A Study In Seduction (28 page)

He extended a hand to guide them into the main room
of the lecture hall. As they sat down, Lydia took her satchel from Northwood and removed a sheaf of papers. She tried to concentrate on what she wanted to tell the professor, knowing she had to present a front of cool competence even if her heart broke a little more with every breath she took.

“This… this is my response to your question about the integrals,” she said, handing the papers to Dr. Sigley, who spread them out and reached for his spectacles. “The general systems have only three. There must be a fourth. And if you normalize the units, then choose the axis in which all moments of inertia are equal, then you find this unit.” She pointed to the pages. “So the fourth integral can be written in complex form like this.”

“Ah.” The single word conveyed understanding and satisfaction. “Now, this makes perfect sense. I do hope you intend to publish this, perhaps even lecture about it.”

No. No chance of that anymore.

The gaslights dimmed. The symposium coordinator banged a wooden pointer on the podium to gain everyone’s attention. Lydia sat back as he announced the series of lectures, the first starting with a discourse on symbolic logic and theory. As the lecturing professor began organizing his notes, Lydia fished for a pencil and spread a new notebook on her lap.

She listened as best she could, took copious notes for later review, and engaged in whispered consultations with Dr. Sigley.

And yet the entire time, her skin prickled with awareness of Alexander beside her—his tense posture radiating his frustration and anger.

What a fool she’d been to believe, even for a moment,
that they might have a life together. That they could be happy. She’d reached too far beyond her grasp… and now she had to bear the fall.

It was one o’clock before the first half of the symposium concluded, with the coordinator inviting the participants to lunch in the adjoining hall prior to the start of the afternoon session.

“Will you lunch with us, then, Miss Kellaway?” Dr. Sigley asked, absently rubbing his belly. “Lord Northwood?”

“No, I hadn’t planned to stay for the afternoon,” Lydia admitted as they made their way along with the tide of men toward the exit. “But you and Mrs. Sigley must come to dinner soon.”

“Will do, then. A delight to see you again, and when I’ve got my thoughts on your paper in order, I’ll call upon you.” Dr. Sigley gave her hand a light squeeze of farewell and nodded at Alexander before joining the men heading into the dining hall.

“You’re coming home with me,” Alexander said.

Irritation prickled the back of Lydia’s neck at the implacable tone in his voice.

“Alexander, if you hadn’t divulged your intentions to my grandmother, we would not be in this position,” she whispered. “If you had listened to me when I first declined and…”

Her whole body rippled with a sudden chill.

“Lydia?” Alexander stopped at the sound of her strangled voice. “What is it?”

Someone bumped into Lydia from behind, forcing her to move forward. Her eyes locked on to the back of a blond man, his hair cropped short against an elegant neck, his shoulders narrow beneath a dark suit coat.

She shook her head.
No. Don’t be silly. It couldn’t be, of course; there’s no way in the world…

He turned. She gasped.

“Lydia?” Alexander clutched her arm and used his body to push through the crowd, pulling her along beside him. When they reached the lobby, he eased her back away from the men still streaming through the doors. “Lydia, what’s the matter? You’ve gone sheet-white.”

Lydia swallowed through a parched throat, her eyes skimming the crowd. He was gone, his sculpted features obliterated by the crush of people heading for the adjoining room.

“Alexander, would you… would you bring me a glass of water, please? I feel a bit faint.”

He didn’t look as if he wanted to leave her. “Come with me.”

“I’m fine.” Lydia pressed her hand against the wall. “Please. Just… hurry.”

Alexander released her arm with reluctance and moved past her. As soon as he was gone, she looked toward the doors.

She had to get out. Even if she’d only imagined him, even if she’d seen something that wasn’t there… she had to get out. Now. Gathering in a breath, she turned and started through the lobby.

“
Guten tag
, Lydia.”

She fought down a scream.

“
Bitte setzen Sie sich
.” He drew a chair against the wall and gestured with a long, elegant hand.

She didn’t take the seat, not because her legs weren’t about to collapse underneath her but because she wanted
nothing he offered. She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on some blurry point beyond his shoulder.

