The Forgiven Duke (A Forgotten Castles Novel) (8 page)

John frowned at her. “I’m a fair hand at riding. Actually, I’ve heard the Icelandic horses are something to see. I admit to be looking forward to seeing them for myself.”

Svein stood back a little and surveyed the two of them, one hand back on his chin, the other arm across his stomach. “I have orders to fill before I could leave. We can purchase you a couple of horses from a nearby farmstead. Icelandic horses are the best in the world. I think you’ll like them.” He turned his eyes to John. “You’re funding the expedition?”

“I am.” Alex cut in. “And I will pay you well.” She held his gaze firm as he still seemed to be deciding.

“Very well. We will leave in three days. Meet me here in the morning. I will have the horses and our supplies ready.”

Alex reached beneath the fur and took out a bag from her inner pocket. She poured out some coins into her hand and laid them on the table. “Will that be enough?”

Svein quirked a brow. “Not even close.”

Alex felt her face flush and looked at John. He motioned for the bag, shook out several more coins, and pushed them over. “That should be more than sufficient.”

Svein shrugged. “I will do my best with it.” And then he winked at Alex.

After they left, Alex laughed. “What a colorful character he was. Do you think we can trust him?”

John squeezed her hand. “We’ve little choice, love. He seems harmless enough, but I will watch out for you.”

They had slowed as they neared the inn. John stopped and then pulled her close to the shop beside it, out of the wind, and wrapped his arms around her. He leaned down and murmured into her ear, “The waiting is killing me. When can we get married?”

Alex thought of the different meanings behind his words. She liked his kisses, but she wasn’t at all sure she was ready for the wedding night. What if she became pregnant? She knew enough about how babies were made from working with her sheep. What would happen to her search if that happened? And was she even close to ready to be a mother? She still wanted her mother’s notice. There was so much at stake.

“I know. It is not the best of circumstances and I . . . John, I appreciate your patience, but I don’t want to rush if we don’t have to. No one has commented that we are traveling together. Perhaps it is not so frowned upon here in Iceland.”

“I hope you are not marrying me for my escort.” John’s voice was low and serious, causing a lodge of dread in her throat.

“Of course not!” But she couldn’t look him in the eyes when she said it.

He held her a little away from him and gave her a searching look. “Alexandria, do you care for me?”

“Yes! Of course I do. It’s just that it all happened so suddenly. I need some time to accustom myself to the idea. And you know my foremost desire, my most important ambition, is to find my parents. I can’t let anything come before that.”

“I know, and I want that too. For all of us.” He took her back into his arms and held her tight against the wind.

She thought of how he would feel if she someday broke it off.
Dear God, am I just using him as a means to an end?

When did I become a woman like that?

She thought of the duke and a deep longing to hear from him filled her. What if, before they left for the Black Castles, she wrote him a letter? Might he get it? If he wasn’t coming after her, then he would be back in London at his town house, wouldn’t he? She had his address memorized. She looked at John and her cheeks burned. She would have to smuggle it out. Perhaps Ana would help her. She was so kind and would do anything for Alexandria after her help in finding Tomas.

Yes, that is what she would do.

She would put her confused emotions in a letter and let her guardian advise her. It was the right thing to do.

Chapter Eight

T
he prince regent was with two of his cabinet ministers and the lord chancellor when Gabriel arrived at St. James Palace. He entered the royal palace to find a servant waiting for him, and had been led through the Guard Chamber—a grand room with tall, narrow windows; twenty-foot ceilings; and a ten-foot-tall fireplace that a man could stand inside. There was an intricate design of swords fanned out across the wall like a work of art and every kind of weapon imaginable hanging on every inch of the other walls. An impressive display of England’s power.

Gabriel was then taken to a magnificent drawing room done floor to ceiling in white plaster work with gold ornamentation. The furniture and rugs were also white and gold. Thousands of candles from two massive chandeliers lit up the golden hues so the whole room seemed to glitter. Gabriel noted all of this in an instant as the servant bowed and left him at the door. He hesitated and then pulled himself up with a determined air and walked over to the group of men.

