Every Whispered Word (2 page)

His expression was contained, but she could see that she had surprised him with her knowledge of his employer's accomplishments.
Good,
she thought, perversely satisfied that she had managed to put him in his place.

“Given the disastrous results of the experiment you just witnessed, I fear I have forever damaged your too kind opinion of me. However, since you just barged into my laboratory uninvited and unannounced, I'm afraid I cannot be held responsible for that. I don't customarily permit anyone to see what I am working on until I am relatively confident it is not going to explode and start shooting undergarments about.”

Camelia stared at him, speechless. He was not so young after all, she realized, suddenly noticing the furrows in his forehead and between his brows, which suggested countless long hours spent in study and deliberation. He was certainly thirty-five, or perhaps even a year or two more. While that was relatively young for a man to have accomplished all that she had just described, it was not impossible. Not if the man was exceptionally brilliant, disciplined, and driven. A terrible sinking feeling enveloped her as she realized she had just insulted the very man she had so desperately hoped to impress with her visit.

“Forgive me,” she managed, wishing that the floor would open up suddenly and swallow her whole. “I did not mean to intrude. It's just that I very much wanted to meet you.”

He tilted his head to one side, his expression wary. “Why? Have you come to interview me for one of those irritating rags that takes such inestimable pleasure in dismissing me as a mad inventor?”

His tone was sarcastic, but Camelia detected a thread of vulnerability that suggested he had not been impervious to being described as such.

“No, nothing like that,” she assured him. “I'm not a writer.”

“Not a writer, and not a spy. That's two counts in your favor. Who, then, are you?”

“I'm Lady Camelia Marshall,” she said, grabbing her hat as it started to slide off her head. “I'm a great admirer of your work, Mr. Kent,” she added earnestly, holding fast to keep the heavily flowered confection from flopping over her face. “I've read several of your papers and have found them to be most intriguing.”

“Have you indeed?”

If he was impressed by the fact that a woman had actually read some of his work, or claimed to find it intriguing, he gave no sign of it. Instead he walked behind her and lifted the first table that Camelia had knocked over.

“What a bloody mess,” he muttered, bending to pick up some of the dozens of tools, pieces of hardware, and wads of notes that lay strewn about the wet floor.

“I'm terribly sorry about knocking your tables over,” Camelia apologized. “I hope nothing is broken,” she added, stooping down to assist him.

Simon watched as she awkwardly picked up a small metal box. She gripped it with one soiled, gloved hand while the other held fast to the enormous monstrosity of her sagging hat. That done, she started to rise. Unfortunately, her balance was compromised by the heavy weight of her wet bustle. She abandoned her grip on her bonnet and flailed around with one hand, her expression suddenly panicked, still holding his invention safe against her breast.

Simon reached out and grabbed her as her hat dropped in a riot of wilted roses over her face. As she toppled against him the scent of her flooded through him, an extraordinary fragrance unlike any he had ever known. It was exotic yet vaguely familiar, a light, sun-washed essence that reminded him of wandering in the woods on his father's estate during a summer rain. He held her fast, drinking in her fragrance and acutely aware of the delicate structure of her back, the soft gasp of her breath, the agitated rise and fall of her breast as it pulsed against the damp linen clinging to his chest.

“I'm so sorry.” Horrendously embarrassed, Camelia wrenched her hat up off her face. Finally free of its pins, the treacherous headpiece fell to the floor, dragging whatever semblance of a coiffure she might have retained down with it, until her hair was spilling across her back in a hopeless mass of tangles.

