ThePerfectPoison
TWENTY-SEVEN
AN HOUR LATER LUCINDA WAS STILL TORN BETWEEN irritation and utter bewilderment.
“I simply cannot comprehend why Lady Milden is convinced that my reputation as a notorious female will be an asset at the ball tonight,” she fumed.
“Do not expect me to explain it,” Caleb said. “The nuances of polite society escape me.”
They were standing in a mysterious realm she had never expected to enter: Caleb’s library-laboratory. When he had invited her to accompany him to his residence after Lady Milden, Patricia and Edmund had departed on the shopping venture, she had been first startled and then intrigued. It was true that her status as a spinster allowed her a degree of freedom equal to that of a widow. She no longer had to guard her reputation as carefully as Patricia did. Nevertheless, paying a call on a single gentleman in his own home was a decidedly daring thing to do.
Then again, when it came to her reputation, there was virtually nothing left for her to lose, she thought.
She turned away from the nearest shelf of dusty, leather-bound volumes and looked at Caleb.
“No, Mr. Jones, the nuances do not escape you,” she said. “Nothing escapes your powers of observation. The proprieties dictated by society may bore you or they may annoy you but I do not believe for one moment that you are unaware of them. You know very well how things operate in the highest social circles but I suspect that you simply choose to ignore the rules unless it suits your purposes to accommodate them.”
He closed the door and turned, one strong hand still wrapped around the knob. His mouth curved faintly.
“And that, my dear, is the real secret of power in the polite world,” he said.
“Does your entire family hold that view?”
“It might as well be the family motto.” He watched her turn back to the ancient volumes. “That shelf is filled with alchemical treatises. Are you interested in the subject?”
“The old alchemists were primarily concerned with the elements, were they not? Mercury, silver, gold. I am more inclined toward botany, as you know.”
“My ancestor Sylvester Jones thought of himself as an alchemist but in truth his interests ranged across the scientific spectrum. He did a lot of botanical research. In fact, most of the ingredients in that damned formula of his were derived from herbs and plants of various kinds.”
“Do you keep the founder’s journals and records here in this library?” she asked.
“I have several but by no means all of them. There are a lot more in the Great Vault at Arcane House. Gabe wants to institute a project aimed at copying the old bastard’s writings so that we will have duplicates in the event some are lost or destroyed. But it will not be a fast or simple venture.”
“Because of the quantity of work that he left behind?”
“That and the fact that he wrote everything in his own private code. We also suspect that several volumes are still missing. We found a large library when we excavated Sylvester’s tomb but there were some significant gaps in terms of dates.”
“What happened to the missing books?”
“Who can say? I think it is very likely that some of them ended up in the hands of the three women with whom he is known to have produced offspring. Others may have been stolen. He had a great many enemies and rivals.”
“Where do you keep the founder’s journals that are in this collection?”
He looked toward a heavy steel door set into one of the thick stone walls. “They are in that vault, along with some . . . other books.”
A flicker of intuition told her that whatever those other books were, he did not want to discuss them.
“What a fascinating place this is.” She replaced the volume on the shelf and wandered slowly down an aisle created by two long bookcases, pausing occasionally to read the titles stamped into the leather spines. “It is rather like my conservatory, a world unto itself. Every time one turns a corner one finds something unique and fascinating.”
There was silence behind her. She glanced at Caleb over her shoulder and saw that he was studying the library as though he had never seen it before.
“I had not thought of it that way,” he said eventually. “But you are right. This is my conservatory.” He reached out and touched one of the ancient books. “Most people find this chamber oppressive. They wonder how I can bear to spend so much time here. Hell, the whole damn house makes them uneasy.”
She smiled. “You are not like most people, Caleb.”
“Neither are you.”
She turned down another aisle of books. He followed.
“Are you still concerned about that piece in the morning paper?” he asked.
“Not as much as I was when I first read it,” she admitted. She plucked another book from a shelf. “The thing that worried me the most was the effect it might have on Patricia’s husband project. But if Lady Milden believes that an attempted kidnapping of her client’s cousin with the intent of selling said relation into a brothel is the merest frippery, who am I to argue?”
“What about being here alone with me?” Caleb said. “Does that concern you?”
The darkness was back in his voice and in him, stirring the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck. And suddenly the atmosphere was charged with the kind of energy only he could generate, the sort that elevated and compelled all her senses. The intimate currents of power that pulsed between them, especially when they were in close proximity, seemed to be growing stronger by the day. Did he feel it, too? she wondered. Surely he could not be oblivious.
Impulsively she tried to lighten things.
“You forget that I barely escaped a career that would have forced me to endure the most lustful and depraved desires of the male gender,” she said, opening the book in her hand. “I assure you that, compared to such a fate, being alone with you is not of any grave concern to me.”
“I am male,” he said. There was nothing in his voice. It was perfectly neutral.
“Yes, I noticed.” She turned a page. The Latin seemed to blur a little. She had to concentrate in order to translate it. A Historie of Alchemie.
“And whenever I think of you I am filled with lustful desires,” Caleb said in that same too-even voice.
She closed the book very slowly and turned to face him. The heat in his eyes was as powerful and as intimate as the invisible currents of energy swirling around her. She realized her pulse was beating very quickly.
“Would those desires also be of a depraved nature?” she asked softly.
“I don’t think so,” he said, unnervingly serious, as usual. “Depraved implies an unnatural quality, does it not?”
She clutched the book tightly. “I think that is a fair definition, yes.”
“What I feel when I am with you seems entirely natural.” He walked to where she stood and gently removed the heavy volume from her fingers. “And very necessary.”
“In that case, I do not think I need be overly concerned,” she whispered.
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