The regent caught sight of him and waved him over. “St. Easton!” he clearly stated, probably in a booming voice.

The other men turned and bowed but scurried away when the regent spoke quick words to them. Gabriel tried to maintain an air of confidence that he knew what was going on when really he felt like a drowning man, unable to find his moorings.
God, help me find Your way through this madness. I’ve thrown my lot in with a reprobate.

After the other men left, the regent gave him a thoughtful stare and then waved Gabriel to follow his ponderous form from the room.

They weaved their way through the palace’s maze of wings, dark passages, backstairs, and suites. A person could get lost for days and
had
, or so the stories went. Finally, they came to the long and deep room full of books—the queen’s library.

Sunlight streamed in from tall, arched windows on one side of the cavernous room, lighting the rows of bookcases overflowing with books. The walls held more bookcases, connected by arches near the ornate molding of the ceiling with busts of famed personages perched on the highest point of each arch. The queen’s desk, looking rather small in such a huge room, sat in the middle, a neat piece of furniture that was more practical than ornate.

The regent led Gabriel all the way to the back of the room where shadows overtook the corners. He pulled forth a key and opened a small cabinet. Inside were drawers, small compartments, and a safe. With another key he unlocked the safe, pulled something out, turned, and handed it to Gabriel. He had not said a single word since his greeting. Now, he looked into Gabriel’s eyes with a small smile.

King George, the prince’s father, was deaf, Gabriel realized. The regent knew how to communicate without many words. Gabriel felt a new respect for the man grasp hold of him.

The regent motioned with one arm to a chair and a desk holding ink and pen. On the desk was a note that read,

I looked at it and can’t make any sense of it. See what you can find out. I will come back in an hour.

Gabriel bowed and watched him go. If the regent didn’t come back, Gabriel wasn’t entirely certain he could find his way back to the outdoors. With a deep breath, he seated himself and opened the faded black leather cover of the manuscript.

Mathematical calculations, advanced calculus, a new math he’d seen a little of, and mechanical drawings leapt out from the page. He tried to make sense of it for a moment, shook his head, his brows drawn together in concentration, and then turned the page. Page after page, over every inch of the pages, squeezed together in corners and boxes, some sideways, some diagonal, running off the page and then, with the slashing lines of a brilliant mind trying to get it on paper as fast as he imagined it, they continued onto the next page.

Gabriel’s brain whirled with images, impossible images that the pages evoked; astonishment and a pooling dread caused a cold sweat to break out across his body.

Oh, God, what is this?

He swallowed back the knot in his throat and started over, more slowly and carefully. There were sixteen pages of new thought, sixteen pages of plans for etchings, as on glass or crystal. There, in one corner was a drawing of crystals with the words
Icelandic Crystal
scribbled underneath.

Iceland. The crystal mines. He remembered it now. The only kind of crystal in the world that was completely transparent with double refraction capabilities. Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens and even Sir Isaac Newton had discovered uses for it, optical instruments and such, when this man, Augusto de Carrara, was alive. That had to be the connection with Iceland.

And Alexandria was there—heading right for whatever this proved to be.

Gabriel closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his forehead, then looked back at the last page, imagining the thing being built, but it abruptly ended. It was only half the plans, if even that. But even with this much . . . it looked fantastical, futuristic, impossible. A thought that had never been thought before stared at him from the pages, making his mind open to all the possibilities of its design.

His mind strained, gaining a slight foothold of this new thought, and then he felt it slide away. But it was there, and it asked a question he didn’t think mankind had ever asked before.

What if light could be used as power?

And then it struck him. Not just power—the ultimate power. What if this could be used as a weapon, the most powerful weapon in the world?