“What… what are you doing here?” Her voice sounded thin, vibrating with tension.

“
Ich bin—
”

“I don’t speak German.”

She felt rather than saw his smile; then he spoke in fluent English. “I came to hear the symposium, of course. I received notice last month.”

“Lydia.”

A choking combination of relief and terror rose in Lydia as Alexander crossed the lobby back to her. His gaze slanted to the other man, his expression hardening with a dislike that seemed instinctive rather than rational.

Alexander stopped beside Lydia and handed her a glass of water, then slipped his hand around her arm and pulled her quite deliberately to his side.

Lydia grasped the glass. “Thank you. I… Would you give us a moment, please, my lord?”

He frowned. “I’d rather not.”

“Please.”

“I am Viscount Northwood,” he told the other man, his voice flat and cold. “Miss Kellaway’s fiancé. You are?”

The man’s mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. “I am Dr. Joseph Cole. Miss Kellaway and I are old friends.”

“Odd. She doesn’t appear to think of you as a friend.”

“I’m fine, Northwood.” Lydia infused a forceful note to her voice. “Please go.”

She willed him to hear the plea in her voice. He hesitated, then stepped back—barely. “I’ll wait over there.”

He jerked his head toward the other side of the lobby,
not taking his eyes from the man beside her as he backed away.

Lydia sipped the water and placed the glass on the chair. She sought the courage she didn’t know she possessed, then turned her head to look at Dr. Cole.

Her heart thumped hard against her rigid corset. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, the analytical part of her brain submerging the emotions threatening to wreak havoc upon her soul.

She assessed him with a clinical eye, noting the gray strands threading his thinning blond hair, the wrinkles furrowing his forehead and the sides of his mouth. Behind his spectacles, his eyes looked the same—a pale green like ocean ice, thick spiky lashes.

“What do you want?” She forced the question through numb lips. “Why are you here?”

He reached into his coat pocket and removed a folded, sealed letter that he pressed into her hand. “Do not open it now. At your convenience, please.”

She tried to push the paper back to him. “I don’t want to read anything you have to say. And I have nothing to say to you.”

“Yet you ask what I want. Do you not wish the answer?”

He moved a little closer, his presence seeming to thin the air around her. Lydia forced herself not to step away, to control the trembles rippling underneath her skin. No, she didn’t want to know the answer, terrified of what it might be.

She felt him assessing her with that razor-sharp perception he possessed, his own mind calculating, adding and subtracting the changes in her wrought by the years.

“You look well, Lydia.”

“I am well.”

A strange fog of memories began floating through her mind—things, people, events she hadn’t allowed herself to remember for years upon years.

And there, in the forefront, her mother, a dulled, pale figure in her stark room of the sanatorium, the nuns fluttering about like blackbirds. Her hair, once so long, shiny, and thick, now cropped close to her skull, her skin white and papery. And yet when Lydia saw her for the first time in two years, the first thing she noticed was her mother’s eyes.

The dark blue eyes so like her own had still contained a light—faded, dimmed, but there. And she knew in that instant what her father and grandmother had been hoping for during the long years—that the light might still illuminate the real Theodora Kellaway, the woman of laughter and warmth who had suffocated beneath the burden of her illness.

Lydia pulled her arms around herself as another woman came to her mind, a softer figure than Theodora Kellaway. This other woman smelled like apples and cinnamon. She wore her braided brown hair in a smooth coronet, spoke in a quiet, musical voice, smiled with her coffee-colored eyes.

Before she even asked the question, pain speared through the middle of Lydia’s chest. Her fingers tightened on her arms, the woman’s name pushing past her lips like a broken shard of porcelain.

“Greta?”

“
Sie ist tot
.” Joseph Cole spoke without inflection.

Shock froze her to the bone. Lydia swallowed a sob of sorrow and regret, backing against the wall as she
struggled to put distance between them, not wanting to breathe the same air as him.

“W-when? How?” She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask, had to absorb the knowledge as if it were a form of punishment.

“Consumption. Three years ago.”

Lydia forced away the tears crowding her throat, hating the lack of emotion in Cole’s voice but knowing that Greta would not have noticed anything was amiss.

