Asher’s Invention(7)
Asher put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Minerva, listen to me. You’ll achieve nothing this way.”
“Abducted your father! I’ve done nothing of the sort.” Grimlock’s face swelled up. “If he’s disappeared, it’s because he’s run away, too afraid to face his creditors, and he’s left you to face the music, you poor miserable critter.”
Her fingers itched to slap the sneer off his face. She lunged forward, only to find Asher holding her back, his hands like iron shackles. Grimlock guffawed before marching off.
“Let me go,” she fumed at Asher.
“Only if you promise you’ll not behave like a hoyden.”
The censure in his eyes cut through her roiling emotions as nothing else could. A hoyden! Yes, that must be exactly what she looked like to him, the way she had just acted. No well-brought-up lady would have ever yelled as she had, or almost come to blows with a man, or tussled with two laborers. Her cheeks heated, but she couldn’t regret her behavior. She’d never pretended to be a well-brought-up lady, and after all the suspense and anxiety, speaking her mind was cathartic.
She tipped her chin at Asher, pulling away from him. “I don’t owe my father’s kidnapper any politeness.”
He frowned down at her. “Are you so sure he is the kidnapper? It seems strange that he should bother to raid your father’s workshop when he has hopes of obtaining the millennium machine.”
“Perhaps he simply wants as much as he can lay his hands on.” Yet Asher had a point, she conceded to herself. Grimlock was a barbarian, but he wasn’t stupid. Why risk attention, if he thought he could have everything he wanted? Perhaps he wasn’t the abductor after all. Wearily she brushed away the tendrils of hair escaping from her hat.
“Why don’t you go inside?” Asher said. “I’ll get our baggage from the carriage.”
* * *
The Lambkin house was shabbier than Asher remembered. The suburb it was situated in had been fashionable, until the wealthy started moving farther afield to escape the spreading industrial pollution of the city proper. The three-story villa had once been handsome, but now its paint was peeling, the stucco was cracked and tiles were slipping off the roof. Hetty, the housemaid, though, was exactly as he remembered, and she made a big fuss when she saw him, despite the fright she had suffered when Grimlock and his henchmen arrived.
“I bolted all the doors, miss, and hid meself in the cellar,” she gabbled to Minerva as they entered the hallway. “Eeeh, shaking like a leaf, I was.”
“I’m so sorry you had to endure that.” Minerva patted the maid’s arm.
“The master will be furious when he comes home, but we can all rest easy in our beds, now that Mr. Quigley’s back.” Hetty bobbed her head toward Asher. She hadn’t stopped beaming at him ever since he set foot in the house.
“Thank you, Hetty,” Minerva said briskly. “That will be all for now.”
When Hetty hastened away with the baggage, Minerva turned to Asher. “Hetty knows nothing of Father’s kidnapping. I’ve told her he was called away unexpectedly for a few days.” She picked up the mail from the hall table. “I shall put you in the guest room and hope none of our neighbors realizes my father is absent. Hetty won’t gossip, I’m sure of it.”
“What about Mrs. Trotter, your cook? I seem to remember she was a bit of a flibbertigibbet.”
Minerva averted her eyes, discomfited. “Cook is no longer with us. I had to let her go.”
“I see.” He wondered how much household drudgery had fallen on Minerva because of Silas’s profligacy.
She frowned at the pile of post in her hands. “Excuse me, but I must go through these right now. You never know…”
She led the way into the parlor at the end of the hall. The carpet here was threadbare, and the few remaining pieces of furniture, though once of good quality, were now too worn to be of any monetary value. Asher waited, watching Minerva’s face as she rifled through the letters.
“It appears there’s nothing here but more bills and letters of demand. No word from the kidnapper.” She rubbed her upper arms, appearing lost. “The house feels so empty without Father. I’m so accustomed to him bustling about at all hours, so full of cheerful energy even in the direst of circumstances…” Shaking her head, she made a visible effort to collect herself. “Perhaps you’d care for some tea?”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble, and I would take myself off to a hotel, but it’s obvious you need my protection.”