He rose and paced to the corner of the library, his stomach sick. This was so much bigger than anything he’d imagined.
Dear God, Alexandria!
The vision of her blithely traipsing about Iceland with that young fop—they would eat her alive! They would do anything to have the other half of this knowledge. Kings, powerful leaders . . . who knew how many knew of this and wanted the rest of these plans?

Could the Featherstones indeed still be alive? Did they know what they were searching for? The impact it could have on the world? Of course, the regent could have invented any number of stories about the manuscript, because only a person educated in the latest mathematics and science could begin to understand these plans. The Featherstones probably had no idea what they were sent to find. But there were others who did. The Spanish and possibly the French.

The thought of Spaniards after Alexandria in Iceland made his hands curl into fists. He had to get back there. He had to get her home.

With a shuddering breath, he leaned against the bookshelf at the back of the library. A hollow vibration touched his back. He stood away and then leaned back against it again. It felt different when his shoulder pressed against it, lighter and almost as if it was resonating. He stood upright and knocked his fist against it, not hearing it, but feeling . . . something strange about it. Without his hearing, touch had become keener. Sensing vibration through the air, through furniture, through the floor, had become a quiet language to gauge action by. Something was not right with this wall.

Gabriel backed up and studied the bookshelves lining the walls. They were ten feet tall and filled with books. These shelves were connected to the walls, unlike the other free-standing bookshelves in the room. But when he looked closely enough, he noticed the one in the corner was not connected to the wall. He plucked some books from the shelf and saw a different back than the other shelves. It matched, almost perfectly, but it wasn’t the same. It was a false back.

With little, precise movements he was able to scoot the shelf out and away from the wall, books falling to the floor as he did it. He pushed them aside and then pulled the shelf free of the others enough to squeeze behind it. It was dark but he ran his palms up and down the wall, looking, hoping for anything.

Nothing. Only the smooth panels of wood. He was being silly. Augusto’s manuscript had cast a spell on him. He shook his head. He was just backing out when his foot caught on something near the bottom of the wall.

He reached down and ran his fingers along the edge, feeling a protruding lever hidden by the molding near the floor. He pushed it, feeling sudden vibrations as something clicked or sprang open. Gabriel leaned back, awash in astonishment as the panel in the wall moved, revealing a dark space behind it.

The door was only about five feet tall and four feet wide, but Gabriel stepped nimbly through, a strange foreboding overwhelming him.

It was dark, only a pale dimness from the library where Gabriel stood, and then a deep, cavernous darkness ate up the room. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the shadowy legs of a table. He went over to it and felt along the top. There. A lantern and flint to light it with. He fumbled with the flint, nearly dropping it, his heart pounding in his ears. He struck it once, twice, and then a bursting of flame fired the air. He held the flame to the wick and watched it glow to life.

Gabriel lifted it high and turned toward the room.

Dancing light from the lantern’s glass flickered like yellow diamonds across the walls. Gabriel looked toward the center of the room.

God help us all.

There it was. What he had just been reading and imagining. It sat in the middle of the floor, like a giant ice sculpture.

The half-completed invention of Augusto de Carrara.

The weapon of the future.

With shaking legs, Gabriel stumbled from the room, rushed from behind the bookcase, and found himself standing face-to-face with the regent.

“What is the meaning of this?” The folds of the regent’s face quivered as he thundered the question, fire in his eyes.

Gabriel bowed his head, knowing he had no choice. He didn’t have time to consider whether it would be advantageous that the regent saw what was in that room. No, he had to tell him.

Gabriel motioned toward the bookcase. “Your Highness, I beg your indulgence for a moment, but I think I have stumbled upon something very important. If you would follow me?”

The regent scowled but motioned that he go on. Gabriel scooted one end of the bookcase farther away from the wall to allow for the regent’s girth and then carried the light ahead of him, illuminating their way. Once inside he held the lantern aloft and nodded toward the center of the room. “Your Majesty, the machine.”