Page 5 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

5

The real truth never fails ultimately to appear; and opposing parties if wrong are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly, than when overwhelmed.

—Michael Faraday

“Do you know what you are risking with your return?” a deep voice growled.

Phoebe first discovered her love for sciences in a roundabout manner. In one of the many unused rooms in Hunt House lay some great-great-granduncle’s or some second cousin’s third cousin’s collection of rocks and gemstones. Among the treasures to be found in the dusty heaps were two ordinary-looking stones. By happy chance, Phoebe discovered they were lodestones.

Magnets .

Even more fascinating than magnetic attraction was the phenomenon of putting like-sides of the lodestones together, whether north with north or south with south, and watching them repel each other.

“Lovely to see you as well, Mr. Kneland,” Phoebe said, returning Arthur Kneland’s terse greeting.

They were like-sides, Phoebe and Arthur; Violet’s bodyguard turned lover turned husband. Both stubborn, both enamored of pistols, and both with a fierce, undying love for the woman who sat on the settee in between them, silent and tense.

It wasn’t simply their similarities that repelled Arthur. There was also the small matter of Phoebe having shot him four years prior.

“I’m happy to see I didn’t leave a gaping hole in you,” she said, irritated at Arthur’s tone of voice.

The task of traveling from Hunt House without drawing attention meant she was dressed like a serving girl and had left out of the servants’ entrance this morning. As far as subterfuge, it was simple. The agents of Tierney a private detective with strange eyes and excellent taste in clothing.”

“…be a jackass and go tell Vi what happened…” That was Grantham bellowing out in the hallway. Kneland’s retort was too soft for them to hear, but the sound of Grantham falling to the floorboards was not.

“Excuse me for one moment, Phoebe,” Violet said apologetically. “This won’t take long.”

Phoebe did not stay in her seat. Revealing more of herself in these past ten minutes than she had in all the years she and Violet had known each other, Phoebe was exhausted. Her apologies were important, the first step in forgiving herself for the death she’d caused, but honesty and kindness became tiring after a while.

Villainesses of Majestic Proportions had a limited amount of patience with being humble.

“Why are you on the floor, Grantham?” Phoebe asked once she’d followed Violet out into the hall.

A scowl carved lines into the earl’s face that hadn’t been there four years ago.

“I am inspecting the molding,” Grantham snapped. “Why do you think I am on the floor?”

“You are on the floor because your arse bounces ever so sweetly when I toss you over my shoulder,” Arthur said.

The insults had a practiced feel to them and no real heat. Phoebe didn’t need to watch Arthur and Grantham playact to know everything here had changed since she’d left. The two men were friends now, and Violet exuded a quiet confidence, leaving Phoebe wistful.

How tedious.

Phoebe stepped over Grantham and faced Arthur head on. “Thank you for letting me visit with Violet.”

He leveled a black-eyed stare at her, then nodded briefly. Not exactly an enthusiastic hug, but at least Phoebe wasn’t on the floor next to Grantham.

“You will leave—”

Phoebe nodded and held up her hand, palm out, to stop him. “I will not come back. It would hurt my pride were you men to put me in prison. I would much rather be the one to imprison men instead.”

She turned and studied Violet, memorizing her friend’s tired brown eyes and ill-fitting dress.

“Thank you for seeing me, Violet. Thank you for letting me apologize. No, please—” Phoebe shook her head. She didn’t want Violet accepting the apology simply because Phoebe had come here to make it.

“If you will excuse me,” she said, straightening the cuff of her jacket and inspecting her skirts for stray spiders. “I must be home by two.”

Hopefully by the time she arrived home, her detachment would return, and the burning indignity of apologizing would be over.

···

“I truly apologize, Mr. Fenley.”

Hope be damned.

Instead of apologizing, she wanted to strangle Sam Fenley. She couldn’t, however, since he had just helped carry her mother from the room.

Phoebe had arrived home from the visit with Violet with a bellyache from being nice to people, only to realize she’d forgotten the “discussions” with their solicitor, Moti, and Sam Fenley.

“When will you want to move your family into Hunt House?” the solicitor, Mr. Nicely—of all the strange names—had asked Sam. The group was sitting in Father’s office, but Moti had dissuaded anyone from sitting in her father’s chair.

Staring at the empty space, Phoebe wanted to scream. If she started, though, would she be able to stop?

“My family lives in Clerkenwell and are content there,” Sam replied. “My plan for Hunt House is not to use it as a residence. Instead, I see the property playing a crucial role in expanding the reach of my family business, Fenley’s Fr—oh, dear!”