Simon stared down at her, taking in the smoky depths of her eyes, which were wide and filled with frustration. They were the color of sage, he realized, the soft green shade of wild wood sage, which grew in the dry, shady heaths of Scotland. A fine fan of lines surrounded her lower lashes, making it clear that she was well past the girlish bloom of her early twenties. Her skin was unfashionably bronzed and sprinkled with freckles, and her honey-colored hair was streaked with the palest threads of gold, indicating she was well accustomed to being in the sun. That he found surprising, given the quality of her attire. In his experience most Englishwomen of gentle breeding preferred the protection of either the indoors or shade. Then again, he reflected, most women of gentle breeding didn't march boldly into a man's house, uninvited and unescorted. He was vaguely aware that she no longer required his assistance to stand, yet he found himself strangely reluctant to release her.

“I'm all right now, thank you.” Camelia wondered if he thought she was incapable of staying upright for more than three minutes. Not that she had given him much reason to think otherwise, she realized miserably. “I'm afraid I'm not accustomed to wearing such a big hat,” she added, feeling he must require some kind of explanation for her inability to keep the confounded thing on top of her head. She declined to mention that a wet pair of drawers had knocked her in the face, challenging the integrity of her awkwardly arranged hairpins.

Simon didn't know what to say to that. He supposed a gentleman might reassure her that the hat was quite fetching on her, but he thought the bloody thing was ludicrous. There was no denying she looked much better without it, especially with her sun-kissed hair loose and curling across her shoulders.

“Here.” He picked her hat up and handed it to her.

“Thank you.”

He turned away, suddenly needing some distance from her. “So tell me, Lady Camelia,” he began, trying to focus on his disaster of a laboratory, “do we actually have an appointment today of which I am unaware?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Camelia replied emphatically. “We most certainly do.” She coughed lightly. “In a matter of speaking.”

Simon frowned. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning that our appointment was not confirmed, exactly. But it was certainly set, there can be no doubt about that.”

“I see.” He had no idea what she was talking about. “Forgive me if I seem obtuse, but just how, precisely, was this meeting arranged?”

“I wrote you a series of letters asking you for an appointment, but unfortunately, you never replied,” Camelia explained. “In the last letter I took the step of informing you that I would call upon you today at this time. I suppose that was rather forward of me.”

“I believe it actually pales in comparison with marching into a man's house unannounced and unescorted,” Simon reflected, slapping a sheaf of soggy notes onto the table. “Are your parents aware that you are wandering around London without a chaperone?”

“I have no need for a chaperone, Mr. Kent.”

“Forgive me. I did not realize you were married.”

“I'm not. But at twenty-eight I'm well past the age of coming out, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to be constantly arranging for some gossipy elderly matron to follow me about. I have a driver, and that is sufficient.”

“Aren't you concerned for your reputation?”

“Not particularly.”

“And why is that?”

“Because if I lived my life according to the dictums of London society, I would never get anything done.”

“I see.” He tossed a wooden pole with a metal attachment onto the table.

“What's that?” asked Camelia, regarding it curiously.

“It's a new type of mop I'm working on,” he said dismissively, bending to retrieve something else.

She moved closer to examine the odd device. “How does it work?”

Simon regarded her uncertainly, not quite believing that she was actually interested in it. Few women had ever ventured into his laboratory. Of those that had, only the women in his family had demonstrated a genuine appreciation of his often outlandish ideas. Yet something about Lady Camelia's expression as she stood there tempered his initial impulse to simply brush off her question. Her sage green eyes were wide and contemplative, as if the odd tool before her were a mystery that she genuinely wanted to solve.

“I've attached a large clamp on the end of a mop-stick, which is operated by this lever,” he began, picking it up to show it to her. “The lever pulls this rod, which tightens this spring, causing the clamp to close tightly. The idea is that you wring out the string end of the mop without ever touching it, or even having to bend over.”

“That's very clever.”

“It needs work,” he said, shrugging. “I'm having trouble getting the tension on the spring right, so that it squeezes out the mop sufficiently without snapping the lever.” He placed it back on the table.

“And what is this?” Camelia indicated the metal box she was holding.

“A lemon squeezer.”

