Regina Scott (11 page)

“A very important game,” he assured her, “but I truly must work out these calculations.”

Emma felt her temper rising. She pried the stocking from his grip. “Of course. Alice is expected upstairs soon in any event, and work of a scientific nature must always take precedence over a promise to a lady.”

His head whipped back toward her, and she could see him frown. One of the fingers of his free hand was still moving, but this time she wouldn’t have been surprised to find he was calculating the exact response to her comment.

“A faulty assumption,” he replied. “A lady should always take precedence, particularly when that lady is my charming daughter. Please return to your knitting, Emma. I’m certain Lady Chamomile will miss her stockings.”

He bowed to Emma, and she curtsied in response, as if they were about to begin a set in a dance. But perhaps they had been dancing, within the confines of the roles placed upon them.

After he straightened, he knelt again beside his daughter. “Is it my turn or yours, Alice?”

“Yours,” Alice said, face glowing. “But I’d be happy to take another turn if you like.”

“Hand your father the ball, Alice,” Emma said, returning to her seat with a smile. “He’s already made enough concessions tonight.”

Chapter Eleven

E
mma went to bed that evening thoroughly satisfied with the day. Nicholas was coming around. She could see it. Surely they had turned the corner, and he would continue toward becoming the father Alice needed. All Emma had to do was encourage him.

That should not be hard, she thought as she snuggled beneath the covers in the room next to Alice’s. She could see that he wanted to love his daughter. Indeed, his kindness to Alice, his willingness to take time to explain things in terms she’d understand, all said that he cared. That’s the sort of father she’d always dreamed was possible, even when she had no firsthand experience, except one.

Thank You, Father. You showed me what a real father should be like—loving, caring, guiding, comforting. Help Nicholas become that for Alice.

But though she went to bed happy, the next day proved that her goal was not yet in sight.

It seemed that night had been the last concession from Nicholas. Indeed, Emma wasn’t even sure he slept. Ivy reported he had been found in his study the next morning, still dressed in the clothes he’d had on the previous evening, hair disheveled, chin grizzled, head bowed over his calculations. He did not join Emma and Alice for breakfast or tea, and Mrs. Dunworthy sent word that their dinner would be served in the nursery that night.

Emma had one thought about the change. Unacceptable. She had begun to hope, and she wasn’t about to let Alice’s chances get swallowed by the ravenous maw of Madam Science. She and Alice had drawn him out once. They could do so again.

Accordingly, she set Alice to a task that afternoon, and by four they were out on the lawn in front of the Grange with a skeptical Ivy.

Dovecote Dale never ceased to delight Emma. After the lifeless stone walls of London, everything looked vibrant, from the grasses stretching across the fields, to the stream tumbling over stones on its way down the dale, to the trees edging the hills. The London buildings had towered over her. The hills and peaks made London seem pitifully small. In London, the mists had been tainted with sulfur from the many coal fires. Here they clung to the river, cool and moist and smelling of summer. London sounded of the rattle of tack from the carriages and lorries, the shout of the street vendor. Here she was greeted each morning by the coo of the dove.

Even with a leaden sky that threatened rain, there was something clean and bright about the dale. The beauty around them was one more thing she wanted Nicholas to appreciate, and this experiment of hers should help.

“Hold it up, like this,” Emma instructed Ivy, lifting the maid’s arms where she cradled a lopsided kite.

Alice was fairly bouncing in her leather half boots, her cotton day dress covered in a fitted pelisse of a violet that matched her eyes. Her velvet-covered bonnet wrapped her dark curls and dwarfed her face.

“Will it really fly?” she asked, gaze on the cloth they had latched to a frame built with kindling from the kitchen fire.

Emma had never flown a kite. She had never been to a park in London big enough to fly a kite unless she had been walking as chaperone to the Frederickses’ daughters. Certainly those girls would have turned up their noses at the idea of such a childlike pursuit. But Emma had read about kites, and the principle of their flight seemed easy enough to master.

“It most certainly will,” she promised, playing out the twine from the ball they’d borrowed from the gardener. “Let me show you.”

She backed away from the kite and cast a glance toward the Grange. She’d chosen a spot directly opposite the windows of Nicholas’s study. With the day overcast, she could see into the room easily.

He was at his desk, head still bowed, hand jerking across the page as he scribbled. Books were piled so haphazardly around him she wondered they didn’t tumble to the floor. Surely he had a crick in his neck by now. Surely he needed a breath of fresh air. All it required was a little noise to entice him out to join them.