A horrified gasp, a rolling of the eyes, and Phoebe’s mother chose that moment to faint.

Sam and Mr. Nicely jumped to their feet, calling for smelling salts, then escorting Moti out of the room to a settee next door.

Had her mother truly been so aghast at Sam’s news or was she being a canny negotiator? Probably both. Phoebe took advantage of the empty room to lean over and read the contracts upside down.

When Sam and Mr. Nicely returned, they found Phoebe well prepared to negotiate on her mother’s behalf.

“I must apologize,” Sam said. Poor man had returned with skin a shade grayer than before. Mothers mustn’t swoon as regularly in Clerkenwell as they did in Belgravia. “I should have thought about how she would receive my news.”

Phoebe did not try to comfort him. His bad conscience was to her advantage as she began negotiations.

They didn’t last long.

“Well, that is a…a sum I believe the family will agree upon.” Mr. Nicely had tried to hide his surprise at the generous amount Sam offered—much higher than he or Phoebe had expected. If Sam went ahead and signed the papers in front of him, Mr. Nicely and a good many creditors would be paid in full.

Phoebe, however, gave no hint in her expression of what she thought.

Bad tactics.

Never appear too eager.

Most folks are keen to puncture someone else’s joy.

“It’s simply a sum reflecting Hunt House’s worth.” Sam’s eyes twinkled, his grin shouting his contentment to the world.

Sam Fenley’s contentment seemed impervious to puncture.

“I am happy to discuss details at a later date,” Sam continued, “My da—my father will want to be present for part of this. The ladies may take with them their belongings…” He paused, then shot a glance at her father’s empty chair out of the corner of his eye. “Paintings and such. Large portraits and the like.”

Large portraits?

Mr. Nicely had no quarrel with this request and soon took his leave of them. Phoebe glanced at the open door, then back at Sam, but he seemed unmoved by the breach in propriety.

She supposed being a woman of thirty and unmarried made her no longer sexually appealing and thus exempt from society’s strict rules for chaperoning gentlewomen. More pressing matters occupied her brain, however.

“You are turning Hunt House into a grocery?” Phoebe crossed her arms and glared at Sam.

“Not a grocery, my lady. An emporium the likes of which London has never seen.”

Oh, but that would have made her father furious. She pictured him sitting behind the desk.

The more furious he became, the quieter his voice. This forced the unsuspecting object of that fury to lean forward to hear him. Phoebe’s shoulders hunched. Even in death her father had the power to terrify her.

When would she be free of fear?

Phoebe coughed to clear her mouth of the rusty taste of resentment.

“What?” Sam asked, no doubt prompted by her pained expression. “Will the Hunt ancestors be turning in their graves?”

A draft from beneath the door pushed at the hem of her skirts, and Phoebe shuddered. The air was cold and stale, and the back of her neck prickled, thanks to her own morbid turn of mind and Sam’s careless language.

It smelled of mausoleums and the dark.

“The Hunt ancestors sleep lightly,” Phoebe said. “Be careful of what you say lest they overhear you.”

Sam’s brow wrinkled.

Knowing Letty and how sensible she was, Phoebe assumed the Fenley family didn’t talk much about unquiet spirits or vengeful ghosts. Theirs was a life of beans and toast, counting pennies, and church on Sundays. A regular British upbringing free from violence and tragedy. Delightfully mundane.

Meanwhile, Sam walked along a row of shelves, peering up at the leather-bound volumes stamped with gold. His volumes. His shelves, as soon as the money was transferred into their bank and from there on to Father’s creditors.

Sam’s offer had saved them from the worst of Fallowshall’s debts.

Next, Phoebe had to find someone who would buy their country seat, Prentiss Manor. Her father’s family had been so certain of an unbroken line of male heirs, they had never entailed the property. That her father was the last male Hunt in existence brought Phoebe great joy. Once they sold everything, Karolina would have more choice as to whom she might marry and enough money for her and Moti to live comfortably if she chose to remain unmarried.

A quiet ending to a tumultuous tale.

“A week is perhaps not long enough for you ladies to pack for your journey north to Prentiss Manor,” Sam said, speaking to the bookshelf, appearing fascinated by a handbound set of Greek tragedies.

Phoebe had already shaken each of these volumes out the day before. Sam didn’t seem like the type to sit by the fire with a pipe and Euclid, either, but if he did, he wouldn’t find secrets hidden therein.

“If you need more time—”

Phoebe waved his concern away. “We do not need to pack too much. The visit will not take more than a few weeks. Once we catalog the art and furniture stored in the manor for the auctioneers, we shall return to London and try to find an auctioneer.”