She regarded it curiously. “It doesn't look like any of the lemon squeezers I've ever seen.” She opened it to reveal a wooden fluted nob surrounded by a ring of holes. “How does it work?”

“You put the halved lemon on the mount, then close the lid and press down firmly, using the handles to create more pressure,” Simon explained. “The hollow in the lid squeezes the lemon hard against the mount, extracting the juice without the need for twisting. The juice flows through the holes into the chamber below, free of pits and pulp, which get trapped in the chamber above. Then you pull this little drawer out and there you have your lemon juice.”

“That's wonderful. Are you planning to manufacture it?”

He shook his head. “I made it for my family because I'm always trying to find ways to lighten their work a little. I expect others would think it was a piece of nonsense.”

“I believe most women would welcome anything that makes their household tasks easier,” Camelia argued. “Have you at least registered a patent for it? Or for the mop?”

“If I stopped to register patents for every little thing I came up with, I'd spend my life buried in paper.”

“But you have some two hundred and seventy patents.”

“Only because some well-meaning members of my family took it upon themselves to take my drawings and notes on those particular inventions and submit the necessary documents and fees to the patent office. I have no idea what has been registered and what hasn't. Frankly, it doesn't interest me.”

She regarded him incredulously. “Don't you want to know that your ideas have been properly registered, so you can receive credit for them?”

“I don't invent things for the sake of receiving credit for them, Lady Camelia. If someone else wants to take one of my ideas and improve upon it and invest the time and the capital necessary to put it into production, so be it. Science and technology would never advance if all scientists hoarded their theories and discoveries as if they were gold.”

He hoisted the second table back onto its legs and began to pile onto it more of the wet papers, tools, and various inventions that had fallen to the floor. “So tell me, Lady Camelia,” he said, shaking the water out of a tangled nest of wire, “what is it that led you to write all those letters asking to see me?”

Camelia hesitated. She had imagined conducting her meeting with Mr. Kent seated in a richly velvet-draped drawing room, where she could expound at a leisurely pace upon the importance of archaeology and the evolution of man, perhaps while being served tea on a silver service by some suitably deferential servant. It was now abundantly clear to her that Mr. Kent didn't employ a servant, given the numerous stacks of greasy dishes piled high upon the stove and in the sink on the other side of the kitchen. She considered suggesting that she return on another day, when he might not be preoccupied with the task of restoring his laboratory to some semblance of order, then quickly rejected the idea.

Time was running out.

“I'm interested in your work on steam engines,” she began, bending to pick up a few more items from the floor. “I have read one of your papers on the subject—in which you discussed the enormous benefits of steam power when applied to the pumps used in coal mining. I thought your thesis that steam power has yet to be used effectively was most compelling.”

Simon couldn't believe she was serious. Of every possibility that might have explained her presence, the subject of steam engines and coal mining would have struck him as amongst the least likely. “You're interested in steam engines?”

“As they apply to the challenges of excavation and pumping,” Camelia explained. “I am an archaeologist, Mr. Kent, as was my father, the late Earl of Stamford. No doubt you have heard of him?”

A glimmer of hope flared in her eyes, which for some reason Simon was loathe to extinguish. However, he disliked the idea of lying to her.

“Unfortunately, Lady Camelia, I'm not very well acquainted with the field of archaeology, and I don't typically attend functions where I might have had the pleasure of meeting your father.” His tone was apologetic.

Camelia nodded. She supposed she couldn't really expect him to know of her father. Given everything she had heard about Mr. Kent, it was apparent he spent most of his time cloistered in his laboratory.

“My father dedicated his life to the study of the archaeological riches in Africa, at a time when the world is almost exclusively interested in the art and artifacts of the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. Very little has been done in terms of recording the history of the African people from a scientific point of view.”

“I'm afraid I don't know very much about Africa, Lady Camelia. My understanding is that its people are basically nomadic tribes who have lived extremely simple lives for thousands of years. I didn't think there was anything of value there—except diamonds, of course.”