“Protection?” She flicked her skirts in a prickly manner. “I hardly think so.”
“I beg to differ. Did you not almost come to blows with a man twice your size?”
“If we had come to blows, he would have needed your protection, not I.”
He shook his head in annoyance. “Why must you be so foolhardy?”
“Foolhardy! You used to call it gumption.” Her eyes glimmered, and for a moment she looked sad. “But I suppose every strength can also become a weakness.”
“A wise man chooses his battles. You may be Grimlock’s superior in many ways, but never in physical power.”
“Because I’m a woman, and therefore weak.” She turned away with a heavy sigh. “You’ve no idea how many times I’ve wished I was born a man. My life would have been so much…simpler.”
He studied her taut, feminine form, noting the slimness of her waist, the gentle swell of her bosom, the burnished tendrils of hair curling against her neck. Did she not know how alluring she was? Despite the resentment he’d harbored all this time? “I, for one, am very glad you’re a woman,” he couldn’t help saying.
A delicate blush rose in her cheeks. He wondered if she entertained the same thoughts as he, remembering that one night of passion they’d shared? Since then, he’d had countless women, but strangely, he couldn’t recall any of their faces, let alone the encounters. He’d worked hard to forget Minerva, but his years as a libertine had little effect on his memories of her. And what about her? Had she taken lovers in the intervening years? No reason why she shouldn’t. She was young, desirable and sensual. He had been her first lover, but he hadn’t had to teach her much, merely awakened and stoked her natural urges. She was unfettered by prudish inhibitions, and astute enough to know how to avoid pregnancy. For all he knew, she’d had as many lovers as he’d had.
The notion made his brow crease in a heavy scowl. He paced about until he stopped in front of a window draped with faded velvet, and he gazed unseeing at the garden outside.
“Do you regret the night we spent together?” He didn’t know why he asked that question, but he had to know the answer.
She paused an interminable while before speaking, “No, I don’t. I wanted to savor what little time I had with you.”
He wheeled round. “You mean, before I found out what had been going on behind my back.”
“No. I mean, before you realized what a mistake marriage to me would have been.”
His shoulders stiffened. “What the devil do you mean?”
She gave him a weary, sad look. “Do you honestly think your family would have allowed you to marry someone like me?”
Disbelief shot through him. “I don’t have to ask my family’s permission to marry. I’m my own man,” he barked, more incensed than he could credit.
“But you’re still a Quigley. Your family records go back to the Domesday Book. Your father is Dean of Crampton, and your grandfather is Lord Choughleigh. Even in this enlightened age, you’ve no business marrying the daughter of an engineer with no connections and no fortune. A dalliance, yes, but marriage? Never.”
“I’ve never heard such nonsense.” He paced the floor, his blood boiling. “You paint me as some weak and shallow nincompoop. Haven’t I demonstrated my resolve by going against my father’s wishes and pursuing science instead of the church?”
“Yes, and perhaps it was that urge to rebel that made you propose to me in the first place.”
He spun round. “Damn it all, I proposed to you because I was in love with you!”
His frustrated bellow echoed off the high ceiling. From across the room, Minerva stared at him, her eyes wide and blue in her pale face, her hands knotted in her lap.
He held her gaze for what felt like an eternity. Mind churning, he started across the carpet. “Minerva—”
A knock on the door cut him short before Hetty bustled in. “Miss Minerva, Mr. Monk and his son have arrived. I knew you’d want to see them right away, so here they are.”
Asher barely had time to pull his rushing emotions together as two men entered the parlor. One was middle-aged, the other about the same age as Asher. The similarities in their height and build marked them out as father and son, though they couldn’t have been more different in appearance. The elder Mr. Monk, slightly hunched over his walking stick, had a hook-nosed, parsimonious countenance. He wore an old-fashioned black suit so rubbed and faded from use, he resembled a rusty vulture. By contrast, the younger Mr. Monk had an open, pleasant face and was smartly attired in a fashionable brown suit with canary-yellow waistcoat and frilly cravat.