Nodding absently, Sam craned his neck to peer at the volumes on the highest set of shelves.

He didn’t ask where Phoebe’s family would stay once they returned.

Phoebe hadn’t figured that out yet.

One humiliation at a time.

“I was surprised to see these were the only books in the entire house,” Sam said. “Where do you keep your instruments and science periodicals? You will want to bring them with you wherever you are settling.”

He glanced at her with a frown.

“Where are you settling after this, Lady Phoebe? Must you return to America?”

“Indeed, I must. As you said to Lord Grantham the other day,” Phoebe said, trying for a light tone, “I am a villainess. I may not have been sent to trial, but I have been judged and punished, nonetheless.”

Sam’s brows lowered. “The constable who died?”

The constable.

He had a name, the dead constable.

Henry Witherspoon.

She’d never seen a picture of the man, only heard a few descriptions. So, it was a featureless face whispering to her in the darkest hours of the night. A stranger she would leave a loaf of bread for on All Souls’ Day.

“Yes. He was at the rally where the Omnis used the chemical weapon I created,” Phoebe said.

Mr. Witherspoon had one child and a wife with a red birthmark beneath her ear extending to the center of her chin who sprinkled her sentences with pleas to God that he be willing.

Phoebe had stared at the birthmark the entire time she spoke with Mrs. Witherspoon, offering an apology the woman didn’t seem to understand and an enormous amount of money, which she understood well.

It hadn’t been enough to assuage Phoebe’s guilt or satisfy those who knew the truth of her involvement.

Grantham and Letty’s husband, Lord Greycliff, had arranged for Phoebe’s banishment to America. They’d put her in the care of Tierney golden and smiling, whose laugh came from the belly, who was kind to children and strangers without calculating what it cost him or what he should take in return?

His blue eyes weren’t innocent. He’d have seen a thing or two growing up in Clerkenwell, but he was pleasant and generous.

Sometimes the world was kind to such people.

Sometimes the world crushed them.

Phoebe admitted to herself—she would not like to see Sam Fenley crushed.

“Will you take a carriage to Cumbria?” he asked.

The words sank in, and Phoebe blushed at the direction of her thoughts. Stepping away, she turned to the window and frowned at the untrimmed hedges out front.

“We sold the carriages last week,” she said, pushing her finger against the dirty glass. “The Hunt women will ride in a public train car for the first time. It will be quite the experience. I may have to dose my mother with laudanum, but I’m certain we shall survive.”

Sam’s gaze rested on the back of her neck, his unspoken questions picking at her nerves. She couldn’t tell him about America, about her father, about the ghosts.

A flare of jealousy cramped her stomach. Unlined skin, untried heart—she’d been right the first time.

He was still a boy.

Meanwhile, Phoebe never felt anything but older than her years.

She turned and left the room without another word.

Boys could be ignored.

It was men who worried her.

···

“I’m not asking you to spy on her,” Grantham said. “I’m asking you to be observant and—”

“You are asking me to spy on her,” Sam objected.

Once again, Sam found himself opposite a desk from the Earl Grantham, but this time they were joined by Sam’s brother-in-law, Lord Greycliff.

Before Letty married him and turned him into a besotted fool—besotted both by Letty and their babies—Grey had been director of a semiautonomous “information gathering” department.

Sam, on the other hand, was a businessman—an honest one at that.

This world of espionage and investigations and secret scientists was one he had no interest in joining.

“I told you the other day when we spoke at your office, people are worried about hunger.” Grantham pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ask Grey if you don’t believe me, but the Omnis are regrouping. Is it only coincidence Phoebe is back in England at the same time?”

The Omnis, or Omnium Democratia, were a group like the Chartists, advocating for workers and demanding the government allow for one man, one vote. They had been led by Adam Winters, a charismatic man who also happened to be Phoebe Hunt’s ex-lover. The man for whom she’d designed a weapon.

“So what?” Sam asked. “Let them regroup. Universal suffrage is a worthy cause. Simply because some of them were overzealous—”

“Someone was killed,” Arthur said.

“It wasn’t Lady Phoebe’s fault,” Sam said.

Lady Phoebe didn’t deserve his protection, but the way everyone spoke of her irritated him. A majestic villainess she might be, but the past few weeks had shown him Phoebe was less terrifying than he’d once thought. She had a dark sense of humor, yes, but it never became cruel. He’d observed her patience with her mother as well; a high-strung woman who looked as though she might float away at any moment, the marchioness looked to Phoebe for answers.