“When I say go, release it,” she told Ivy.

Alice clapped her hands, eyes shining.

Emma took off at a run, one hand raising her brown wool skirts above her ankles, the other clinging to the twine. She felt the tug from the kite. “Go!” she shouted.

Alice’s squeal of delight told her the kite was airborne.

“Cheer it on, Alice!” she cried, and Alice began calling out to the kite, encouraging it to climb, to soar. Emma’s spirits soared with the sound.

She slowed, turned, played out the twine a little more. The kite was actually up in the air, dipping in the gray sky. She beamed at the sight as Alice ran to meet her.

“You did it! You did it!” Already the little girl’s hands were reaching for the ball of twine. “Can I do it?”

“Of course.” Emma handed her the ball, showed her how to hold the twine firmly. “You see, the wind’s caught our kite now. We have to hang on, or it will get away.”

Alice sobered. “I won’t let it go.”

Emma patted her shoulder and released the kite to her control. Alice stood, feet planted on the grass, hands steady, gazed fixed on her charge. Dedication and determination were written in every line of her little body. How could her father fail to appreciate such a sight?

Because he hadn’t seen it.

That fact was all too evident as Emma watched him through the glass. Despite the noise outside his window, he hadn’t moved from his spot at the cluttered desk. She could imagine the tension in those shoulders, the pressure of the chair at his back. The safety lamp was certainly important, but to the exclusion of all else? She’d thought she’d shown him how delightful his daughter’s company could be, how much Alice needed a father. Didn’t he care? Was he incapable of caring?

“Oh, no!”

Alice’s cry brought her back to the moment. The kite had tumbled. Emma could see the twine strung across the ground and up the side of the Grange. She shook her head. It would have to be the roof, wouldn’t it?

“It fell!” Alice cried, dashing up to Emma. “I didn’t take care of it!”

Emma bent to put her gaze on a level with the girl’s. Already tears were brimming in Alice’s eyes.

“I’m sure you took good care of it, Alice,” she murmured. “Kites can be willful things. Let’s go ask Mr. Charles how to reach the roof. We’ll fetch it right down and show it the error of its ways.”

Alice caught Emma’s hand. “We should be nice to it. It’s probably lost and very afraid.”

Emma gave her hand a squeeze. “We’ll make sure it’s brought safely home.”

Ivy hurried up to them. “What should I do, miss?” she asked, eyes wide as if she feared she’d be blamed for the kite’s loss.

Emma smiled as she straightened. “Please take a message to Sir Nicholas. Tell him his daughter needs his assistance in solving a problem involving the precise calculation of leverage. She’ll be waiting for him on the roof.”

* * *

Nick set down his quill and rubbed his eyes. So many variables made the ratio of space to material difficult to determine. The wick’s ability to burn under the right conditions could be affected by the type of oil, the width of the yarn and even the dye used. He’d thought he could apply his knowledge to devise the correct dimensions, but it began to appear that experimentation would be required. That meant he’d need several of the little stockings, perhaps many of them. He’d simply have to conscript Emma.

Charlotte would protest. He could deal with Charlotte. Emma would likely protest, as well. She seemed uncommonly devoted to Alice. Of course, she had proven last night that she could knit while keeping an eye on his daughter. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such an imposition. In other circumstances, he thought she might enjoy helping further the cause of science.

Someone scratched at his door, and he called permission to enter before eyeing his crowded sheet again. Perhaps if he eliminated the dye from consideration. It should be possible to procure yarn that had yet to be colored. Certainly some of the Duke of Bellington’s tenant farmers had sheep. Perhaps Charlotte would know a way to contact them.

“Excuse me, sir.”

He glanced up to find the maid who generally assisted in the nursery standing before him, hands clasped in front of her apron. She had some sort of plant name if he recalled. Daisy? Laurel?

“Yes?” he encouraged when she said nothing.

She bobbed a curtsey, and the compression of her lower lip suggested she was biting it. “Miss Alice has need of you on the roof. Miss Pyrmont said it was a matter of leavening.”

“Leavening?” His frown must have been more fierce than he realized, because she scuttled back from the desk. “Do you mean leverage?”

“Very likely, sir.” She visibly swallowed. “Will that be all?”

“Yes, thank you.” Nick nodded his dismissal, but she was already fleeing. Was it a matter of such importance, then? Had the maid garbled the message more than he’d realized? He went over the pertinent facts again.

Alice. Roof. Leverage.

Had something happened to Alice?