I’m sorry, Greta. I’m so, so sorry…

“Lydia.”

She turned to see Alexander come toward her again, though he remained a good distance away. Tension vibrated from him. She held up a hand to stay his approach, not taking her eyes from Cole, who stood watching her.

“Please.” She whispered the entreaty both to prevent Alexander from overhearing and because regret stifled her voice. “Dr. Cole, please go. Please leave me alone. I don’t want to see you again. I never did.”

The faint smile disappeared from his lips, replaced by an iciness that she knew was borne from deep within his being. “Before you speak again, Lydia, I suggest you read my letter. Otherwise you might do something you will regret.”

He stepped back, his gaze sliding from Lydia to Alexander and back again. “Congratulations on your engagement. I read about it in the
Morning Post
.”

A sick feeling swirled through her gut. She watched Dr. Cole go, air from the open door washing away some of the thickness surrounding her.

Her heart throbbed with relentless pressure against her chest; her breath came short and choppy. Even her blood
felt heavier, as if the concert of her body was determined to remind her that she lived. That she was alive, could inhale and exhale, could think and move and
be
.

Unlike her mother. Unlike Greta.

Alexander’s strong arms caught her the instant before she collapsed to the ground.

The unopened letter lay like a flat stone on her lap. Alexander sat on the carriage seat across from her, his arms tight across his chest. Lydia could sense the questions simmering in his mind and his palpable effort to restrain them.

“Who is he?” Alexander finally asked. The question pulsed with urgency.

“No one you care to know.”

“How do you know him?”

“He’s a mathematician. A good one. Or at least he was. Years ago.”

“How do you know him?”

“Could you… Alexander, I must go home.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

He rapped on the roof to gain the coachman’s attention, then gave instructions to head to East Street.

Although Alexander remained silent for the drive, dissatisfaction and unease coiled through him. Lydia gripped the letter so tightly she thought she might tear it—and considered doing just that, ripping the paper up into a hundred pieces and tossing them outside. Horses’ hooves, carriage wheels, wagons, dogs, pedestrians—all would trample over the torn pieces and crush them until they rotted and dissolved in the filth.

Because she knew the contents of the letter. Knew them as well as she knew the Pythagorean theorem. Knew them as well as she knew the contours of Jane’s face, the different shades in the girl’s hair. The color of Jane’s eyes.

She preceded Alexander from the carriage and hurried to open the front door.

“Hello, Miss Kellaway. I’ve got seed cake fresh from the ov—” Mrs. Driscoll stopped in the foyer, looking past Lydia to where Alexander stood on the doorstep. “Oh, good day, Lord Northwood.”

“Mrs. Driscoll, is Jane at home?” Lydia asked, trying to keep the urgency from her voice.

“No, miss. Mrs. Boyd took her to her piano lesson.”

“Please tell me at once when they return.”

Mrs. Driscoll looked from her to Alexander again, a line of confusion between her brows. “I’ll… er… I’ll fetch tea, shall I?”

Shedding her cloak, Lydia went into the drawing room, closing the door behind her to keep Alexander out. She sank into a chair beside the window, her heart pumping terror instead of blood through her veins. With trembling fingers, she turned the letter over, broke the seal, and unfolded the paper.

Her suspicion solidified into painful acceptance as she read the neat penmanship and tried to remind herself that she had feared this day for years. She should be grateful it hadn’t dawned before now.

Every square matrix is a root of its own characteristic polynomial
.

She refolded the letter and slipped it into her pocket.

Think, Lydia. Think.

The door opened and Mrs. Driscoll left the tea tray on
a table before departing. The smell of biscuits caused a swirl of nausea. Lydia tried to drink a cup of tea but managed only two sips before her stomach rebelled.

She grabbed a decorative bowl and retched, sweat breaking out across her forehead, her hands shaking as they gripped the porcelain edges.

“Lydia?”

Her heart plummeted. Tears stung her eyes, blinding her. Alexander’s hand rested warm and heavy on the back of her neck.

“Lydia, go upstairs. I’ll send for the doctor.”