If pressed, Sam would admit he enjoyed Lady Phoebe’s company. There was a certain thrill to engaging with her. Much like the combination of terror and exhilaration one feels when walking a ledge high above a ravine.

“Letty told me while Lady Phoebe invented the weapon, she wasn’t the one who set it off,” Sam reminded them. “We don’t go around condemning the Manton family because they make dueling pistols.”

“She designed the weapon for Adam Winters to use. She didn’t design it for show,” Grey pointed out.

“I never understood why Phoebe cast her lot in with him. He was all talk and no action.” Grantham crossed his arms, mouth puckered as though the words tasted sour. “Phoebe was the real brains of that group.”

Sam ignored Grantham and examined his brother-in-law. Grey might have gone soft in the head from love, but he’d a solid sense of right and wrong, and Sam trusted his opinion.

“Do you believe Lady Phoebe has come back to England to kill in the cause of universal suffrage for men ?” Sam asked.

Grantham and Grey exchanged a glance and Grey stroked his chin in thought.

“Let’s leave the question of motivation aside,” Grantham said. “The Omnis may not even be a threat this time around. Grey, can you still call in favors with Military Intelligence?”

Grey nodded. “I’ll get some men out there and ask questions as discreetly as possible. We won’t bring up Phoebe’s name unless we must. Hopefully, she will have left before anyone else in the government wonders why she is not in prison.”

He looked over at Sam, a question in his eyes.

“I won’t be party to mistreatment of the Hunt women,” Sam said firmly.

“You are an idiot if you think Letty would let us mistreat her friend.” Grey’s face looked to be carved of marble.

An intimidating man, to say the least.

“I did question Phoebe’s commitment to the cause,” Grey continued. “She carried on with Adam Winters because it would horrify her father, not because she was a republican. In fact, she thought women should be given the vote and men stay home to mind the children and increase their skills in the bedroom.”

A sound halfway between a cough and a cry flew from Grantham’s mouth.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Before you make a cake of yourself and announce how you don’t need help with your ‘skills’—”

“Well, I don’t,” muttered Grantham. “I happen to be a spectacular lover.”

“For feck’s sake, will you listen?” Sam interrupted him. “I promised the marchioness I would keep away crowds of strangers.”

Lady Fallowshall had been trembling with anxiety when Sam had proposed an auction right there on the manor’s grounds. Phoebe had held her mother’s hand with surprising tenderness and asked Sam to send someone to catalog anything of great value.

“If the ladies allow, I will transport them to Prentiss Manor,” Sam explained. “Once there I will recommend which pieces to sell and arrange for them to be transported back to London.”

“For a price,” Grantham scoffed.

Sam bristled. “For a fair price,” he snapped.

“How will you explain abandoning your business interests?” Grey asked, ignoring the earl.

“If the Hunts will allow me to auction the items, I will receive a commission. This more than pays for the trip. Wolfe and the scientists can handle the paper. If I see or hear anything out of the ordinary, I will tell you. I will not, however, go creeping round and unearthing another family’s secrets.”

Grantham grumbled to himself, but Sam didn’t care.

“I know Lady Phoebe shot Kneland, but it was an accident by all accounts. She’s not going to shoot me, not if I’m the one who’s going to set up her family so she can go back to America and do whatever it is she was doing there.”

“If I went, too…” Grantham began.

Sam let his annoyance with the earl get to him and raised his eyebrows in a suggestive manner. “Oh, canny idea. You go to Cumbria with Lady Phoebe, and in the meantime, I’ll stay here and see to entertaining Margaret while you’re gone. You’re the one told me I’m missing out on something.”

Grey admonished Sam. “Don’t you start a fight with Grantham. Listen. We’re not asking you to search through their belongings. We cannot send an agent to Prentiss Manor—it’s too isolated and there are only a handful of long-serving staff.”

“I tell you once again; she is leaving for America the second she has the funds from selling the manor.”

Sam did little to hide his frustration that an earl and a viscount were more likely to agree with each other than with a mushroom like him.

“The Corn Laws will be repealed with or without the influence of the Omnis,” he said. “All this concern is overwrought.”

“Take note of visitors and what, if anything, Lady Phoebe says about her past actions with the Omnis,” said Grantham, his blue eyes hardening. “I’m sure you can agree to that at least.”

Ridiculous.

Whatever secrets Lady Phoebe kept were her business. So long as she didn’t have diagrams for a new weapon hung in the Prentiss Manor parlor, Sam doubted there would be much on this visit to surprise him.