He was on his feet and striding around the desk a second later. Snatching his coat off the chair by the door, he shrugged into it as he headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Up through the chamber story, up past the little rooms where his staff lived, to a door at the end of the corridor, a door that stood ajar as if waiting for him.

He had discovered the steep set of stairs that led to the roof when he was a child. The flat expanse of gray tile was covered with chimney pots, like a forest high above the ground. He’d been particularly partial to the corner pointing down the dale, for it had been the perfect place to mount a telescope so he could observe the stars.

He followed that path now and burst through the door onto the roof, looking in all directions for any sight of his daughter. He didn’t see her at first, but he heard her. She was sobbing.

The sound cut into him, forced him forward, weaving around the chimney pots, searching. His boots slipped on a puddle, but he managed to keep his feet. The frantic pounding of his heart nearly eclipsed Alice’s cries. He came around the last pot and skidded to a stop.

Emma was down on her knees on the tiles, skirts pooled about her, arms around Alice, who was crying against her shoulder, her bonnet fallen behind her. Nick strode to their sides, knelt as well, lay a hand on the silk of his daughter’s hair.

“What’s happened, Alice? Are you hurt?”

Emma’s head came up, and she stared at him. “Oh, Nicholas, you’re here.”

An obvious observation. Surely she’d been the one to call for him. Did she think he’d refuse to come? Did she think him a monster that he’d be immune to his daughter’s pain?

Apparently Alice did, for she looked equally surprised by his presence. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his cravat.

“Oh, Papa, I killed it!”

“Oh, darling, it wasn’t your fault!” Emma assured her, patting her back, her own face stricken.

What on earth was going on? Nick gently pulled his daughter’s arms off his neck and drew her back so he could look at her. The dust from the roof had merged with her tears to form dark tracks down her cheeks. But he could see no sign of injury, no laboring of her breath.

He glanced at Emma. What he had taken for concern seemed to be dissipating, as if his presence had brought her comfort, as well. Her hair was coming free from the braid in which she usually kept it, creating a nimbus of pale gold around her face. She didn’t seem physically hurt either.

“Emma,” he said, “perhaps you’d be so good as to explain why I should find you and Alice on the roof.”

Her voice trembled just the slightest, suggesting she was as distraught as Alice, but there was that light in her eyes again, as if even on a gray day they were capable of sparkling.

“I fear we’ve had a mishap,” she said. “It seems Alice’s kite was introduced rather abruptly to a chimney pot, and the two did not agree.” She nodded to a heap of cloth lying nearby.

A kite? Alice was sobbing about a kite? He’d left his calculations for a kite?

“I killed it, Papa,” Alice said with a sniff. “It got away, and it died.”

Nick drew a deep breath as he released her and stood. “Kites are not alive, Alice. You didn’t kill it.”

By her frown, he could tell she didn’t believe him. Why should she? She must have seen the thing soar as easily as a bird. She was too young to understand the difference. And the kite appeared to be as important to her as his calculations were to him.

Nick managed a smile for her sake. “Let me take a look. There may be a way to save it.”

“Oh, Papa!” Now her eyes were shining, full of faith in him. And he knew in that moment that he would do whatever was necessary to save the silly kite.

He went to the jumble of materials, lifted them gingerly. The struts were inferior pieces of wood, rough, uneven. Under the strain of flight, they had snapped and poked through the fabric. The twine was a tangled mess. In short, the thing was a loss.

“Ah, yes,” he said, tucking it under his arm. “A simple matter. We’ll have it put right by dinner.”

Alice rushed to hug him, further squashing the kite against him. But it was Emma that held him captive.

Her eyes were pooling with moisture, as if his gesture had touched her. Her hands were pressed together and up against her lips, as if to thank the Lord. It was the look of complete approval, of supreme appreciation. More, it spoke of something he hadn’t known he could recognize.

Love.

Something poked at him inside, whispered that such a look was dangerous. Love was messy, unpredictable. Love had a way of interfering. Love meant compromising, ceding another point of view. He wasn’t good at that. The reactions of his parents had suggested as much. His inability to see Ann’s illness before it was too late had proved the point. The very thought of the tender emotion made him consider thrusting the kite at Alice and dashing for the safety of his laboratory.

But it was just a kite. Making it fit for its purpose did not mean he was pledging himself to anyone. He could fix it for his daughter, and if fixing the kite pleased Emma as well, that was all to the good. He’d need her help in his experiments, after all. He had no other reason to wish to see her smile at him like that again.