patted her back. “Already, I’ve a set of observations about infant behavior that would provide years of study. Do you know, most male physicians are stupid?”

“I’m going with Grey,” Phoebe said.

Letty must have anticipated this, for she showed no surprise and kept rubbing the baby’s back while Phoebe took one last sniff at Will’s head for courage.

“I didn’t set off that bomb.” Phoebe had intended to say it with confidence, but it sounded like a plea in her ears.

Millie’s opinion came in the form of a wet belch.

“Are you going with Grey because you don’t want to hurt Sam or because you want to prove yourself innocent of setting off the bomb?” Letty asked, settling Millie back in the cradle.

“Look after Karolina and my mother, please. Tell Sam…”

The door to the kitchen opened and Letty’s husband, Lord Greycliff, stood in the doorway, a quick jerk of his squared chin the only sign of his surprise at seeing his wife and Phoebe sitting at a kitchen table like two housemaids.

“I told you so,” Letty said to Grey.

The viscount rolled one shoulder up in acknowledgment. “Yes, I know. You were right. You are always right, my miniature little wife.”

“Yet you continue to doubt me, my enormous melon-headed husband.” Letty sighed at his obduracy.

Her friend might have been smaller than her husband, but the force of Letty’s personality lit her like a flame, and Grey leaned toward her like a moth enamored of an unobtainable light.

“The two of you need to stop the sweet talk,” said Phoebe dryly. “You’re making me blush.”

“Do you have anything to collect?” Grey asked Phoebe politely. “If not, we should go now. If you and Sam hadn’t run off together, this might have been over by now.”

“Yes, much shorter distance to Newgate than to Clerkenwell,” Phoebe said dryly.

The viscount rolled his eyes. “Not Newgate, Phoebe. Sam left before I explained that we are not convinced of your involvement with the bomb, but there are reporters sniffing around. You might be recognized. While Grantham and I know you will keep your word and leave, not everyone in the government is inclined to feel the same way.”

This could have been sorted by now.

Then again, Phoebe would never have spent the night with Sam.

She rose slowly and settled Will in the cradle next to his sister.

“Will I see you again before I leave?” she asked Letty, keeping her gaze fixed on the baby. “I would like to, if that’s possible.”

Letty patted Phoebe’s arm. “Yes, dear. Besides, it isn’t as though they are taking you to some underground torture chamber. Only, beware the basement if you are afraid of ants.”

Phoebe put her hand over Letty’s and looked her in the eye. “Do you believe me? That I didn’t have anything to do with the bomb?”

Millie yawned and a wet spluttering sound issued from her diaper. A second later, Will imitated his sister, his spluttering even louder. Letty sighed and looked to Grey, but he held his hands in the air, walking backward out of the door.

“Oh dear. So sorry, Phoebe and I must be on our way,” he said, not even pretending to be sympathetic.

Letty’s pink lips twisted into a tight line Phoebe found foreboding. She wouldn’t want to be Greycliff later today.

“Take good care of her, my lord,” said Letty, reaching down and lifting the blanket off the babies, wrinkling her nose as the scent of soured milk filled the air. “She has friends, none of whom you want to anger.”

The statement fell like a stone in front of her, and Phoebe tripped over it. Friends. Somehow, after all she’d done, Letty—and hopefully Violet—considered themselves her friends.

Amazing.

The couple continued to bicker as Phoebe excused herself to the privy. When she returned, Laura and her mother had joined Letty in the kitchen. Upon hearing Phoebe was one of the founders of Athena’s Retreat, Mrs. Fenley filled a basket for her with the rest of the cheese and bread.

“Tell your sisters I said goodbye,” Phoebe told Letty as Greycliff assisted her into the carriage.

Letty waved as Grey climbed in behind Phoebe and shut the carriage door.

“I have no problem conveying your farewells to my sisters,” Letty called as the carriage rolled away, then shouted something about not wanting to be there when Sam found out.

Well.

Sam couldn’t have expected Phoebe to remain with him. He had a fortune to make while Phoebe had an ocean to cross and an atonement to carry out.